What did you do to your tank today?

[Anonymous]

One of the boards I visit for one of my other hobbies has a 'what did you do to your x today' thread. I've really enjoyed following it because it brings together a wide range of projects into a single place. The thread is constantly opening my eyes to ideas, DIY's, equipment, and techniques that I hadn't ever considered before. The thread is incredibly successful - 240K+ hits. Then I thought, hmmm, why don't we have a thread like that?

So...with that...

I didn't do anything to my tank today but glance at the pH monitor, confirm that I have enough water in my ATO to make it through tomorrow, and throw in some food.

On Sunday I hooked up a new dosing pump setup - two new Drews Dosers from BRS run through a nifty to-the-minute digital timer I picked up from Home Depot. I'm convinced that this is the easiest and cheapest method for Ca/alk maintenance. Mixing up a batch (Prestone Driveway Heat and Baking Soda) takes ~5 minutes and lasts for weeks. I am pleased to have ditched my long loved calcium reactor.

I'm no longer running kalkwasser - please disregard the fact that I didn't clean the scale off of the side of my ATO container.

 

[Anonymous]

added some food :lol:

 

[Anonymous]

Tested the values, scraped the glass, added some food and spent some time trying to figure out whether to upgrade to bigger.

 

[Anonymous]

Well today nuttin yet, but yesterday...I got a call from my local crack suppli..err...reef store that their show tank had sprung a leak and were emergently selling off the show corals. DAMMIT I was forced to go spend waaayy more than I needed to. And I baked some baking soda and mixed up some icemelt for daily adding.

I got this insane red monti cap, about 12-13" inches and scrolled out the yingamus yangamus. Pics you say? Gimme a day or two.

 

[MartinE]

Today I did a water change on the 15gal long and one on the live rock I have curing, mixed up some new reef crystals water. Then I took down the hanging light fixture I have (that now seems to have a bad flourescent ballast) dismantled it to get the ballast out so I can order the right one. Fragged some zoo's. And that's about it so far.

 

[purplefirefish]

Today I cleaned the glass on the main tank. On the soon to be sump I added some glass panes to create a bubble trap, made up 60 gal. of water to fill the sump on Fri. Now, yesterday I finally got the tempered glass for my UV shield in my getto light hood and added new hqi bulbs.

 

[WhoDey]

Made sure there was no giant bubble in the overflow tube and checked for water clarity (Rock going in on Saturday!) :mrgreen:

 

[SnowManSnow]

today... I cleaned the side and front acrylic. Will feed later.

 

[Anonymous]

Topped off my bowfront, fed critters, added buffer then sat and admired my handiwork until, as usual, my attention was dragged towards the labyrinthine nightmare of electrical wires running amuck in my 90 year old house :/

I need to build myself an auto top off system. I keep saying it, and not bothering. I have no room under the tank stand, so I need to be creative. I think I have come up with something I might like. It consists of a large, decorative, glass vase with clear airline tubing siliconed down the inside to the bottom, with a ball valve at the sump end. This pretty decoration will sit on a platform built into the wall beside the tank, and work via gravity. If I figure it right, I should only have to pour RO water into the vase every 3 or 4 days. Once a week would be cool, but the vase would need to be too large and I would run a risk there. Figuring out dosing will be a bit of a challenge, since I'm adding manually right now. I think I will just switch to liquid carbonate additives, I already add calcium via a liquid. But what to do with the 50 gallon drum of buffer?? LOL

 

[Ben1]

Cleaned up a huge overflow.. :evil:

 

[Anonymous]

Hopefully you meant to write 'small overflow'.

Added a cup of fresh GFO.

 

[Anonymous]

Unfortunately he doesn't. Poor guy's had a tough day.

 

[Ben1]

Floors dry hehe. Today I did alk test on my 58, moved my LM3 over to my new tank, dosed my zeostuff to the new tank and sat and looked at them.

 

[Anonymous]

You're zeo?

I tested my alk and fed. The DIY 2-part system is nearly dialed in.

 

[Anonymous]

Fed the new ventrails a lot. Did a water change using the old water straight into the ceph system.

 

[Ben1]

You're zeo?

Not to get off track but on my old tanks no. I started doing prodibio on the old tank a few months ago and really liked the results so am going to try zeo on the new tank since to me it seems like a more complete system. I thought at one point why change things if my old tank was doing well but I think theres so many ways to make reefing work that I do feel I can safely change it up.

BTW, Happy Mothers day to all you mothers out there.

 

[SnowManSnow]

I ran carbon for 24 hours.

taking it off line tonight.

b

 

[hotrodder]

Tested water, changed water, cleaned glass, replaced reactor media, enjoyed my tank. Worked on reef farm tank. Setup plumbing and light diffuser grating for frags.

 

[MartinE]

Changed media, topped up both tanks.