Neptunes 125 Reef Diary.

[king_neptune]

Yes, the foam wall is siliconed in. And I ran a bead of foam along the bottom and sides to ensure it was nice and tight against the glass. The foam wall can be cut with ease provided my cuts aren't along the a rock line. And I can go all the way back since past the sand/epoxy its really very soft. So my toughest part would be a layer of epoxy/sand that would be like tough leather.
So option "A" is cute a square wedge on each side large enough to fit a small over flow on each end. OR
Option "B" which Im entertaining as well:
No over flow "BOX" but a stand pipe with an "Overflow head" kinda like a smoke pipe with slits.

 

[king_neptune]

Alright im going to go two towers hanging down. the elbo peice would be intact. it will shoot straight up with an upgradeable top that can be custom built to be anything i want from a feeding doc to a breeding station for small stuff. this is an experimental tank imo in the garage and im going to conduct it as such. ill do it in the next week or so. i think im going to order a nice professional camera. but like they say...there you get to see details. thats good and bad.

but its cool. i can learn by my mistakes and you all can too.
over all im having fun. my eco system is balancing itself awesome. CuC is stepping it up. i see little clashes every now and again. today two hermits decided who was bigger. and two snails decided who was faster.
life is starting to come out, but doesn't like to hold still for camera. so far only one person can really come over and that's my neighbor. but hell stand and bs for a while and the fish will warm up to him. others jam their faces in the tank, and you know how popular that is.

 

[king_neptune]

oh i forgot the towers are going to be live coral or something cool maybe so i cant wait to see how the new lighting scheme looks.

 

[robertmathern]

Hey king been a while since I seen your thread good to see thank tank still doing good. I am a piece of advice for you and many others that live close to the coast on food. The grocery stores have wide selections of food for fish but be careful as many of them have preservitives in them to keep them "fresh" now I am not saying not to use there stuff as it is still cheaper and better than the frozen stuff at any LFS. But Try to see if you have a local bait shop near you that carry live bait. It is got no nasties in it and alot fresher than anything you will get at the store. Just food for thought. Nice tank by the way. And good luck with the nem. Hope he does good in your tank.

 

[king_neptune]

ya. i was concerned about that as well. im not a fan of shopping at major food chains for those cost cutting reasons alone.
i did get the bulk from an old fashioned marketplace with natural foods as a main theme. im sure that was a safe bet since they get their seafood from the local fishermen.the fish dont seem to care a whole lot if i feed it 3 days in a row. so what i do now is give them a breakfast and dinner, with small sample's of each type of food. since dont have many fish, i dont have to feed more than a tiny amount at a time. and they get a wider variety. altogether i have 7 types of food, ranging from frozen to pellets, that i mix and match with whatever i feel like. Also i have a garlic addative, that they seem to enjoy as a treat. eventually i will be upgrading food variety even further. but for now with my small family i think its ok.

 

[eric b 125]

whats crackin nep? things are looking good. what are the towers youre talking about in post 553 and 554?

 

[eric b 125]

what are your thoughts on purple-up? worth it?

 

[bmkj02]

Purple up is good stuff. I loved it. Lots or purple it gave me

 

[spanko]

Originally Posted by Eric B 125
http:///forum/post/3164455
what are your thoughts on purple-up? worth it?
My thoughts are to let the tank mature without having to do the additives. Introduce some rock with Coralline on it. You can even scrape off the coralline into the water to spread the spores.
Adding purple up to the tank will change water chemistry parameters and you will need to check them to ensure you are not overdosing. Calcium, alkalinity, Ph would be the things I would worry about the most.

 

[posiden]

Originally Posted by spanko
http:///forum/post/3164782
My thoughts are to let the tank mature without having to do the additives. Introduce some rock with Coralline on it. You can even scrape off the coralline into the water to spread the spores.
Adding purple up to the tank will change water chemistry parameters and you will need to check them to ensure you are not overdosing. Calcium, alkalinity, Ph would be the things I would worry about the most.

Isn't purple up, just the same as dosing Kalkwasser??
I wouldn't add it if it wasn't needed. I agree with spanko, just give it some time.
Another trick to add to what spanko said, a powerhead blasting on a rock with the coraline will also help the spreading of the algae.

 

[king_neptune]

i put in 1/3 dose every few days. when it calls for once every 24 hours. i ran battery of tests just yesterday in fact. everything is spot on.
i have located a few dozen spots around the tank that are now sporting coraline growth. even the base dead rock i ordered is darkening up, and now showing signs of purple specks... some as large as a pea. the stuff seems ok to me. i dont have anything to gauge it by, but within a week of putting it in i saw my first coraline growth. so for a $20 investment, it seems to do as promised.
the two towers im refereing to is for the overflow. i will remove the overflow bar sometime in the next few days. in place i will have two pipes comming up out of the water. ill cap them with something to allow waterflow, but keep livestock from falling in.
ive practiced it many times in my head, it will be a really simple procedure and in theend . I feel ill be much happier.
my scrubber is doing awesome! i got a nice thick spread on it now.
As for the gfo/carbon reactor, it really cut back on algae growth...but unfortunatly my pump crapped out on me 2 weeks ago almost, and the tank shows the results
ill order something more reliable next payday.
I like my sally light foot so much, im going to get a second one, it eats constantly and is doing supreme!
My king kong hermate loves his shell! This guy is the king of the tank. Nothing touches him! Cant believe he killed the snail to get the shell, but I got a second snail and he seems to leave it alone.
Located the pistol shrimp i lost 2 months ago. hes big! maybe thats why he came out. If I could only see that yellow watchmen goby that dissapeared ill feel like it wasn't all a waste. Although now that i have more experience...ill never get another pistol again...they just too elusive.

 

[eric b 125]

oh, i know what youre talking about now. we have that setup on all of our tanks at work. seems to do good there. i will take a pic and post it of what we have capping the overflows off to see if that helps you any. next day i work is tuesday. also, as far as the pistol shrimp goes- the wife put a pom pom crab in my 125 and we never see it. every few months she'll say, " i think the crab is dead, we should get another one" and everytime she says it the crab will come out within days. i kind of dig it. it makes it that much more special when we do get a glimpse of the crab. when i got those marco rocks a couple months ago i took all the rock out of the tank to re-aquascape, that's the last time we saw it and it had grown two-fold since the previous sighting.

 

[happyfeet]

Originally Posted by King_Neptune
http:///forum/post/3164932
If I could only see that yellow watchmen goby that dissapeared ill feel like it wasn't all a waste. Although now that i have more experience...ill never get another pistol again...they just too elusive.
That’s funny; my watchmen goby that I introduced recently is a riot and always has been. From the second I put him in the tank he has had the "Look at me! Look what I can do!" attitude. Hovers midtank and does summersaults when ever you look at him.

 

[king_neptune]

I'm really beginning to appreciate the intricacies these animals have, they sport as much personality as most domestic dogs and cats. Once a bond forms they are much more astute to coming out and putting on a display.
To date they have only opened up to me and my neighbor. He and I will sit back and talk in front of the tank, and the animals will come out and act cool around us. When its me I get a close up show. But for the rest of my family, they dont show the same respect, and the fish don't respond in kind.
Hear is some shots i took:
The Coraline growth

these blotches are around whole tank.
Some hitch hikers,

those tube worm things that I was describing...
These guys are a purpleish, with bright green veins that glow neon under the actinics. They are begining to spread around the rocks, and the other day I found a separate colony, starting on the other side of the tank!
A few shots under different lights:

A sally lightfoot molt, just outside an engineer goby den:

That thing is HUGE now! I wonder how big it will get. Im also getting some size put on some of my hermates, and a few other members of the CuC. Kong is this monster crab that took out a snail that was larger than a golfball. He now totes the shell around even up walls. Second place crab has only 1/4 of the shell size. No body messes with kong. He is a champion!
I tried to snap some shots, but he didn't focus well at all.
And lastly my scrubber station:

I get fantastic growth from it, and the sump down below is really keeping itself tidy. I drop some occasional food down there from time to time, but for the most part I leave it alone.
If anything these shots really motivate me to get a better camera.I want to wow people with shots of how awesome this tank is going to look.

 

[spanko]

It looks like you have a lot of algae growth in the display from the pictures. The scrubber also looks to have a lot of growth. My understanding, although it may be wrong, is that the scrubber is designed to out compete the display algae for nutrient and to be used as an export mechanism for said nutrient by harvesting.
So my question to you would be is your system too new to realize the advantages of the scrubber? Is the scrubber design you have not doing what it is intended to do? Are you not harvesting enough from the scrubber to have an effect on the display?

 

[bmkj02]

Originally Posted by spanko
http:///forum/post/3165983
It looks like you have a lot of algae growth in the display from the pictures. The scrubber also looks to have a lot of growth. My understanding, although it may be wrong, is that the scrubber is designed to out compete the display algae for nutrient and to be used as an export mechanism for said nutrient by harvesting.
So my question to you would be is your system too new to realize the advantages of the scrubber? Is the scrubber design you have not doing what it is intended to do? Are you not harvesting enough from the scrubber to have an effect on the display?
I agree. I have been subscribed to this to see the outcome cause I was considering this but this is a lot of algae. I have a fraction of this in my tank with a skimmer. Whats the reason for all this algae?? Do you still think the scrubber is worth it? Whats your RO/DI TDS reading?

 

[king_neptune]

A new tank 2 months old can get algae bloom.
Im about 4 weeks past the diatom, (which is pretty much gone now) red slime is also on the down slide, actually non existant now as well. last is the green hair algae. And I already took steps to counter measure(which are working awesome)
the secret to pollution is dilution, are your water changes doing a part in your algae reduction or is it your skimmer? i don't do either. Dont get me wrong, Im not opposed to either methods...they are bother great practices, I just want to see how far things can go w/out them. I have my nice beefy skimmer ready to go any time. And buckets of salt on standby for when I am needing to do a water change.
The TDS reads 0-3ppm.
The algae is actually half of what it was just a week ago,(my gfo/phos went out of commission a little over 2 weeks now, and the shock caused a nice climb in algae levels.) The algae eaters in my tank have been going to town with all the surplus, and it went from out pacing them...to the other way around. Mostly the front half of the tank has the algae, and the parts in the back that offer safety from view are pretty much picked clean now.So they are working their way forward. This morning I saw a new 6x6 patch stripped clean
Things are balancing out, and as a result the scrubber is getting thicker, and the rocks are getting slimmer. I still have to get a new pump for the reactor and when it goes back online algae will decline even sharper.
Im undermanned in the water flow depart met till new power heads come in. I got a pair of Korella 4s as a temp beginnings, but I knew from the start I would need much more for a 125DT.
As you can see there are a lot of factors to consider before coming to the conclusion that the scrubber is worthless.
Before I go the skimmer route, I'm more likely to add a second scrubber station. This one is reaching its potential, but I still have the other side of the sump to add more. If a second scrubber station still cant keep up, then it was a valiant effort, and ill begin experimenting with skimmer/scrubber combo.
I do take my water in to the LFS and have them do free tests, they reach the same conclusions I do, my water is great. So something is moving in the right direction.

 

[spanko]

Thank you for that information.

 

[happyfeet]

King, Question please.
How do you clean your scrubber? I see you have zip tied it on, do you cut them each time and replace them with new ones when ever you do a cleaning?

 

[big]

Originally Posted by Eric B 125
http:///forum/post/2956631
you could get a few bags of aragonite for way less than $300.
I totally agree, with its increased buffering abilities I would use Aragnite sands........ Just do not use the very fine grained and if using any dry Aragnite sands be sure to rinse it extremely well first.......
Great shots and description of your scrubber too!