DrunkG0D

WOW! It's been a year since the last update. Alot has happened in a year but the most prominent being life got in the way of the reef and it fell into neglect for more than 6 months. The reef also suffered from vermatids and bryopsis that required action. In september I decided to get my act in order and sort out this reef. So I decided on a 2 week daily 10% water change followed by a 7 day break then another 2 week daily 10% water change to get all the parameters back in order. Somewhere around mid October I finally completed the water changes and started dosing again. After a week or two I finally found the sweet spot and everything has been rock solid stable ever since. I had lost some coral during the course of the neglect but the reef constantly surprises me. Corals that were on the brink just stabilized and started booming. Corals that I thought were dead revived and have now started booming. I replaced my gonio garden with a hammer garden. Added a torch garden. Added 4 new sps colonies and other bits and bops. Looking forward to 2020, adding more corals and watching them grow.

Following. How exciting

Going through some disease issue now with the fish. Been dosing reef medic. Now on day 12 of the dosage. Doesn't seem to be clearing up. It doesn't look like ich and I'm inclined to think it's velvet but yet it isn't spreading so quickly and I haven't lost any fish except for a yellow tang. It started with the purple tang and he is still showing spots and is patchy but all of the fish are still eating very very well. I'm just going to continue dosing reef medic for another 8 days to complete the 20 day dosing regiment and will see how it goes from there. Some new additions to the tank.

Photo update, picture taken on 22nd Nov. Then... went away for a 5 day holiday and came back to this: Brown brown everywhere.... after a bunch of cleaning it looks better now. Added in 3 tux urchins to help with the munching of the more stubborn algae and have cut back the DT lighting schedule to 9 hours with the T5's only coming on at mid day for an hour. Slowly ramping things back up to normal. Latest readings: Mag 1660 Phosphate 0.01 Nitrate 2 Alk 9.1 Cal 449 Need to start feeding more... been struggling with very low phos and nitrate.

Welcoming kai kai and jia jia to their new home.

Short update. Spent the last 2 weeks raising the parameters since the salt mixed up low. Finally got to around where I want it to be latest readings: Alk 8.8 Ca 466 Mag 1440 Nitrate 12 Phosphate 0.04 Changed out my gfo cos gfo still a tad too high for my liking. No visible algae in the display and a tiny bit in the refuge. But the chaeto has exploded in growth so thats a good sign. Have been feeding twice a day 1 cube of mysis each time. Fish are happy corals seem happy. Sortof happy with the mushroom garden now and have gotten a funghi garden going. Triton dosing for part 1, 3a and 3b are at 15mls a day with part 2 at 7mls a day. Tested adding a few short frags of easy sps and some encrusting. They seem happy. Am still slowly ramping up the light duration and intensity. Should hit the peak in another 8 weeks or so by gradually increasing the time the t5's stay on. At the moment the leds are on to 80% intensity for about 4 hours with the t5's for an hour at peak. The rest of the time the leds are only operating at 15% with a 2 hour ramp up and ramp down before and after peak.

Selling the following: 1) Boyu Reactor FT316 - 600L/H - used for 2 days. Then took out, washed and kept. - $30 2) DVH Aquatics Biopellets. Left 300g. I used 100g - $35 3) Phospha-Guard 250ml unused new - $20 4) Icecap Gyre XF130/230 interface. For use with Neptune Apex. Bought from USA but never used because i bought the wrong unit. Have 2 available. - $150 each. Can deal at heartland mall. Pm if interested.

More photos for those enquiring. They are alot the size of a one dollar coin or slightly larger.

Have 4 pcs of ricordea yuma godzilla for sale. Prices as indicated. Pm if interested. Open to nego if more than 1 pc taken. No reserve. Fcfs.

Some addition updates. Got some goniopora, alveapora, elegance, hammer, torch, mushroom farm and cyphastrea going.

Lols you are right. Lots of toilet bowls but since I got my gyres working on an alternate cycle ive yet to see a toilet bowl. These gyres are really pushing alot of water through the tank. Now the sand is a mess but I can live with that. I tried biopellet for 2 days and it clouded up the water so I took that offline on day 3.

After the last few days of testing, my parameters were starting to worry me. With my dos running auto waterchange over the course of 36 hours and changing 90L, I felt that the water change wasn't accomplishing much so i stopped doing that. Running GFO brought my phosohates down to 0.03 from 0.086 in 24 hours but it has started creeping up and today it came in at 0.0429. I reckon I may need to change out the GFO today. Rushing through to finish setting up my dosing lines and prepping my dosing containers as last night's water test showed alk dropping 0.5dkh. As such I had no choice but to start dosing additives immediately. Just 15ml of triton solution over the course of 24 hours. This evening's test came out slightly better with alk going back up and recovering the 0.5dkh. Also finally got my ATO setup. Decided to run with the Tunze Osmolator. My only gripe is that the sensor and power cables are way too short. I had to splice new power cables for the pump and it was such a pain due to the fact that my fingers weren't being cooperative and I literally crushed/wasted 6 pairs of connectors for the splice. On a happy note. I found my tank's toilet bowl. The one true spot where all the crud, uneaten food and crap settles out. This is great because I can now pay special attention to this area and clean it out more often.

No not planning to go ulns. Mixed tank so just normal parameter will do. The refuge is taking some time to get up to full extraction. But yeah I'm surprised that the blue bucket is mixing up such low parameters as well.

Woke up today and decided to do a full test to see what my starting parameters will be after cycle since I decided to go with the Red Sea Blue Bucket the results were kinda low for my liking. Alk 6.7 Ca 398 Phosphate 0.86 Haven't got to testing Mag and Nitrate yet as I had to run off to do family stuff. As the phosphate is pretty high I think I will get my GFO going to reduce the phosphate and slowly make the switch to the Red Sea Black bucket instead. But because the parameters are so low I'm going to have to start dosing additives to bring the levels up. I was previously using the black bucket and I would really like to not have to boost parameters every time I do a water change. Ideally would like the parameters to hover around 9-10dkh with cal around 450. What are you guys maintaining your parameters at?

Since the cycle is complete have been dragging my feet on getting my water change setup and done. Got 2 drums of salt water mixed 2 days ago and today finally got the auto water change going. I've got it set to change 70L or about 10% of then water volume every 24 hours. The current plan is to do this for the first week followed by a lesser amount of approximately 35L daily for the second week and taper off to about 2% wc daily for the third and fourth week before I start the switch to triton dosing. Chaeto has been stabilizing and is now on 4 hours photoperiod every night and hasn't melted into a pile of green gloop yet. Fingers crossed this plan works.

This extension is the EB6 that comes with the Neptune Apex. You can get it ordered most marine retail stores.

Thanks... 1 more week to go... now currently breaking it in with the air completely closed.

Skimmer is exploding... not sure how long it takes for a quantum 220 to settle down but the microbubbles and excessive foam... Decided to throw some carbon in there and will do a water change tonight to see if it will settle the foam a little. Could be due to the epoxy. Been growing some of these in my other tank. Just waiting to transplant them.

So as of 2 days ago the cycle has completed. Ammonia 0 Nitrite 0 Nitrate 10 I guess the pre-cycled media helped along with 80grams of Ammonium Chloride to keep Ammonia at 2ppm for the past 2 weeks. Got a little guy in to test and he is doing fine. The kids named the clownfish dory... Love the monitoring capabilities of the Apex: Temp stable btw 24.3 - 24.8 degrees ORP at 254 pH btw 8.04 - 8.15 Refuge lights have been on for 3 hours every night and a mini ball of chaeto in since day 5. Chaeto isn't dead yet so I think so far so good. Next steps would be: 1) Setup ATO + Osmolator 2) Run all the flexible hoses for the DOS 3) Calibrate the DOS 4) Get some softies in 5) Tune the display lights These mushrooms are waiting to go in.....

The controls and electricals are finally done phew. Also managed to get the DOS all set up in the store and connected via the onelink module which is awesome because I only need 1 cable for each of them and no external power cords. Probes are all in and running except the salinity probe which I'm having trouble calibrating. But that doesn't really matter that much at the moment. Can't wait to get the first livestock in.

Tank has been flooded since last week. Salt added and skimmer was exploding. Have since decided to keep skimmer off until cycling is complete.

Phew, the tank is finally filled. Now to fill the sump! Tadah!

U can generally get it from the hardware stores, for me my company orders these things in bulk for projects so I got easy access

2 part epoxy

Spent a total of 36 man hours getting the scape done. Thankful for the help of a great master to be able to finally get the whole scape up. Though I'm not quite ready to share the final scape yet, I'll first share two pictures of the preparation for the final setting. These pictures depicts the rocks as we were in the midst of combining to form the basic structures for the final scape. As this is typed the sand has been poured and the flooding of the tank is underway. Next up will be salting the tank, getting my 3 month old media into the sump and finishing up the rest of the electricals and plumbing.