nicholas_yeo

here is the side view with the acrylic stand

Hi all Due to the long holiday during CNY, my office was shutdown for a few. Coz a few concerns like maintaining stability of calcium and KH plus top up water. Decided to DIY top up container using drip method; as cheap as it goes 1) Container (5 litres) - $2.50 2) Air valve - $0.25 3) Silicon - use leftover from previous DIY 4) Acrylic Frame / stand - use sheets from leftover previously DIY Stand: I use gas cooker to heat up the acrylic and make a couple of bends... damm thing is hot, burn a couple of my fingers... but manage to get the shape I want. Then use silicon to glue it together. Pretty sturdy. Try it out and it holds well. Drip valve Next use a iron solder to 'poke' a hole in the container, make is slightly smaller than the air valve diameter and squeeze it in. Then finally apply silicon glue over the area. It wasn't a sturdy joint - if u pull hard enough, darn thing will fall off. But it holds and no leaking..... hey, whats to complain.... dirt cheap idea. Finally, use duct tape to hold the box on the acrylic holder and we have a workable drip..... Only problem is the drip sometimes is not consistent due to the pressure drop over reduced water vol. But sure beat spending a couple of hundreds to get a pro version. Tested it. Full capacity will drip over 6 hrs. This allow my tank to be without top up water for as least 5 days.... at least next time can take vacation... whew

cjh: FW is fresh water .It is done (declorinated) to corals like a dip to get all those unwanted critters to 'evacaute' from the host..... Gothia: Yah, I noticed.... hee too poor lah. all the colorful stuffs cost a bomb. Most of the LFS didn't have much shipments till end of this wk. The next selection in my pipeline Fish / invert: 1) Yellow Tang 2) One more clown fish 3) Red Blood shrimp Corals & others 1) White / pink elegance (saving hard to keep this next) 2) red or green prata (too expensive now.... no $$$ to spend on this one) 3) Blue / Red mushroom (damm hard to find.... ) 4) Coco worms Let me know if anyone got any suggestion to put other corals in there. Even better, recommend me the shop that carry it. I am hopping around Reborn, Sealife and aquamarin to look for a nice stock

Here a close up on the Jewel and hammer

New update - this wk. Added a False Percula clown, Cleaner Shrimp and 2 corals : Jewel and Hammer Head. Now closely monitoring their acclimation progress. So far so good, corals are opening up and the clown fish is happily swimming in there. My cleaner shrimp is very shy, dare to venture out yet....

already check. This is only sold in USA. Nearest location that sell this is Korea. I already check with their company - said no distributor in SEA.

well, it was out there for about a yr now. It wasn't popular coz u 'lost' the feeling of typing on the keyboard. Trying hitting your fingers on the table instead of keypads... no compression force... making it feeling really weird.... Its cool but probably not practical at this pt. Wait longer, they will release similar design for mini projection system to replace LCD monitor.... next time dun have to restrict to size anymore.

alamak, didn't know about that. I didn't dip the zoos into FW. That 'nudibranch' was no where found - ninja liao. jialak...... how to tell it is in discomfort??? today it opens nearly 100%..... I was concern that I position it incorrectly. (Right now, it is enjoy med light and med current). I was thinking of positioning it closer to the indirect current. Will try later.

Guys, can help. What is this ? It is moving in my tank, only saw it today. Could be a hitch-hiker from the coral rocks. it looks like it has pink/white tentacles and no shell. As if like an anemone but doesn't look like a antipsa anemone to me.

no worries Gothia if u see the 1st page of my thread, tank is in a/c room. Not to worry, I check it with all the equipment running. On days that no a/c, my tank runs at 28 - 29 degC.

Got a luminous green algae growing out like a stick. Any reefers can help to ID this? No idea.....

close up on the poly. Got them from Reborn.... Reborn new branch is getting really good on quality. I like it.

close up on the leather family

Finally, time to put in the 1st set of corals. My toadstool leather and green mushroom was the 1st to entry. Follow by Orange Polyp and finger leather 2 days later. Hee.. all blooming and open up. Also add in 2 turbo snails to start working on the cleaning up for CNY. Looks like a good start for reefing

Another view from the side of the dead water column

'Dead water' column: Saw 2 regions where lack of movement was visible Algaes was growing out from the sand during the ANN Cycle. I did a test by dropping in pellet food and see where it lands and both will always end up in the 2 highlighted region. I fixed the left column by putting another LR over it. I will leave the right column alone as it is good hiding spots for the shrimps later.

Copepods are starting to grow from the refugium and can seen swimming everywhere in the main tank : free food for my upcoming fish.... nice

hi all More update this wk. Plant & algae growth was significant during the ANN Cycle. I believe this is due to higher bio load as I spike the tank. U can see from the pic below the plant growth from wk 1 to wk 4.

Kokhui, sunny meant putting a compartment full of LRs with caulerpa only. The DSB has its function using sand or miracle mud. Check out this website: http://www.wetwebmedia.com/refugium.htm It has pretty good info on what u should be considering. ALternatively, u can put the sand in a plastic bag and slit its btm open and slowly release the sand. Do this with half the water in the refugium compartment. This will allow it to settle down and u can then mod the piping over from the skimmer and connect the rest together.

alamak, forgot to mention. The other method is to have the hang-on refugium which is easy to implement for your case. U should go to Equanature office at Geylang, they have a demo tank there running. Also, the hangon type is also a pleasure to view. Can see all the critters and plants in there. Consider that your 2nd tank to look at.

Hi Kokhui Kareen is right. How big is your refugium capacity based on the mod design. Your tank is much bigger than mine. got confused looking at how the flow movement. Your main inlet is from the right and your refugium is making use of the chiller return flow to cater for the refuguim right? a) It is good that the refugium flow directly to the return PH and skip the skimmer in my view (copepods wont get scramble into the venturi and create more load). Bad part is u use Chiller Return flow - so u will lose efficiency due to the extra passenge. Basically if u need to keep your main tank cooler at 26degC, your chiller need to work harder as it will pass thru refugium -> return PH ->main tank If u can use chiller return directly to the main tank and instead use SKimmer return to flow into refugium. This may make it more efficient but u need to double check the back pressure that this extra piping will create and change your skimming level. c) Caulerpa is good. Easy to maintain in refugium. Saw alot at reborn yesterday. Finally, your tank is already operational, how do u intend to add sand or miracle mud into your last compartment.... it will be very messy.

seachem reef builder is okay when u dose it seperately from kalkwasser - shouldn't affect calcium alot. Do not dose them together... not advisable. Also, if your magnesium is low - getting it above 7 will be very hard. It happens to me too; I dose magnesium to a 'acceptable' limit b4 cont with my seachem reef builder. (Pls use a magnesium test kit to check)

u got pic to post? Like to see it

here is a pic with the refugium lighting for fellow reefer - Kokhui. Pretty easy to get from LFS.

Hi guys My IOS measured 2ft (L) by 6" width. Use a PL Light (11W) at 6500k to light it. Alot of pple ask me to change it to 24hrs lighting for it. Looks like that will be the final setting. I debated alot about putting it in there. But I decided to give it a try after much review on the web about refugium. The only thing I prefer is to have the refugium after the skimmer instead of putting it b4. Coz the skimmer PH will suck the copepods into it like a black hole. Not very good in terms of precedence. But thats all I can fit in there so no choice. My Macro skimmer is about 45cm tall x 10cm dia (I think). My tank call hold up to 40Gallons, so I didn't wanna believe that with only live rocks and refugium, I can do w/o the skimmer. The only thing that the skimmer design is bad is the return outlet is 90deg from the inlet - fixed position. making it very hard to position. Hee... my HR Manager complains about my tank coz she said affect fengshui. Yah, saves alot of electricity for sure. I uses coral chips after much advise from Sealife. I saw their tank performance, darn good - no algaes and the corals are very healthy. All use coral chips and they are a strong believer that this is much superior to bioballs in trickle system. definitely going slow on the intro of fishes... my target is still zero casualties like the construction firm. Dun plan to kill anything..... will update this thread when the tank get more stable.