ShakerBreakers 300xl Build

[ShakerBreaker]

The aquarium is doing well
Everything looks very healthy, the hammer coral is extra puffy and the xenia is already starting to extend and spread out. Alkalinity and calcium are a bit low, but tomorrow is water change day.

In 2 weeks I will be changing from the tropic marin classic salt to the tropic marin reef pro to prepare for the addition of more corals.

PH 8.2
Ammonia 0
Nitrate 5
Calcium 378
Alkalinity 8.7

 

[ShakerBreaker]

Day 25 since the tank got wet. I'm very happy with the tank's progress so far. I believe from my test results yesterday that it has fully completed cycle and cycling the dry rock in a trash can ahead of time was well worth the effort. So far no ugly phase, but I expect much of that happened during the initial cycle. I do expect to see algae bloom in the next 2 weeks though as I have begun feeding the clowns more heavily.

I have set up a second quarantine tank in the workshop for inverts and corals, took advantage of the Black Friday deals and I have an urchin on its way to begin quarantine as well as some more fish. Fingers crossed, I will be able to add them to the display by Christmas if all are healthy.

 

[ShakerBreaker]

well I did a triton ice test and it looks like my 5 stage ro di needs some help. The silicate will be the first thing I address and I will worry about the manganese and vanadium later if they are still there.

I will be replacing my di stage with a 3 part di stage

 

[ShakerBreaker]

Well, I think it's safe to say that my hammer coral is enjoying the Tropic Marin pro reef salt. I got back from a short vacation and did my first large water change with the new salt and the hammer responded almost immediately. here are some pictures for comparison. The one on the left is after the water change with the new salt. I was super happy with the classic, but I'm even happier with the pro reef so far.

I've been meaning to do an equipment list for a while as well

Equipment

Tank: Red Sea Reefel 300xl
Lighting: 2 Maxspect Ethereal lights
Skimmer: Bubble Magnus Curve 5
Power Heads: Neptune WAV x2
Return Pump: Reef Octopus Varios 4
Controller: Neptune Apex

 

[ShakerBreaker]

I took some time to set up the DOS I had in storage yesterday. Right now it is just running RO water, 10 ml a day on each side. I just want to give adequate time to run it through its paces before I need it since it's been in storage for 5 years.

 

[ShakerBreaker]

Very happy with the parameters of today's round of testing. I think next month I will start testing phosphates as well since there will be more fish and corals in the aquarium.

Parameters
PH 8.2
Ammonia 0
Nitrite 0
Nitrate 5
Calcium 462
Alkalinity 8.2

 

[Bob E]

Your tank start is looking good

 

[ShakerBreaker]

Your tank start is looking good

Thanks Bob!

I need to do a build update soon, but I'm waiting on a few deliveries.

 

[ShakerBreaker]

Things had been going really well until about 2 weeks ago. I installed the Reefmat500 which is a joy, but since Red Seas modification kit isn't out yet I used some box cutters, and well ... I broke some glass and wasn't even able to remove the glass panes. I cleaned up the mess the best I could and didn't think much of it.

Slowly I started to notice the corals were a little less happy and I thought my alkalinity was low. Increasing it didn't help and I started to notice small amounts of bleaching so I ran an icp test.

The broken glass must have leached tin. sigh.

We run well water and I have recently tested the water from the faucet and there is no tin in it, though I am running a 7 stage RO with relatively new filters so even if it was in the water it would be filtered out.

I have scoured my tank for a worn magnet or a rusty screw. I even threw away my trusty algae scrapper blade.

Since I had to remove everything from the sump and clean it out with a shop vac I took the opportunity to clean my return pump .. it needed it, my gph increased by 100. So there is that bright side.

I'm running poly-filter and carbon to help catch it and I've done enough water changes at this point to replace 80% of the water using the effective water changes calculator.

Once I get that to 100 I'll probably send in another icp test and cross my fingers.

 

[dlaird76]

Hopefully thats the source then and you've caught it in time

 

[ShakerBreaker]

Hopefully thats the source then and you've caught it in time

I'm crossing my fingers, but really I've eliminated everything except the RO water at this point, so if the tin increases I'll have to take a look at that. I have an icp test arriving on Thursday from ATI as well which checks the RO water just to be sure.

If it's not the glass or the RO then it has to be a pump or powerhead. I haven't seen anything that looks like it would be doing that.. but it will be a game of remove and test at that point.

 

[dlaird76]

Any updates?

 

[ShakerBreaker]

Any updates?

Thanks for asking! Well, after cleaning the sump out and the water changes and the poly-filter I did another ICP test and tin tested at a 2 which is low enough to be in the green.

I have done more water changes since and ran other products to try to get the last of the tin. I am planning on doing another ICP test Monday just to make sure the tin is either gone or further reduced.


Other than that, the tank has been doing very well. Possibly the easiest success I've ever had with a reef aquarium. I am amazed at these new bacteria products like microbacter and the PNS products. It feels like cheating.

 

[dlaird76]

Well that sounds like good news. Yes the use of Microbacter/Dr Tim's along with products like coral snow really deserve their place in the hobby. Look forward to more updates and pictures

 

[Lavey29]

Thanks for asking! Well, after cleaning the sump out and the water changes and the poly-filter I did another ICP test and tin tested at a 2 which is low enough to be in the green.

I have done more water changes since and ran other products to try to get the last of the tin. I am planning on doing another ICP test Monday just to make sure the tin is either gone or further reduced.


Other than that, the tank has been doing very well. Possibly the easiest success I've ever had with a reef aquarium. I am amazed at these new bacteria products like microbacter and the PNS products. It feels like cheating.

I use PNS products in my xl300 too. Work great.

 

[ShakerBreaker]

Well, I've been making many changes to my tank recently, trying to track down whatever is making my corals angry. My first suspicion was that tin had made its way back into the system, so I finally used the red sea sump mod kit sitting on my desk and removed the half-broken glass left from installing the reef mat and also the Neptune flowmeter since one screw had a touch of rust and then I sent in a Triton ICP test on the aquarium. I then sent in an ATI test on my mixed saltwater and RO water.

While waiting on test results I explored other possibilities. It's summer here, so the tank had gotten hot, primarily due to me bringing in saltwater from the mixing tank and not checking the temperature. It's not a problem I had thought about simply because it's heated during the winter and this is the first summer I've had both an aquarium and a garage mixing station, it raised the water to 82 degrees for about 30 minutes as it took that long for me to get it cooled back down using an ice chest block wrapped in ziplock bags in the sump. So that is issue 1, but other than that one instance (which was 2 weeks ago now) water temperature has stayed between 78 and 80 though I typically like to keep the aquarium at 79, it's 105 outside so I am pretty happy about keeping it 80 or below.

Issue 2 is stray voltage. A friend told me to test for it, so I got out my old school multimeter and gave it a read. Voltagewise I am getting about 1.5v in the water when the return pump is on. Now I know that's not a lot and I'm not seeing any amperage in the water so it's probably fine, but my return pump is from 2015 and the flow from it was way down, below thresholds for my system, so I decided to just replace it anyway.

I decided to replace it with a Sicce Silent 4 and let me tell you, at first this thing was NOT silent. After a weekend though it did whatever breaking in it decided and it's pretty quiet now, not as quiet as my old various 4 was .. my old pump was only pushing up 300 gallons and this one is pushing twice that easy.

Now I have another problem, microbubbles. Ever since I changed the pump I am getting a lot of microbubbles from my skimmer. I wasn't getting ANY with my old return pump and I'm not sure why changing the return pump would cause microbubbles to enter the display from the skimmer.

I've tried lowering the water level to create more of a lip at the baffle. I've tried raising the water lever to give the pump more draw down and give the bubbles more room to escape. Nothing seems to matter except turning the skimmer off.

I have a couple of different sponges coming to try out to see if they help with the bubbles and an inline ball valve to put on the pump to try to slow down the return if needed .. so I'll keep this thread up to date if they make a difference.

Last night the ICP results came back for the display I have them attached below. As far as water quality goes I don't see anything there that would cause my Gonis to close up like they are. So I am inclined to believe it's from the rise in temperature and possibly the voltage.

 

[ShakerBreaker]

-

 

[ShakerBreaker]

A little system update. I added a cabinet, got the electronics out of the stand. Feels more roomy and safer to me. Now what to put on the new cabinet? that is the question.