Mountains of sawdust (360g plywood, LED, Arduino build)

[amcarrig]

I would just leave it be for now because if it does split, it will be even more delicate than it is now until it recovers.

[der_wille_zur_macht]

Good news: it is sorta attached.

Bad news:it it is TOTALLY deflated. Like, down to about 4" across from a max size of maybe 12".

Hoping this is just a part of adjustment, not a prelude to death. Looks like another sleepless night for me.

[kcress]

Here's hoping..

[amcarrig]

Pssst! Hey DWIZM...don't look now but your OCD is showing.. You're the only person I know who would lose two night's sleep over an anemone

I'm sure it's just adjusting or getting ready to split or both. If it's attached, it's a good sign but I wouldn't blast it with water just yet. Keeping my fingers crossed!

[der_wille_zur_macht]

Wanna hear about my ocd? I took some photos of it but decided not to post them because the eggcrate playpen is all crooked.

I checked on it a few times in the night and he was looking better. Trnd continues today. Inflated to maybe 6-8" and tentaccles a little more lively. Definitely not out of the woods but way way better than last night. I noticed he had dumped some zooxanthellae late yesterday afternoon so I am wondering if my lights are too much still, so I turned them down another 20%. Ahh, the beauty of dimmable LEDs.

[sammy113]

Originally Posted by der_wille_zur_macht

so I turned them down another 20%. Ahh, the beauty of dimmable LEDs.

I love it. I have my LEDs dialed down to 55% blues and 35% whites. I was wondering if I was the only one running LEDs too low because of their power

[edgey]

Originally Posted by der_wille_zur_macht

Good news: it is sorta attached.

Bad news:it it is TOTALLY deflated. Like, down to about 4" across from a max size of maybe 12".

Hoping this is just a part of adjustment, not a prelude to death. Looks like another sleepless night for me.

So, how's the mag?

[kcress]

Yeah did it pull thru or .......... dah dah da dah dahh.

[der_wille_zur_macht]

It's dead. It perished about a week after I made the above posts. Out of roughly 20 years of reefkeeping I've had a few dozen anemones and this is the first that has perished in my care. Just never seemed to settle in. One day it would look awesome, the next day it would look terrible. Parameters all appropriate and stable, I have full control over lighting and flow and was able to dial both to what seemed like appropriate values. Only thing I can conclude is that the animal was either damaged/stressed prior to me getting it, or that they're just REALLY REALLY REALLY freaking hard.

[Flanders]

bummer.

[der_wille_zur_macht]

Yeah, it was a real beauty. I was pretty bummed for a few days and didn't even want to look at the tank.

Then yesterday I started fooling around with the closed loop and suddenly my enjoyment is back.

[Jay1982]

Ah, that sucks. It always puts a dampner on things when we lose an animal in our care. I particularly take the demise of fish and coral pretty hard, lol. Happy to hear though that it didn't take long for your enjoyment to rekindle!

[knockout]

great thread, great tank, any recent tank shots?

[Sugar Magnolia]

Sorry to hear about the nem Dwiz. Are you going to try another one? I'm nem-less right now too. When I transferred tanks to the 40B my RBTA split. One perished and the other is still looking really ill. I put it in my son's 20g hoping for a recovery but so far not luck. My perc is using a large patch of star polyps now.

[mess7777]

Thinks are looking good, was happy to see you found a way to get it going after some setbacks. Your approach to filtration is very interesting, I started my ATS about a month ago and am interested to see how it goes on a large tank like this.

In reading a lot, it seems that the type of algae is not as important as the algae itself. Yes it is better to have green, but if your nutrients are 0 who cares!

Possible suggestions based on readings.
-dosing iron can help yellow algae go to green
-decreasing photo period from 18 to 16 to 14 etc until you get green
-screen is too large compared to feeding (12 sq in. per cube of food/daily)

I have the problem of high nutrients and the ugly brown/black screens while the ATS hopefully kicks in and brings those down.

Also happy to see that you continue to do water changes in spite of the ATS.

Thanks for sharing your build!

[newtophish]

Hey Dwzm,
This thread is to long to read, can you recap it for me?
Thanx

[kcress]

Originally Posted by newtophish

Hey Dwzm,
This thread is to long to read, can you recap it for me?
Thanx

[thebanker]

Originally Posted by newtophish

Hey Dwzm,
This thread is to long to read, can you recap it for me?
Thanx

THOUSANDS OF YEARS AGO, before the dawn of man as we knew him, there was Sir Santa of Claus: an ape-like creature making crude and pointless toys out of dino-bone and his own waste, hurling them at chimp-like creatures with crinkled hands regardless of how they behaved the previous year. These so-called "toys" were buried as witches, and defecated upon, and hurled at predators who were awoken by the searing grunts of the children. It wasn't a holly jolly Christmas that year; for many were killed!

A warlike race of elves from the red planet landed on the ice-encased earth, and they were immediately enslaved by the unevolved Santa ape to make his confused toys, using galactic elfin technology for Evermore Sanchianados. Toys were made into recognizable shapes and given names like 'train' but these toys were also thrown at predators and defecated upon because they were so stupid. Christmas still sucked a big way.

Long story short:

The elfin blood will flow forever, for eternity from the elfin graves. Forever.

[newtophish]

Thanks Mikey! I feel I can completely post with the confidence of a completely knowledgeable thread follower.


Nice Tank!

[der_wille_zur_macht]

Yeah, that's pretty much accurate.

Not much new to update. I had my first livestock "disaster" a month or two ago. I was moving some of the LED hardware and thanks to a bad connection at a screw terminal, I burned up about a dozen of the CAT4101 drivers. So my tank was running on low lights for a week or two while I replaced them (with a single LM3409, my new favorite LED driver). During that time, I was consumed with the rework of the LED system, so I pretty much forgot to recharge my kalk reactor (which I only have to do every few months), which meant Ca and alkalinity plummeted for a few days. The combination of low light and low parameters killed about a dozen SPS. Luckily nothing else was bothered.

Also I decided to run a skimmer on the tank for a while, just to see what it would do. My nutrient levels all still test reasonably well, but this same brown/green slime algae still covers the rockwork and I have to clean it off every few weeks (so, clearly, there are nutrients in the system). The turf scrubber has continued to grow nothing but this same slime. The skimmer has been on for about a month with no significant change but I think I will leave it on for a while longer to see how it does.

Also, I picked up a really nice red BTA from a local reefer to fulfill my desire for an anemone. I am still planning on something more challenging/interesting down the road but at least for the meantime the BTA has been great. It's red throughout but has really strong pale blue "variegation" on the oral disk.

I'd post photos but I'm still not "over" losing the SPS, which means current photos are kinda depressing.

Gearing up for another local group buy from sealifeinc within the next few weeks, too...

[mr.wilson]

Originally Posted by der_wille_zur_macht

Yeah, that's pretty much accurate.

Not much new to update. I had my first livestock "disaster" a month or two ago. I was moving some of the LED hardware and thanks to a bad connection at a screw terminal, I burned up about a dozen of the CAT4101 drivers. So my tank was running on low lights for a week or two while I replaced them (with a single LM3409, my new favorite LED driver). During that time, I was consumed with the rework of the LED system, so I pretty much forgot to recharge my kalk reactor (which I only have to do every few months), which meant Ca and alkalinity plummeted for a few days. The combination of low light and low parameters killed about a dozen SPS. Luckily nothing else was bothered.

Also I decided to run a skimmer on the tank for a while, just to see what it would do. My nutrient levels all still test reasonably well, but this same brown/green slime algae still covers the rockwork and I have to clean it off every few weeks (so, clearly, there are nutrients in the system). The turf scrubber has continued to grow nothing but this same slime. The skimmer has been on for about a month with no significant change but I think I will leave it on for a while longer to see how it does.

Also, I picked up a really nice red BTA from a local reefer to fulfill my desire for an anemone. I am still planning on something more challenging/interesting down the road but at least for the meantime the BTA has been great. It's red throughout but has really strong pale blue "variegation" on the oral disk.

I'd post photos but I'm still not "over" losing the SPS, which means current photos are kinda depressing.

Gearing up for another local group buy from sealifeinc within the next few weeks, too...

Sorry to hear about the short. Maybe now people will listen to you about low vs. high voltage LEDs, as it could have been a lot worse.

I have done the skimmerless tank a few times over the years and came to the conclusion that it's best to start off with one, then unplug it six months down the road once the tank has developed.

If you use NP biopellets and GFO, the turf scrubber will not grow much of anything. I'm not a fan of them in the first place, as they tend to grow mostly nuisance algae as you have experienced. I would consider repurposing it to grow macro algae in shallow trays.

I'm surprised your kalwasser reactor needs top-up so frequently. I find they only last a week or two at best with evaporation rates. I put my kalk stirrer motor on a timer to work intermittently because it tends to get used up too quickly if it stirs constantly. Are you adding vinegar with yours? This may help in the carbon dosing area while stabilizing PH and dissolving kalk.

How did the SPS die? RTN? STN? Rapid recession from the bottom or tips? Bleaching? I can see SPS browning out under those conditions, but mortality is usually a slow drawn out process.

[der_wille_zur_macht]

No carbon dosing or pellets in my system FWIW.

Originally Posted by mr.wilson

I'm surprised your kalwasser reactor needs top-up so frequently. I find they only last a week or two at best with evaporation rates. I put my kalk stirrer motor on a timer to work intermittently because it tends to get used up too quickly if it stirs constantly. Are you adding vinegar with yours? This may help in the carbon dosing area while stabilizing PH and dissolving kalk.

The kalk reactor is a big Brute trashcan. I dump a big (1g volume) container of BRS kalk powder into it to "charge" it. The charge lasts maybe 4 - 6 months. When I think the powder is getting close to depletion I test pH of the solution to see if it has started to weaken. If it has, I dump in more powder.

About once every 4 weeks, I go down to the basement and pump the reactor full with RO/DI water. The pump moves a few hundred GPH, so the force of the water entering the trashcan is enough to mix the kalk to saturation (I don't need a separate mixing mechanism).

The kalk solution is then pumped to the sump by a 50ml/min peristaltic pump, which is on a timer. I control the daily dose of kalk by controlling the on/off intervals for this pump (right now it's set to run 5 times a day, mostly at night. I spread it out in to several intervals to keep the parameters more stable). This way, I can keep the kalk dose stable from day to day - it is not tied to evaporation rate.

As the kalk is pumped to the tank, the level in the trashcan drops, hence the refilling on a fixed interval. With each water refill, more of the powder is dissolved, hence the recharge with powder on a fixed schedule. As long as I keep up on the maintenance it is very foolproof and stable. What I forgot recently was to dump the next tub of powder in, so the kalk was really weak for a few days.

FWIW top off for evap is controlled through a totally independent automatic top off system consisting of another peristaltic pump, operated off a relay based on a pair of float switches in the sump. It pumps fresh RO/DI from the main RO/DI storage tank. I'm not (yet) close to the point of kalk demand being "enough" to match evap, but if I ever get to that point I will obviously have to rethink my overall strategy. Perhaps supplement with 2-part or a calcium reactor. I really like kalk though, because it's cheap, easy, and effective.

How did the SPS die? RTN? STN? Rapid recession from the bottom or tips? Bleaching? I can see SPS browning out under those conditions, but mortality is usually a slow drawn out process.

Tissue receded from the bottom of the colony towards the tips. A handful of the corals still have tissue alive on the tips of the branches so it is not a total loss. Admittedly the whole disaster was my fault and could have been avoidable. Plus it took me a few weeks to get the new driver up and running (too busy with life). After the first few days I put three 4' VHOs on the system thinking it would make up for the reduced LED intensity but either it didn't, or the low parameters caused the corals to stress, because the losses still occurred.

At any rate it was just one of those things that happens to everyone who is in this hobby, so I am going to learn from it and move on.

[Sugar Magnolia]

Sorry to hear about the coral losses. It certainly is depressing. If you still have flesh near the tips of some of the colonies, why not just frag off the living portion and glue it to a frag plug.

[mr.wilson]

Originally Posted by der_wille_zur_macht

Tissue receded from the bottom of the colony towards the tips.

I would take a REALLY close look for AEFW. They are very hard to spot, but blasting acros with a baster will knock them off so you can see them. Also check for eggs on the bare coral skeleton near the base. They seem to be ubiquitous with maricultured acros these days.

[der_wille_zur_macht]

No flatworms - the death is purely due to the light/ca/alk disaster. Of maybe 10 or 12 SPS losses, I still have a few living polyps on 3 or 4 of them so it wasn't a total loss. And the gorgs, softies, and LPS recovered quickly with no longterm impact.

Someone needs to throw a bucket of water on me though. I've been getting the itch to rescape the tank lately...

On a happier note, I did another group buy with sealife inc that arrived earlier this week. Three new gorgs and a bunch of other critters. I'm approaching the one year mark since rebuilding the tank last fall so I will probably do a recap post soon...