My new 200g peninsula build!

[Sean Clark]

Your plumbing looks good. I like your returns and the amount of room that you have. Good work.

 

[hawkeyejp82]

Your plumbing looks good. I like your returns and the amount of room that you have. Good work.

Thanks. Im not sure that I will even need the extra room. I shouldnt need any reactors as I have dosing setup for that and I plan on just running chemi pure carbon bags. I will place the water analyzer in but I ran into a snafu. I didn't realize the apex system requires a hard connection ethernet wise. I could drill a hole in my main floor and run a long long long cord down to it but I will just pick up a wireless adapter for it soon. I have a refugium setup so that should help with nutrient export vise a GFO reactor. yeah the space may just wind up being extra space for buckets and cleaning supplies. Even though the wires look kind of messy right now I can easily clean that up now that my PVC board is in place and the main thing is no components are exposed to where they can short by leaks of water. I was super surprised how well the plumbing worked out I only had one minor leak which required slight tightening of a clamp and easy fix.

 

[Sean Clark]

Apex should not require a hard connection and should be WiFi compatible. Hardwire is preferred by a lot of people but it is not required.

 

[dustinc]

Love seeing the tank with water. That's when the fun really starts!

 

[hawkeyejp82]

Anybody using 600W heaters on the 200g Innovative Marine? I have 2 of them and it cranks the heat up to 84.5F. I'm going to try and figure out the APEX and control the power to each of them any tips?

 

[hawkeyejp82]

Well I installed the temperature probes that came with my BRS 600W heaters so in theory they should stop running the water so hot.

The water has cleared up nicely overnight. I've included a picture of how it looks now and also of my closed loop UV sterilizer build which also has a flow meter on the output so I can tune it to my needs when the time arrives.

As for the Apex when I installed the app on my phone and was initially setting it up there was no option for a wifi hookup it instead asked me to install an ethernet cable. I'm not sure what happened but I went back into the app and now it offers me the wifi option so Id say it was just something off with the application itself at the time.

 

[dustinc]

Good decision on installing the temperature controller of some sort. Definitely want something that turns the heaters on/off as needed.

 

[hawkeyejp82]

So my Apex doesn't recognize my network. Probably because I placed it in my APS stand so it can't find the signal. I do think Im going to have to buy a wireless adapter that catches the signal place it in my basement and then run an ethernet cable to the apex.

 

[hawkeyejp82]

Here are my newest additions to the tank. They will be in quarantine for 28 days until they go into the display.

 

[hawkeyejp82]

Finally got my APEX to work with a hard connection to the ethernet. Dropped the probes in but the readings will take awhile to level out. This is going to be slow process of adding fish and coral given my strict quarantine procedures. I leak tested the closed loop on the UV sterilizer and had to fix a few minor leaks on it but it works well now.

All of my corals in the QT have tiny tentacles all over them now I think they have been feeling each other out for places to expand to. I moved my lepto a little further away from the hammer coral as it was getting stung. The two clowns and the firefly goby all get along well and readily eat marine flakes so I think there going to be just fine and super happy once they get into the main display.

 

[hawkeyejp82]

Good decision on installing the temperature controller of some sort. Definitely want something that turns the heaters on/off as needed.

Yeah the BRS heaters come with a temperature probe and controller I just didn't initially install it because I had the temperature probe with the APEX but I decided its better to use the one that came with the heaters because it will free up ports in the energy bar for moving my T5's over which I want to set to a ramp up ramp down schedule. Also I still want to get 3 xr15 lights to add to the T5.

 

[hawkeyejp82]

Ok so what I thought was diatoms in my QT with corals is now clearly dino. Also what I thought was tentacles is probably more likely the dinos growing on my coral bases. Any hints on how I should tackle this issue? I was thinking limiting light since they are only in QT anyways and do a water change adding some copepods I grow in my refugium. I'm not terribly worried about the issue showing itself in my display given I have the UV sterilzer in place to limit dino growth.

 

[ninjamyst]

this is why i added fish quickly and been feeding 2-3 times a day. i didn't want to get dino since i am starting with dry rock. is this just coral QT? how big is the tank?

 

[hawkeyejp82]

this is why i added fish quickly and been feeding 2-3 times a day. i didn't want to get dino since i am starting with dry rock. is this just coral QT? how big is the tank?

Yeah its just coral 40 gallon breeder with a couple pieces of rock in it and a hang on back filter with carbon.

 

[hawkeyejp82]

Got some copepods for my refugium going to make a colony of them for fish feeding and hopefully reduce diatoms/dino with them. Should work nicely to get the Mandarin fish which I like the color of that fish but have heard it is hard to feed.

Also turned on my UV sterilizer given I have nitrate in the display tank now and have noticed a few small spots of diatoms. My flow meter is reporting back between 375-415 gph and my return pumps are both below 50% but I think that should be a good rate to reduce algae and bacteria with a x2 per hour tank turnover.

 

[hawkeyejp82]

Ok so update I have had my clownfish and firefly goby in the display for over a week now they were happy and feeding well until tonight. I turned my protein skimmer on for the first time and 1 hour later they were all dead. What the heck is that? Only thing I can think of is if the protein skimmer produced a chemical but even if that was the case why wouldnt it have caused an issue before as it has been sitting in the sump the whole time. The other thing I thought of was maybe it leaked electrical current into the water I dont even know how to test that.

Water parameters are as follows:
Salinity 1.024
Temperature 77F
Phosphate 0.2 ppm
Nitrate 1.2 ppm
PH 7.5
ORP 300

flowrate 600GPH with carbon so even if it was a chemical it would presumably be short-lived due to 3X turnover per hour through chemi pure. Earlier I was dramatic the clownfish arent dead yet but I dont trust they will survive the night they are in labored breathing pattern that just came out of nowhere after eating and moving just fine 3 hours ago.

 

[hawkeyejp82]

Clownfish survived they are back to looking healthy. I still have no idea if it was the protein skimmer or the turbo start I put in the tank but it had to be one of those two things.

 

[hawkeyejp82]

So I lost the firefly goby but putting the clowns back into the QT they regained full strength within 24 hours. Something aint right in the display tank I guess I should try and do an ICP test or whatever.

 

[hawkeyejp82]

So I figured out what happened to my display tank. I had a sea anemone in there that went bad and must have released his toxins which is why the clowns survived and the firefly goby didn't. So I removed the sea anemone however is this toxin something that carbon will filter out or should I just do a massive water change before adding anything back into this tank?

 

[hawkeyejp82]

Probably overdue for an update on here. So my UV sterilizer wasn't working properly looks like I failed to secure the quartz sleeve allowing water into the power ballast. I have ordered replacement bulbs and ballast to fix the problem. I had a loss of life event and have since found out what the problem was.

I thought it was odd that I had turned my protein skimmer on and then lost fish, however it wasn't the skimmers fault. I had a sea anemone that just didnt take to the non established tank and when he passed away he sent toxins into the water column. Thankfully all I lost was 1 firefly goby (sadly I never want to lose anything but I'm glad it wasn't more than 1 fish). The clownfish almost passed away but considering there immunity to sea anemone toxins it explains why they survived.

So I really started this tank wanting to host clowns in a sea anemone but it seems mother nature has other plans for this tank. I am officially giving up on a sea anemone given the loss of the firefly goby and green carpet anemone. I have several fish prepared to go into the dispay (1 lawnmower blenny, 2 clownfish, 1 dispar anthia, 7 benjai cardinals, 1 mandarin goby) and I also have 4 corals ready to go into the display (1 lepto 24k gold, 1 birdsnest acro, 1 hammer, 1 goni). I also have several 14 corals ordered ready to go into quarantine. So I'm going to get back on track without the anemone unfortunately but I want to get things going into the display and it appears sea anemones need an established tank but also hard to put them into an established tank not knowing what location they will setup in.