My 150g Cube Journey

[Gumbies R Us]

Thanks — some frags just took off once settled but you know the feeling. It feels like an eternity sometimes! Ha

For sure!! Time feels like it's going slow, but then you look at a picture from a few months ago and the growth is crazy!

 

[bakbay]

Things are going strong and quite honestly, I’m bored. I’m contemplating on getting a bigger tank. I got a quote for a 96x48x24 3/4” acrylic tank but still trying to create a “proposal” to the Home Boss. Unfortunately, I don’t have room in our kitchen so this bad boy (and myself) will be in the garage. Let me know what you guys think?

 

[bakbay]

I think I’m going to stop dosing Kalk since it’s very unpredictable and caused my Alk to go from 8.5ish to 9.75 (yikes!). You can see the jump in the graph. Alk is now back down to 8.5ish and everyone is still happy.

 

[bakbay]

Just a quick update - spent a few hours today fragging and moving colonies around. Corals are now touching each other. I’ve grafted the Geeen Slimer and made a few frags. Hope they will recover soon.

Also, that purple Secale (bottom of pic) grew from an 1” frag to now a massive colony in ~2yrs. I had to cut the rock and wedge it in there. Looks very natural and not shading others so it’s a win!

 

[bakbay]

Tank is consuming media faster than I can replenish — after 4mos of new Reborn media, I’m almost half way done. So…I got a new (to me) Geo 618 CaRx that I’ll be upgrading next week. The old Korallin CaRx will go to the RS250 + frag tank.

 

[bakbay]

It’s interesting that this GEO reactor doesn’t need a lot of CO2 to dissolve media. I can run at 6.5ish and was able to keep up vs 6.3ish before. Perhaps it’s due to more than double the media volume of the old reactor?

 

[bakbay]

Finally got a chance to swap out my CO2 scrubber media (been too lazy) - as you can clearly see, it made a huge difference in pH!

 

[bakbay]

I’m still having a challenge tuning CaRx — not keeping up with Alk demands. I’ve manually dosed soda ash this morning to keep it above 8.

Dissolving at 6.27 pH + 75mls/min yet still dropping my Alk by 0.5/day.

What should I do? Add more CO2 AND increase flow to 90min/min? No — I have not measured the effluent lately.

@vetteguy53081 - your thoughts? Should I follow @jda ‘s manual method to tune this?

 

[bakbay]

Finally on auto-pilot with CaRx + CO2 scrubber. Alk is between 8-8.5 and pH between 8.2-8.4.

 

[bakbay]

Tank is on auto-pilot. I made a “frag” of this ORA Blue Voodoo over the weekend. It’s one of the fastest growing corals in the tank!

 

[Lebowski_]

That’s a nice piece.

 

[bakbay]

That’s a nice piece.

Thanks -- I've started with a frag plug but discovered that it might tip over so managed to mount on a small rock instead. I think it turned out good. I love the sparse, branching nature of the Blue Voodoo -- you can mount it on top w/o shading things underneath.

 

[bakbay]

We took a 7-day family vacation and happy to report that outside of algae on the glass, nothing really happened. In fact, corals grew faster since I wasn’t watching everyday — ssshhh… that’s my little secret for faster coral growth! Ha

The 10g ATO reservoir had 2g left, calcium reactor was on auto pilot, fish feeder kept all my tangs happy, etc etc. All I did was to clean the glass upon my return. Outside of ATO, I think that I can go on a vaca for months (wishful thinking) and things will be fine.

Before & after shots

 

[bakbay]

Who says that you can’t have the best of both worlds? Uhm — ultra stable Alk while pegging pH at 8.4!

 

[bakbay]

Added my two final fish to the tank: Kleini Butterfly (for aiptasia) and Achilles Tang (for…I always wanted one).

The Kleini is the help of @vetteguy53081 — he swears by it or my money back! Ha

 

[DIFish]

Awesome updates. Glad to see everything is still going smooth.
Think your results speak for itself. Do you dose any trace elements? And what are your nitrates and phosphates. Did you say you do no water changes??

 

[bakbay]

Awesome updates. Glad to see everything is still going smooth.
Think your results speak for itself. Do you dose any trace elements? And what are your nitrates and phosphates. Did you say you do no water changes??

Thank you. Things have been progressing on autopilot. Nitrate was 20ish and PO4 was 0.10 a few months ago. Honestly I have not tested. I don’t dose anything except the CaRx doing its thing. Still no WC — coming up 3 years in Nov.

Latest Trident stats below.

 

[DIFish]

Awesome to hear, I go more than a month without a WC everything starts looking bad.
Have you noticed any better growth now that you are at a higher PH?

 

[bakbay]

Awesome to hear, I go more than a month without a WC everything starts looking bad.
Have you noticed any better growth now that you are at a higher PH?

Interesting. Mine looks the same — really. Are you dosing to keep up the top 3 or trace elements? Mine is done via a CaRx

I think that my SPS responded better/faster with higher pH; however, I didn’t see any other difference with LPS.

 

[Gumbies R Us]

Added my two final fish to the tank: Kleini Butterfly (for aiptasia) and Achilles Tang (for…I always wanted one).

The Kleini is the help of @vetteguy53081 — he swears by it or my money back! Ha

Love the butterfly!