Mixed Red Sea Reefer 525XL

[DLHDesign]

6/13/2016 - Day 36 (still) - Snails are SUCH a PITA...
It's not my fault! Okay; it likely is, but not in the way I thought. Today involved a lot of observation, testing, more observation, more testing, and then two more snails. Oh yeah - and a 30gal water change.
So I watched the numbers all day as everything basically stabilized itself again. Ammonia climbed up a little - up to 0.010 before the water change. This is likely because there was still dead stuff in there (two snails were buried inside some rock piles). So while doing the 30gal water change, I pulled my rock apart and took them out. Also found the other Nassarius that's still alive; so yup - two of those in the tank cleaning things. They need to step it up some; it's a big tank and they're just wee little guys...
Anyways; I also went back to the LFS. Figured I'd give them a chance to give me their opinions on what went wrong. After I rattled off my numbers (from both before and after, as well as since), they basically chastised me for not bringing in a water sample. When that attitude came out, I decided asking for a refund or replacements just wasn't in the cards. Better to chalk it up as a lesson and walk away. Still; got a bucket of salt and I picked up two more snails. Not because I really wanted the snails from them, but because I wanted to test some of THEIR water. I'm not saying that I'm any kind of pro at testing water (as I'd hope they are), but I was curious to see how my results compared to both what I had and what they said they had. I figured anything I'm doing or using that's incorrect or altering, it will at least be consistent; so apples-to-apples.
And wow. I was shocked.
I'm now at 1.025 SG. They are 1.015. I say "now at" because I discovered that my refractometer calibration was off by 0.02. Whoops - need to be sure to check that more often.
After the 30gal water change, my dKH ended up at 11.1 (new salt). The water is 5.8dKH. Big difference.
Ph was at least in the ballpark - I'm at 8.06 right now (and rising) while they have ~8.4.

I'd only grabbed a single bag of their water, and at this point I figured I'd need every drop of it to acclimate the two new snails slowly into my water. So after hours of temperature acclimation in the bag, I put them on the slowest drip I could manage. I stopped the drip when I doubled the water volume. About 10 minutes later, one of them pulled up into it's shell and has yet to come out. The other seemed to slow down, but is now out of it's shell a bit more. I've no interest in adding more dead things into the tank, so I'm going to leave them in there until morning and see how they are.

Also; one result of taking the rock apart to get at the dead things is that I couldn't get it back together the same way. I've never been the type to put my Lego's together in the same way twice, so that's not really a surprise, I don't think. In any case; Lover's Arch isn't quite so heart-shaped any more. We'll likely keep the name, however - it's close enough that people won't think we're totally crazy. The wife also named the fish; the larger (and presumably female) is Merida (from Brave, because "she" was swimming around the entire tank and is... er... orange) while the smaller is Marvin (because "he" was hiding in the rocks at first and is a clown fish). I find it ironic that we named them based on their behavior while they were under the influence of ammonia poisoning, but it seems fitting, so the names will stick.

Edit: Both snails are moving again. Still; they stay where they are until the AM.
Edit (again): Aaaaand nope. Just as I was turning off the lights to go to bed, one of the suction cups breaks off from it's screw and the entire canister flips over. Another mess to clean up, and now the snails have no water for the night. Into the tank they go. *sigh* Best laid plans, and all that...

 

[adestafi]

It happens. Stuff happens. Take a deep breath- many of us can relate. I've killed more snails in my reefer than you can imagine. In fact I have a boneyard w shells, dead corals etc

 

[DLHDesign]

Thanks. It's more frustrating than upsetting or anything. The frustration is more that I don't know why it's really happening. Even with the slow-drip introduction that I used, I woke up this AM to find both snails dead (pulled them from the tank this time). I'm pretty sure that snails are supposed to be a bit more hardy than this... Aren't they? :-?

Some more tests; 10 NO3, 0.25 NO2, 7.94 pH, 0.005 NH3, 78.3F.

 

[DLHDesign]

6/15/2016 - Day 38 - The tank stands upon on the edge of a knife...
At this point, I think I'm just going to let the tank do it's thing. I'm keeping things clean in the sump (filter socks, skimmer, bubble-catch, etc.). I'm dosing the little bit that the Red Sea Mature Pro kit calls for (basically 15ml of NO3O4-X).
At the moment, I'm at 7.86 Ph and 0.014 NH3 and the two clowns look a bit stressed out (the bigger one was twitching earlier). I had the thought to do another significant water change (likely around 20gal), but I'm going to hold off till tomorrow and see where it's at.
Less is more, I hope...

 

[DLHDesign]

6/16/2016 - Day 39 - RODI ATO
I already dislike carrying water throughout the house in buckets. I'll do it when needed, but I also don't want to have to do it every other (or few) days. So last night I replaced the original ATO with a direct-from-RODI feed. Not overly complicated; my RODI tank is high enough that I can just gravity-feed the ATO. After running RODI line from the garage, under the floor, and up into the tank, I added a new bulkhead to the ATO chamber, two manual shut-offs (one on each end) as well as an emergency overflow shut-off. The Red Sea already has a float switch top-off, so I'll use that until it gives me grief (which I'm sure will happen).
I'm leaving the ATO tank in place for now, but eventually I'll remove it, plug up the hole with a dab of silicone, and it will become a QT (or frag tank, or...).

Aside from that, I also did another 30gal water change. NH3 is still a problem (pre-water change was 0.017), so I'm still just letting the tank settle itself out...

 

[DLHDesign]

6/20/2016 - Day 43 - Survived the Weekend
Everything seemed to have turned out well from the weekend away. My mother-in-law was watching the dogs, so I gave her instructions on how to turn off the pumps and feed the fish. She did great; very little food in the filters. The ATO worked like a champ; very happy with having gotten that done.

I was up in the mountains for the weekend with little cell access. When I did catch a signal, I made sure to check on the tank as best I could. Having that ability really makes me certain that whatever controller I end up with must have internet reporting. The new Apex is top of the list, for sure, though I'll be waiting for that to release and some reviews to come in (I expect all of them positive) before I make any decision. For now; I have the Seneye in the tank. For those that have not seen what that web dashboard looks like, here's a screencap from my tank right now:

A few things stand out:
- My pH is low-ish; which I'm pretty sure is an indicator that the tank is still cycling (which makes sense as I expect it to be doing so)
- Ammonia isn't 0.00. Boo. BUT, it is lower than 0.017 - which is where it was at before the weekend. I'm happy with the downward trend.
- Aside from that, the dashboard tells me that my heaters and lights are still working, that the sensor is in the water (which basically means that the tank hasn't exploded), and that the sensor is still good. Yay.

Things I would like to change (but can't);
- I'd like to set my own low/high thresholds (the red lines). I'm not sure that I would change them at this point, but I can see myself wanting to do that later... (EDIT: Can be done; http://answers.seneye.com/en/Seneye_Products/seneye.me_dashboard/changing_alert_levels_on_seneye.me)
- I REALLY wish the NH3 graph was better adjusted to my levels. If you squint really hard, you can see the green line representing my value over time. It would be nice if the vertical axis went from, say, 0.000 - 0.050 or the like given my historical values. That would let me see at a glance my recent trend. As it is, that graph is practically useless. The others are better, but again - pH between 7 and 9 would be better than 6-9.
- Their trend directions aren't much help. I've done some work in determining trends and I know it's not as easy to do programmatically as it might seem for highly dynamic systems, so I can forgive this feature being not quite up-to-snuff for my preference.
- The sensor came out of the box labeled "NEW". I've not been able to find how to change this...

Note that the Seneye software does not have great support for the Mac. A lot of the above very well might be fixable/editable via the app, but I don't feel like buying Windows 10 just to tweak them... I've also got the mobile app, but I've found that the web dashboard is more consumable for me than the app screen, so I've just bookmarked it on my phone.

 

[spscrackhead]

I really like the detailed posts. And honestly I am super impressed with your learning curve!
Just a few things I'd like to touch on.
Clownfish have a dance they do when they pair up. One will spasm, almost seizure like twitching. This is normal and a good sign! You had noted that they were doing this and you indicated you believed it was stress. Nope, it's a good thing!
You also mentioned that you temp acclimated your snails in the bag for hours. It shouldn't take that long... Once the temps are the same go ahead and begin the drip. If you wish you can test salinity to give an idea when parameters are close. While taking your time is important and you Dec don't want to rush things, this process taking a few hours in my eyes is a bad thing.
Based off what I can see, you will love the apex system! You sound like a control freak!

 

[DLHDesign]

Thanks for the compliments! I'll try to keep the details going; I like to record my progress on projects so I can look back and see how much has changed over time (did that with a house remodel and I appreciate it all the more as a result). I don't really FEEL like I'm learning fast enough, honestly. Every time I start to wrap my head around something, I discover something else that I need to understand better (or at all) before I can really understand that other thing... It's worth it, though.

Clownfish have a dance they do when they pair up. One will spasm, almost seizure like twitching. This is normal and a good sign!

Super! That's good to know - thanks! Here I was thinking that they were dying, but instead, they are just dating... Come to think of it; that sounds a lot like my adolescence. :-\

The first invert addition I pretty much just dumped everyone in there after about 1hr (followed the LFS instructions). Everything pretty much died as it hit the water (I didn't recognize it at the time; they either just shriveled up into their shells, or else spasmed for a moment before going still). I didn't do any drip-acclimation for the first batch and didn't know what I was seeing (else I would have left more of them alive in plastic cups floating on the surface or something).
The second batch ("just" two snails) I did much MUCH slower than even I thought was needed. They seemed to be doing better until the mechanical failure caused them to be dumped in about 50% of the way through the drip acclimation I had going. I did measure their water before starting the acclimation and found some pretty variant salinity (1.014 vs my 1.025), so I chalked the whole thing up to that combined with my inexperience. It's amazing how the death of a dozen+ snails affected me so much. Guilt over a snail... Huh. Who'd-a-thunk it. (Note: I pull snails out of my garden all the time and make sport of seeing how far into the street I can chuck them over my house, so I was quite surprised by my emotional reaction...)

To be honest; I've not revisited the Invert Challenge. I need to; obviously (I have hair algae growing that needs to become food). My plan is to head down to a different (better rated) LFS store to see what they've got. I was planning on bringing some of my tank water to see if they would acclimate a critter or two for me there - or at least test the water and advise if their stuff should/would die on contact with mine... Tomorrow, perhaps.

I don't consider myself a control freak, but I can see how that would be the impression I'm giving. I'm highly motivated to understand things around me. I want to know why things are doing what they are so that, if/when they need to change, I will be able to affect those changes more easily. Not so much needing to be in control at all time as it is needing to be able to take control if/when needed.
I'm also a gadget-freak, though - so yeah; I'm sure I'll love the Apex.

On the vein of tracking changes over time, I decided to photo the "tools" that I've collected so far. These are the "non-consumables" (yes; I know test kits are consumed) that I keep around in the "chiller" side of the Red Sea cabinet:

Towel (the most massively useful thing an aquarist can have), Hanna Alk tester (w/ spare regent), hydrometer (re-purposed from my brewing kit), AccliMate, Oxo graduated cylinders, API test kit (original LFS sold it to me; replacing it with the Red Sea Pro kit soon) plus 5ml syringe
Net (took me a month to get it - a week after I had fish), pen and log book (need to make it bigger; writing down more numbers than I thought I would...), aquarium sealant I had sitting around (mostly to fix things - like the AccliMate suction cups or the emergency overflow shut-off for the ATO.
Also (out in the garage) - spare RODI tubing and a box of extra API tubes (I broke 2 the first week, so ordered 25 more... whoops), some spare parts from the tank (nothing practical), and all the manuals that came with everything. I also have some plastic grid that will likely become a frag rack at some point.

I've not run into a burning need to have anything not listed above; are there tools I'm almost certainly going to need that you don't see above?

Current tank params: 1.025, 78.2F, 8.6 dKH, 0 NO2, 0.012 NH3, 7.98 pH, 5 NO3
Lights running the Coral Lab SPS A/B+ template (sand bed: 150 PAR, mid: 220 PAR, top: 350PAR)
Occupants: 2 clown fish (Meridah and Marvin)

 

[spscrackhead]

You will most certainly need a turkey baster! I am sure you have one but didn't list it. All new tank purchases should include a turkey baster lol.
I made the control freak about the apex mostly in jest. If you Google apex control freak you will see all the t shirts and all that stuff that apex has with the words "control freak" on them lol. Its kinda their thing.

 

[DLHDesign]

I do not have a turkey baster, actually. Basting is generally not something that is usually beneficial to roasting meat, so I've never had a need to own one... I was planning on picking up an actual targeted feeder in the near future (the thought being that the feeder will be longer, and with the deep tank that means less I need to put my hands in the tank to get the food to the deep corals).

Ha! Despite all that I've researched on the Apex, that slogan never set in. I missed the joke, sorry. It was a good one. ;-)

 

[DLHDesign]

6/21/2016 - Day 44 - Not All SG Is Equal
Yeeeeah. Turns out that a refractometer that measures beer does NOT work to measure saltwater. Beer - be it wort (unfermented beer) or drinkable beer - is mostly composed (aside from water, of course) of sugar. At least; that's the part you measure Specific Gravity (SG) for. The wort SG minus the "final" SG can give you a fairly reasonable measure of the level of alcohol (and whether or not the beer is "done", when to bottle it for natural carbonation, etc. - all sorts of fun stuff).
Here's the thing - there's no (or very, very little) sugar in saltwater. So if you have a refractometer that measures Brix, it will help you not at all when measuring saltwater. Not even if that refractometer has a SG scale that you can make read 1.025 if you just add enough salt to the water...

So yeah; all this time, I've been running my tank not at the "perfect" level of 1.025 SG, but instead at the "WHOA WHA?!?" level of 1.040 SG.
(Fun fact - clowns can survive at 1.040 SG. Not thrive, but at least survive...)

You ever put salt on a snail and watched it shrivel up and die really quick-like? Yeah; that's what my first two batches of snails did. I just didn't recognize it at the time because, hey - I'd measured my SG several times and there's no way my salt could be off. After all; I've been measuring SG on my refractometer for more than 15 years...

You know what tastes good with beer? Humble pie. Humble pie washes down a lot better with something wet.

SO; chalk that up to me thinking I know anything about this hobby due to previous experience. I do not. Everything I think I know, I should check. And then double-check. That's the lesson from today. Tomorrow; new lesson, I'm sure...

So how did I find this out? Thanks for asking; I went to a different LFS and they insisted on testing my water before they would sell me anything after I told them my story. I liked that. It showed that they were invested in my success, rather than just out to make a few bucks off me. They got my business (which is no small thing given what I've already spent on this near-empty tank). The guy I was working with checked my chemicals and they all looked good. He then put a few drops of water on his refractometer and boom - I felt stupid. We laughed about it and he sold me a saltwater refractometer, a new cleaner crew, and a long spot-feeder. I almost bought two QT's from him, but the wife (correctly) vetoed the idea (Walmart and Amazon will supply our two QT tanks).

"Da Crew":
10x Trochus Snails
10x Astraea Snails
2x Halloween Hermits

So after we got home, I started a water change. Or perhaps a "reverse water change"? Anywho; I took out 36gal of saltwater and replaced it with 36gal of RODI water. That dropped my salinity down to the proper level. Before doing this, I pulled out the two clowns. I figured they'd like the resulting change, but would not prefer to go through it first-hand. Took a few hours and used pretty much every drop of RODI I had on-hand - I wasn't planning on a WC of that volume, so hadn't bothered to top-off the tank. But I got the SG down to 1.025 (for reals). Being totally cautious this time, I measured the water the snails were in in order to ensure that it's SG and temp matched mine. It did, so I carefully put in one of the more averaged sized Astraea.

It didn't die.
It lived.
And beyond that - since I had set it right near one of my algae hot-spots - the little dude practically tried to kiss me before sucking onto the rock to chow down. Bless his little... er... foot.
I kept going and got all 20 snails into the tank. None seemed any worse for the transfer. Checking again, all had made strong bonds to the rocks. Most were already on the move. Woot! Finally, I placed the two hermits in. I'd seen these guys in the bag and was already enamored with them, so I hoped they'd do as well. And; they did. Off they went - cleaning the sand around them without more than a pause to get their bearings.

Finally; it was time to add the clowns back into their home. This would take longer, of course, because I would have to drip in the new solution. I hang the AccliMate on the side of the tank (check it's secure), turn around (turn back around to check that it's secure), turn around again to get the tubing and - CRASH!!! The same suction cup had come undone, dumping most of the water and one of the clowns (Marvin!!!) to the floor. I manage to catch the box and keep Merida inside. My wife - my pregnant wife who suffered a groin pull today - rushes over and manages to pick up Marvin from the floor (my stubby fingers couldn't get him - she had to "shovel" him with her nails) and gets him back into the box. I now have two fish in about 1/2" of water. If I keep the box tilted to one side, I can give them enough room to move. Not much; but better than 1/2". While standing in a puddle of water on our laminate flooring (which soaks up water if left too long, mind you), we discuss just putting them in the tank. No - rejected. She holds them while I towel up the worst of the mess. Thankfully, the baby is already asleep.
Like a trauma team hooking up an IV, we start to drip in some of the tank water into the box. This is what the AccliMate does, so it goes okay. Usually you replace the water in the box with water from the tank by siphoning in new water, and siphoning out old. We don't bother with the old-water siphon and just let it slowly fill. Not trusting the suction cups (ever again), we set it on a box that's sitting on a tub, that's on top of a chair. Necessity is the mother of solution, or something.
About 30min goes by while I watch every drop. They do okay. Even do their mating-twitch a few times. I think this experience will bring them closer as a couple. Eventually, the SG matches the tank. Temp is about a degree different, so I slowly flood the box with tank water to bring the temp up to even, just in case. Finally; I release them into the tank. They take a tour of the entire thing before settling back into their familiar corner. It's been a rough day for all of us.

I finish up the night with my nightly doses. I'll need to manually top-off until I can patch a small leak that developed in my RODI tank (may as well, while it's empty) and will delay cleaning the skimmer till tomorrow...

But hey - I have a cleaner crew. My water is more in-balance. I look forward to cleaner rocks in the days/weeks ahead; and beyond. Tomorrow; I call WWC and talk to them about shipping me those corals I bought last week...

 

[DLHDesign]

6/24/2016 - Day 47 - It's Now A Reef
Decades in the dreaming and 47 days in the making, but today I woke up to a reef in my living room. Words fail me, which - as you can tell from this thread - is not often the case. Photos will have to do. Much thanks to the folks who have posted in the Photograph forum - I give you all credit for how well these turned out and take all the blame for not doing what was suggested (I didn't have a tripod nor remote shutter, but both are on their way now). Note that I snapped these quickly and made no effort to stage them, so the composition is - again - my bad.

Everything was received from WWC yesterday, dipped in CoralRx Pro (not because I don't trust WWC, but simply to get practice and establish the habit), and then added to the tank.

The Zoa Bunch
Caribbean Blue Zoa

Dragon Eye Zoa

Mandarin Orange Zoa
Fun fact - this was a surprise receipt. WWC included it as a bonus frag with my order. Needless to say; I'm thrilled with the quality of WWC and expect to get a large number of corals from them going forward (I've got a big tank to fill, after all).

The LPS Crew
WWC Cherry Red Goniopora

Green Star Polyp

WWC Green Tipped Galaxea

Purple Cespitularia
That's a blurry Marvin in the back. He kept photobombing the shot. Which is fine as I hope that he and Meridah will take up residence in them once they are in place (plan is to add a separate piece of Fiji rock to let the Ces to grow on).

WWC Kaleidoscope Favites

 

[rvlcf]

Just read the whole thread and loved it! Congrats on the tank and all the trials and tribulations it will bring.
Looking forward to more updates, definitely subscribed.

 

[DLHDesign]

6/27/2016 - Day 50 - Yeah; I got this...
Tank is, generally, doing well. Too well; in fact:

My poor Cespitularia is struggling (sorry for the junk picture; cell phone was easier than DSLR). I've moved it about once or twice over the past few days trying to find a nice "moderate/moderate" lighting/flow location for it. No dice. Running the battery of water tests, I came up with 0 NO3 being the most likely culprit - I think these like a "dirty" tank?

Potentially related; after several days of manual dosing and lots of testing, I think I've managed to generally stabilize my dKH and Ca, so I've gone ahead and begun auto-dosing it (1.1mL of each 12x day; 1min every other hour). It's possible that I brought up one or the other too quickly at the end there, so I'm hoping that after a few days it may recover. Will watch and see (unless someone has a suggestion?).

Good news: all of the other corals are doing great and are closer to finding permanent homes! The CUC is dong well; lost a snail or two, but that's about it. The rest are jamming around the tank. I likely need to double up on the quantity (with more focus on sand cleaners) as the current Crew isn't quite keeping up. Goby time? Certainly some Cerith and/or Nassarius...

Meridah and Marvin are doing well. They're getting acclimated to being hand-fed (from the dropper). Fun for me and less food in the tank that goes to waste (though I may need more waste to bring up the NO3, perhaps...).

All-in-all, I'm feeling good about the tank these days. Which means it's time to shake things up; I'll be adding hard-plumbing and a refugium in the days ahead, so that should be fun...

 

[rvlcf]

Not sure if you are aware, but you need to dose Alk and Ca at least an hour apart from each other. Don't dose both at the same time.

 

[DLHDesign]

Well... poop. I do recall hearing that, but then promptly forgot it when I set up the Ca dosing. :-\ Looks like I'm headed down to the store to get another digital timer today.

Thanks @rvlcf !

 

[rvlcf]

You can get a doser meant for reefkeeping pretty cheap these days. I have a Marine magic doser that I paid $125 for a few years ago. I think they are only about $100 now. Fully programable and will dose 3 elements independently at timed intervals you program.

 

[DLHDesign]

I've got two of the BRS dosers in place. My eventual plan is to get an APEX and have that manage all the scheduling and timing of everything (I'll be dosing a whole lot more than just Alk/Ca eventually, I'm sure). For that reason, I'm sticking to dosers that will play nice in that system and augmenting the timing of it with cheap digital timers. I check the tank and such every day right now, so I'm not overly concerned with the timers failing or anything.
My timer is set for a 1min interval every 2 hrs (13.2mL every 24hrs with the 1.1mL/min rate of the BRS dosers). I don't have much in the tank, so I'm starting pretty low just to get a sense of how to dial them in.

 

[AFrederick]

Cool build thread so far man! I am just starting too so I'm going through the same learning process.

One thing about the BRS dosers - don't assume it runs at the advertised 1.1 mL/min. If you haven't yet, measure its actual flow rate. I measured mine at 1.9 mL/min. It's no problem; just have to adjust the run time accordingly.

 

[DLHDesign]

6/29/2016 - Day 52 - More. More! MORE! (And Whoops!)

Picked up another client last week, so I've been on overtime with work stuff. That, plus the wife kicking it into overdrive to prep for the next baby (due early Aug) has had me busy with other things than playing with the tank every night (beyond measuring the vitals). Which is likely for the best; it all seems to be settling out into what I'm hoping it will be at. I've unplugged the Calcium doser from the timer for now, but other than that, things have been less stressful.

Which, of course, means it's time to change things up. Enter; more living things. Went to the LFS and picked up more CUC - 10x Cerith snails and 10x Nassarius snails; both aimed at cleaning up the sand bed a bit. At the same time, the mixed sand bed I had in place kept getting blown about the tank (and mostly ended up in the back no matter how I aimed the flow). So I ended up picking up more base to mix in - 20lbs of crushed coral (~1mm in size?), specifically. After several rinses, I added it in on top of the existing stuff with only a bit of sediment in the water (which I'm sure will clog my filter socks before the morning...). In the days/weeks ahead, I'll work on mixing it all together, but for now it forms a layer on top that's not entirely natural. Meh; at least it's white again in the bottom of the tank.
That brings my sand bed up to about 3" on average - which is about as much as I want to get in there, I figure. Unfortunately, I added the new snails in before I added the crushed coral. That's not the "Whoops!"; it's just an, "eh". Within a few minutes most of the newbs were digging themselves out and resuming their feast that is my tank right now. Welcome, gang. I hope most of you make it, because you're pretty cool to watch. I did not expect to enjoy watching snails when I thought about owning a reef tank all these years, but now that I've got them (and understand what they do for that tank), I totally appreciate them little sucking feet.

Finally - MORE FISH!

Regal Angelfish
We didn't go into the LFS expecting to come out with an angel. But this little guy was just so darn cute. Angels are certainly something I hope to have several of in the tank if we can manage, but if we can only get one, then this is one that I'll be happy to have. We're still toying with a name for it; "Henry" is the front-runner (family name and it's regal-ish sounding), but we're not quite sure just yet.

Lawnmower Blenny (I think?)
This was the wife's pick, and was actually something we went into the LFS to get. Or something like it; at least. I'm still (mostly) trying to populate the tank with creatures that will have a net-positive impact on the stability and cleanliness of the tank. It's a sure bet that I'll be over-feeding for a while at least (feeding two - now three - tiny fish in a giant tank is rather hard, I'm finding), having an algae eater in there will be nice. Plus, the wife liked how it poked it's head out of the rocks. She said it reminds her of an old man... Okay; whatever. It's a cool fish too. It's likely that this fish will be named "Peek-a-go". That's what our daughter (nearly 2yrs old) says instead of peek-a-boo and this, more than any other, seems like a fish we can convince her is playing peek-a-boo with her. If it buys us even 5 minutes of peace, we'll totally do that...

Pictured, both fish are being drip-acclimated into their first QT tank. I matched the salinity and temp of the LFS water, but I figured they were already in the AccliMate, so why not. In truth, I'm not really liking the AccliMate at this point. This time I put the box inside the tank so that it's weight was supported by more than just the lousy suction cups. Which worked fine enough. But when I went to dump the fish in (improvement: this step did not involve scoping them off the floor this time), the suction cup broke off. Again. Same one. No harm done; but I had super-glued that thing on there to ensure it didn't do that again. It was a pain to fish out the suction cup, but at least this was only a 10gal tank on the counter and not my deeper DT. I'm thinking at some point I'll have to build a custom tank-hanger for it and forgo the suction cups entirely. I like what it does; it's just this one thing that fails and makes the whole thing less than useful...

Anywho; QT tank. 10gal (with only about 5gal right now) cheap Walmart tank, airstone (which will be dried for a month+ before next use - I've got 10 of them on-hand), heater, and a flower pot. That plus the pictured AmmoniaAlert and thermometer make up stage 1. I'm following the TTM method for two reasons;
1) It sounds (and logically makes sense to me) as if it's pretty foolproof with minimal chemical requirements. Obviously if something comes up, then I start looking for cures and such, but the basic "best case" involves very little chemicals. I'm not anti-chemical by any means, but I'm also not looking to stock up on things that I can do without with just a bit of effort.
2) It takes time. A lot of time. It may as well be called the "Delayed Gratification Method" with how long these fish will be in a "boring" tank. They're sitting on the counter on the other side of the room from the DT (>10ft - no worries there), so it's not like they can't be watched. It's just not as pretty looking, of course. I consider this a good thing because this hobby, I'm learning, is going to either teach me patience or else fail completely. Patience is not my strong suit at the moment, so anything that has a regime I can follow that will also further the lesson is something I'm more inclined to adopt. So I'm following the TTM for what it will make of me, if not for the fish's sake.

Flower pot wasn't my first choice, btw. I had bought 3" PVC T-junctions for this purpose. But, trying to save a few bucks (for some reason I know not why), I ended up picking up the lighter-grade PVC that is used for drains and such instead of the standard schedule 40. That stuff floats, I found out. So; flower pot.

So the "Whoops!". Because I'm ambitious, I also planned on getting my hard plumbing in tonight. I glued it all together last night and pressure-tested it this morning just to be sure. Everything looked solid enough, so I turned off the pumps and pulled the return hose out. Hooked up the new works to the return and started to mount the ball valves to the cabinet via the mounting holes so that the structure would be supported and solid.
Fun fact: The ball valves I have don't have mounting holes. They have mount points - which take a ~1/4" screw or bolt or the like. Not a 2-1/2" wood screw all the way through them. When you try to put a 2-1/2" wood screw through a ~1/4" mount point, you end up driving the screw through the edge of the ball. Which, for some reason, just made things not work...
Found out that I did that AFTER I put screws through all four ball valves. Yeah; you remember what I said about patience not being my strong suit... :-\ This happened to be at 9:54pm. I'm close to the hardware store and they're open till 10pm (I know this because of many other house project gone awry late at night), but not 6min close. So I'll just have to get there tomorrow, if I can. I'll be sure to pick up a second digital timer as well so that I can hook up the Calcium doser again, and a pair of schedule 40 PVC T-junctions while I'm at it...

Other news: My power strip arrived today while we were at the LFS. So next up will be making some kind of sense out of that jumble of wires in the "dry" side of the cabinet... I'm looking forward to being able to turn things on and off without having to do yoga first.
The tripod for the DSLR will be here tomorrow, with the remote control arriving next week. Tripod should be enough to get a few nicer shots and I feel like a FTS is in order soon...