Biota Yellow Tang update!
His name is Randall. :p
www.reef2reef.com
I was going to say I only had 1 until a week ago. So I dont know how well they play together. I picked up a freshwater to go on my new tanks fuge along with the coral grow I already have. I'll probably start with just the fw one and see what it is like.Ok, lights are under control now. Had to delete the coral glow and add it again. Works now. These are the color controls I have:
Glad it's doing well sir! Mine is a mess right now and I need to trim and re-arrange them myself!Just messed around in my refugium to see what has survived the past month. Several red macros I got from a local (AFboundguy) seemed to be doing very well. There was some detritus/microalgae on them, but fluffing it around a bit and it is clear they have grown well. Several pics below, moved to the display. Most stayed in the refugium.
The wild macroalgae I got from the ocean (first picture) is hanging in there, but maybe not growing much. There is also some ulva (I think) and green hair algae.
I put GFO in my skimmer bag. It’s much simpler than any other method I’ve tried.Tunze Skimmer Update
The Tunze 9410 skimmer is now all set and has been running very well for a few weeks. The organic load has been coming from the refugium.
I somehow misjudged the skimmer height relative to the water level, and it was collecting too much liquid because it was too deep in the water. Recall that in Brute #2 the skimmer is resting on an inverted laundry basket with the plastic cooling coils under and around it. Instead of trying to mess with the basket, I cleaned a flat rock I had (shale maybe) and placed it under the skimmer to reach the recommended 6" depth of water around the skimmer. That fixed the collection issue and it has been collecting dark tea skimmate for a while now.
Since I'm often not at the tank, I wanted to be able to collect skimmate almost endlessly, so I chose to use the foam extraction unit instead of the collection cup. That change too has been working well. Here's a picture of it attached to the top of the skimmer, and the second picture shows that foam rises in it, and out the tubing to the left, for collection.
Here's a look down the side of the skimmer into the brute can. The white tubes are the cooling coils. Water exits the skimmer in the dark ring at the bottom of the picture, and flows over to the white ring that has a 300 micron filter bag attached. It is removable, but particles larger than 300 micron might be worth catching. I'm experimenting with that. It is also suitable for putting GAC in the bag, and will likely try that when I think I'm ready to use GAC.
Here's a look at skimmate that has been collecting for about a week (picture is a 5 gallon bucket).
I set up a way to collect into a 5 gallon bucket from TBS by sending the skimmate down a section of PVC pipe cut to just allow it to enter through a whole cut in the top of the bucket. I drilled two holes in the pipe at the bottom end to unsure that skimmate can get out even if the pipe is flat on the bucket bottom.
Finally, I used another tbs bucket to cover the top of the skimmer as shown below. This allows for no moisture to escape to the room from the Brute, as the black tubing to the right of the picture is sucking out the air, keeping the skimmer using fresh air.
