Reef Rehabilitation 29g cube and equipment room build

[AaronFReef]

So once the tank was going again I added some more ammonia and some Microbacter 7 and she’s testing zero after a day. Still ghost feeding it a bit. Meanwhile my quarantine got stocked with three beautiful African firefish. They have a nice tinge or yellow to their dorsal fin and face. They’re eating well and hiding behind the pvc pipe I gave them most of the time. It’s been about six days now. The electrical is coming together. I added a Icecap gyre 1k to the DT and left my hydro koralia from five years ago to the QT. I’ll show the electrics soon but it’s a rats nest.

 

[AaronFReef]

My family and I getting the fish at Neptune with my daughter so excited she left bruises on my neck and wouldn’t stop running from tank to tank saying, “Look at this!!!!”

Before the fish went into the QT they got a short dip in Ruby Reef after acclimation and then let loose.

 

[AaronFReef]

I’ve got my Neptune Apex all set up. I have attached to it a COR20 as my return, an LDK with two optical sensors for high and low water protection in my sump, a WXM for my MP40QWD (more on this later, its not hooked up), a Tunze ATO 3155, and a Fire 7 tablet I snagged for $30 on Black Friday (along with all this at nice discounts on Black Friday. Thanks BRS!).

I haven’t calibrated the salinity probe yet so it’s nonsense. Also my pH is lower than I’d like since my CO2 is often high in the room. It’s a 300 sqft room with two 55 pound dogs in it most of the time with the door closed and windows closed in winter. My CO2 air meter reads about 500-800 ppm most of the time and often gets up to near 2k when all the family is in here watching TV.

 

[AaronFReef]

Also my whole system is just about batter backed up. I have a 9.8 kWh battery hooked to 3.5kW of solar panels that is on an outlet ten feet away but I haven’t made the circuit the aquarium is on part of that yet. I left a circuit for the fish room which isn’t begun yet beyond the slab.

Between this app for my solar and Apex Fusion I can hardly stop playing with my phone when I’m away from home.

I need to get an IP cam to monitor the tank when I’m gone but I’m sensitive to privacy and security concerns with having a microphone and camera in my living room 24/7. Anyone have recommendations on good high quality ones that don’t use cloud for streaming and just stream direct from the camera through my IP/Dynamic DNS?

 

[AaronFReef]

So yesterday I got my BRS mini reactor plumbed into the manifold. In the process I swapped out a gate valve for another and forgot to close the valve. When I turned the COR20 back on the push connect tubing wasn’t far enough in on the reactor and it flooded a gallon or so on the ground before I could react and it went under the tank! Leak detectors were happy as clams. So I need to reposition them under the stand to the low point which should be interesting...

The reactor is 80% BRS carbon and 20% BRS GFO so I can continue to remove any phosphate leaching from the rocks. Tested phosphorus a little late (8 hours after installing the reactor) and it was at 14 ppb (0.014 ppm) which is pretty darn low so I’m happy. I’ll knock it back up with a shrimp tonight to keep the cycle alive and get the skimmer working which I have now switched on.

Which reminds me my skimmer is an older ASM Mini-G skimmer which appears to be well liked. It’s loud as heck though. Louder part of the system by far. The overflow comes with a little cap to put over the center which channels water around the sides and makes it quiet. Had to drill an airline down into the 90 fitting behind it to prevent it from backing up from air though but it can flow the full force of the COR20 which is pretty phenomenal.

Tank is clear and sparkly today. Did my first water change on my QT yesterday too and the firefish seem to be adjusting well. They’re eating PE mysis frozen happily. Hope to move them over next weekend and get the next inhabitants. I’m thinking some flasher wrasse pair will do nicely.

 

[AaronFReef]

Well I did some aquascaping with my better half just now and am quite happy with how it came out. Thoughts everyone?

Also I got the MP40QWD on there as you can see yesterday. I found that the IceCap Gyre 1k is just too powerful ramping between 10-20% which is the minimum you can do. So I turned it to alternating Gyre mode set at -10 to 10% with 0.2 seconds for ramp up/down and runtimes and it works great. Builds a nice clearing wave across the tank. If it’s not bad for it (for which I have a separate topic to ask about) then I will do this and maybe have it switch off except for lighting period hours.

I’m still debating how to run an algae filter be it a ATS DIY built into my awkward 3” fuge or just growing some chaeto in it which I’m inclined to do. I’ll be grabbing a Kessil H160 or 380 soon as well as a Kessil A360X for my display as it’s approaching lights on time. It’s been cycling for two months now.

 

[NY_Caveman]

I like that aquascape a lot. Very interesting shapes and sizes. Just be sure to leave enough room to get a scraper through to clean the glass.

 

[AaronFReef]

I like that aquascape a lot. Very interesting shapes and sizes. Just be sure to leave enough room to get a scraper through to clean the glass.

Oh good. Thanks. Yes I’ll have to pull the trigger now and buy that Flipper magnet to see just how much room it needs because it’s probably too tight in some spots now.

 

[AaronFReef]

So the plan is to move the firefish out of QT this Friday and put up the screen on the tank. Then I can go get a pair of flasher wrasse and put them in QT.

I am trying to determine what fuge light to get as I want to start that up now. I’m prepared if necessary to use a Kessil H380 but wonder if the AI prime fuge light that just came out wouldn’t be just as good with the shallow and really narrow fuge I have. Still haven’t ruled out an ATS but will start with a standard fuge. In researching about the Prime fuge light I saw people saying that the Amazon LED grow lights are just as effective. Anyone have one that they’d recommend?

 

[AaronFReef]

Well I just had one of those nights. First, I can’t for the life of me get my MP40QWD to stop rattling loudly no matter how I move the wet side around. Not a huge deal. Two times my Hanna phosphate checker timed out while I was mixing up the cuvette. What a horrendous design in order to maximize reagent sales. Then I look under my tank to pull the shrimp in my filter sock since my phosphate was reading 0.13ppm and notice that A.) I have a slow drip from my last section of manifold and B.) it’s because I never glued another section!!! Yikes! It’s just too late to glue it and I’m making a silly and highly dangerous decision to wait until the morning to cement it but I figure hey it’s already been two weeks...

Lastly I notice that I never replaced the steel pipe strap I used temporarily instead of my PVC pipe strap that’s plastic and there seems to be some yellow strangeness growing on my sump silicone.

I don’t think it’s from the steel strap rusting because it hasn’t actually rusted yet from the looks of it so I figure maybe it’s some mold or bacteria starting from the cycle and the shrimp? Any thoughts on what that is?

 

[Hemmdog]

My family and I getting the fish at Neptune with my daughter so excited she left bruises on my neck and wouldn’t stop running from tank to tank saying, “Look at this!!!!”

Before the fish went into the QT they got a short dip in Ruby Reef after acclimation and then let loose.

Nice ! I go to Neptune every once in awhile as well!

 

[AaronFReef]

Nice ! I go to Neptune every once in awhile as well!

It’s an awesome store. Unfortunately the downpour continues: this morning I wake up early to work on the plumbing that needs to be cemented and find one firefish swimming in the front corner of the glass. He’s got fin rot. My wife is gonna go get some PrimaFix to treat the tank this morning. I’m just finishing up the plumbing.

 

[AaronFReef]

So Sebastian as my daughter called one of our firefish is dead. He didn’t show symptoms for long but those three fish hide 99% of the time. They came out a bit in the day or two leading up to the first water change I did for them Saturday but have since gone completely reclusive again until this one showed up sick this morning and died hours later. Wish I knew what caused the illness. Perhaps something got introduced in the water change. I used an old quiet one pump to stir up the bucket while mixing the salt and perhaps that leaked some oil or something or just the swing of salinity of them being off 1 ppt for the five gallons I added caused too much stress. This fish has been feeding well up to yesterday too. There has been a bacterial bloom present in the water since last Friday I assumed due to the new feeding but the ammonia has constantly read zero as evidenced by Salifert and one of those suction cup monitors. Hmmm... thoughts?

Edit: the water is very stable at 78.5 degrees with two 100W neo-therms.

 

[AaronFReef]

It’s been almost a week and we’ve had some more hiccups. I lost another firefish to severe fin rot so we are down to one lonely fish. I think something went wrong in my QT. It seemed to have a bacterial bloom so I think I fed too heavily. It never had ammonia during any tests but that may be because the bloom was eating up any waste and making the water hypoxic (low oxygen). I did a water change on it (40%) and tried to install carbon in my sponge filter but found my ROX 0.8 was way too small to fit in my sponge filter. I ordered some bituminous carbon to try and absorb any toxins that may have been present. The bloom died after the water change.

I was concerned that the QT problems could kill the last fish so I took him out and acclimated him to the DT and placed him in. He’s been in there a few days and is much happier. He regularly comes out now and is feeding fine though quite shy. Lone firefish in a tank is not good if I recall correctly so I’ll be trying to get him a couple buddies in the QT as soon as possible. I’m still ghost feeding the QT to try and keep its biofilter going strong. Here’s a pic of the firefish in the specimens container during acclimation.

I also rewired the whole electrical and got everything much cleaner. The cube sump and stand sure makes it hard to do things clean. It’s still a wire mess in there a bit with the number of probes and leak detectors and water sensors and ATO and everything else. I also realized I had been running my ASM Mini-G skimmer way too low. I still haven’t gotten it to produce any skimmate. Hopefully it’s not just a piece of junk but I’m giving it one more chance. Thinking it’s still just too light a load to skim.

 

[AaronFReef]

Got some skimmate out of my skimmer and realized it’s missing an o ring which explains the water pouring from the skimmer neck. I thought it was just bad design lol.

So my alkalinity (my first test) read 5.8 dKh. That would explain why my pH is always so low. Why would my alkalinity have dropped so low? I mean I assume it’s dropped since I have salinity of 35ppt with Red Sea blue bucket. I don’t have anything that would use it yet that I can think of. No coralline or anything yet. Anyone got some ideas for me?

 

[AaronFReef]

Found a leak on my overflow where my PVC threads into the bulkhead. Major bummer. Will have to disassemble it and drain the water low enough to be under the lowest bulkhead in the tank. The threads on it hardly went in. They looked clean too. I used Teflon tape and probably should have used thread sealant. I’ll try again with some sealant if I can but I have a new bulkhead on order and can get some new plumbing at the local hardware store meanwhile.

 

[AaronFReef]

Well I went up to Neptune Aquatics today. Got a beautiful red Filamentous flasher wrasse. He talked me out of the flame angel I was also there to buy saying it was too small a tank. What are your guys thoughts? Lots of places online say 30g is fine but Robert of Neptune is a celeb and I trust his expertise.

Also I got a ball of clean chaeto from Algae Barn which promptly dissolved into a nightmare in my tank just now. It was all teeny short pieces and just fell apart. I definitely had the flow too high in my fuge at first and turned it down within a minute but it still shredded to pieces. So now I have it suspended in a fish net in my fuge so hopefully tomorrow I can get the Chaetomax light on it and get it growing into a reasonable clump that can live free of a net.

 

[AaronFReef]

Oh and here’s some eye candy:

Got my A360X in and just trying to figure out how to get it hung on my two mounting arms.

 

[AaronFReef]

Scratch the filamentous wrasse. I think it’s a Blue Flasher wrasse (cyaneus). It’s all cuddled up against the two firefish in QT against a section of pipe [emoji23]. Hopefully they can breathe while he spoons them in his mucus web hahaha

 

[Katrina71]

Beautiful wrasse! So now you'll have 3 firefish?