looks awesome, and still can't believe it's just a couple months old..However you didn't have to cycle anything I assume, and you stocked it with rock and other things from your older running tanks I'd assume? Also, tell me more about your "Ozone" setup. I Have been going back and forth on adding it to my 180g reef build. I've felt I have kept my water clarity really good with a Fleece roller and a UV sterilizer. So I've been on the fence about upping my game to add ozone. How hard/easy is setup? how hard/easy to monitor, etc?
Thanks again. Correct on both accounts with cycle. Old established rock and new live rock from Gulf Live Rock. No dry rock went in the tank that had to cycle. Sand was all new though. Didn’t use anything else of the old sand. Used half dry special grade and half live from GLR. This formula worked like a charm for me. Instant cycle.
I have been seriously considering an Ozone set up. You also need something to measure ORP too, correct?Thanks again. Correct on both accounts with cycle. Old established rock and new live rock from Gulf Live Rock. No dry rock went in the tank that had to cycle. Sand was all new though. Didn’t use anything else of the old sand. Used half dry special grade and half live from GLR. This formula worked like a charm for me. Instant cycle.
Ozone is super simple to set up, BUT you need to do it right. Just need an Ozone generator, dryer to dry air going into generator, some ozone safe airline, and an ozone reactor. I use my skimmer as the reactor. Skimmer needs to be ozone safe.
Rule of thumb to be safe is to set up the generator to produce 15 - 25 mg/h of ozone per 25 gallons. In my case I have 170g net volume and set my generator dial (Poseidon 200) between 4 and 6. I was running it 24/7 but backing down to 8 hours a night. Goal for me is water clarity and probably don’t need to run it as much.
The one thing ozone will give you that nothing else comes close is crystal clear water. Ozone just removes all color/ tanning and essentially becomes invisible ( outside of whatever is flying around in the water. Cost for my setup is under $300. Below is a visual from Ozotech. I don’t have a flow meter but considering getting one.
Good catch!
What are you using to measure your ORP?
My Apex.
I just need to bite the bullet and get a controller...
yes...yes you do. LOL
I'm an old guy too but have always loved tech. I had an Apex on my previous system in 2009. Still have it actually. I'd hate running a system without one now. From helping to control anything to the information it provides no matter where you are. I really love the tech.
By the way, noob mistake on my part with tank maintenance. After this discussion on ORP, I started thinking as to why my ORP is so low. Then I thought, when was the last time a cleaned that probe? Pulled it and it was really cruded up with snail eggs and sponges. DUH!
Cleaned it up and a short time later I was at a 330 ORP reading. What a dump butt move on my part. Could have overdosed but kept ozone low because I wasn't sure of the reading. Glad I did.
what lights you running and what are your percentages for the colors?A few new pics with whites up higher.
Thanks man. I just jumped on your build. Beautiful angels and tanks. So sorry to hear about your heater disaster. Must of been devastating! I wish you luck as you repopulate your tanks. We all hear too many stories about heaters. I went expensive with redundancy for heaters on this tank.
Man, that sucks! And it can happen to anyone. Just a simple oversight. Not only did you have some very nice fish in there, you had fish that you've cared for for years. I'm sure it was/ is painful. Thanks for sharing what happened and hope it helps other reefers to avoid the same thing happening to them.@MegabiteOG, it was 100% my fault. Very short version: I decided to do major cleaning of both 150-gallon tanks, and it got late and I had become tired. So I quit for the night. Little did I realize that I had caused each Inlbird probe to dangle out of water in the cold air-- and all night long it had been telling the 600 watt heaters to "heat the water!" I awoke to 'cooked' fish. A huge French Angel I grew from a baby. Same with an adult Emperor Angel. Harlequin Tusk, Purple Tang, the list goes on-on-on.
what I did rather then relying on the Apex to run the heater, I have a separate heater controller that is much more robust for controlling on and off of heater..and then it is plugged into my Apex, and my Apex is just set at a "HIGH" temp, so if the thermometer does fail for some reason, the Apex acts as a backup and will shut it down when the Apex temp probe registers the spike in heat.
Thanks. Thats how I’m currently set up.
