Tomservo's UAS test

[tomservo]

Just got done building this tank:

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Two questions; what sort of reflector material will survive underwater? Will a cheap acrylic mirror really do the job? My plan is to put 6R 1B LED at the back side of the scrubber and two reds on each side, maybe angled if I can get some sort of reflector.

Second question, what cheap material (pref black) is there to put at the back of the tank, or is there a type of paint that will be OK underwater?

[ruddybop]

Ok Tom this is just my opinion... I'm not bashing your idea... I think it's great. From what I see the bubbles are going to rise to the top and cause a water swirl at the top and possible bubble water over the edge of your nicely designed external/internal UAS. (You need a good amount of bubbles to make these work).. Because you have the output hole about an inch from the top the water will fight with itself to get out those holes. I love the concept. If you could make some kind of removable deflector (so you can take the screen out and clean it) that makes the water flow out your holes at the top it would work better and the flow of water would be smoother.

1...You want the bubble bar to go all the way across your screen. Your bubble bar only covers 3/4s of the screen....

2...Maybe you can make the screen shorter in height and make a baffle to deflect the water out the holes. Yes your screen would be shorter but the flow would be smoother. Your screen loos like it's 7x7 inches. You can still get good scrubbing with it slightly shorter at the top.

3...If you drilled two more holes on the top between the others you have you would have great water/bubble flow on the output.

4..Fill it up with water and see how the air pump works pushing the water.... See if your going to have an air/water bubbling over the side... Or maybe it will work fine... An experiment never is complete until you have tried it.....


This is just my opinion... I would like to know what the other guys think also... And do a test run...I would like to know what happens... :)

[tomservo]

Thanks for the feedback, ruddy - the airstone is just what I could find, cheap, for now. I've got to do some looking at my friend's store and see what he has. I have a very nice Schego air pump to drive it with, though.
I think the water should flow out of the scrubber reasonably well. My biggest concern is either a foam column at the top, squeezing out past the lid or air bubbles diverting out into the tank. I have some ideas for a bubble deflector inside the tank, however.

The screen is approx 6x5, the little box on the back is 6x6, and I'm already regretting not making it a bit bigger. Upgrading it would be a HUGE PITA b/c I used SCS1200 silicone and that box is glued on tight.

Test run, for sure.. Unfortunately, we had a thunderstorm last night and I had to unfill the tank (as I tested itout on the patio). The front and sides are 4mm tempered glass, I didn't want to risk the wind throwing something into it.

The plan is to make this a little nano-reef, using an LED pendant (140w, dimmed WAY down). I'm debating whether or not to drill the tank bottom and put in a plugged bulkhead, in case I ever want to run a sump.

[kerry]

So the flow will come out the top row of holes, right? I have a HOB unit I made and the bubbles are horrible. I made one from a Millennium 3000 with its own air venturi and it makes tiny bubbles. I need to come up with a bubble trap fix. I have wanted to make my own HOB out of glass or acrylic but before I do that I am going to work the bugs out of my test unit.
That build looks good. It might be better to remove the material between the two top holes so the algae will not plug the holes and shorten the screen a bit so it will flow over when it gets growth.
As far as drilling goes I would do it and plug it as you suggest, its real easy now.
When do we get to see it up and running with SW???

[tomservo]

Well, I was planning on doing another wet test today but actually pumping some air in there to see what happens.. Other than that, I have an angle on live rock, salt and water, but I have to build a stand. A couple days, I'd say. Then I have to see about getting my light back from the guy I borrowed it to.


edit: http://vimeo.com/42476162

Looks good with FW at least. I think I'm going to go with a tight lid on this tank to help evaporation.

[tomservo]

Finally! Some progress. I still need some plastic mirror for the scrubber, and I ran out of black ABS so I have nothing to keep the scrubber light out of the tank at the moment so it's not been running. The tank currently houses 2 pieces of live rock and 1 red leg hermit stowaway. I've seen pods and tiny brittle stars as well as those little cyan/brown snails that only come out at night, plus 3 or 4 mushrooms. It's some nice rock!

Does anyone have any suggestions on dealing with the surface scum?

I got a PAR sensor so I took some readings.. at the lowest turn-on setting I get a little over 100 umol indicated at the sand bed, maybe 125-130 on top of that rock. At the surface it's 500. At full blast I have 450 PAR on the sand and a little over 600 at the top of the rock and 1300 at the surface. Right now I can drive the white LED at 60w (it's rating) and the blue at only 60, I could push the blues at 100w and this isn't even counting the 24w of cool blue and violet.

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[SantaMonica]

Scum where?

[tomservo]

In the main tank area I've got some surface scum going on.. I was thinking of putting a tiny powerhead I have in there upside down but the water level will change with evaporation.. I'd hate to get a bunch of microbubbles. As it is, I have NO microbubbles, I did at first with the flexy bubble wand but then I poked it full of holes with a needle, problem solved. It seems that if I keep the bubbles on the back side of the screen, I get none in the DT area, which is nice, but obviously not ideal for the scrubber.

[SantaMonica]

Yes circulating the surface of the dt is a good way to get the proteins and food particles down to where the corals and periphyton can eat it.

[ruddybop]

looks great Tom...once you figure out all the bugs....very pleasing looking tank with an Algae scrubber built in...... :)

[tomservo]

Thanks, ruddy! I'm tapped for cash or I'd go live rock shopping, I *really* want a few more pieces in there and I don't want to add later as I'm wanting to let the tank run with just CUC for 2 months to kill off any parasites (and follow a strict dip regimen for new stuff).

SM: I need some of your flexible mirror stuff, but I'd really rather it be shipped first class, like in a manila envelope - express for $33 is tempting but I am willing to wait a month for the price difference. I can't seem to find anything up here except a 2x4' sheet of 1/8 acrylic mirror at home de pot.

[SantaMonica]

Regular shipping is only a few bucks.

[tomservo]

Ah, sorry - I'm in Canada, which is why an acrylic mirror can be so hard to find. The *only* local plastic place sells a sheet of 1/4 black acrylic for $400!

[tomservo]

Update, still don't have the scrubber running but I will be starting it up tomorrow. Finally got a "background" piece, I am using some 1/8" acrylic mirror (facing the back of the tank) with some holes that align with the holes in the glass and some pieces of mirror on standoffs to block the light from the holes. The tank facing side is painted black, I wasn't super confident in the coating that came on the back of the mirror, it seems like it is pretty good but I dinged it in a couple places so I painted it. We'll see how that goes. I'll have a picture of that stuff later..

The other thing I did was do a floyd style bubbler-in-a-pipe with thin clear plastic to direct the bubbles. I have a picture of it, not sure how it's going to work, the plastic I have may be too stiff, as the bubbles get mashed into huge blobs of air. Heck, that may actually be better, though, b/c the algae will be getting good exposure to air pockets. The screen is hot glued to that bit of eggcrate but is not attached to the bubble bar. The weight of the eggcrate (which is out of the water) is enough to hold it down and the pipe/bubbler assembly sits on the bottom of the compartment. I made a lid for that compartment out of a piece of mirror acrylic, which is recessed into the compartment to contain the water spray, glued to a piece of black ABS.
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The only changes I made to this assembly were to shorten it about 1/4" and I cut a slot for the bubble bar's air nipple in the side.

[tomservo]

The promised picture! This shows the background in place, it works pretty well, the only real light leaking through is coming from the corner, and I can't think of anything to do about that.
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I've also made an acrylic lid for the tank, it's not in the picture but it's fairly unremarkable.

The scrubber ran for like 5 hours yesterday and is now on the 12 hour timer with the main lights. I don't have an extra timer or the outlet to do opposite cycles, also I have concerns about the brightness of the scrubber light if it's on all "night".

[Fishuntbike]

Nice......very neat

[tomservo]

Update 6-17-12, got some algae growing. I have no idea how long this has been running as my post above has been labelled "1 week ago" for days and days already. Based on the date I took pics, it's been about 10 days.

I think I have too much light; and maybe the plastic is restricting flow too much. I have good growth of hair algae at the top of the screen where the eggcrate spacer/handle is. In the places where LEDs are, you can see there is no algae. Must I reduce intensity or can I just reduce duration?

I was thinking to increase water flow, I can probably just punch some holes at the bottom of the plastic sheet to allow water in, and maybe a spacer of some sort at the bottom of the screen to give it a little room.

I'd like to note that the side with the GHA and greener in general is the side with the blue LED.

[SantaMonica]

I'd like to note that the side with the GHA and greener in general is the side with the blue LED.

Because it's getting less "growth" light (red).

Yes the screen is burning, so increase bubble flow, or reduce hours.

[Garf]

With all virgin bubble screens, if you start with lower light, you can increase this over a few weeks to 1 watt per inch and get green. Keep the faith!

[srusso]

Excellent work!

[tomservo]

Thanks, guys! I got another timer and set it to 6 hours/day. We'll see how that does. There's a boatload of light in that little box, ~18 watts (8 red x 2w + 1 blue @ 2.5-3w). I'm really happy with how the growth on the screen is coming along, and the tank in general. I still haven't decided for sure what fish to put in there, but I did order an emerald crab to take care of the bubble algea. I'm hoping the tank is small enough to actually catch him once his job is done.

I've been considering a goby/pistol combination.. I really like gobies and blennies. It's kind of regrettable that the tank isn't big enough for a lawnmower blenny, I love those guys and their dragon faces.

SM: Actually the end with the blue LED still has red LEDs, I just crammed a blue in between. Even with the LPLC18 power supply strapped to that bit of aluminum, it still stays reasonably cool.

BTW: LPLC18-700 (18w/700ma) drivers are only $9 at powergate.

[tomservo]

An update, at last!

It's been, well, however long now.. This is the first real scraping, I did pick off the chunky hair algae last time I took photos but this time as you can see there's a lot more. Screen's filled in more, but I suspect I could lower the photoperiod even more. Would 4 on 8 off x 2 per day work? It'd essentially be 2 12 hour days per 24hrs. Based on the 18/6 photoperiod, I'd think 8 hours between should be enough, and the 4 on may be short enough that the whole screen could fill in. Opinions? I may just try it either way.

edit: hey, photos! I forget which side was which, but I think the side with the chunky clump was the side away from the lights.

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[SantaMonica]

I think diffusing the light is what's needed.

[tomservo]

Some tank shots, sorry for the lousy photography, I don't have a tall enough tripod to take shots of this tank. The back wall is just getting covered with those little hard spirally (and not) featherdusters. Tank's cloudy b/c I just scraped algae, it wasn't bad just a green haze, could still see through it OK, been scraping it about every 2 weeks or so. I think it helps a lot that I designed the light optics to cover the tank without flooding the glass with light. The top half of the glass gets almost no algae to speak of.

The sand/CC substrate has some green algae on it, this was mostly confined to the shell pieces in the substrate but it has slowly grown more. I'm not terribly worried at this point, it seems to be pretty well under control, and I will be getting some finer live sand to put over top of it from a fellow along with a couple more pieces of LR.

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It may LOOK empty but there are 3 mushrooms in the tank! There are 2 in this shot, these ones were a dull red/brown when I got the rock but the one getting more light is developing a very nice cyan/blue color. They've doubled in size also, and seem to be moving down where they can get more light, albeit very slowly.
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This little crab's shell has a really interesting teal color to it, is that just the shell I wonder?
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edits: It took me a long time to notice that I never attached the extra photos.. doh!

[tomservo]

So, lots of changes this week... I got another piece of LR, this one has a maxi mini anemone on it, which seems to be doing well. It's only been in there 3 days now, but it's opening better every day. Also, two clowns, an "onyx" (ocellaris I believe) and a regular ocellaris. Everything seems to be doing very well.

I switched the scrubber to 4 on / 8 off / 4 on / 8 off on sunday and the growth seems to be much improved. Entirely anecdotal, I didn't take pictures of it. The dead spots that were there before are gone now, however.

Using the "sleeve" around the screen seems to have a nice side benefit in the case of my setup, the glass doesn't seem to grow algae much except at the very top where there's flow and air.

Obligatory pics:

FTS
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Also spent some time making a bracket for the float switches that arrived today.. One sits about 1/8" above the other to act as a failsafe, the lower one determines the normal water level.
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[kerry]

real nice clowns and the coralline is looking great.

[tomservo]

Thanks, Kerry, though that be a little belated.. Small update, just some shots of the clowns and nem. You can see the decorative hair algae next to the nem, that came with the rock. It certainly hasn't grown, and I expect it will get eaten by the emerald crab or one of the snails sooner or later. The nem is getting some color going, it's a maxi mini and when I first saw it, looked great.. The day before I picked it up the dude dosed his tank with 2x chemiclean so everything was very unhappy.

Also modded the scrubber setup a little, changed how the lights are attached to the tank.. Before they were just siliconed directly to the glass and I haven't been real happy with it.. So I put some white diffuser over the channel, and glued some clear diffuser "hooks" on and made some glass loops on the tank. It works very well. I'm trying to work out a way to make a better screen holder rig so the bubbles disperse better. As it it, they're kind of "clumpy".

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[tomservo]

Pictorial update! I got some monti digi frags (more like a colony!) today and a couple pieces of orange monti cap.

Also did a scrape of the scrubber, the growth seems much better on the side with the blue LED. Maybe I'll rework that setup, move the LEDs to the middle of each strip and do a blue/red pair on each one. I MIGHT be able to get away with that many on one 18w driver.. A decent crop I think. I took some shots of the algae fibers, they look almost like chaeto.

The purple tip monti digi doesn't look quite that purple in person, but that's the best setting I've found for my white balance. I need to make a custom setup or something I guess. It was open the whole way home in the car, and was open like the pics less than 5 mins after it went in the tank. A bunch of bits broke off, it was in a low flow area of the tank and is rather fragile. One finger I stuck in the rock in front of the main colony and the others are chilling out on the bottom until I can get some rubble for frag mounts. The mother colony in the guy's tank where it came from was like 18" across! He had a tang that would pick up broken bits and move them around the tank, so he had colonies everywhere, and even a piece encrusted onto the glass.

The orange cap monti came from the same tank, and the colony when I saw it was about 12" around, and he said it was twice that big before he accidentally broke off some plates. My pieces he just snapped off the back plate.

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[SantaMonica]

I've been looking at some purple digi's, but did not think they were purple enough.

[tomservo]

That pic is a little off maybe but the colorful sides are definitely more purple than brown. I expect it to color up more in my tank as well, in his tank the coral was only getting like 70-90 PAR at the top. They were under eshine 60w LED for the last 2 months and before that some T5 setup. They look a lot different under my lights than they did under his TBH, but mine uses a high CRI white emitter and has 420nm also. I didn't think there'd be much difference under my lights, but you can see a big difference in color between the side that was getting a lot of light in his tank (exposed side) and the back sides of the branches, which are pale brown.

[tomservo]

So I pulled the screen up to have a look-see at the growth and decided to scrape early.. Here's some pics:

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I also picked up a couple tiny frags, no pics yet. A less than dime piece of green monti cap, and a nickelish sized piece of neon green monti (encrusting type). The neon is wicked glowy, the guy I got it from started his colony from a similar sized frag and it's now covered a 6x6" rock.

[tomservo]

2 week cleaning update! Really scraping in the algae now.. This noodly stuff I keep growing, almost seems like chaeto to me, except it's really soft and kind of squishy. There's lots of it this time. Very happy with the tank is doing, I started dosing sodium carbonate about a week ago, as it was down to 6 dKH. It's back up to 8 or so now. Seems to be quite a bit of demand as it didn't rise nearly as fast or as high as I expected based on what I mixed up.

I really feel like the 4 on / 8 off / 4 on / 8 off is working for me.. I set my friend's waterfall scrubber to 6/6/6/6 and the growth really bumped up a notch.

edit: added a FTS and a shot of the gravel/sand. Still no significant algae in the tank, the inherited HA is still on the same rock to the right of the 'nem. The tiny nem has moved up a bit more and alternates between looking really tiny and looking pathetic. Not sure if it's going to make it.

I've been thinking about adding another koralia to the tank, I'm just not happy with the flow.. With the 425 pointed basically straight at the digi, the polyps get tousled just about right.. but everything else in the tank just gets a steady gentle flow, although the 'nem really likes it how it is / where it is.

[SantaMonica]

Do you still have the wrap-around?

[tomservo]

The plastic sheeting? Yes, I haven't changed that setup at all, although I am thinking I will need to pull it all out and clean it next go round.

[tomservo]

Nother 2 week update, got some new mushrooms. FTS in a bit, I cleaned out the scrubber box and there's some loose bits of algae flitting about.

1/2 cup of algae removed, I'd say about the same as last time.

[kerry]

looking good

[tomservo]

Thanks, Kerry. Seems like you and SM are the only ones following my thread but I'll keep on keepin on... It's pretty easy anyways since I've got a nearly identical thread on the local club's board.

Also the bubble algae is on a boom, I think my emerald crab is on strike or something. He was doin good but what a slacker now.

Sorry if these next shots are kind of off, we got a new P&S camera and I was playing with it.. That and the DSLR batteries were dead.

[SantaMonica]

Looks like your design worked :)

[kerry]

Many others fallow for sure, not having posts means there is not advice to give, so yes the design is working good. I also get bubble algae every now and then even though my scrubber in the 40G is doing good, I never really worry about it any more.

[tomservo]

Thanks SM, it's shocking really, the water flow through the scrubber section is slow to say the least. I guess if the numbers in the tank stay low it doesn't need much to keep them that way.

I forgot to mention, I diddled with the lights a couple days ago.. I used to have some 495nm LEDs on the fixture, originally 4, then changed to 2, and now none. At the same time I added 4 more 420nm for a total of 8 @ ~18w. Really brought up the 'pop' level, and they look crazy just by themselves.

I hope to have a spectral analysis available soon, I've found plans online (http://publiclaboratory.org/wiki/video-spectrometer-construction) to make a USB spectrometer from simple things. I saw an interesting one recently at RC Multichip build spectrum (http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showpost.php?p=20613709&postcount=2140)

[Floyd R Turbo]

yeah, I got mine a few days ago. Only have had time to crack open the box though! I see that people are already posting their spectral plots on RC though. Pretty cool.

[ruddybop]

Thanks, Kerry. Seems like you and SM are the only ones following my thread but I'll keep on keepin on...

A lot of people sandbag and watch silently.... Like me.... :)

[tomservo]

Thanks guys, still playing with the spectrometer, not satisfied with the graphs I'm getting with my new webcam. I have ordered a piece of real diffraction grating, hopefully that won't take too long from israel.

Bad news! I noticed a small amount of cyano recently and I always suspect death when I see cyano - and lo and behold the emerald crab died. I thought it was just molting or somesuch but no. All the other life is doing well, the hermits are active and happy (full body count too) no problems with snails except maybe they're breeding faster than I thought was usual. I have dozens of tiny baby snails all over.

I plan on scooping out the infected sand later tonight. since it's mostly crushed coral I'll replace it with some finer stuff. Scrubber still doing well and my SPS are growing nicely! The green australiensis is doing well, the green monti cap has had some strange dieback (RTN maybe; it was a very young frag). The mushrooms look like they're dividing. More pics soon, I rearranged things some.

The orange monti cap is a dark orange now; it glows like crazy when just the blues/actinics are on.

[tomservo]

Another cleaning, today actually - huge amount of algae again.. Despite my success, I have decided to try the setup without the clear plastic over the screen, based on the bubble flow before I think it will work better now, but I'll have to wait and see. This time there was a good sized bristle worm chowing on the screen, or stuff in the screen. I removed him with tweezers. I wish I knew what kind of algae this is. It's totally different than anything I've seen, although it vaguely resembles chaeto, it's very soft, squishy and likes being deep fried in photons.

I haven't mentioned but a week or so ago I got a Randall's goby, basically an orange stripe goby. These guys are supposed to have a magnificent top fin, but mine was in some sort of unfortunate situation over at J&L. He's doing good and last night he discovered the pistol shrimp, and not only have I seen strong evidence of extensive excavations, I actually saw the shrimp today too. Now every time I look at the tank, I think about how badly I need to add sand! But the two sands I have are crushed coral (there's plenty in there already!) and the tiny sugar sized stuff (also plenty already). I need some of the stuff that's not so fine, and not so course.

The pistol shrimp is currently waging war against my hermit crabs, I've found two victims so far. It's unfortunate but at least I have snails breeding like crazy in the tank, so I expect I won't be replacing them.

Edit: I never posted pics from my last cleaning done sep 15th, but the result was similar to today's, maybe not quite so much algae.

[SantaMonica]

Looks like the growth might be Ulva Fasciata. Very high filtering. Some iron, and/or more feeding, should darken it up.

[tomservo]

SM, Thanks! Any notion how much iron? I added a drop of seachem iron the other day but that's not very much. I guess it's another test kit I will need to buy.

edit: Looking on the algae sites I found searching for ulva fasciata, there's a distinct possibility it's Enteromorpha flexuosa. It's hard to tell because it gets all jumbled up like ramen noodles in my little box. The interesting thing is that the bits that get loose during cleaning don't establish or grow at all in the display tank.

[SantaMonica]

Just go by the instructions, or until the growth gets darker.

You might try just feeding more nori first.

[tomservo]

I don't think any of my inhabitants would eat the nori, excepting the emerald crab and the snails.. And I already have the iron as a supplement for my planted tank. Not that I've been fertilizing.

[tomservo]

Small update: I just got back from the states with my reef angel and lots of other goodies, like a red sea foundation test kit. My Ca and Mg are super low (<290 and 920) so I spent some time making up solutions and dosing some. I'm adding 50ppm worth of Ca and 100ppm of Mg, will test again tomorrow morning and see what's what.

The goby has found his pal since about a week ago, it was immediately apparent in the scale of the excavations. Now there's a ridge maybe 1.5" above the sand bed where they've fortified their crevice in the rockwork.

[tomservo]

<EDIT> So I'm even dumber than I thought - but I still can't figure out how I went from testing 920 ppm to 2000 after adding only enough Mg to raise it 100 ppm..

The corals all seem fine, the nem is acting normal, fish are happy, etc. I had read something by Randy that raising the Mg quickly was likely not harmful, although bad practice.

I did send an email to the reef calculator guy.

[tomservo]

More non-news... Tank is rumbling along, no problems. Harvested algae today, about the same amount as usual, though I have been feeding a bit less. A cube every other day, maybe a tish more. It looks like this ulva fasciata grows just as well without the plastic sheeting. Interestingly it grew that nice green at the mirror side of the scrubber, but filled the whole scrubber box. I bet you could use this stuff like chaeto in a fuge but with buckets more light than chaeto can take. It seemed to grow just as well outside the bubbles/plastic sheeting before I changed the setup, FWIW. It even grows on waterfall scrubber screens - I put a couple (literally) strands through my friend's screen and it's taken over maybe 20% of a 9x12 screen.

I acquired an acropora frag, I'm not sure what color it was supposed to be but it is acquiring a green fluorescence in my tank. It has also already attached itself to the rock. The green monti cap or plate or whichever it is, doing well and growing. Polyp extension is huge on that one. The orange monti caps are doing well, I am sure the one in the back wall is attached now. Very happy with that, and it's forming some new plating at a different angle that favors the light angle.

The shot of the neon green monti cap (macro) doesn't show the color at all, I used my wife's point and shoot cause it was handy. It's a brilliant light fluorescent green. In the back-left of that shot you can see an orange/brown blob, some random mushroom that I just noticed there today and don't know whence it came.


And the other pic is a shot of the coming soon "Dream Chip" light. The gooseneck is just a piece of PVC conduit I bent with a heat gun. The gooseneck and the light housing itself will be (sanded as needed) painted gloss black.

[SantaMonica]

Hopefully your orange monti caps will take over like mine did, and fill up your tank :)

[tomservo]

SM: They are, for sure - the one that I moved to the back wall had attached itself to the rock in the right foreground, I broke it off and the little bits that remained actually survived, going from no light white to now orange and are growing.

[Floyd R Turbo]

Got me a dream chip also...

[tomservo]

Lazy update - this is my second attempt at this tonight, don't know what happened earlier.. Anyways I have added some more sand, ~1.5" and the shrimp has gone nuts, tunnels everywhere. I haven't seen the goby today at all. The FTS is an evening lights pic.

[SantaMonica]

Gotta love all-in-one nano setups...

[tomservo]

Wow! My thread's only down this far? Anyways, text update time. Tank is still doing well, but earlier this month the ulva just stopped growing - went from cleaning the usual amount to some strange thready stuff growing (and not all that well). I "dose" iron via my top off water, I just shot like a mL into a 5 gallon bucket of RO water. So I don't think the issue was iron, I am wondering if it is a potassium or other ion deficiency. I got rid of my african cichlid underneath the reef so that 10g tank is now tied into the system, along with the ~10g of fresh saltwater, and I re-seeded the ulva from my friend's tank, it is taking off. I also got some chaeto yesterday from a friend, so I'm going to try some of that as well.

I guess that means I should be doing a w/c every 3 months or so - It seems like it will be cheaper than buying a bunch of expensive test kits.

Finally got around to connecting my pH probe as well - pH has been steady at 7.6, turning on the skimmer only brings it to 7.63. I'm guessing the CO2 in our apartment is really high as we have the windows sealed and all the drafts are blocked off. If I had a house I think I'd just put the air pump for the scrubber outside or something. Anybody think I should try to fix the pH? KH is steady around 10 as I dose sodium carbonate.

Edit: further info... Tank params are Ca 500+ KH 10.7 SG 1.026 .. Reason the Ca is so high is b/c the seachem salt I have mixes up to absurd Ca levels. Next bag will definitely be something else! Keep in mind that I doubled the water volume and went from 400 ppm Ca to over 500!

[SantaMonica]

I just ended an ulva test myself. Got completely covered with GHA within 3 weeks.

[tomservo]

I can't say I've ended the test, it's still working fine from that aspect - There's a tiny big of HA but it's in the couple of places that get direct light from the scrubber (and in the scrubber). It may be that the narrowleaf ulva that I have is better at pulling out nutrients?

[tomservo]

I somehow didn't even consider doing a pet shop crawl for the background.. I reached for the nearest black spray bomb and some newspaper and masking tape. It sure looks nice now, after I used up that can of super cheap black that couldn't hide with 1000 coats and got some real paint.

I'm not quite done with things yet, I need to make another outlet "nozzle" for the display and paint it black. Also need to take the overflow siphons off one at a time and paint them black. But I thought I'd post a meatier update than the last one (few?)

IOW that means pictures! There's only a small ball of chaeto in my sump at the moment. The overflow and skimmer empty into the top of a length of 4" PVC pipe, this almost eliminates the bubbles in the tank. I've been wondering if something like a bubble plate or a piece of that blue open cell foam would do the rest. The skimmer is a seaclone, modded, it actually works pretty decent even with just a stock impeller on the pump. The pump is crazy loud though, clatter city. That's OK though since I only run it midnight to 8 am. I'm not even convinced I need it, but it makes me feel better to use it than let it sit on a shelf.

The light on the sump/frag tank is the "old" LED fixture from the display. It's currently set to the lowest brightness that the light will come on at. The chaeto is loving it big time.

I re-seeded the scrubber with the ulva narrowleaf from a friend I had seeded his scrubbers with it. Incidentally, it really kicks ass on a waterfall scrubber. He has chunks like 1.25" thick growing in his! There's also a bit of chaeto in the scrubber just to see who wins. The ulva is growing nicely again since I added on the frag tank - I suspect some necessary element was depleted.

I still haven't gotten around to cutting the lid to fit the overflow - been sick as a dog and don't want to freeze using the bandsaw outside. 3737

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[SantaMonica]

Good to hear that yours is growing :)

[RkyRickstr]

Tom can you tell us your no3 and po4 readings?

[tomservo]

I've been meaning to do an update, tank is still doing well.

I don't have a PO4 test but I can give you an API nitrate level in a little while.

Edit: Nitrate test shows zero, not even a hint of color.