Office Tranquility (75g mixed)

[madweazl]

The peppermint shrimp are hungry!

[madweazl]

Pretty good growth on the monti cap in only three weeks.

[madweazl]

[madweazl]

Poor thing was missing part of a leg upon arrival and lost another in the week after. After a couple months, he is almost back to normal.

[madweazl]

[Cademusgr]

Thank you for sharing. Subbed

[Mattie_Fish]

Originally Posted by madweazl

Pretty good growth on the monti cap in only three weeks.

They grow so fast!


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[madweazl]

[madweazl]

Deltec 1350 arrived today I have it sitting in 7 5/8" water at the moment; hopefully the tuning process is much easier than the Curve 5. It is considerably noisier than the Curve 5 but I also have it resting on PVC couplers vice it's rubber feet. After I find an appropriate water depth, I'll have a nice acrylic block made for it which should squelch a lot of the noise being produced (one can hope any ways).

[madweazl]

Three new heads and a fourth not visible on the other side.

[madweazl]

Poor guy never gets to keep his limbs very long (dont think they had fully grown back more than a couple days before he lost this one).

[madweazl]

Pulled out about three times more than what I started with and still have at least twice as much as when I started. I should have been removing this far more often but got a little lazy.

[madweazl]

Tank turned five months today (I'll add the monthly FTS this evening).

Maintenance performed:

10g water change (vacuumed the sand)
Alk - 8.68 (increased ~.5)
PO4 - .009 (yesterdays test was performed right at feeding time but I cant remember if I fed before or after the test so that is a possible explanation)
NO3 - ~5 (look into a more accurate low range kit if this is something I actually want to monitor)
Ca - 444 (was 445 five days ago so there wasnt much change here)

Also drained the skimmer cup; the entire room stank this morning and I wasnt quite sure what it was until I opened the lid to the skimmer. The smell could gag a maggot. I forgot to add a delay to the skimmer start up in the script so the skimmer filled the cup instantly at startup. Two minutes will be more than adequate to allow the water level to normalize in the sump. Also made a half turn adjustment on the skimmer to dry the effluent out a bit.

The duncan is starting to open up again but I'll likely move it to an area of less light so I can bring the intensity back up for everything else. I really epoxied this guy in there so it will probably be quite a chore.

No noticeable changes in the acroporas since introduction.

[sandipan.ece]

Originally Posted by madweazl

Deltec 1350 arrived today I have it sitting in 7 5/8" water at the moment; hopefully the tuning process is much easier than the Curve 5. It is considerably noisier than the Curve 5 but I also have it resting on PVC couplers vice it's rubber feet. After I find an appropriate water depth, I'll have a nice acrylic block made for it which should squelch a lot of the noise being produced (one can hope any ways).

This is a beautiful skimmer. I have the sc1351 and it works like a charm. Its easy to tune too.

[madweazl]

It has been fantastic so far! Very consistent in operation and was a piece of cake to dial in. Sure hope it stays that way.

[madweazl]

Nothing new happening in tank but I thought a follow up on the skimmer's performance was worth mentioning. Today I tore it down of a thorough cleaning to include the impeller. It has only been running for about 16 days but there algae was growing on and I like my sump area nice and clean.

Likes
Ease of maintenance (super simple to assemble and disassemble).
Easy to tune
Simple, sleek appearance
Consistent performance

Dislikes
Availability and cost
Noisiest piece of equipment in the setup
Slight pain cleaning the cup

Seven minutes after complete tear down, it is right back to work like nothing happened. This was exactly the kind of consistency I was after.

[madweazl]

Was checking out the tank today and noticed that the red monti has turned much more pink (a rather vibrant pink). I dont recall this being the case on the 11th but I was caught up doing other things. The Capps undata seems like it may be a bit more pale in color.

Things that are outside the norm the past week:
No carbon reactor (decided to see how things looked without it)
Light intensity increased 2% (highly unlikely to have caused any issue
Window has been closed the last week so the pH has come done to about 9.17-9.27 (should cause any issues)
Feeding has been reduced to twice a day for two weeks now (wife didnt want to over feed while I was out of town).
Alkalinity dosing was decreased while I was away just to avoid any surprises the other direction. This made a difference of .55 (highly unlikely for this to be the cause.
Moved most of the nerite snails to the sump because about five of them were on there way down there anyways (choked the main line a few times waking me up in the middle of the night on work nights naturally). A milky film collected at the top of the aquarium; I cleaned this off and the tank was cloudy the next day giving me the impression of a bacterial bloom. Cleared up on its own after two days. No other observable issues from this.

dKH - 8.68 (I try to maintain 8.0)
PO4 - .04 (I fed the tank about an hour before the test so this may explain the increase but there may be an interesting correlation with less feeding too, I'll have to check out nitrate though my test isnt very good in the low range).
Mg - 1380

[madweazl]

Eesh, been a while since I posted any updates. I had two pretty rough events while I was out of town that put a serious hurt on a number of items. I lost the Capps undata (thankfully the parent colony lives on in another members tank) and three of the four across I had (including a Reef Raft Wolverine). I actually thought I lost all four but a tiny piece of tissue remained on one of them (I couldn't even see it) and it has come back strong, re-encrusting the entire skeleton and now has moved laterally across the base/rock. The red monti was in dire straights but survived and has subsequently taken off like a weed. The pipe organ, toadstool, and torch never showed any signs of distress but everything else was in pretty bad shape.

Our local web forum (WAMAS) has a loaner PAR meter (Apogee with full spectrum probe) available and after a fairly long time on the wait list, I was able to get my grubby lil mits on it. My tank is like with two Kessil A360s that run 65% color and 40% intensity (set on a parabola that peaks at 4pm). The measurements below were taken at 65% color and 39% intensity. The upper most measurements were take just under the water surface and directly under the light (lights are mounted five inches above the surface).



And here is a picture to show just how bad things had gotten (picture taken shortly before Christmas).

[dimasv]

Beautiful Tank! How do you clean the back wall ? Also to you quarantine your fish ?

[madweazl]

Originally Posted by dimasv

Beautiful Tank! How do you clean the back wall ? Also to you quarantine your fish ?

I just use a standard algae scrubber (magfloat for the rest). And no, I do not quarantine my fish (never have). Not recommending for or against, I just don't do it.

[madweazl]

[madweazl]

This little scroll always makes me happy; color and polyp extension is always great.

[fishdip22]

Originally Posted by madweazl

Eesh, been a while since I posted any updates. I had two pretty rough events while I was out of town that put a serious hurt on a number of items. I lost the Capps undata (thankfully the parent colony lives on in another members tank) and three of the four across I had (including a Reef Raft Wolverine). I actually thought I lost all four but a tiny piece of tissue remained on one of them (I couldn't even see it) and it has come back strong, re-encrusting the entire skeleton and now has moved laterally across the base/rock. The red monti was in dire straights but survived and has subsequently taken off like a weed. The pipe organ, toadstool, and torch never showed any signs of distress but everything else was in pretty bad shape.

Our local web forum (WAMAS) has a loaner PAR meter (Apogee with full spectrum probe) available and after a fairly long time on the wait list, I was able to get my grubby lil mits on it. My tank is like with two Kessil A360s that run 65% color and 40% intensity (set on a parabola that peaks at 4pm). The measurements below were taken at 65% color and 39% intensity. The upper most measurements were take just under the water surface and directly under the light (lights are mounted five inches above the surface).



And here is a picture to show just how bad things had gotten (picture taken shortly before Christmas).

Did you ever find out why it did this?

[madweazl]

It was a combination of a few things; phosphates and nitrates were elevated, the foam block in the bubble trap of the skimmer backed up in the sump which caused the skimmer's water level to increase so it dumped its contents into the sump, and something else happened as well but I cant recall what it was off the top of my head. Basically boiled down to a couple relatively minor events that combined for a lot of die off. As things were recovering, I had another set back that sealed the fate of the other acros but this one survived. I'm much more diligent on maintenance before I go out of town now (I travel often).

[fishdip22]

Originally Posted by madweazl

It was a combination of a few things; phosphates and nitrates were elevated, the foam block in the bubble trap of the skimmer backed up in the sump which caused the skimmer's water level to increase so it dumped its contents into the sump, and something else happened as well but I cant recall what it was off the top of my head. Basically boiled down to a couple relatively minor events that combined for a lot of die off. As things were recovering, I had another set back that sealed the fate of the other acros but this one survived. I'm much more diligent on maintenance before I go out of town now (I travel often).

Well at least you where able to figure out what the issue was. Is ther now other steps you take that you did not befor this? Othere then just extra maintenance.