Rob’s 30g Tonga Shroom Garden

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intricate_reefer

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Some of my coral frags that I place ,, where I am not sure I will leave them long term ,, I use just a dab of glue to hold them to the spot ,, just enough where I can easily pop it loose ,, but enough so the crabs and snails can't move it ,,, I got tired of them knocking frags all over the place :)

That’s a really good idea. I don’t know why I didn’t think of that. I’ll for sure be doing this at least for the ones that have the potential to fall on other ones. How’s your new build coming along?
 

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QUOTE="VaporCountry, post: 6412054, member: 17651"]
How’s your new build coming along?
[/QUOTE]

On a holding pattern ,, I pretty much have everything done that I can do without the tank ,, SPS tank is now ready for more SPS corals I think ,, I had bought a few more frags from Boom Corals , they are doing good ,, not much growth ,, but the tank is now using Alk ,, I talked with Adam at Battle Corals ,, think I will have him ship my frag pack in another 2 weeks or so, I am kinda gun shy :) its a big frag pack ,,

The Chalice corals have settled in ,, growing & looking good, told a friend ,, I should make the SPS tank the Chalice tank :) My favorite at the moment :) the Stained Glass Chalice ,, its only about 2/3 the size of a dime ,, it came in with one small part on the side of it not looking good ,, I am keeping a eye on it ,, seems to be holding its own right now ,,

Most all the Favias are settling in and looking happy , the older ones anyway ,, the newer one's need a bit more time ,,
 
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Little update

Things have been going well.The zoas are starting to come back around. I pretty much have the tank on auto pilot which is nice because I just started school. There are a few things I have been working on to try and get better growth and color. While color and growth have been good I feel like it could always be better.

First thing is my phosphates, they were around .2 for awhile so I have been trying to lower them slowly. At first I tried GFO and it was like it would bring them down a bit and they would just rise after a week. I got tried of changing it out so I went to Phosphate E by brightwell. It has been working well, I test and dose twice a week. I have been getting readings around .06-.08 and just dose back down to .03. One thing I have noticed is I have to dose twice the amount that it says on the bottle.

Second thing is lighting, I am running 2x Ai Prime HDs with 3dReefing diffusers. I was running a modified Saxby schedule and was having decent results. Recently I have read that chalices do well around 50-100 par. I don't have a par meter but am guessing they were getting more than that. So I decided to switch my schedule to the BRS AB+ prime spectrum and reduced the intensity and white channel. It has only been a few days so not seeing any changes yet. Now my nitrates are steady at 2ppm and I was thinking about raising them to 5-10 and seeing if it made a difference. I want to wait until I see the lighting results before doing this so I know how each have impacted the corals.

Today I also got in some new corals from BSA Corals. 5 micro acans and and a chalice. The tank is really starting to fill up and I don't have a whole lot of room left, especially when consideingr the growth area they need.

Current FTS
IMG_6873.JPG


Micro Acans still opening up, have only been in the tank 1 hour
IMG_6876.JPG


BSA Conviction Chalice
IMG_6877.JPG
 
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Did a little project today with the tank. I bought a hybrid button box that can be used with my apex. It has one toggle switch and two buttons. The toggle can be programmed for something like an emergency cutoff or in my case a water change switch. The two buttons can be programmed for stuff like feed or light mode. I set mine up for two different feed modes because my router won’t like me hook my Ai Primes to the apex.

The other cool thing about this box is it a hybrid so it also includes a 3 input breakout box. I hooked a float switch to it and programmed it for an emergency cutoff if my ato pump were to fail. I may also hook a couple leak detectors to it down the road, you can DIY them really cheap. I was thinking about hooking up a light that automatically came on when I opened my cabinet but realized it would have to take up one of my valuable outlets on the EB832 power bar.

I have also been having a few a aiptasia that have been popping up here and there.
I was putting aiptasia x on them, they would go away then return. I read about this stuff called F-aiptasia here on R2R and ordered some. It came today and I treated the two I saw. I’ll report back how well it works.

C5D20F8F-F6BE-4478-BCEC-7AC7737302AB.jpeg


A727897D-6B04-4BFB-BAC3-6547F4EC5354.jpeg


352817F8-4FFC-4708-97E6-E7CEB0D4A64B.jpeg
 
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I’m here on the NC coast and we have a hurricane threat from Dorian. I’ve been trying to come up with a backup plan for the tank. I have a lot of money in coral and definitely don’t wanna lose it. Last year when Florence hit us we were out of power for over a week, luckily I didn’t have a tank at that time. We have been trying to get a whole home standby natural gas generator for a couple months now but all the electricians have been booked up. We do have a pretty big gasoline generator but that requires gas and we can’t run it 24 hours a day and does nothing if we have to evacuate. Hopefully we can get the natural gas generator before hurricane season is over.

Today I wired up a battery backup for my mp10. I used a 105 amp hour deep cycle battery which should give it more than enough run time. The Ecotech one is only 18 amp hours and runs a single mp10 for 72hours. I would think I would get around 2 weeks with the battery I got. I didn’t hook up a float charger to it as I’m only going to hook it up if I’m going on vacation or during emergencies. I also got a couple battery powered air bubblers. The only thing I don’t have completely covered is heat. I am freezing some water bottles but was also thinking about getting a window unit air conditioner that I could run off the gasoline generator during the day, or at the very least a couple fans. Just trying to be prepared. I have never went through a long time power outage with a tank so any suggestions or tips are welcome.
 

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I’m here on the NC coast and we have a hurricane threat from Dorian. I’ve been trying to come up with a backup plan for the tank. I have a lot of money in coral and definitely don’t wanna lose it. Last year when Florence hit us we were out of power for over a week, luckily I didn’t have a tank at that time. We have been trying to get a whole home standby natural gas generator for a couple months now but all the electricians have been booked up. We do have a pretty big gasoline generator but that requires gas and we can’t run it 24 hours a day and does nothing if we have to evacuate. Hopefully we can get the natural gas generator before hurricane season is over.

Today I wired up a battery backup for my mp10. I used a 105 amp hour deep cycle battery which should give it more than enough run time. The Ecotech one is only 18 amp hours and runs a single mp10 for 72hours. I would think I would get around 2 weeks with the battery I got. I didn’t hook up a float charger to it as I’m only going to hook it up if I’m going on vacation or during emergencies. I also got a couple battery powered air bubblers. The only thing I don’t have completely covered is heat. I am freezing some water bottles but was also thinking about getting a window unit air conditioner that I could run off the gasoline generator during the day, or at the very least a couple fans. Just trying to be prepared. I have never went through a long time power outage with a tank so any suggestions or tips are welcome.
Good luck, stay safe. Luckily I live in an area where power outages are uncommon. However, just to be safe I’m going to be grabbing one of the Ego power inverters from Home Depot tomorrow. It’s only $99.99 and I have three 56v batteries from various Ego equipment we have. I think I’d be good for a day or two with those three batteries to run my return pump and the heater if I had to.
 
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Good luck, stay safe. Luckily I live in an area where power outages are uncommon. However, just to be safe I’m going to be grabbing one of the Ego power inverters from Home Depot tomorrow. It’s only $99.99 and I have three 56v batteries from various Ego equipment we have. I think I’d be good for a day or two with those three batteries to run my return pump and the heater if I had to.

Thanks man, it’s always a good idea to have a backup plan.
 
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Ok ,, I am going somewhere with this you most likely won't want to go ,, but its a option for you ,,

I live in Biloxi Mississippi ,, its on the Mississippi GULF Coast ,, I know what hurricanes mean :( this is about as big of a storm as you can get ,, if you would like to frag some or all of your corals ,, Fed Ex them to me ,, I will hold them for you and then reship them back to you after the storm ,, if its more corals than my tank can deal with ,, I have good friends that would also help ,, I have some friends with big tanks and lots of room ,, I can speak for them ,, they would be more than willing to do this ,, I know ,, you don't know me from Adam ,, but if I can help I will help ,,, not sure if you can frag corals this quick and ship them so quick after fraging them ,, but the offer is there for you ,, I really don't see this storm being a problem for you where you live at ,, it would have to come a long way hugging the entire East Coast ,, that would pretty much wipe out the East Coast ,, if you choose to take my offer though ,,its there for you ,,

Thanks for the offer it means a lot. I’m just going to have to play it by ear. As long as I don’t have to evacuate and my safety isn’t at risk I think I could keep the tank alive for awhile. Between the battery, generator, battery bubblers, and a car power inverter I’ll be good. I should probably go and see if I can find a small air conditioner today and fan for the 10g, all ready have one for the 30g. The thing that sucks is we only have two 5 gallon gas cans and the stores are sold out. I suppose I could fill 2 of the cars and siphon if I run out. Flooding isn’t such a situation right in my neighborhood, we sit pretty high. Our town if New Bern is know to flood pretty bad.

If we have to evacuate I’m pretty much screwed as far as heat. If this happens I’ll seriously be considering your offer. I doubt they would survive the trip after fragging. All my coral are frag sized though. The biggest being in a 2” disc. I could also call some lfs inland and see they would house them for some cash or a bunch of my frags that weren’t the high end ones, I just counted my frags and have 112 lol.

Hopefully it stays off the coast and we don’t get hit hard. Here is the most recent path , I marked in red in NC where I’m at. The center of the storm is predicted to be anywhere within that cone. By the time it gets to me though they are predicting it’s going to weaken to a cat 2, at least I have that going for me. They are saying late Thursday early Friday so we are still a ways out and you never know things might change
735460FB-D511-4C3C-93B9-054A1494A189.jpeg
 
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A little video I shot the other day

EDIT- For some reason its not working and now I can't delete the post lol. I have never uploaded a video here before. Im going to see if I can find out how to do it properly.
 
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Hurricane update

Dorian came through Thursday. We didn’t get hit too bad just some rain and max winds of 50-70mph. We did have some tornado warnings and a couple places near by got hit by them. Power was only out for two days and is restored now. Ran the generator during the day and the mp10 and bubblers during the night. Temp was kept around 80 during the day with the help of fans and 81 or so at night with the windows open. Overall it went really well and the tank didn’t skip a beat, things are looking great. So grateful it wasn’t as bad for us as the early predictions. Also my heart really goes out to those in the Bahamas, I can’t imagine what they are going through.
 

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Hurricane update

Dorian came through Thursday. We didn’t get hit too bad just some rain and max winds of 50-70mph. We did have some tornado warnings and a couple places near by got hit by them. Power was only out for two days and is restored now. Ran the generator during the day and the mp10 and bubblers during the night. Temp was kept around 80 during the day with the help of fans and 81 or so at night with the windows open. Overall it went really well and the tank didn’t skip a beat, things are looking great. So grateful it wasn’t as bad for us as the early predictions. Also my heart really goes out to those in the Bahamas, I can’t imagine what they are going through.
Glad to hear you came through without too much stress. I couldn’t imagine 2 days without power though, we just don’t have that kind of thing happening here (knocks on wood). We had a pretty spectacular thunder and lightning storm for about an hour earlier tonight and the power flickered for 1 second but that was it. I’d be freaking out if we lost it for 2 days. Not prepared for that at all.
 
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Glad to hear you came through without too much stress. I couldn’t imagine 2 days without power though, we just don’t have that kind of thing happening here (knocks on wood). We had a pretty spectacular thunder and lightning storm for about an hour earlier tonight and the power flickered for 1 second but that was it. I’d be freaking out if we lost it for 2 days. Not prepared for that at all.

Thanks man, unfortunately our power here is terrible. Last year when Florence hit we were out for 10 days. Thank god I didn’t have a tank set up at the time. When I was living in Maryland power was great and rarely went out, that’s the only thing I miss about there lol. That’s awesome you don’t have trouble with it, always good to be a little prepared. A couple cheap amazon battery air bubblers will go a long way.
 

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Thanks man, unfortunately our power here is terrible. Last year when Florence hit we were out for 10 days. Thank god I didn’t have a tank set up at the time. When I was living in Maryland power was great and rarely went out, that’s the only thing I miss about there lol. That’s awesome you don’t have trouble with it, always good to be a little prepared. A couple cheap amazon battery air bubblers will go a long way.
10 days!!! I can’t even imagine that. I’m going to get an inverter that works with the 56v batteries that come with my Ego lawnmower, trimmer and weedeater. If we ever have an outage that should let me run my return pump or at least a wave maker on its lowest setting for short term outages.
 

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I had to make room for the battery backup for my Vortech so I finally got around to mounting the power bricks. It’s not the prettiest job but it works.

2F08314E-739D-40C4-AC20-8E569ECBA58F.jpeg
That’s not too bad. Unless you’re really gonna plan it out from scratch and do it 100% right there’s always gonna be some random wires floating around. That definitely works. Nice DIY skills on the battery backup.
 

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That will work :) I am using the Eco Tech battery back ups ,, I have 3 on the system ,, one for each MP40 and one for the return pump ,, I replace one battery each year ,, I can buy them off Amazon for not a lot of $$$ I just have to drill out the rivets take out the old battery and pop in the new one ,, I am just trying to keep the tank running thru the bad part of the hurricane till I can get the generator up and running ,, I know its not the best or cheapest way to go ,, but its easy and the battery backs ups ,, mount really nice onto the stand ,,
 
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That will work :) I am using the Eco Tech battery back ups ,, I have 3 on the system ,, one for each MP40 and one for the return pump ,, I replace one battery each year ,, I can buy them off Amazon for not a lot of $$$ I just have to drill out the rivets take out the old battery and pop in the new one ,, I am just trying to keep the tank running thru the bad part of the hurricane till I can get the generator up and running ,, I know its not the best or cheapest way to go ,, but its easy and the battery backs ups ,, mount really nice onto the stand ,,

Nice man, glad you have a plan in place. Do you lose your power often? Also you really need to make a build thread, I’m dying to see your system. I have seen the video on how to replace the Ecotech batteries, seems really simple once you get those rivets out. My plan was to buy the Ecotech one but then this storm kind of snuck up on me so I just got this one from Walmart. It’s not as clean as the Ecotech one but is 5x as big and only cost me $100. The only thing is I don’t have a float charger hooked up. I heard they can gas off flammable gasses when charging. I just don’t know how I feel about the battery charging in my enclosed stand with other electronics, also it’s in my bedroom. Not sure if I’m just being too cautious but the plan is to just check the voltage every month or two with a multimeter then pull it out to charge when it drops to about 12.5v.
 

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I do have a do have a build thread ,, of sorts :)

 

A worm with high fashion and practical utility: Have you ever kept feather dusters in your reef aquarium?

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  • I have not had feather dusters, but I hope to in the future.

    Votes: 25 13.5%
  • I have no plans to have feather dusters in my tank.

    Votes: 28 15.1%
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