Slice of Ocean Build - 48g Fiji Cube

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Update 148.21 (148 Days aka Week 21 aka 4 months 4 weeks)

AWC Pump change: I finally picked up 2 EcoTech Versa pumps from BRS and replaced my Neptune Dos with them for my AWC system. After running for a few days now it is literally the best thing I have done so far for the tank. I absolutely hated the sound, even at the slowest speeds, of the Neptune Dos unit. The Versa can continuously pump at double the speed and at what seems to be 1/3 the noise level. I had the Neptune running 9.8g/week changes and could still hear the dang thing through the cabinet and in my living room about 100 ft away. With the Versas I am now running 15 gal/week and cannot hear the pumps at all even when I am working in the cabinet directly. Night and day difference and as long as they don't start having some of the problems others have seen I will be shocked at how much better these pumps are.

Parameters
Alk: 7.62
Mag: 1215
Nitrate: 0
Phosphate: 0

Parameter Thoughts: All in all, I don't love that my phosphate and nitrate have zeroed out so I will slowly try to get those a bit up again. The tank is looking great and I am glad to have Alkalinity to where I want to maintain it once I start adding coral. My livestock order of the remaining fish should ship in the next week or so and I think that will bring things back up with the increased bio-load and feeding. Once I can stabilize the changes after adding the last few fish then I will start with some tester coral.

I have started to see some small bits of Coraline growing on my rock work and overflow box but more noticeably on the shells of the clean-up crew. Love seeing that as it's some evidence that things are maturing and stabilizing over the last few weeks.

 

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Update 167.24 (167 Days - Week 24)

Versa Pumps: So far I mostly love these pumps. They are amazingly quiet and while I am only changing 10gal/week right now, I can easily get that to 20+ and still not hear them under my sump while sitting 3 feet from them at my desk. I have been having a problem with them stopping their cycle overnight, however. Ecotech is sending one replacement to me this week and has me trying a non-24-hour cycle for my auto water change. If that does not work I am going to try a daily reset via my Apex. Most of the time both pumps stop and are set to their home position however what has been my concern is the few times only one of the pumps stopped meaning something was getting over or under pumped which could drastically change my salinity if gone unnoticed. We will see what happens but I trust Ecotech will help me out at the end of all of this either way.

Monitoring: I ended up getting a few Wyze cameras for the house and tank. In the photo below you can see where I mounted it with the magnetic base in the upper left corner so I can monitor it anywhere. This is going to be a huge peice of mind when I am out of town in a few weeks where I can see the sump and the display tank and control remotely with my Apex if anything goes out of whack.

Livestock: Everything in the tank has been doing great. I have noticed that some snails are showing some type of algea growing on them lately so I dosed a bit of Microbacter Clean to fight it off a bit and will remove and scrub them if I continue to see growth.

I just paid the invoice for my final fish order so that should be shipping by next week at the latest. I am a bit concerned that I went overboard on the order for the tank size but I will monitor for aggression and remove those that end up not playing well. I do want to go with an overstocked tank generally (heavy in + heavy out for nutrients) but also want healthy fish. I am hoping I get them this week so I can monitor them for a week before I go out of town for a bit.


That's the update really for now. I am still trying to figure out better ways to photograph the tanks since it is close to windows and they make for nasty reflections but I will get some more for when the rest of my fish arrive

 

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Update 198.24 (198 Days - Week 28)

Parameters:
Alk: 7.2-7.6
Nitrate: 0
Phosphate: 0
PH: 8.15-8.35 (8.24 Avg)
Temp: 79.5 - 80.8F (80.01 Avg)
ORP: 289-327 (312.4 Avg)

Parameters:
I would really like to get Phosphate and Nitrates up before adding coral. For now I am going to try and only run my skimmer overnight and leave it off once PH is rising during the day. This will hopefully lessen my overall PH swing but also allow Nitrates to bump up a bit with the additional feeding to support the livestock additions. There are a few brown algae spots growing on various bits of the tank but nothing I am concerned with currently. Assuming that is consuming some phosphate within the tank I will just slowly play with different options to see if I can get the levels up a bit. Everything else seems fairly stable with minimal testing. As I get closer to starter coral I will start testing a bit more to get an idea of consumption and swings in Alk during the day.

Vera Pump Update:
While EcoTech replaced one of the pumps after a few calls as the pumps were randomly stopping overnight, I think the bigger issue was having the program set to a 24-hour cycle. Since I have changed the program to change the same amount of water in 23 hours and 45 minutes instead of 24 hours they have been running perfectly. I cannot say enough how much nicer these are compared to the Neptune DoS pump. I simply do not hear them running at all from less than 5 feet away every day and I can easily double the 10gal/wk volume and still not have a noise problem. This is more of a case-by-case preference but these pumps just look and feel so much better.


Livestock:
Long story short, my order mistakenly was shipped by Dr Reef Quarantined Fish while I was away on vacation. Without getting into it this was done after an okay communication process with them and ultimately just an oversight on their part. The bad news is that nothing could be done in the moment and all the fish were lost when they were delivered and I did not have anyone lined up to get the shipment. I called a few local stores and friends but the store saw the risk as being too high and friends ultimately were not going to be equipped to handle the situation given I did not have much connectivity to walk them through the process while on vacation. The good news is that Dr Reef simply refunded my order for their oversight and I decided to no longer use them to source my livestock. I simply did not love the lack of overall communication while waiting on status updates and then the lack of process that seemed to be in place in order to prevent this sort of situation. I just expected better from a more premium supplier that claims to care for the wellbeing and health of the fish. They made it right in the end for me but the amount of fish that needless died in the process is just not justified for me.

Luckily the LFS near me had just gotten an order in once I got back from vacation. So I picked up some of the fish I had originally ordered from Dr Reef and a few I did not originally plan on. The LFS does some treatment with Copper and medication so I felt fairly good going with them rather than finding another fully quarantined supplier. Once I start adding SPS I will find a new supplier if ever needed.

Current livestock list:
1. Purple Firefish
2. (2) blue/green Chromis
3. Red Fairy Wrasse
4. Female Lyretail Anthia
5. Frostbite Clownfish
6. Orange Storm Clownfish
7. Kole Tang

Controller: I pulled the trigger and upgraded my Apex with the 25th anniversary Apex A3 Pro. It means that my controller cabinet is a mess again but I will be rethinking it a bit and doing something nicer in the future. For now, the programming and setup are running much better overall and the added controls and monitoring are nice to have.


That is basically it for this update. Everything is looking pretty good and most daily tasks just include glass cleaning, feeding, and occasionally skimmer cup emptying, filter floss, and carbon bag changing.

Happy reefing y'all

 

[cougercruiser]

Where are the display tank pictures?

 

[Ryebreadiest]

Hanging in there?

 

[NewCaliCaptives]

any full tank shots?

 

[certain_code]

Update 1-62.60 (1 year 62 days - Week 60)

Parameters:
Alk: 8dKH
Nitrate: 10ppm
Phosphate: 0.1ppm
PH: 8.15-8.35 (8.24 Avg)
Temp: 77.2 - 78.7F (77.89 Avg)
ORP: 323-400 (357.1 Avg)

General Update:
I honestly cannot believe it had been so long since my last update here on the tank. The last 2 months have been mostly spent not living in my apartment due to an unrelated flood that then led to a recent move to a different apartment in the same building. The move, as expected, was not very fun but I managed to move the tank and slightly modify a few things in the process. I learned that I needed some additional space behind the tank to better position the Nero magnets and for easier cable management. I also used this time to 3D print a lid and make a large cutout in the saltwater AWC tank to better clean it and to be able to add a larger pump for mixing. Everything else has stayed the same as the setup was running very nicely with minimal maintenance. At some point, I will need to re-set up the GHL Doser but for now, I don't really have the need.

The tank survived the move without any loss of fish which I am very happy about. Unfortunately coral on the other hand has been suffering prior to and even more so after the move. I am super fortunate to live close to Kung Fu Corals who have been becoming popular for their dip but also have an incredible SPS selection down here in San Diego. I had picked up 5 frags from them for a great price as testers about 2 months before the flooding situation and unfortunately, they did well for about a week before starting to RTN/STN. I still have 2 of the frags but they have lost most of their color after the move of the tank with most tissue at this point having fallen off the skeleton. I mainly am attributing this to some pretty wild swings of parameters just before and then during the tank move. I am starting to think that I need to feed more consistently with frozen foods (feeding Rods currently) as well as remove some rock in the sump to be better able to build up some nutrients. Since I have had the tank back online in the new apartment for about 2 weeks now I am going to see if nutrients are a bit more stable and see how things go.

Lighting/PAR:
I am currently running the single SKY fixture on Coral Growth at 50% with a 7 am-9 pm schedule. Below are the PAR readings I am getting at max intensity measured with the Apogee MQ-210X.

What's Next:
Fix the dang doors again!! I cannot for the life of me get these things right and the dang doors drive me nuts not being aligned!

I'd really like to get more coral going again once I feel like things are stable. I still am enjoying sitting next to the tank every day but I still am pretty far from my original goal of having a successful SPS-dominant tank. With Coraline growing quickly and a few tweaks to my routine, I am going to pick up a few frags and sit them on the rack for a few weeks to see how they do. There still is just something I am not quite getting right about this whole SPS thing and it is sort of driving me nuts. I am going to send in an ICP this week to get a gut check on anything I cannot measure myself that might be playing a role as well. I'd love for anyone's feedback on what might really be going on if I am missing something obvious here.

Photos:

I hope everyone has been doing well! Happy reefing!

 

[NewCaliCaptives]

wow awesome thanks for such a detailed update! Also, sorry about the flood that sounds like a MAJOR headache.

As long as your parameters are stable and in good ranges, there are 2 things that stick out to me.

1. Nutrients, if you continually have zero po4 and close to zero no3 corals will not appreciate that and will suffer. Phosphate is required for all life and gone are the days of chasing it down, they need it.

2. No sand bed. This may be controversial, and im really not equipped to spit out any facts but from what i’ve been hearing a lot of troubles arise without a sand bed. Specifically taking bacteria much longer to populate, and taking tanks a lot longer to mature.

I just bought a Fiji 48, got a really good deal and im trying to decide whether to transfer my waterbox 10 over into it or just use it as a frag tank. As a side not I also just got my first class medical cleared from the FAA so soon i too may be a pilot with a Fiji Cube

 

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wow awesome thanks for such a detailed update! Also, sorry about the flood that sounds like a MAJOR headache.

As long as your parameters are stable and in good ranges, there are 2 things that stick out to me.

1. Nutrients, if you continually have zero po4 and close to zero no3 corals will not appreciate that and will suffer. Phosphate is required for all life and gone are the days of chasing it down, they need it.

2. No sand bed. This may be controversial, and im really not equipped to spit out any facts but from what i’ve been hearing a lot of troubles arise without a sand bed. Specifically taking bacteria much longer to populate, and taking tanks a lot longer to mature.

I just bought a Fiji 48, got a really good deal and im trying to decide whether to transfer my waterbox 10 over into it or just use it as a frag tank. As a side not I also just got my first class medical cleared from the FAA so soon i too may be a pilot with a Fiji Cube

Yeah, the move was not as bad as it could have been. I had previously moved tanks when I was on the East Coast so I have a pretty tried and true process for doing them. My building has an elevator and along with the suction cups I was able to do everything on the day before the "official" move of all of our other things.

1. Im not continually at 0 but instead have a hard time finding a leveling out point. I am not dosing nor am I doing anything other than skimming and regular filter pad changes on a schedule but for some reason, I am still seeing some pretty wide swings of Phosphate and Nitrate. I am now sitting in the ideal spot I want to be so the goal is just to keep the numbers in that area.

2. Yeah I knew no sandbed was going to be a risk and make things take substantially longer overall to stabilize. I think my 2 media blocks from Polyp Labs are more than making up for a lack of sandbed now that they are a year plus into the tank. I can certainly say I do not miss dealing with flow issues messing with the sandbed that I dealt with on other tanks.

Congrats on passing your medical! Flying has been such an awesome thing in my life and it was so worth the training and some of the hassle to get through my check-ride but I highly recommend everyone try general aviation at some point. I plan on this summer flying up to LA from San Diego to check out some of the larger reef stores up there. Just the thought of doing so is such a weird dream to me still. Ha!

Thanks for the feedback and thoughts on my set up. Much appreciated!

 

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Update 1-78.60 (1 year 62 days - Week 62)

Parameters:
Alk: 8.4dKH (+/- .2 dKH over last 2 weeks with testing every other day)

I ran an OCP through Triton and overall I am pretty happy with the results. A few things that are a bit out of range that I will keep an eye on over the next few weeks before sending in another OCP next month. I will let the charts do the talking mostly here but really just looking at trying to get Calcium, Phosphate, and perhaps Iodine back into better ranges. Nothing is significantly out of range so taking it very slowly. Photos here are just of the results with any sort of significance in terms of needing monitoring or eventually corrective behavior.

General Updates:
- I added 5 various SPS frags about a week ago now. They are extending nicely and only have a slight color change at this point but I expect that as they are on a frag rack and getting acclimated still. I am going to keep an eye on them for another week before moving to more permanent places and potentially dimming the light to slowly ramp/acclimate them in their final positions.
- One of the Nero 3s died in "lock detection" mode. A new one is on the way from AI via the SEP which hopefully will be here next week.


Short update today but hope all of you are doing well and happy reefing!

 

[NewCaliCaptives]

Thats a pretty good looking ICP! How do you like the Nero? Debating on MP10, Icecap Gyre or Nero 3. I am in the slow process of filling mine with RO water.

 

[certain_code]

Thats a pretty good looking ICP! How do you like the Nero? Debating on MP10, Icecap Gyre or Nero 3. I am in the slow process of filling mine with RO water.

I really like the Neros! This is the first time in the year or so that I have had an issue but AI is replacing it without issue which is great. The controller size is super small and the connection to Mobious has been solid. I am excited to get the MXM module so that I can control them with the Apex but I would recommend the Nero in most cases.


Unrelated I had one of my clowns die this morning randomly. Pretty odd as he was eating just fine and there have not been any signs of illness or anything in the tank. Going to keep an eye on things and look for a replacement.

 

[NewCaliCaptives]

I really like the Neros! This is the first time in the year or so that I have had an issue but AI is replacing it without issue which is great. The controller size is super small and the connection to Mobious has been solid. I am excited to get the MXM module so that I can control them with the Apex but I would recommend the Nero in most cases.


Unrelated I had one of my clowns die this morning randomly. Pretty odd as he was eating just fine and there have not been any signs of illness or anything in the tank. Going to keep an eye on things and look for a replacement.

good to hear! and i’m sorry for your loss maybe run an Aquabiomics test?

 

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good to hear! and i’m sorry for your loss maybe run an Aquabiomics test?

At some point, I will probably go this route just out of curiosity if anything. I'm not sold on it really showing anything actionable so for now stability and ICPs are the focus for testing.

For now, a poorly lit and non-color-representative video of some serious PE.

 

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After 2 weeks on the frag rack and consistent 8.2-8.5 dKH I have moved the frags to more permanent spots. Some of the frags are mounted a bit higher than they were on the rack so I will keep a closer eye on those to make sure the light change is not too intense.

For some reason, I have always struggled the most with coral care after placement in their more permanent location. I never really understood why and maybe I am just overthinking this but even after sitting on a frag rack for months in some cases, as soon as I glue them to the rock, making sure lighting and flow are as similar as possible, that within weeks I get STN and in most cases RTN within days. I will keep on eye on params and resist any changes to the tank for now and just see what happens. 2 corals certainly were a bit more pale and I am hoping that was due to being in about 150 PAR on the rack so moving them to 200-250 will help with the coloration being a bit closer to 'ideal' SPS ranges.

Do you all acclimate on a rack or just stick coral in their final spots and decrease lighting for a while?