Turtle's Sushi Tank

[SashimiTurtle]

We got goodies! I added the sea lettuce, and promptly removed it. It was in a billion tiny little shreds and clogged up the overflow into the refugium chamber. I did add the chateo and red ogo, as well as thin out the Dragon's Breath. A three macro fuge should be more than sufficient for what I want to accomplish.

Pods were added to the fuge and pumps turned off for about an hour to let them find hiding spots.

 

[SashimiTurtle]

Current project...

 

[SashimiTurtle]

It's done. Stayed up past midnight getting everything hooked up. Finished this morning with calibration and doing some tests. The first few were wacky(one was 6.5 and another 15.3), but after I got it dialed in I got 3 consecutive tests at 7.3dKH. My Hanna checker says 7.5dKH, so I'm happy with where it's at.

I've got the doser set up using Tropic Marin's All For Reef, its a one part Ca Alk Mg and trace element solution that is popular with the KHD, as it takes 3 heads to run it on a 4 head doser. Having an all in one solution prevents you from having to buy a second dosing pump. The KH Director is just in test mode for now. Once I get up to my target alk and mostly stable, I'll hand over control to the robots.

 

[najer]

Manual dosing still, swapped to All For Reef a couple of months ago, I should probably test for the big three but the corals look fine so it's not gonna happen.

 

[NoahLikesFish]

Exciting stuff... tank build stuff, and pictures!

Ok so I had a running reef tank in the spot where this one was going to go. It was gas station sushi, yeah... no good. We can do better than that. With some help and encouragement from friends, we managed to move it out of the way and get this one set up in a weekend.

New tank and stand in place and leveled. This one is MUCH lighter than my previous tank. It took all we had to move the old one out. Three years of salt creep and splashing water over the side had glued the tank to the yoga mat, as well as gluing the yoga mat to the stand.

Placing the rock, first try looked so good I decided not to mess with success. Two perfect little sushi rolls.

Sand in and adding water. Like the rice that brings everything together.

Oh boy, I remember this sand now. Super cloudy, touch it and you create a dust storm. Should have rinsed it. After I got all the water in, I added a bunch of bottled bacteria as I have no place to keep my fish so we're going to have to power thru a cycle with fish while keeping ammonia at safe levels. I have additional bacteria and prime on hand and will be checking ammonia daily, so far so good.

Dust had settled by Monday morning and I added the first inhabitants, this huge brittle star that I had no idea was still alive and my 4 year old coral shrimp. He's the sushi chef.

terrapin biotope?

 

[SashimiTurtle]

Manual dosing still, swapped to All For Reef a couple of months ago, I should probably test for the big three but the corals look fine so it's not gonna happen.

See I would, but I'm so forgetful... its better if I can automate as much as possible. Computers remember schedules WAY better than I do.

 

[PokeFish]

im loving the tank and all the macros too I will definitely be following

 

[najer]

See I would, but I'm so forgetful... its better if I can automate as much as possible. Computers remember schedules WAY better than I do.

I am the ato, splash it in and then dump in 1.5 G of RO to flush it in, I have had a doser new in the box for about 4 years now, heard of too many failures but I think I figured out a fail safe, I think, maybe next year.

 

[NoahLikesFish]

i like it

 

[SashimiTurtle]

im loving the tank and all the macros too I will definitely be following

Welcome, have a seat and a seaweed salad appetizer.

 

[SashimiTurtle]

i like it

Sorry I completely didn't see your posts yesterday. Thank you.

 

[SashimiTurtle]

After a few days of slowly raising my KH, I think I'm there. Now to level it off and hold steady. 4ml, 4 times a day created a slow increase, so I'm going to back off to 3ml 4 times a day and see if that stabilizes things.

Testing against my Hanna(8.2), the KHD is still a few points low. I'm going to adjust the final reading up by about 2%, that seems to be in the middle of the KHD and Hanna, and that will put me right at 8.0dKH. I'm not concerned with exacts, just stable. If it's 7.8 or 8.2, I'm ok as long as it stays there. I use Red Sea blue bucket salt and it mixes very close to 8.0.

 

[SashimiTurtle]

Sunday maintenance day... well not really, more like Sunday lazy day. Tank has been looking great the past week.

I did test my water, NO3 PO4 and Alk. My dosing chemicals are supposed to keep CA Mg and trace elements in line as well so I'll just check those monthly to make sure they are in line.

I've had some discrepancy between the Hanna and the KHD. For almost a week the KHD has said 8.9 then 8.8 now it's hovering between 8.7 and 8.6. Something happened that spiked it up from 8.0ish to 8.9. The Hanna was testing low 8s the whole time but over the last two days has come up to match the KHD now.

I also need to calibrate all my probes. Salinity has been a little temperamental, more than it should be. I'd like to just rule out calibration before I go hunting why it's dropping, especially those steep drops recently.

 

[SashimiTurtle]

Well I meant to update yesterday, but I forgot. I'll try and get into the habit of updating every Sunday.

I ordered the GHL 7.5dKH refremce fluid. I was having some testing discrepancy between my Hanna and the KH Director and I wanted to be sure of at least one of them.

After flushing the cell several times with RODI to ensure everything was purged out, I ran three consecutive tests with the solution. The results were 7.4, 7.5 and 7.5dKH. This confirmed for me that the KHD was in fact accurate and all my calibrations and calculations were on.

Over the week, my alkalinity climbed rather rapidly to 9.1 and then stayed there. This was the same time I tested with the solution so I was confident this was an actual reading. I'm not sure why this happened as I hadn't increased my dosing or added anything. The corals didn't seem to be stressed over it so I decided to give the GHL control of the dosing pump.

I set up that I wanted it to hold 8.0dKH, and if it was 1dkh higher to lower the dose by 1ml. It works with your scheduled dose you have set up in the dosing control section. I'm currently dosing 2ml, 4 times a day for a total of 8ml a day.

The alk came back down to around 8.5 and has been steady in that spot for a few days. I'll monitor closely over the next week and make sure everything stays stable.

 

[sfin52]

Did you figure out what caused the spike

 

[SashimiTurtle]

Did you figure out what caused the spike

No idea. It had been hovering around 8.5, which is fine I'm not chasing numbers that hard, I just want it stable and close to 8.0 where my salt mixes. I get a test that's 9.1 out of the blue and all tests after that were the same. Even flushing the KHD, testing with the solution and confirming it is in calibration, then testing the tank again I got 9.1. The KHD dropped the dose by 1ml until it came back down to 8.5 and then went back to what I programed.

 

[SashimiTurtle]

Sushi update!

I actually added some items to the menu. I got a piece of bird nest, a jack-o-lantern lepto, a grafted war coral and an acan.

Everything else has been doing great. Alk has been staying relatively stable. The only swing I had was from 8.3 to 8.8 and back, and that was a gradual increase and decrease over the course of four days. I've been learning how to tune the KHD to be able to better control alk so it doesn't wait so long to start changing my dose.

The refugium is sort of in an ugly phase. I think most of the chaeto died off and created a GHA outbreak, but its contained to the refugium and I'm not worried about it. The same thing happened with the red dragon's breath, and after a while it just out competed the GHA, with my help of some manual removal. The red ogo seems to be hanging in there and growing some and the dragon's breath is still the bulk of the refugium.

I haven't really had to do much to the tank at all this week. Everything looks happy so I've just been leaving it alone and monitoring.

 

[sfin52]

Sushi update!

I actually added some items to the menu. I got a piece of bird nest, a jack-o-lantern lepto, a grafted war coral and an acan.

Everything else has been doing great. Alk has been staying relatively stable. The only swing I had was from 8.3 to 8.8 and back, and that was a gradual increase and decrease over the course of four days. I've been learning how to tune the KHD to be able to better control alk so it doesn't wait so long to start changing my dose.

The refugium is sort of in an ugly phase. I think most of the chaeto died off and created a GHA outbreak, but its contained to the refugium and I'm not worried about it. The same thing happened with the red dragon's breath, and after a while it just out competed the GHA, with my help of some manual removal. The red ogo seems to be hanging in there and growing some and the dragon's breath is still the bulk of the refugium.

I haven't really had to do much to the tank at all this week. Everything looks happy so I've just been leaving it alone and monitoring.

Thats what a refugium is for. All the ugly stay there

 

[SashimiTurtle]

Here I am forgetting Sunday again...

Anyway weekly update time. Not much has changed. We went out for sushi! No, not fish tank sushi. Dinner sushi . I ate a lot...

The tank seems to be doing really well. I've been using adaptive mode and that seems to be better at keeping the alkalinity more stable. I did lower my dose at the same time as switching to adaptive mode and that has put be a bit low from my target, but its been stable there so that's what I'm after.

We did get a new sushi for the tank. It's a little green leptoseris, I think. A friend gave it to us.

 

[najer]

We went out for sushi! No, not fish tank sushi. Dinner sushi . I ate a lot...

Was it all you can eat sushi and are they still in business?!