I banged out a water change today and made a bit of a mistake. Since I still have like 50 lbs of LR left over from the re-do, I am short one water change garbage can because that's what the LR is being stored in. I figured no big deal, I would just let my fresh water reservoir run dry and use it since all the garbage cans I use (ATO reservoir, mixing container, and emptying container-now LR holding container) are the same. The problem is that my tank was allowed to evaporate a bit and the water that I removed had a higher SG than the replacement water. I didn't check to see how big the difference was, I'm assuming it wasn't that big of a difference, and not that big of a deal, but it was something I didn't even consider and thought I would share this with yous guys.
I continue to pick out all the nuisance softies that pop up and zap aiptasia when I do my water changes. Every now and then I give my tank a real good inspection on the hunt for aiptasia, and I only had one pop up since the last water change. I had half a dozen peppermint shrimp in there, but they've disappeared. I didn't see them when I tore the tank apart so I'm guessing that the engineer goby, that I've since gotten rid of, may have eaten them. Or possibly my brittle star got them?
I take out between 28 and 33 gallons for every water change. It takes my tank level down to here:
I usually try to get the water change done before the halides come on b/c some of the corals get beached and I don't want them to be exposed to the heat and intensity of the MH without water. It also helps with matching the water temps doing it before the halides kick on as opposed to during or after they've been on for the day. Today I was a bit behind but the actual water change only takes 15 minutes from starting the siphon to turning the return pump back on (the full bi-weekly servicing of the tank takes an average of an hour). The halides turned on about 3 minutes before draining finished so like I said, no big deal.
Building the canopy with the idea of having to remove the door like that was a good move, but it proved to be difficult for me to figure out because I have very little knowledge of carpentry. I have no idea of what building materials even exist, so most of the time when I build something I have to go to Home Depot or Lowes to figure out what size lumbar I can use or what hardware will work. Since I knew the door would have to be removed regularly I wanted to be able to unscrew it without ruining the wood. I used these guys (not sure what they are called):
They are these metal inserts so the threading isn't compromised with a lot of screwing/unscrewing the hinges. I'll post some more images of the frag placement tonight when everything has a chance to settle after the water change.
