Raeges 75 gallon Adventure

[Raege]

Nice build, glad the fish are getting along.

Thanks!

 

[Raege]

Hope everyone is having a safe and happy 4th!
Wife took me to LFS sale and picked up some stuff she had to have......... the first frag pictured was coming off its plug and when I went to take the stem off it split to 3 pieces. I thought I had wrecked thus one but all three pieces have started opening up and seem happy? Hopefully got lucky with this guy.
Ps forgive the pic quality playing with camera app to compensate blues and need more practice. Hopefully camera and reef skills will improve with time and reading more posts here on R2R

 

[Raege]

One final FTS with the Damsels to finish the day

Forgot her fav purchase

 

[NY_Caveman]

Looking great! Happy 4th to you as well!

 

[Raege]

Looking great! Happy 4th to you as well!

Thanks Caveman. Fairly happy with results so far. If I can just follow advice on these forums and slow it up a bit think we'll be looking real sweet a year from now.

 

[Raege]

Well the sump upgrade adventure continues. My wife and sons bought me a skimz 34 sump from Reef2Land for Father's Day. First delivery came in with both top off reservoir walls busted in and cross braces broken

Second delivery arrived with no outside box damage at all but an entire end piece was nocked out like someone at factory kicked it in before boxing

Needless to say not very happy. Reef2Land rep has been helpful and I've requested a refund on the Skimz ( after the two failed deliveries) to apply to a Emerald Trigger 34 instead. Hopefully this Monday will get the Skimz returned and start the ball rolling on the Trigger sump. Reef2Land gent tells me this is not an unusual situation with the Skimz product. Wish I knew that when we ordered would have started with a Trigger and had it up and running weeks ago.
Wish me some luck I think I'm gonna need it

 

[NY_Caveman]

Wish me some luck I think I'm gonna need it

Good luck!

What a great gift! It should all work out, just take some time.

 

[Raege]

Good luck!

What a great gift! It should all work out, just take some time.

Thanks Caveman, nothing compared to what you went thru getting your tank. I'm pretty lucky for sure kids and wife took real good care of me this year

 

[RichtheReefer21]

nice man, good luck. I was 3.5months in as a first timer, and paid the price by not having QT'ed anything.

Currently got my (old) 55g cupramine'd

New 125g is cycled and running fallow with all my frags and inverts.

Best of luck ill keep checkin in.

 

[vector824]

Liking the progress. Sorry about that sump, what a bummer. Looking forward to seeing it thrive!

 

[Raege]

Decided to swap protein skimmers today. After reading reviews went with the Bubble Magus Curve 5. The ETSS reef devil was tuned at one point but with more bioballs in intake than recommended by factory. The extra balls in intake caused it to dribble a little water from intake top down tube into the sump. Seeing I have CDO like OCD but with letters in alphabetical order as they should be I went to find the right stack of balls and just got tired of chasing perfection.
Will get some pics once I get it broken in.
At least I'll have some equipment to sell to finance this addiction I guess lol

 

[Raege]

Need to unsubscribe from LFS. They had a sale so we couldn't resist a couple coral frags
Think we ended up with a hammer, brain and acan

 

[Raege]

Quick update as it's been a bit.
My son started a 32 biocube with some of my rock and a bottle of Dr Tims. His tank came along very fast and made it to the uglies with acdiatom bloom in record time and then settled to zero across the board nicely.
In my tank got carried away I think and added a Fixface and Royal Gramma and got a slight uptick in nitrites and nitrates.
We rejoined the Blue Devils to another home to lighten the bioload and because female was total jerk and QT time out didn't cool her off for more than couple days.
We also rejoined a couple corals to sons tank that seemed a bit unhappy without opening fully.
Happily the corals we moved rebounded nicely and remains are still doing well.

Added a carbon and GFO dual reactor new skimmer is working well so hopefully after a few weeks bio filter will be back in balance and can rehome corals from sons tank.

So easy to get carried away and think you have it nailed good lesson with no loss of coral or fish so Life is good and getting back on track

 

[Raege]

Hopefully the end of the “uglies” is near. Had th3 diatoms, minimal green hair algae, and now beautiful pink spots on my sand like coralline......... Doubt it’s the very rare sand covered coralline so Cyano is my bet.
I was away a few days and th3 lights were left on overtime contributing to the cyano im sure. It’s very minor and clearing after just a few days so lesson learned. I had timers for lights just didn’t get around to installing but that won’t matter in a week as I have some Chinese black boxes coming in with built in timers.
Pretty sure the par output on the light I got with the tank were shot. After checking prices for new halide bulbs and actinic sprung for a whole new set. Well have to see how these work out. I got cheap instead of blowing double to get a Hydra 26 hd’s
I owe some pics but am going to wait for the new leds

 

[Raege]

Here’s a FTS with current soon to be old sold lights

 

[Raege]

Not much in tank that I picked crept this guy. Next to a Clown Trigger my favorite fish

The gang hangin* out doing some housekeeping

 

[Raege]

Put in an automatic top off tank and an IceCap ATO unit. Found a suitabke foodgrade plastic waste bin with a button press open top. A little dremel action to the back and im out of the daily top off business.
Now i jyst need to either buy the Bashea sump or build my own then i can neaten up the cluster that ud my cabinet......

 

[Raege]

Bad reefing day today. My favorite fish died. My One Spot Foxface got stuck yesterday between my fish trap and aquarium glass, Have been trying to capture the Blue Devil Damsel again to re home. Left the room for 15 minutes came back saw him stressed spikes up. Removed the trap and he swam away and I hoped he would be ok but this afternoon he passed while I was at work. Guess he was trying to get to the mysis through the glass instead of at trap opening and got stuck couldn5 back up . I feel like **** for walking away and not minding the trap and killed my beautiful favorite fish.

One good thing that lost most of its fun is that my led lights came in and are working well. Just don’t feel like taking pictures atm still bummed that the Foxface won’t be in em.

Tomorrow’s another day learned a lesson and won’t repeat that mistake again.

 

[Raege]

Wife wanted to replace her royal gramma that the Damsel killed and our Foxface who passed from my stupidity and got this. I wanted to wait another 5-6 months for an anemone but the wife’s heart wants what it wants and so far so good. Lights are in acclimation mode and anemone is spending half the day outside it’s cave so hopefully another week or two in acclimation will see it outside the cave full time.

 

[Raege]

Some eye candy with new aquarium camera app. Still need some practice with the settings but better than I had