Waterbox 130.4 tank build

[Hop2jr]

That is a good one! There is one call the genni for 25 bucks but if power goes out you have to manually reset it. An just so you know Kasa is made by TP Link you will see the logo on the power strip end. Great choice.

 

[Blutspitze]

Cabinet is looking good; loving the controller setup, thanks for sharing the additional pics.

 

[s_tempest]

The automated message machine here on R2R sent me a reminder that I hadn't updated my build thread in a while (nudge... nudge ...) so here goes:

I think the tank is looking pretty good. I certainly am very happy looking at it every day, maintaining things, learning things, reading as much as I can. Yeah, I'm hooked.

There have been a few things I've worked through or struggled with, many of them documented in other threads & posts:
- borrowing a PAR meter and mapping my light with as many settings and spots as I could think of:
https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/r2r-par-database.538894/page-3#post-6545278
- my attempt to divide the skimmer chamber with a glass baffle in hopes of having separate space for a refugium has failed for now. I used too thin glass, and moving/bumping the skimmer resulted in pushing against the baffle and cracking it. Maybe someday I'll try again with thicker glass, but for now I just pulled the glass and cleaned off the silicone.

- I fought a nasty tough algae for about two months. I really though it was just my poor/inexperienced husbandry, too-high nutrients. But all sorts of attempts to drop nutrients or bring in critters to eat it didn't help. I tried fluconazole in a moment of desperation, and heck if it didn't work! Lots of photos showing progression in this thread:
https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/hey-did-i-actually-solve-my-tanks-algae-problem.679141/
- I rehomed a beautiful fish that I suspected was nipping on my acans. I had acans in my nano tank where they looked great there, and I bought a few more frags since setting up this tank. All rapidly shrink away into their corallites. Some lost all their tissue and died, one is still hanging on but way retracted. Although I never saw nipping, my eiblii dwarf angel was a likely suspect. Long story short, eiblii went away six weeks ago and the acans are unchanged. Oh well.

- I struggle with some washed out colors and poor polyp extension. After ruling out some weird metal contamination after an icp test, I'm leaning towards lighting and/or not-yet-perfectly-stable major chemistry. Even though the PAR results don't suggest this, the corals look like they might have been getting too much light. So I'm trying a reset with lower intensity and duration for about 10 days now, and will slowly increase and watch what happens.
https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/t...ook-drab-lifeless-need-ideas-and-help.681029/https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/favites-war-coral-sunken-washed-out.679495/
- and I had a great time participating in the 2019 Secret Santa. Thanks to whatever elf sent me some great gadgets, and I hope that my gift recipient is getting some value out of theirs. What a great program from this R2R community!
https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/secret-santa-2019-gift-show-off-thread.668112/page-33#post-6864394

 

[Blutspitze]

Thanks for sharing your update! Glad to hear that things are going well, and the tank is looking amazing! Sorry about the losses and lighting/growth issues; hope that your plans work to get them back to 100%

 

[s_tempest]

Maybe it’s a good time for some tank updates:
I now have chaeto growing in my sump (I tried back in Nov but it melted away then). I put a spare AI Prime over the sump as a fuge light, and the chaeto is growing great. It took about 2 weeks to triple in volume, and I’ve harvested/pulled out half of total several times - it just regrows. I rinsed it in tap water and gave it to my chickens (!). I can’t say I noticed much drop in NO3 or PO4 - nitrate is solidly around 15 ppm and phosphate solidly around 0.06 ppm. I’m happy with those #s.
I got a 4-channel dosing pump at FFM. It’s only been running about 10 days so I can’t say I see an impact yet, except in the measurements of alk and Ca of course. I’m dosing ESV B-ionic Ca and Alk, and Acropower. I have the 4th channel feeding from a bottle of NoPoX but am not dosing it at present.

and, some tank pics as of this morning.

 

[Blutspitze]

WOW! The tank is looking amazing! Glad the chaeto is growing so well for you, also! Always good to hear.

 

[Bucx]

Im picking up my Waterbox 130 this Friday. hopefully i can make it look this good!!!!

 

[Jgerm]

Looking for an update here

 

[Leiph86]

Great build for me to read through and see how your journey went because I am looking at waterbox but I'm hesitating that they don't have the ability to convert half of the skimmer chamber into a refugium. Do you mind posting some detailed pics of your set up and where the baffles are? It's a little hard to see in some of the prior posts. Thanks!

 

[codee]

I now have chaeto growing in my sump (I tried back in Nov but it melted away then). I put a spare AI Prime over the sump as a fuge light, and the chaeto is growing great. It took about 2 weeks to triple in volume, and I’ve harvested/pulled out half of total several times - it just regrows.

@s_tempest What was your final solution for your refugium? I read your first attempt of dividing the skimmer area failed, but reading the above, it sounds like you've got one working! I am trying to figure this out for my Waterbox 90.3 (including contemplating repurposing the too-small ATO chamber).

 

[s_tempest]

@s_tempest What was your final solution for your refugium? I read your first attempt of dividing the skimmer area failed, but reading the above, it sounds like you've got one working! I am trying to figure this out for my Waterbox 90.3 (including contemplating repurposing the too-small ATO chamber).

I ultimately gave up on chaeto. I’d like to go back to it someday, but probably not with this tank & sump setup.
but until I did, what worked was making a box out of eggcrate to fit in the sump, with the AI Prime

 

[s_tempest]

Great build for me to read through and see how your journey went because I am looking at waterbox but I'm hesitating that they don't have the ability to convert half of the skimmer chamber into a refugium. Do you mind posting some detailed pics of your set up and where the baffles are? It's a little hard to see in some of the prior posts. Thanks!

Sorry I never looked at this thread to reply. The baffles where across the middle chamber of the sump. Skimmer in front of that (upstream with respect to flow), chaeto in rear half before the return pump chamber.
ultimately my baffle-gluing failed. Maybe if I used more silicone and thicker glass for the baffles, but I haven’t torn down my sump to do that. I think it’s worth a try for someone to play around with though.