[Johnseye]

Now on to a hardware update.

Lights:
Steady as she goes. The Spectra has been a stable and consistent fixture. In hindsight adding the Kessils was a very good idea in that it helps to bring a little more of that blue fluorescence that helps corals pop, but they are a bit small. Their output can't compete with the MH and T5s so when those are on the effect is very minimal. They do help with a dusk to dawn effect.

I have been thinking about going back to Radions to get a better viewing color. Everytime I go into Reefwise, where I donate all of my trimming, I can see what my coral looks like under eye popping LEDs. Plunking down several grand for some new lights when the Spectra works so well to grow coral is not appealing however and I always talk myself out of it. The Radiums do emit a nice color and I have played around with the T5s for more pop, but nothing can do that like LEDs. For now I'm sticking with the Spectra. I will also say that whenever I get the ComEd bill it sucks seeing my usage waaayy above my neighbors.

Return Pump:
This past December I went to Thailand for 3 weeks with my family. We go every couple years and I have a routine setup with 3 of my neighbor friends to feed and watch the tank. My LFS, Reefwise is on standby in case there's an emergency. Brian, the owner of Reefwise is extremely helpful in times of need. I had an Apex failure a few years ago about an hour before I had to leave for the airport on another trip and he had someone out to my house right away to work with my wife and help replace it with my spare.

On this trip to Thailand he came to the rescue again. One of my friends found the return pump had failed. He immediately called Brian who knew another reefer in my area who uses a Royal Exclusiv Red Dragon RD3 230. That person happened to run two and so he shut down one of them and brought it up to my house that night. It turns out the controller of the Red Dragon had failed. The warranty on the RD3 is 2 years. My controller was about 2 years and 8 months old. While I did get a 25% discount on the replacement I still had to pony up $411 for a new one. While we don't know the cause of the controller's failure they point to a surge. My entire house is on a whole home generator and my RD3 is plugged into my Neptune EB8, which apparently is not a surge protector. Until now I didn't think I needed one. I've since added a UPS large enough to support a decent load, but not everything on the EB8. I'll explain more on that later.

Here was Royal Exclusiv's response regarding the issue: "The EB8’s don’t have surge protection so all we can do is speculate. That said, most of the failures of the RD3 230’s have been surge related and there have been very few 230 failures in total. As it sits right now, the only repair option for the 230’s is sending them back to the factory in Germany and the shipping is expensive back and forth. Likely in the neighborhood of $200 for UPS total shipping both directions with insurance plus the repair costs. This is one of the reasons why we offered you the discount on the new controller. That said, I inquired with Germany as to whether we can get the internal boards for the 230 watt controllers so we can offer a repair service in the US. I will update you once I have further info on that as your failure prompted me to inquire about that. In the mean time hang on to your 230 controller. "

So no option to replace the controller board yet, only the full controller if I want an immediate replacement. My backup pump is an offline Reeflo Hammerhead, which I've only used the first couple weeks of having the tank up. I can get it in place and working in an hour or so, but it would have been very difficult for someone else to do that. In hindsight, if I were to do it all over again, I would use two return pumps inline with one on standby ready to go. It's worth the insurance. I'm extremely grateful and indebted to Brian at Reefwise and the individual who helped me out, saving my tank.

Ecotech Vortech powerheads:
The only comment on these pumps is that my wetside cages fly off often. I think the cause might be soaking them in vinegar too long which may cause the rubber O ring to degrade. I'm going to be pulling the O ring off and clean it before soaking the pump.

More to come shortly...a big CaRx change!