Lil Elroy’s 30L Build

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LilElroyJetson

LilElroyJetson

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Synergy Reef 5 Gallon auto top off reservoir arrived today. This thing is niiiiice! (I think it’s nicer than my actual tank!) I knew my ATO reservoir wasn’t going to fit in my tank stand with everything else in there so I wanted to get something that would look good sitting outside the tank. Very happy with it, a really solidly constructed acrylic box.

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LilElroyJetson

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AutoAqua optical water level switch. Love how small this sensor is and the fact it’s black and dark blue so it won’t stant out or take up space. Putting one inside the tank near the top to shut off the return pump if the tank starts to overflow and another one in the sump to cut off the return pump if the water Inc the return chamber gets too low.

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LilElroyJetson

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Diatom bloom in full effect and just a couple of days into that bloom, seeing some tiny green algae spots scattered on the rocks. Not sure what it is yet. I scraped some coraline into the tank and kept the skimmer off for the day hoping to seed the tank so whatever kickstarts it’s growth I’m good with it. Alk and Ca dropped a bit from yesterday to today, and phosphates have been steadily dropping due to the Rowaphos in the MiniMax reactor. I started with 2tbsp of Rowaphos (30 gallon total system water volume) and it dropped the P04 a bit. Now I’m running 6tbsp and it has been steadily dropping my Po4, down today from 0.236ppm to 0.184ppm. Will be interesting to see if it gets to zero or stalls somewhere short.

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LilElroyJetson

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Phosphates still going down, 0.166 as of yesterday. And to my surprise...green coraline?! Looks like it! Dry rock got put in the Brute container around January 12th, diatom phase seems to have come to an end after about a week, yesterday the first little green dots appeared on the live rock and woke up today to see it’s already spread quite a bit. I did scrape a small amount of coraline into the tank about a week ago and left my skimmer off for two days to allow it to take foot but I didn’t expect to see results (and so evenly spread) this quickly!

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May have been a false alarm on the green coraline. Looks like I’m in my green hair algae phase. I’ve been out of town for 10 days and my friend who checked in on the tank while I was out took these photos so please excuse the poor quality but here are some photos of the bloom. Corals look nice and happy. I’ll try to get another update up tonight or tomorrow.

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Exciting day today! Another order from @uniquecorals arrived! The montis and acros are from UC and the zoas are from WWC. Thought it was time for a frag rack...what do you guys think? :)

Unfortunately, my first @WWC Coral Club delivery that had a bunch of inverts coming along with it didn’t arrive today due to a FedEx delay. Hope everything makes it ok!

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I added a Seneye Reef Monitor to the tank. It has been nice to be able to monitor temperature and pH on my phone, as well as keep track of ammonia as the tank progresses so I know if any of the new additions’ health begins to decline. I used it’s PAR meter functionality when mounting my Frag’s to the rockwork and that was probably its most useful function thus far. I also was having trouble getting my pH above 8.0 for a few days, I’ve since started opening my apartment windows during the day and can watch the pH trend upward over 8.2 during those hours while generally staying above 8.1 now. So the Seneye is great for seeing how my pH trends over 24 hours. I’m still trying to figure out how I’ll address the lower pH issue when the Arizona temperatures climb upwards of 110 during the summer months when I won’t be able to keep my windows open and can’t run anything outside.

I plan on installing this Chill Solutions Thermoelectric Chiller this weekend as a backup measure in case my AC unit goes down at any point during the summer (like it did last summer). Fortunately my complex treats a downed AC unit as a mandatory same day emergency, so hopefully neither I or the tank suffer due to the high temps. :cool:

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Things are coming along!! Here’s a shot of the tank I took tonight (I need to learn how to take photos of the tank and it’s inhabitants with my DSLR...the photos will get better I promise!) :D:

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DIY dosing containers for my Calcium, Alkalinity and Magnesium 3-part. VOSS 375 mL glass water bottles, 1/4” acrylic rods and John Guest bulkheads. Did all 3 of these in less than 10 minutes and happy with the way they came out. Hoping to get my doser set up this week!

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DIY dosing containers for my Calcium, Alkalinity and Magnesium 3-part. VOSS 375 mL glass water bottles, 1/4” acrylic rods and John Guest bulkheads. Did all 3 of these in less than 10 minutes and happy with the way they came out. Hoping to get my doser set up this week!

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Wow nice!
 
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Dosing pump is up and running! Please excuse the mess, we’re slowly getting things cleaned up over here! Dosing Brightwell 3-part. Calcium and Alkalinity in 3 spread out dosings when lights are off in a very small dose, magnesium once a week, also a small dose. Hoping this greatly helps contribute to the stability of the tank and it continues to thrive.

I know this isn’t a big deal to many reefers who’ve been in this hobby forever but when I first started reef keeping I could not conceive a day when I would have this wealth of knowledge and understanding of the hobby, so, proud moment tonight setting this thing up after almost daily testing for the past month to get a good read on how much my system is consuming and anticipating how things will progress going forward. :D

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Dosing pump is up and running! Please excuse the mess, we’re slowly getting things cleaned up over here! Dosing Brightwell 3-part. Calcium and Alkalinity in 3 spread out dosings when lights are off in a very small dose, magnesium once a week, also a small dose. Hoping this greatly helps contribute to the stability of the tank and it continues to thrive.

I know this isn’t a big deal to many reefers who’ve been in this hobby forever but when I first started reef keeping I could not conceive a day when I would have this wealth of knowledge and understanding of the hobby, so, proud moment tonight setting this thing up after almost daily testing for the past month to get a good read on how much my system is consuming and anticipating how things will progress going forward. :D

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Nice nice! What are the white things on your dosing lines? And what do they do ?
 

A worm with high fashion and practical utility: Have you ever kept feather dusters in your reef aquarium?

  • I currently have feather dusters in my tank.

    Votes: 64 36.8%
  • Not currently, but I have had feather dusters in my tank in the past.

    Votes: 59 33.9%
  • I have not had feather dusters, but I hope to in the future.

    Votes: 25 14.4%
  • I have no plans to have feather dusters in my tank.

    Votes: 26 14.9%
  • Other.

    Votes: 0 0.0%
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