Texas Waterbox 220.6 +Plus HD

[45bravo]

Just adverted disaster. Luckily I got home from work early today and went to check how the protein skimmer was doing. When I looked under pump I smelled a burning smell. After looking around frantically for a few moments I noticed the Return pump area way low. The heaters were out of water and on. The temp sensors are where the protein skimmer is. Not sure why they were on but it was on long enough where the black coating on temp holder melted to the Cor-20 cable. I was able to pull it off. Looks like the ATO pump died so just amazon primed a new one and now looks like I need new heater or heaters

So I didn't see anyone chime in about your heater placement on here, but you should never put the heaters in an area where the water level isn't constant or at least cant go down that far. The best place you could put them is the skimmer area as that area should never change, at least it wont go lower than the baffle. Just think if your sump was all acrylic you could have melted a hole in it or maybe even start a fire from the melted plastic.

 

[jstephens24]

So I didn't see anyone chime in about your heater placement on here, but you should never put the heaters in an area where the water level isn't constant or at least cant go down that far. The best place you could put them is the skimmer area as that area should never change, at least it wont go lower than the baffle. Just think if your sump was all acrylic you could have melted a hole in it or maybe even start a fire from the melted plastic.

I thought people always put them in return pump area. First time with a sump haha. I’ll need to check if heaters can fit in that area

 

[jstephens24]

My second batch of fish from Ocean Devotion came in recently. Received 3 bangaii cardinals, 1 exquisite wrasse, 1 Carpenter wrasse and 1 royal gramma. Unfortunately the royal gramma had a swim bladder issue when I got it in so I had to get a refund for him. The exquisite hid pretty much the first 24 hours but has been out cruising the tank since. One of the cardinals ended up not making it but the other 2 have been perfect. The carpenter has hid the whole time. I assumed it died after not seeing it for a few days but I lifted up a rock to get some GHA off and I saw it swim away. Hopefully its finding some food at night or something. I am 0-2 looks like on social carpenters. I am done with fish additions though.

I am battling GHA right now but its not too bad on rocks. Or atleast I have seen worse pics. I do have a ton growing on back glass so maybe that's where it will consume. I have been working a ton but will be off in a couple days so plan to do a good cleaning on my off days

 

[jstephens24]

Vermetid snail or sponge? Ton all over my rocks. Never noticed them before until today. Idk why when I upload straight from phone it always goes sideways

 

[BifrostReefer]

Thanks for this thread, I'm hoping to get a WB 220 on order in a few months and all your info has been great. have you thought about a refugium or algae scrubber for your GHA problem? How are you liking the Hydras? My biggest dilemma is lighting right now, considering the Hydra 32's or xr15s for a mixed reef.

 

[jstephens24]

Thanks for this thread, I'm hoping to get a WB 220 on order in a few months and all your info has been great. have you thought about a refugium or algae scrubber for your GHA problem? How are you liking the Hydras? My biggest dilemma is lighting right now, considering the Hydra 32's or xr15s for a mixed reef.

I have not really thought about either one. if my protein skimmer would ever work as good as it originally did then I don't think it would be too bad. I don't feed an incredible amount, usually just 2 frozen cubes a day. I actually just turned off my lights yesterday and will leave them off for a few days. Plan on doing a waterchange tomorrow as well and scrub off the GHA on back glass. That is where the majority is at currently.

The Hydras have been great to me. I have 0 complaints. There has been 1 moment where the fan on one light didn't kick on so it popped up error code and got too hot. I reset it and fan came back on and haven't touched them since. I do need to cut down on my light schedule to see if that helps GHA too. Right now they turn on at 9a and off at 10p with a 1 hr ramp up/down. Maybe need to make it 8-10 hours total instead of 13

 

[jstephens24]

Vermetid snail or sponge? Ton all over my rocks. Never noticed them before until today. Idk why when I upload straight from phone it always goes sideways

a bunch of people on IG said sponge so got my answer. they have exploded

 

[jstephens24]

going to be adding some Caribsea Fiji pink sand to the tank. iv vacuumed some special grade up by accident and instead of washing/putting it back in I have been just dumping it. also I ordered the 200 gal worth of IO salt. that is the way to do it for my setup. 4-50 gal bags where I dump 1 bag in with roughly 45 gal of water.

 

[MERKEY]

going to be adding some Caribsea Fiji pink sand to the tank. iv vacuumed some special grade up by accident and instead of washing/putting it back in I have been just dumping it. also I ordered the 200 gal worth of IO salt. that is the way to do it for my setup. 4-50 gal bags where I dump 1 bag in with roughly 45 gal of water.

Great thread and thanks for the ride!

We also just got our WB 220 and put our 32g and 75g into it. These tanks are so much fun and have so much room!

Just a suggestion, when you add the new sand with the new water...rinse the sand before you add it to the tank and you can add it all at once. This eliminates the clouding and stops and minincycle that might happen with the bacteria trying to fight the new bioload. But if I miss understood how you will be adding the sand then ignore my post hahaha

Great tank!

 

[jstephens24]

Great thread and thanks for the ride!

We also just got our WB 220 and put our 32g and 75g into it. These tanks are so much fun and have so much room!

Just a suggestion, when you add the new sand with the new water...rinse the sand before you add it to the tank and you can add it all at once. This eliminates the clouding and stops and minincycle that might happen with the bacteria trying to fight the new bioload. But if I miss understood how you will be adding the sand then ignore my post hahaha

Great tank!

yea I plan on rinsing. I did that originally as well. crazy how dirty the water is

 

[jstephens24]

finally rinsed and added the new sand couple days ago. tank looks so good with clean white sand. I really need to stop being lazy cleaning the glass. I have some algae that is tough to get off even with a razor. think I just need to spend more time doing it. I did place a new small order of fish from TSM Aquatics. They should be in tomorrow: algae blenny, sleeper banded bullet goby, royal flasher wrasse and blue sided fairy wrasse. I already put a mirror up today and will keep lights off all tomorrow to help out

 

[jstephens24]

fish arrived yesterday and all doing great. The royal flasher hid when I turned the lights on but everything else was out and about cruising the tank. I had light off for the first 4-5 hours of them being in the tank. I am working nights right now so didn't see if it got brave enough to come out later. Woke up today and all 4 fish are out doing their thing. the 2 wrasses are in middle of water column, algae blenny perched up on rocks and goby spitting out sand. So pumped that everything is doing great. I was 0-2 on mcCosker wrasses with them both hiding the entire time and never coming out to eat so seeing these guys swimming has been great

 

[jstephens24]

ordered one of the nice size glass razor scrappers from BRS to get the hard algae off. its doing pretty well but with such a big tank it takes awhile. I did a WC on Monday and did a quick scrub around to get GHA and the hard algae off. Tuesday I focused on the front panel and maybe tomorrow will knock out the sides. Tank looks so great when you have clear panels

It seems my latest DI resin went kinda quick when it showed 1 TDS. My PSI is 60-65 but didn't think it was that low. I think it lasted only about 300 gallons. I changed it out today and started making more water so I will try to see if it gets any better.

For some reason I did lose 1 anthia couple days ago. I noticed it laying under a rock and then couldn't really swim. It would swim upside down. Could not see any injuries or anything so Im not sure what happened

 

[jstephens24]

time for another update. I ended up losing all my anthias one by one about a week or 2 apart. very strange. still battling the red hair algae. did a scrub last night and did a WC. I also ordered some Vibrant from BRS and did my second dose after the WC. Hoping to knock this out finally. Protein skimmer has been working good still

 

[TheShrimpNibbler]

time for another update. I ended up losing all my anthias one by one about a week or 2 apart. very strange. still battling the red hair algae. did a scrub last night and did a WC. I also ordered some Vibrant from BRS and did my second dose after the WC. Hoping to knock this out finally. Protein skimmer has been working good still

I hate to hear that the anthias didn’t do well. Hopefully you’ll get the algae knocked out soon enough though. Good luck with the tank!

 

[Joshua123]

Do you use the two filter socks that came with the waterbox sump? Do you have a refugium and if not is your baffle still in place that separates the refugium from protein skimmer section? How about the foam filter that is before the pump section, do you have to clean it often. Sorry for the barrage of questions, just some things from my waterbox that I’m looking at

 

[jstephens24]

Do you use the two filter socks that came with the waterbox sump? Do you have a refugium and if not is your baffle still in place that separates the refugium from protein skimmer section? How about the foam filter that is before the pump section, do you have to clean it often. Sorry for the barrage of questions, just some things from my waterbox that I’m looking at

I do not use the filter socks. I bought some large media cups and just put pillow stuffing in the first one. I do not have a refugium so i did take out that baffle. I just have my protein skimmer and couple extra rocks in that section. the foam filter before the pump i took out b/c some people said they had clogging issues with it. no problem with questions....i will answer any

 

[jstephens24]

2021 goal to get rid of this RHA. I will say vibrant is making it easier to clean the back glass thats covered in it. Going to try and stir the sandbed more frequently to try and keep it white looking

Not sure what is going on. Went out of town for 5 days but had someone come by and drop 2 frozen cubes once a day in tank. I also had pellets dropping twice a day. When i came back algae grew back a lot faster than i would have thought and also my clownfish died. Snails and crabs didn't get to him yet so it must have been that day. I don't understand why the fish are dying one by one couple weeks apart. Currently in tank: PBT, 2 yellow tangs, blue tang, 1 osc. clownfish, pink margin fairy wrasse, royal flasher wrasse, blue sided fairy wrasse and bangaii cardinal. Algae blenny is supposed to be in there but haven't seen him when i look at the tank. I have not seen his body though so hopefully still alive.

just paid last installment for the tank couple days ago. Still happy with going for this size of tank and still happy going with Waterbox

 

[PilotOfSubmarines]

That seems like a LOT of food per day to me. I have the same tank with voracious eaters and I put in a small piece of LRS Reef Frenzy along with 4-5 half shell clams for the Tusk, Tangs, and Trigger. The larger fish go for the clams and eat some of the frozen. There is still a little of the frozen left over when they are all done eating.

This is with 12+ fish in the tank. I have a Neptune auto-feeder that I havent even used in months because it was too much food.

I can't even imagine what 2 full frozen cubes and 2x pellets would be like daily. The fish will always appear hungry and be ready to eat more but it's VERY easy to overfeed the tank. Have you been measuring your Nitrates/Phos/etc?

 

[jstephens24]

That seems like a LOT of food per day to me. I have the same tank with voracious eaters and I put in a small piece of LRS Reef Frenzy along with 4-5 half shell clams for the Tusk, Tangs, and Trigger. The larger fish go for the clams and eat some of the frozen. There is still a little of the frozen left over when they are all done eating.

This is with 12+ fish in the tank. I have a Neptune auto-feeder that I havent even used in months because it was too much food.

I can't even imagine what 2 full frozen cubes and 2x pellets would be like daily. The fish will always appear hungry and be ready to eat more but it's VERY easy to overfeed the tank. Have you been measuring your Nitrates/Phos/etc?

maybe thats my problem then haha. last i measured nitrates was low like 5-10 and phos was .06. Those numbers were with a bunch of algae in tank though. So maybe 1 pellet feeding and 1 cube or 2? the cubes aren't that big though. just like the small square ones not ice cube size