Planet Aquariums 155 build.

[dschuffert]

That is a great looking setup. I learned something new about bulkheads too in this thread, thanks!

 

[tedstalcup]

So here is our happy baby Tomini. I guess I’m one of the last people to successfully order from LiveAquaria? The tomini was willing to eat hikari seaweed extreme and S pellets within an hour of being acclimated. S/he spent two weeks in the 10g and did two rounds of prazipro. Boy does that stuff yuck up the water. The tang is happy with its nori and seaweed extreme and is doing great in the display tank. This is fortunate since we’ve reached the neon green film stage. The tomini picks at rocks from dawn to dusk then retreats to its cave. My wife wasn’t into the tang at first but now she says the tomini is “elegant.”

 

[tedstalcup]

So now my tank has reached the minty green stage. I had cyano for literally like 48 hours then it vanished and this stuff started it. It’s a very thin film that doesn’t scrape off. It’s very light sensitive and doesn’t grow in shadow or shade at all. The tomini picks at it and the snails and hermits from IPSF seem intrigued by it. All my research says to leave it alone. Apparently copepods and amphipods like to graze on it and eventually it’ll be replaced by coralline. I’d buy ceriths and more species to mow it but as a federal employee I haven’t gotten a full paycheck in over a month. My wife bought me the tomini as a pick me up.

 

[tedstalcup]

So what do you do when you’re an excepted federal employee forced to work without pay for a month? Well, you can… revise your plumbing! Yes. With the purchase of a couple angled three-way pvc fittings ($4/each) I dipped into my stash of other pvc parts, and unions, and redid the top of my return. Yes, the fitting is furniture grade but frankly the pressures involved in this situation are well within any reasonable limit imposed by the fitting. My original return split was somewhat tortuous and resulted in the left-hand return being weaker than the right-hand return. Using my astounding tank plumbing skills I whipped up a much cleaner design, dry fit it, double checked it, carefully marked each piece with sharpie to ensure the angles stayed correct and glued it together. It was a cm too short on the left. So…. I put it away, thanked myself for never buying one of any pvc fitting, and tried again today. This time I remembered that with pvc glue in the join, things can slide together just a little bit more. A few little bits more and you’re off by a cm or so. Because pvc is not known for its stretchiness that cm might as well be ten feet once it’s all glued. This second version fits perfectly and the unions just drop into place. I let it dry a couple hours and it’s all good. The flow now seems so close to equal as to actually be so. The new design is on top in the picture.

 

[tedstalcup]

So with the government shutdown over and my back pay and salary being deposited, I’m back to moving forward with my build. I had a used Kessil H160 that’s now on a reverse photoperiod with gracilaria (red ogo) and clean chaeto. The refugium is floored with dry rock rubble that’s turning bright green. There are also the survivors of several seedings of Reefs by Steele benthic copepods. The majestic pod buffet is four benthic species and they seem content in their chaeto and rubble. The refugium is 18x8 but has a 16x7 acrylic tray in it to create a 5 inch high low flow zone. The gracilaria was included free with the IPSF order and is really taking off. It’s gone from a couple threads to an anchored bushy colony. The pods are reclusive but review with a red light shows them twitching around. The IPSF amphipods are reproducing in the display like mad but the socks keep them from the refugium.

 

[tedstalcup]

With my restored cash flow I bought five springeri damsels from NYAquatics when they were $5 on Halloween. One was DOA and another didn’t survive QT but three are fine and in the display. One fat one is clearly dominant and swims around with the Tomini and the now-fat ocellaris pair. The two more timid ones stick close to “their” rock structures. Very pretty fish. A bit aggressive with each other but entirely docile when confronted by the Tomini for daring to enter his cave. I’m going to add two Talbot damsels from Dr. Reef and hopefully the Chryptisera damsel drama will be reduced.

 

[tedstalcup]

So as six weeks of salary hits my account, in addition to repaying my savings, I’ve gone ahead and ordered the rest of the gear to get the tank to a fully operational status. That means an ATO kit, a hydros launch, and a hydros Blenny. Because my stand is 48 wide and 30 deep, my 36 x 18 sump doesn’t leave a ton of room for an ATO reservoir. Yes, there’s a foot of space at one end but the Hydros components are three inches thick and every control board is also three inches thick. After much consideration and crawling around with a tape measure I decided that I’d like that 30x12 space for the hydros gear and dosing reservoirs. With the Blenny I’ll start with AFR and chaetogro… theoretically since right now the tank requires neither. I can set up a ph-driven alk doser at some point as well.
That left the 6x36x15 space in front of the sump free for a reservoir. I reached out to a couple of places but decided to work with Matt from OctoAquatics. Just fantastic communication, thoughtful input on the design and a good “no surprises” all-in price (including shipping). We exchanged design sketches then PDFs of more final ideas and came up with a 30x6x15 hinged reservoir with a pump access lid and two 12mm ports for wiring and tubing. I’ll get top-hat silicon grommets to drop in and make everything tight. Volume should be right around 11.5 gallons which is about ten days of top off for the 155 display and 30 gallon sump. Here are some in-progress shots from Matt showing the high quality work on the reservoir. I’m a big believer in supporting small vendors and Matt kept his quote in place even though the shut down meant the quote and the order were a month apart. Got to respect that. Because he’s such a pleasure to work with I’m ordering a custom lid from him.

 

[tedstalcup]

So let’s see here on my detailed build thread no one reads but me… so I’m down to two bigger springeri damsels. They’re ruthless with ones not their own size. The ocellaris have doubled in size and the Tomini is lord of the tank.

I bought adhesive bathroom shelves from Amazon and stuck them on my doors. There is one on each door and they hold all my Brightwell bottles and refractometer. The other one holds all my dried foods.






My refugium is going gangbusters under the Kessil H160. Per some threads here I stuck it to the right of “grow” and 75-80%. The chaeto is going well, the gracilaria is going fantastic and everything else is ulva rigida. Nitrates are currently sitting at 1.8.

 

[tedstalcup]

So my hydros gear came. Got a launch, wave engine v2, Blenny, and XP8. I have to figure out how they should be mounted. I did this mock up first but I’m thinking I need to move the Blenny to where the wave engine is so that the 0-10v cables can go directly to the nautilus and varios skimmer boxes. I’m toying with the idea of backing the whole thing with commercial Velcro then I could move things about as needed and if the maven ever comes out; or I buy a kraken, I can make room or redesign. Although I know people mount these boxes hollow side back, I’m thinking of using one inch stand-offs and routing wires behind it that way. I’m waiting on my command bus cables, Octopulse 4 adapters, and command bus terminators so I can wire it all. The gear came from different vendors (thanks Ocean Aquatics for the early Black Friday pricing) so it needs a bit of a trip to the parts bin.

 

[tedstalcup]

Ok, so I never liked the look of the meridian side mounts. Not attractive at all. I wanted the BOT mounts but my employer the federal government didn’t give me a full paycheck for five weeks.

I ordered BOTs from ReefBreeders and wow. These look fantastic. Well-made, easy to assemble, and integrated wire management. Took about half an hour to disassemble the side mounts, assemble the BOTs and reinstall. It’s so obvious these lights are meant to use these. They have tracks, sliding threaded posts and a wire retainer that are all in place from the factory but which the side mounts don’t use. If anyone wants a set of meridian side mounts let me know but I’m not paying shipping.

 

[tedstalcup]

When I started the tank I seeded it with benthic copepods from Reefs by Steele. I think that helped with avoiding Cyanobacteria since that phase lasted 48 hours. Then I got an intensely green film and added my Tomini and also some clean up crew from IPSF. I added baby bristle worms, micro brittle stars, micro hermits, nerite and littorid grazing snails, and amphipods plus their live sand booster. These guys kept the sand relatively clean and kept the algae cropped down to 1-2mm.

I now have gammarid amphipods everywhere. They’re in every rock hole and crevice, they’re in the ceramic media in my cryptic sump areas, they’re in the socks when I clean them. I’ve also got a snow storm of Harpacticoid copepods in the refugium. Likely tisbe biminiensis and Reefs by Steele “harpa” pods.

However, even though nitrates are low at 1.8ppm I’ve now got happy ulva rigida growing on every lighted surface. It doesn’t grow -at all- out of the light and shades areas are bone white.

I added a tuxedo urchin from AlgaeBarn, 18 collonista snails from TopShelf, and from ReefCleaners I ordered 6 more micro stars, 10 Florida cerith, 20 dwarf cerith, 10 dwarf planaxia, 10 Nassarius vibex, 10 more micro hermits, 5 blue leg hermits, and a tiger conch. Everyone arrived alive and promptly got to work.

 

[tedstalcup]

So I’ve been battling that ulva in my display tank and stubbornly low Ph. Parameters are:

Nitrate: 7.2
Phos: 0.01
dKH: 10
Ph: 7.80-7.85
Mag: 1440
Cal: 470

Unfortunately, while these numbers and sharply reduced display lighting (meridians dialed back to 25% and only 3pm-9pm) have reduced the display ulva to a pale green film that my tang, snails and baby tuxedo urchin are demolishing, it also reduced my refugium gracillaria and chaeto to almost nothing. Hopefully the chaeto rebounds now that it’s not being competed with. I’ve got to figure out the Ph as well. I’m loathe to buy more gear but I may end up going the recirculating scrubber route. My reef octopus regal 200 would need a new top and I’d probably get the basic 10” BRS canister then loop them together with a T fitting and valve. Time will tell. Not doing anything until after the holidays. Fingers crossed the four Hydros units and avast plank can keep the tank going while I’m away. The 11.5 gallon OctoAquatics reservoir seems like it’s easily going to handle the 7 days.

 

[Txoutlaw]

How's the tank doing?

 

[tedstalcup]

So, where are we? I beat back the display ulva by reducing the photoperiod. However my chaeto all dissolved before the holidays and by the time I got back from traveling, my refugium was full of green hair algae. Interestingly there was no GHA anywhere in the display. I speculate that my army of gammarid amphipods, benthic copepods, snails and hermits prevented it from getting past the starting line. I’ve had a little cyano on the tank back but the rocks have no more than a light green film and the sand is white. The “1 biota links goby is now a fat torpedo of a 2.5” links goby. If it’s on the sand, he eats it.

 

[tedstalcup]

So I’ve been trying to get chaeto to grow. Clearly it’s not the “no matter what you do it grows” fantasy that it’s represented to be. I’m dosing Brightwell chaetogro at 5ml a night through my blenny. But it turns white and then dissolves into mush. Fearing that my Kessil H160 was baking the chaeto I reduced the photoperiod to 8 hours and dialed the power down but no love. My next idea was to tumble the Chaeto. I found a brand-new icecap 2K and connected it to the wave engine. Jeebus. This pump is ridiculously loud. I took it apart, I used food-grade silicone to lubricate the impeller shafts, I’ve run it with the direction inverted. The best I can do is a grinding whine. CoralVue wants me to pay to ship it back: way to provide customer service to a hobbyist with $4000 worth of your products.

Unfortunately with the hydros I’m sort of locked into their ecosystem so I can’t really protest quit. I do like the hydros but lord the icecap 2K blows.

My current plan is to use a Varios 2 into a “U” of pvc pipe that’s been drilled. This should invoke a toroidal current in the Fuge that keeps the chaeto free of detritus and keeps it tumbling.

We shall see

 

[tedstalcup]

Well, my chaeto farming is still a miserable bust even though I’m sure the eBay sellers love the business. I’ve now got a dynamite chalice, hammers, torches, and zoas happily not dying. I also added a six line wrasse for amphipod control and a pair of biota mandarins for wife approval factor.