Water Lily Reef (180g In-wall)

[1Blazer]

Beautifully executed and remarkable workmanship--- wanna do mine next?! lol But seriously looking to seeing this thing tank get some livestock in it. I may have missed it but are you planning on doing LPS/SPS/ Mix?

 

[DLHDesign]

Thanks. I need to update this thread, but don't have a FTS that's current. And it's not an update without one of those...

Mix for sure. I was hoping to get PAR readings before the next update so that I can present a rough coral layout, but that may have to wait till the update after next...

 

[jsker]

Wow I have missed a lot. What a awesome build Dave and blown away with the results. I like the little shop too!!

 

[Rick.45cal]

Amazing build! I can see why it’s hard to keep up momentum. You’ve been in the serious build phase for quite awhile now. It looks like you are in the home stretch now! What an amazing set up! The tank is beautiful, so is your craftsmanship. The facade is killer and clean as can be. My hat is off to you!

 

[DLHDesign]

3/17/19 - Day 163

Been a while, eh? I've been slacking on the updates - I know. So let's start off with a FTS (unfiltered; sorry) from yesterday;

Basically still the same, just with a bit more algae growth.
Oh yeah; and a few fish. Not as many as I'd hoped to have, but more than zero. For those who don't enjoy playing "spot the shadow fish", I'll help out a little:

The blue streak wrasse ("Scrat") has been one of the family favorites since it arrives - but mostly because it pretty much spends the entire day up in the water column, zipping about. When you're the only thing that moves about, you tend to get appreciated more...
The filefish lurking in the back ("Zig-zag") was picked up to help with aiptasia in the last tank. In the process of knocking that out, it conditioned to eating frozen and pellets, so gets to live the life of luxury in the new tank. One thing I didn't know about filefish before getting this one is that they are color-shifting. They aren't great at it (not any kind of octopus or anything), but the fish will definitely shift colors - and patterns I think - to match the rock it's currently hanging out it. Either that, or my rock just happens to be the same color as a filefish and the color shifting is totally unrelated... Anyone is welcome to learn me on this bit of trivia - or I'm just as happy to continue with the belief that I have a ninjafilefish instead of just a filefish.
There is one other tank mate, but the Lawnmower Blenny lives up to his name - "Peek-a-go" (if you don't know the story of this name; check out my previous build). I know that good 'ole Peek is still alive and well, however, because every morning I see this type of thing somewhere new:

Those - if you don't have a Blenny of your own to never see - are the grazing marks of a Lawnmower on a bare-bottom tank covered in algae (okay; and a bit of mortar dust). I do actually see more than this - most days Peek will be seen pecking at the upper rocks for a truly delicious snack (I guess) or else just perched somewhere yelling at the kids to get off his (now bigger) lawn...

Sadly, those are the only fish that made it through the move. I'm knocking on every piece of wood I own that the losses have stopped there, because I'm not sure how much more I can take. The YT I had in QT ("Lemon") as well made it through all the treatments and blooms and problems - only to decide to throw in the towel once into the DT. Despite offering up every sort of food (and it's never been a picky eater), I just couldn't get it to eat after the transfer to the DT. No signs of intestinal problems; no redness of the gills; no sores, injuries, or discoloration beyond normal. It just wouldn't eat. Over the course of weeks, it slowly lost weight until it became too weak and I found it trapped on the overflow weir. I freed it from there, put in some fresh nori, and moved it to the center of the tank - turning off all the pumps save one of the two returns. This wasn't the first time I'd tried this, and it didn't work any better this time. Despite having such a relatively low flow, the fish ended up on the weir again a brief time later. Not looking to punish the fish any longer, I mixed up some clove oil water. I hate the smell of that stuff now (have ever since I first used it). I've told the wife she absolutely is not allowed to use that scent in her oil diffuser, that's for sure...

Yet life moves on. On the equipment side, most everything is holding up. One of my Gyre 250's is acting up, but I think it's because one of the rotors is misaligned and the pump is shutting down due to resistance. I'm seriously considering picking up the new Gyres in order to get the easier maintenance, but three things are holding me back:
1) I'm kind of past the point where I want to mess with wires and cables and such on this build.
2) No Apex integration. That's a small thing because they have such solid controllers, but I've put a lot of work into getting every aspect of this tank onto the Apex, so it seems silly to regress now.
3) The new design certainly SEEMS easier to maintain, but I want to see if people report that being the case or not. That experience will take time to gather...
If #2 gets solved somehow, I'd likely make the switch. Especially because...
**sigh**
I found some aiptasia in the frag tank today. On the gyre pump in the frag tank (that was turned off), specifically. I suspect that a bit of it rode in on one of the snails I pulled out of my frag QT. I had basically threw in the towel on that tank when a weekend away caused the whole thing to crash due to the inattention (it had an ATO, but that was about it). The only things that really survived were a ricordia, my two rock nems, a piece of toadstool, three trocus snails (one 2", two medium), and two hermits. Since everything had been isolated from fish for >76 days, the two frags (pathetic though they were at that point) went into the new frag tank (still connected to the DT at this point) along with one of the med snails, the large snail went into the fuge, and everything else went into the DT. The nems promptly went on walk-about (whatever; nothing else in the tank) before settling into the dumbest areas they could find - in the back of the scape where I can only see them when I turn off the pumps and look down from inside the fish room (not from the display side, in other words). **sigh** Whatever; they've been through a lot. Let 'em live out their days in privacy if that's what they want.
As for the aiptasia, I pulled the pump out and gave it a vinegar bath. Despite having gone over the snail shells with a brush and scraped at them with a blade, I figure that's how it got in since neither of the frags were on plugs when added. I don't for a moment believe that the one I saw is the only poly of that annoying junk, but there's not much I can do until I see more of it pop up. Zig-zag may not get to enjoy his retirement after all... And I may need to get another filefish for the frag tank at some point if they keep showing up there. Ah well; at least they are cool looking (if you can spot them with all their cool camo, of course).
While inspecting the pump I pulled out, I also may have solved another mystery. Before transferring everything (fish, corals, inverts, etc.) from the QT tanks, I took some ICP samples and sent them off to Triton. They came back and indicated that I basically had something rusting in my tank. There's not many things that aren't new, and the gyres are one of the oldest wet equipment in there - especially the 150 that was in the QT. Looks like one of the wet-side magnets had burst and was rusting into the tank. That magnet now resides in the garbage can, wrapped in several layers of my angst and frustration. I was going to pull the other two out of the DT tonight to check them, but I decided to write up this update instead. Okay; the real reason is that I came home tonight and the dogs attacked each other. This is not an unknown possibility, which is why we keep them separated. But they were worked up and my wife forgot to lock the gate, so the bigger one barreled through the gate and I dove in between to stop them before an injury could happen again. Everyone was fine and they got sent to their respective corners, but I figured if I did find more rust, I may not have been able to handle the anger as well as I would need to... So, basically, this update is catharsis for me, I guess...

What I did do today was isolate the frag tank from the DT. The plumbing was designed for this from the start, so the segmentation was mostly just moving the QT Apex onto the wall (which I thought I had a photo of, but guess not... later; it's a mess still) and getting it all hooked up and running. Didn't take long; nothing really needed to be programmed, even - though I did adjust the AWC amount and recalibrated all the probes (both in the frag and DT, because why not). I've got a salinity probe in my mixing tank as well, but I can't calibrate that without emptying the entire tank (poor design choice on my part there - should have just dropped it in from the top on a removable rod or something). So instead I just took a measure of the water in the tank and made a note of the deviation. Close enough. **shrug**
Turns out that my salinity is low - 31.8ppt. Which makes sense because I've been getting some pretty heavy skimmer overflow. The ATO is obviously doing it's job in keeping the water level good, but I've got to remember to pull out whatever I dump from the skimmer (which is in a ~3gal locker) and replace it with some slightly elevated new saltwater... Going to have to figure that out, I suppose. As for the heavy skimmer overflow, that's due in part to the skimmer still getting dialed in, but also because the chaeto I put in there as a test hasn't been doing well, I guess. It looked fine in the glow lights, but when I removed it from the sump, the top 1" or so was the texture of hard noodles and the bottom was starting to waste away. Despite having 1700gph flowing through that sump, the stuff refuses to stay in suspension and spin. :-\ I've got a gyre 130 I keep on-hand as a backup and I thought about putting that in there to increase the chamber flow, but I ended up just pulling it all out and tossing it. I'll try again once there is more bio-load in the tank - there's not much in there now (boo).

In other news - I'm no longer worried about the security of the tank's power!

This is the same Powerwall we had the last house (literally - we uninstalled it before moving out) and it took this long to pull permits and get it reinstalled. The new house doesn't use as much energy as the old one (yay new construction), but we also have less than half the production from the panels as we did. The net result is that we don't produce enough to charge the battery via solar. While annoying, this isn't surprising - I knew going in that the panels the builder gave us wouldn't cut it. So next steps is to call up the solar company and get another 4kWh of panels on the roof - which thanks to the monitoring the Powerwall provides, I know should cover us. That should just about fit in the "optimal" area of the roof without needing to locate any in sub-optimal areas as well. I've also started the process for adding at least one (perhaps three) more Powerwalls. Each one provides 30amps, so with just the one our stove and hot tub breakers (40 and 50 amp, respectively) aren't covered. It's not that I'm really worried about being able to bake a pie and use the hot tub when the power is out (okay - yes I am), but the extra battery (batteries?) will provide longer uptime in the case of an outage. And since our next car will likely be electric, I'd like to set us up for that as well. Besides; with the extra solar and 4 batteries, we could very likely be 100% energy independent in all but the middle of winter. I doubt we'll recoup the costs, but that's not really the point for me...
Until then, the house is backed up in the case of a power loss. The tank will not even notice - not for several hours, at least. And potentially longer if I'm either home or the Internet is up and I can shut down things like the HVAC (not to mention the heaters and chiller on the tank). I'm also slowly converting all the switches and plugs we use most often to smart (Z-Wave) devices so that I'll be able to shut down things if/as needed to extend the life of the backup system.

Next steps on the DT are to go back to a rebalance of my water chemistry. Get the salinity back in line with a few elevated SG water changes. Then do a rebase of my alk consumption - which I think I rushed through last time and got my math wrong, because I either still have some mortar dust in the system from when I built the scape (possible; I never really did a full cleaning after) or else I am getting precipitation (also possible). In either case; I'll focus on the SG first.
Next steps on the frag tank are to prep it for a delivery of corals coming in from AquaSD's live sale. I picked up a few of the lower-cost items that still fit my layout goals (such as they are). I'll use these as my first set of tester corals in the DT - but first they go through 76 days of QT. Because that's how this tank is going to roll - do it right, right from the start.

 

[DLHDesign]

Thanks @jsker and @Rick.45cal - appreciate the positive vibes, for sure. I've not been at this as long as some (my few years seems paltry in comparison to 30+), but I've certainly picked up the idea of "slow, slower, slower still" when it comes to this stuff... Drives my wife a bit nuts because - to quote her, "You work more on this one than the old one, and this one isn't even changing." Yup; that's reefing...

 

[jsker]

I'm also slowly converting all the switches and plugs we use most often to smart (Z-Wave)

Without internet these devices are not going to work?? I have been switching out our switch to the automated switches and plugs.

Next steps on the DT are to go back to a rebalance of my water chemistry.

I have been have a night mare with mine over the past year

Great update, Zig Zag needs to go in the frag tank.

 

[DLHDesign]

Without internet these devices are not going to work??

The Z-Wave hub is also our alarm hub. It has cellular backup, so if we do loose the Internet, I can still control them via that. Forgot about that detail during the previous post...

Zig Zag needs to go in the frag tank.

Eventually, perhaps. But not until after all the new frags I’m receiving have gone through a 76 day fallow. I’m far more worried about parasites and diseases than I am aiptasia. The former has wiped out most of my old tank; the latter I had been able to manage via Zig-zag and nudibranchs.

 

[jsker]

The Z-Wave hub is also our alarm hub. It has cellular backup

ahh, yes. I have been looking at a new alarm panels and this is one of the features some are promoting.

Eventually, perhaps. But not until after all the new frags I’m receiving have gone through a 76 day fallow. I’m far more worried about parasites and diseases than I am aiptasia. The former has wiped out most of my old tank; the latter I had been able to manage via Zig-zag and nudibranchs.

That makes a lot of since.

 

[Rick.45cal]

Great update! Glad the doggos are both ok.

 

[User1]

3/17/19 - Day 163

Been a while, eh? I've been slacking on the updates - I know. So let's start off with a FTS (unfiltered; sorry) from yesterday;

Basically still the same, just with a bit more algae growth.
Oh yeah; and a few fish. Not as many as I'd hoped to have, but more than zero. For those who don't enjoy playing "spot the shadow fish", I'll help out a little:

The blue streak wrasse ("Scrat") has been one of the family favorites since it arrives - but mostly because it pretty much spends the entire day up in the water column, zipping about. When you're the only thing that moves about, you tend to get appreciated more...
The filefish lurking in the back ("Zig-zag") was picked up to help with aiptasia in the last tank. In the process of knocking that out, it conditioned to eating frozen and pellets, so gets to live the life of luxury in the new tank. One thing I didn't know about filefish before getting this one is that they are color-shifting. They aren't great at it (not any kind of octopus or anything), but the fish will definitely shift colors - and patterns I think - to match the rock it's currently hanging out it. Either that, or my rock just happens to be the same color as a filefish and the color shifting is totally unrelated... Anyone is welcome to learn me on this bit of trivia - or I'm just as happy to continue with the belief that I have a ninjafilefish instead of just a filefish.
There is one other tank mate, but the Lawnmower Blenny lives up to his name - "Peek-a-go" (if you don't know the story of this name; check out my previous build). I know that good 'ole Peek is still alive and well, however, because every morning I see this type of thing somewhere new:

Those - if you don't have a Blenny of your own to never see - are the grazing marks of a Lawnmower on a bare-bottom tank covered in algae (okay; and a bit of mortar dust). I do actually see more than this - most days Peek will be seen pecking at the upper rocks for a truly delicious snack (I guess) or else just perched somewhere yelling at the kids to get off his (now bigger) lawn...

Sadly, those are the only fish that made it through the move. I'm knocking on every piece of wood I own that the losses have stopped there, because I'm not sure how much more I can take. The YT I had in QT ("Lemon") as well made it through all the treatments and blooms and problems - only to decide to throw in the towel once into the DT. Despite offering up every sort of food (and it's never been a picky eater), I just couldn't get it to eat after the transfer to the DT. No signs of intestinal problems; no redness of the gills; no sores, injuries, or discoloration beyond normal. It just wouldn't eat. Over the course of weeks, it slowly lost weight until it became too weak and I found it trapped on the overflow weir. I freed it from there, put in some fresh nori, and moved it to the center of the tank - turning off all the pumps save one of the two returns. This wasn't the first time I'd tried this, and it didn't work any better this time. Despite having such a relatively low flow, the fish ended up on the weir again a brief time later. Not looking to punish the fish any longer, I mixed up some clove oil water. I hate the smell of that stuff now (have ever since I first used it). I've told the wife she absolutely is not allowed to use that scent in her oil diffuser, that's for sure...

Yet life moves on. On the equipment side, most everything is holding up. One of my Gyre 250's is acting up, but I think it's because one of the rotors is misaligned and the pump is shutting down due to resistance. I'm seriously considering picking up the new Gyres in order to get the easier maintenance, but three things are holding me back:
1) I'm kind of past the point where I want to mess with wires and cables and such on this build.
2) No Apex integration. That's a small thing because they have such solid controllers, but I've put a lot of work into getting every aspect of this tank onto the Apex, so it seems silly to regress now.
3) The new design certainly SEEMS easier to maintain, but I want to see if people report that being the case or not. That experience will take time to gather...
If #2 gets solved somehow, I'd likely make the switch. Especially because...
**sigh**
I found some aiptasia in the frag tank today. On the gyre pump in the frag tank (that was turned off), specifically. I suspect that a bit of it rode in on one of the snails I pulled out of my frag QT. I had basically threw in the towel on that tank when a weekend away caused the whole thing to crash due to the inattention (it had an ATO, but that was about it). The only things that really survived were a ricordia, my two rock nems, a piece of toadstool, three trocus snails (one 2", two medium), and two hermits. Since everything had been isolated from fish for >76 days, the two frags (pathetic though they were at that point) went into the new frag tank (still connected to the DT at this point) along with one of the med snails, the large snail went into the fuge, and everything else went into the DT. The nems promptly went on walk-about (whatever; nothing else in the tank) before settling into the dumbest areas they could find - in the back of the scape where I can only see them when I turn off the pumps and look down from inside the fish room (not from the display side, in other words). **sigh** Whatever; they've been through a lot. Let 'em live out their days in privacy if that's what they want.
As for the aiptasia, I pulled the pump out and gave it a vinegar bath. Despite having gone over the snail shells with a brush and scraped at them with a blade, I figure that's how it got in since neither of the frags were on plugs when added. I don't for a moment believe that the one I saw is the only poly of that annoying junk, but there's not much I can do until I see more of it pop up. Zig-zag may not get to enjoy his retirement after all... And I may need to get another filefish for the frag tank at some point if they keep showing up there. Ah well; at least they are cool looking (if you can spot them with all their cool camo, of course).
While inspecting the pump I pulled out, I also may have solved another mystery. Before transferring everything (fish, corals, inverts, etc.) from the QT tanks, I took some ICP samples and sent them off to Triton. They came back and indicated that I basically had something rusting in my tank. There's not many things that aren't new, and the gyres are one of the oldest wet equipment in there - especially the 150 that was in the QT. Looks like one of the wet-side magnets had burst and was rusting into the tank. That magnet now resides in the garbage can, wrapped in several layers of my angst and frustration. I was going to pull the other two out of the DT tonight to check them, but I decided to write up this update instead. Okay; the real reason is that I came home tonight and the dogs attacked each other. This is not an unknown possibility, which is why we keep them separated. But they were worked up and my wife forgot to lock the gate, so the bigger one barreled through the gate and I dove in between to stop them before an injury could happen again. Everyone was fine and they got sent to their respective corners, but I figured if I did find more rust, I may not have been able to handle the anger as well as I would need to... So, basically, this update is catharsis for me, I guess...

What I did do today was isolate the frag tank from the DT. The plumbing was designed for this from the start, so the segmentation was mostly just moving the QT Apex onto the wall (which I thought I had a photo of, but guess not... later; it's a mess still) and getting it all hooked up and running. Didn't take long; nothing really needed to be programmed, even - though I did adjust the AWC amount and recalibrated all the probes (both in the frag and DT, because why not). I've got a salinity probe in my mixing tank as well, but I can't calibrate that without emptying the entire tank (poor design choice on my part there - should have just dropped it in from the top on a removable rod or something). So instead I just took a measure of the water in the tank and made a note of the deviation. Close enough. **shrug**
Turns out that my salinity is low - 31.8ppt. Which makes sense because I've been getting some pretty heavy skimmer overflow. The ATO is obviously doing it's job in keeping the water level good, but I've got to remember to pull out whatever I dump from the skimmer (which is in a ~3gal locker) and replace it with some slightly elevated new saltwater... Going to have to figure that out, I suppose. As for the heavy skimmer overflow, that's due in part to the skimmer still getting dialed in, but also because the chaeto I put in there as a test hasn't been doing well, I guess. It looked fine in the glow lights, but when I removed it from the sump, the top 1" or so was the texture of hard noodles and the bottom was starting to waste away. Despite having 1700gph flowing through that sump, the stuff refuses to stay in suspension and spin. :-\ I've got a gyre 130 I keep on-hand as a backup and I thought about putting that in there to increase the chamber flow, but I ended up just pulling it all out and tossing it. I'll try again once there is more bio-load in the tank - there's not much in there now (boo).

In other news - I'm no longer worried about the security of the tank's power!

This is the same Powerwall we had the last house (literally - we uninstalled it before moving out) and it took this long to pull permits and get it reinstalled. The new house doesn't use as much energy as the old one (yay new construction), but we also have less than half the production from the panels as we did. The net result is that we don't produce enough to charge the battery via solar. While annoying, this isn't surprising - I knew going in that the panels the builder gave us wouldn't cut it. So next steps is to call up the solar company and get another 4kWh of panels on the roof - which thanks to the monitoring the Powerwall provides, I know should cover us. That should just about fit in the "optimal" area of the roof without needing to locate any in sub-optimal areas as well. I've also started the process for adding at least one (perhaps three) more Powerwalls. Each one provides 30amps, so with just the one our stove and hot tub breakers (40 and 50 amp, respectively) aren't covered. It's not that I'm really worried about being able to bake a pie and use the hot tub when the power is out (okay - yes I am), but the extra battery (batteries?) will provide longer uptime in the case of an outage. And since our next car will likely be electric, I'd like to set us up for that as well. Besides; with the extra solar and 4 batteries, we could very likely be 100% energy independent in all but the middle of winter. I doubt we'll recoup the costs, but that's not really the point for me...
Until then, the house is backed up in the case of a power loss. The tank will not even notice - not for several hours, at least. And potentially longer if I'm either home or the Internet is up and I can shut down things like the HVAC (not to mention the heaters and chiller on the tank). I'm also slowly converting all the switches and plugs we use most often to smart (Z-Wave) devices so that I'll be able to shut down things if/as needed to extend the life of the backup system.

Next steps on the DT are to go back to a rebalance of my water chemistry. Get the salinity back in line with a few elevated SG water changes. Then do a rebase of my alk consumption - which I think I rushed through last time and got my math wrong, because I either still have some mortar dust in the system from when I built the scape (possible; I never really did a full cleaning after) or else I am getting precipitation (also possible). In either case; I'll focus on the SG first.
Next steps on the frag tank are to prep it for a delivery of corals coming in from AquaSD's live sale. I picked up a few of the lower-cost items that still fit my layout goals (such as they are). I'll use these as my first set of tester corals in the DT - but first they go through 76 days of QT. Because that's how this tank is going to roll - do it right, right from the start.

Nice update. Side note what solar panels are you using? We have been toying with adding some more but not sure if I could get the same deal that we got with our builder 3 years ago. In fact the day we signed a contract the price already went up but they gave us credit which was nice. We are using the Sunpower panels. E or X series, forget which. I think E unfortunately. X's at the time cost a lot more for the return.

 

[DLHDesign]

Side note what solar panels are you using?

SPR-X21-335 (the black ones) - also from SunPower.
The builder added the panels during the initial build of the house, so I didn't get a lot (...any) say in the options. They are okay panels - not the best option, but not the worst. I self-installed on my previous house about 3-4 years ago (my brain ain't great at timeline memory...) and the panels I used then were better (more efficient).

I'm on the phone now with SunPower, in fact. Now that I've got the battery installed, it makes sense to bump the solar up so that I can produce enough to actually charge them. Due to my roof slope, an upgrade to a 5kWh system would take up all the optimal slope and leave me shy of production in all but the Summer months. So I'll likely look at having them put up a ~9kWk system.
Here was the graph from yesterday:

(Blue is power draw, yellow is solar production, green is battery activity)
To sum up; we draw about 3.5kWh on average, with spikes up to ~8.5kWh when the hot tub kicks on. The oven running will kick up to ~5kWh. I'm under-producing right now, so the battery isn't getting fully charged, which leaves me with nothing to use at night (the battery is configured to hold 20% charge in reserve for power outages).
In looking at my energy bills since we moved in (last Sept), this is about average. According to those bills, we use about 2,000kWh per month. To sustain that all from solar year round, we would need to have something more than even a 9kWh system - likely around a 12kWh. That's a big draw already - and that doesn't account for our plans to trade in our Mazda for a Tesla in the next year or two (I work from home now, so no need for two gas-based cars)...
Anywho; big energy plans in the days/months/years ahead. The draw from all the fish stuff is kind of getting lost in the other noise...

 

[User1]

SPR-X21-335 (the black ones) - also from SunPower.
The builder added the panels during the initial build of the house, so I didn't get a lot (...any) say in the options. They are okay panels - not the best option, but not the worst. I self-installed on my previous house about 3-4 years ago (my brain ain't great at timeline memory...) and the panels I used then were better (more efficient).

I'm on the phone now with SunPower, in fact. Now that I've got the battery installed, it makes sense to bump the solar up so that I can produce enough to actually charge them. Due to my roof slope, an upgrade to a 5kWh system would take up all the optimal slope and leave me shy of production in all but the Summer months. So I'll likely look at having them put up a ~9kWk system.
Here was the graph from yesterday:

(Blue is power draw, yellow is solar production, green is battery activity)
To sum up; we draw about 3.5kWh on average, with spikes up to ~8.5kWh when the hot tub kicks on. The oven running will kick up to ~5kWh. I'm under-producing right now, so the battery isn't getting fully charged, which leaves me with nothing to use at night (the battery is configured to hold 20% charge in reserve for power outages).
In looking at my energy bills since we moved in (last Sept), this is about average. According to those bills, we use about 2,000kWh per month. To sustain that all from solar year round, we would need to have something more than even a 9kWh system - likely around a 12kWh. That's a big draw already - and that doesn't account for our plans to trade in our Mazda for a Tesla in the next year or two (I work from home now, so no need for two gas-based cars)...
Anywho; big energy plans in the days/months/years ahead. The draw from all the fish stuff is kind of getting lost in the other noise...

Thank you for the information. I do not have SunPower's monitor installed. I was wondering why, have called and asked after we moved in, and it seems they only install that on the homes that are leasing. We paid upfront so this was over looked on everyone's part and no matter how much I argued with them it was another cost. I got tired of that battle so that was it. A couple years later I picked up Sense and at least I can see some generation via their app although not sure how accurate it is. The more I read how some people are using solar, the battery store units, and the system installed the more I feel ignorant...

Here is what I'm seeing and man do I need to control the evening use. At least during the day it seems that I'm positive on generation. Thanks again and sorry to derail thread.

 

[DLHDesign]

I've almost pulled the trigger on a Sense multiple times. The screenshot above is actually the Tesla app. During the Powerwall install, they attach numerous sensors all over the lines. The main purpose of those sensors is to enable the relay to manage all the power sources and such (when to draw from grid vs. solar vs. battery, when to charge the battery from solar vs. grid, etc.). They also built the app to provide that as monitoring as well, of course. So I don't get the usage tagging that the Sense is supposed to provide and I don't have the capture frequency that you get, but I have the general gist of the flow, at least.
Since I work from home and our kids are still young (2 and 4), we have a pretty flat draw line (the hot tub being the only real outlier). We have a gas dryer, which helps keep things predictable as well.

The more I read how some people are using solar, the battery store units, and the system installed the more I feel ignorant...

It's such a fast moving industry. It's one of those (much like cell phones, electric vehicles, or TV's) that you just have to drop a stake in the ground and hope that you did so after a technology leap instead of ahead of one. I've always thought that as long as the system works for me, I don't regret not having the something better that's come along. I guess that approach applies to reef gear as well, eh?
To be honest; the whole-house battery thing isn't really ready yet. It's worked out for us because we jumped in SO early that we got all the early rebates and such. But now that those rebates are mostly tapped out, the break-even point on them is not quite balanced in the right direction. Unless you have a special need (such as keeping expensive fish alive during a power outage while you are away on vacation), it'll likely be a few years before they become mainstream viable. Even solar is still teetering on the edge of being viable for most people, and generally it's only tipping into the positive due to government intervention (e.g.; mandating that all new homes built must have solar, etc.). I'm in favor of that, obviously, as it will help keep the existing power grid viable for longer...

Thanks again and sorry to derail thread.

Not at all! My other build thread also sidetracked at times into solar/battery/energy conversations. I think that power management (especially of the emergency sort) is a part of the reefing industry that is underserved and am happy to offer and discuss the solution that I've found for my tank. It's not an easy problem to solve - backup power is basically the same as being able to go off-grid. And while appealing on the face of it, it's not very viable to be "gridless" for most people and in most areas. I'm lucky to be in CA in that way (lots of sun year round). So while I'm not aiming to be off-grid (and nor would I even were it possible - things break and I want redundancy), I wouldn't mind being able to self-generate 90%+ of my own power over the course of the year. Keeping myself in the bottom tier of power costs each month is my goal right now, and I think that may even be a stretch... Darn you hot tub - if I didn't like soaking in you all the time, I could help save the planet better! ;-)

 

[DLHDesign]

5/29/19 - Day 236

WOW it's been a while. First things first; no - I've not died in a plane crash. Though there's been a few times where I thought I was going to bounce the plane apart, all the landings have failed to harm the plane and passengers. Well; there was some ego bruising, but that's normal I figure.
Oh - I'm learning to fly a plane these days. That involves a lot of studying - something I've never been good at that just exhausts me so much that I'm incapable of doing anything else. I've been forcing myself to jump on tank maintenance after the girls are in bed (~1hr), then I do some studying for a few hours, then I take each dog for a walk/run, then - finally - I have some "unscheduled" time to do things like build thread updates (and, sadly, forum browsing). So - yeah; I've been absent from R2R more than I'd like. Tonight I'm taking a bit of break from studying (brain full) and figured I'd knock out this update. Please forgive the rambling nature of the update that's sure to follow...

First up I guess is the new fishes. I've been lucky enough to work with @Humblefish, getting my new stock through him. I've tried my hand at QT'ing and while I understand all the processes and procedures well enough, I just don't have the time right now (see above) to be caring for fish in QT. Being able to get a box of fish at my door and have them swimming around in the tank 30min later was awe-some. Even with some stressful moments due to some shipping issues (not his fault at all), the process was far below the mental conniption levels I've had with fish from anywhere else.
Added to the tank were;
Statler II (a replacement for a lost favorite)

Bandit (aka; The Algae Nemesis)
(With Zig-Zag photobombing the pic, of course)

Pink (yes; I know - there's no pink on that Coral Beauty. But my 2yr old got to name a fish...)

And finally; Tinker Bell (who moves around too much to not be a blur. Also; Scrat did a peek-in.)

There are still more fish to go; clowns, tangs, other fun things. But we're splitting the shipments up to allow the less aggressive members to settle in. Slow and steady...

So those are the new fish. Yay! Bandit and (sigh) Pink went right to work on the algae issues and had things reasonably cleaned up. I though everything was coming together well for a bit there. Which of course means something had to go sideways, right? Well; yeah - right. I mean; red slime isn't really all that unexpected though, right? Bound to happen in the new tank at some point, and at least I don't have any corals in there to worry about. So I can get pretty aggressive with my cleaning. I did a round of ChemiClean the last few days to try and knock it out, but that has had no positive effect that I can see. I tested a piece of the red algae with the H2o2 test (2c tank water, 1ml H2O2, wait for the water to turn green) and the water never changed color after hours, so I guess that means it's not cyano; it's spirulina. Either that or the bottle of peroxide I used is old and past its shelf-life - which is entirely possible as it was almost empty and we rarely use it. I'll pick some up tomorrow on my way home from flying and redo the test. Meanwhile, I'll do a 20% water change tonight and suck as much of it out as I can - just as soon as the saltwater has some time to mix up (silly me for not making it up last night when I knew I needed it tonight...).

As to what caused the red slime outbreak; could be any number of things. With the new additions I've been feeding a bit heavy to keep aggression down (I've since reduced back some). One of my gyres has completely throw in the towel - even after cleaning it'll run for an hour and then seize up. I'll replace both of them with XF350's as soon as BRS gets them back in stock because I'm tired of dealing with that one - and the other isn't much better (though it doesn't stop running, at least). The chaeto in the sump is still trying to decide whether to thrive or fail - the top burns out and dries up while the bottom throws out new growth pretty well - I think I need to get it tumbling more, but I've not had a chance to deal with that yet... So; yeah - lots of little things I could likely dial in tighter - and stuff I'll work on for sure...

I'd get a FTS, but I'm trying to let the fish get to "sleep" so that I can clean the tank without disturbing them as much. Maybe after I get it all cleaned out, I'll get a nice looking one.
Aside from the ugly algae, not much is growing in the tank. Specifically; I still don't have any positive signs of coraline I added in there. I suspect that all the bottled stuff I added in has died off - most likely due to my alk swinging all over the place. I found out about a week ago that both my 3a and 3b Triton lines had clogged up and hadn't been dosing in, so my alk had dropped down to 4.8dKH. Way low, obviously. I've shut off the Triton dosing entirely (I was only running it to help dial it in) and am just adding some BRS soda ash solution with the BRS dosing pump. Yay for backups. I've worked the alk back up to 6.4 and will continue to step it up slightly until I can hold it at 8.0dKH. I'll make the switch back to Triton once something is in there to consume all the other stuff (aside from annoying algae, of course).

Speaking of things that consume alk, I thought I was going to loose all the SPS corals in my frag tank due to RTN, and possibly the monti's along with them. I couldn't keep the frag tank clear for more than a day or two, even with 100% water changes and not feeding a thing into the tank. In desperation/frustration, I picked up a small HOB skimmer. I was amazed at how quickly and completely the water cleared up. It's not crystal clear or anything, but I can see all the corals again and they are doing better than ever! I've never actually had an SPS with even passable polyp extension, and now I get this (you can see the RTN in the lower-right):

The dozen or so frags I have were purchased as test pieces for when the DT seems ready - which it clearly is not yet. So they'll continue to hang out in the frag tank for a while longer. No rush; this is reefing - not racing.

I think that's about it from a tank perspective... I guess it's time to go do a WC and then back to the books!

 

[Janci]

Just went through the thread so far.
Great built and house.
Life indeed can be a handful and with those tanks and fish rooms it is not getting any better. Ha

 

[jsker]

Things are progressing along

This is fish look healthy and happy.

Pilot now,

 

[DLHDesign]

I figure once I have my pilot’s license, I can fly to all the best LFS to pick out corals by hand instead of online... (I’m looking at you, @AquaSD!) ;-)

 

[jsker]

I figure once I have my pilot’s license, I can fly to all the best LFS to pick out corals by hand instead of online... (I’m looking at you, @AquaSD!) ;-)

You know, that is a great idea!!

 

[specwar]

Like I just watched a part of Disney being built!!! IMPRESSIVE!!!! Kudos!