Very nice looking rockwork. gonna be sweet when it grows out. Also i love the grounding bar idea for the breakout box. I will have to do that as I redo my float switches and all. Also wiring looks nice and clean too.
Good stuff!
Thanks! I actually decided to get some split loom the past weekend and hope to clean up the wiring next week to make it look a little better. I'd do it this weekend but I'll be out of town.
very cool build. following!
hope the fishies do well in hypo. good luck.
Thanks! This is a good time I guess to update how those guys are doing in QT.
Feeding & Fish Status:
I have been feeding the tangs Nori twice a day and they now all come up to the tank when they see me as they recognize me as the provider of the Nori. They are all eating well and have full bellies. I would like to see the Powder Blue put on some more weight though. He tends to just get the little pieces that float around rather than go directly for the larger pieces. What I've done for him is break up some of the Nori in the water so that he can get lots of little pieces quickly. The others go after the sheets of Nori aggressively. I also add a 1/2 cube of PE Mysis every other day.
Because they all come out for feeding, it is pretty easy to regularly check them for ich. As of last night, I saw one spot on the Powder Blue and just a couple of spots on one fin of the Blonde Naso. They will stay in hypo until the 8 weeks is up or for 6 weeks after the last spot is seen, whichever is longer, before I will bring the salinity up and do a Prazipro treatment.
Filtration & Water Parameters:
First thing I've added to the QT is a SeaChem Ammonia Alert so that I don't have to constantly test for ammonia every day.
I've got the doser setup to just deliver Alkalinity supplement to help keep my Alkalinity up to maintain stable pH. I am using
BRS 2-part Recipe 1 and am dosing about 0.5ml of Alk per gallon to maintain an Alkalinity level of 8.5 dKH. I need a new pH test kit to make sure pH is stable and am seriously thinking about just getting an Apex Jr. or Lite for this system for pH monitoring and other purposes.
I am planning on doing a water change today so I'll post what I find in terms of amount of Alk needed to bring up a hypo saline solution to 8.5 dKH so others can use it as a guideline if they go this route.
I was surprised to see my skimmer is generating a little skimmate despite the hyposalinity conditions. Obviously it is not enough to provide proper filtration but anything helps. The macro in my fuge seems to be doing fine under the hypo conditions so I hope it is still contributing to nutrient reduction. I also have a filter sponge on the overflow box and filter floss. The sponge gets cleaned daily and takes care of floating Nori and other food that gets sucked in and the filter floss will be changed out twice a week when I do water changes. I did test for nitrates earlier in the week and they came back as undetectable despite my feeding schedule. I guess the sand, rock, and macro are still doing their thing. I'm not worried about and will not test for phosphates for now as there won't be any corals in QT for a while.
I will also say having an ATO is the only way I would try to do hypo from this point forward. Changing room temperature and humidity can really affect how much top-off is needed and it would be too easy to go over the 1.009 level without an ATO if you just tried to keep up with manual top off unless you had a very high volume.
I am using a JBJ ATO and Aqualifter as earlier and have done a couple of things to ensure it works property as there are known issues with using a JBJ and Aqualifter. First, I opened up the ATO and set the stuck float switch timeout to the maximum time (14 minutes) as the sump can easily hold the 5 gallons from the container if something goes wrong with the switch. If anyone wants to see how to do this, there are instructions on JBJ's website under the FAQ's for the ATO. Basically, just remove the four screws on the back cover, find the blue potentiometer at the top, and turn it all the way counter clockwise. Second, I put the JBJ on a timer that shuts office twice a day for 15 minutes as that was the smallest increment available on the mechanical timer I picked up. This will reset the JBJ twice a day in case it decides to act up with the Aqualifter's low current draw. Another work around others have done is use a light bulb on the circuit that powers the aqualifter to increase current draw. I have not had any timeout or reset issues for the past few days after doing the above.
