Lee's 65g Mixed Reef

[lnevo]

You can see in that last FTS what happened to the crappy blue background.

Sometime in December I started battling some STN that was happening with those SPS pieces. Tissue was melting off slowly. I tried fragging and remounting. Everything was testing fine...I should have questioned the 0 nitrates more...but everything was clean. Phosphates were low, no algae issues, but my corals were dying.

I ignored the problem for two months. Did my normal maintenance and got on with life. Looking back, I know what I would do different but at the time it was very depressing.

The only positive about this episode was it landing in the middle of the holidays....and that means PRESENTS!!!

 

[oh207]

Very nice tank and very clean setup. I have the same tank with somewhat similar rock-scape and I'm impressed with how neat you have the cables.
I never thought of utilizing the space behind the door to mount the Vortech controllers. I will try to do the same. Following along.

 

[lnevo]

Very nice tank and very clean setup. I have the same tank with somewhat similar rock-scape and I'm impressed with how neat you have the cables.
I never thought of utilizing the space behind the door to mount the Vortech controllers. I will try to do the same. Following along.

Thanks! I like how you mounted your apex modules!

 

[lnevo]

The holidays came and went and thanks to my generous wife, I had plenty of happy nights of Hanukah.

Also on the list was BRS gfo and rox carbon. The carbon went into a mesh bag in my filter a sock and the GFO waited till i could setup the reactor.

In addition, I got the flush kit, pressure gauge, and tds meter for my ro/di.

It would take me a while to get everything together especially since the tank was showing the first signs of stress.

 

[oh207]

Thanks! I like how you mounted your apex modules!

Thanks. They fit nicely in that location and the EB8s are on the right wall. But after seeing a few threads on rust and evaporation
I'm a bit worried.

 

[E.intheC]

Nice progress.

And see, "real reefers" can come from Tanked!

 

[lnevo]

Thanks guys! Thats one of the nice side effects of having all my electronics in that second container. Pretty much fully protected.

I still love watching Tanked and FTK. I just can't get enough watching aquariums. Now we have Saturday Aquarium Night Live and Tank Wars coming!

So onto the positive. February is rolling in. I finally decide to do something about the tank decline. I bring a water sample over to AV and do some tests. Steve helped me out and we tested the nitrates a few times because the test was coming out BRIGHT red. 80ppm the first time 40ppm the second. I'm sure it was somewhere in between if not closer to the 80 mark.

Now mind you everyone. I have the full two sets of API tests and every time I tested it came out bright yellow for 0ppm. I was sooo pissed. I came home with the Red Sea Algae Control kit for PO4 and NO3. I liked the Reef Foundation kit I had picked up at the swap so now I can get much better resolution and accuracy.

Did the rest of my tests to get a baseline and started doing big water changes. Basically doing 18g changes 2x a week. Kept that up for about 2-3 weeks. This helped tremendously. Nitrates were quickly knocked down to a more manageable level and one or two of the SPS frags started healing and showing signs of growth again!

I cleaned up all the dead skeletons and stuck with the larger volume of water changes. To this day I am still doing a 20g weekly WC. This calculates to 28% but i do a continuous water change so I figure I'm getting 20-25% effective.

 

[lnevo]

With the holidays behind and the nitrate issue tackled, and with things starting to improve it was time to get some of my goodies hooked up.

I got the reactor plumbed and started running GFO. Started at 1/2 the recommended which was about 7tbsp which I increased 1tbsp at each media change.

Next project was to mount my dosing pumps

I made some containers for the two part out of SmartWater bottles. They hold 1.5liters and aren't too bad to look at.

I had this running with RO/DI water until just a few weeks ago.

 

[lnevo]

Took some great shots tonight. Thought I would take a break from the history and share some pics with everyone.

Yummy

Some sump action...

Uh oh.. ATO is empty..

 

[lnevo]

The build thread is mostly complete anyway so might as well get everyone caught up.

Bought and modified an Eheim auto feeder so I could control it from my Reef Angel.

Bought some toys from Avast Marine!

You already saw how the skimmer and skim-mate locker look.

Here's everything taken out of the corner

And tucked back in...

You also saw the dosing containers which get tucked in over here

And last but not least my controller board with all the new goodies hooked up

 

[lnevo]

Oh..almost forgot..

Had too many accidents...

And my mixing station

 

[oh207]

Wow wow. Very impressive. Nice and clean setup and livestock and corals looks great. I'd like to learn more about how you modified the ehiem auto feeder. I have the same unit and have it programmed but would like the ability for my Apex to control it. Would like to schedule feedings to coincide with return pump shut off.
And I have 10 Mexican turbo snails and have had plenty of close encounters with my overflow. I like your solution and will try to do something similar. For now I just added a piece of sponge.
What are those 3 canisters that looks like a reactor?

 

[lnevo]

The Eheim hack is documented in a few places. But essentially you are jumping the manual push button and connecting it to a 5 or 12v relay. The relay then connects to a 5 or 12v wall wart that you can plug into a relay.

Here's a good post documenting the process. His is a little more complicated..but the pics are good.

http://wamas.org/forums/blog/13/entry-46-diy-automatic-feeder-for-aquacontroller/

As far as the 3 reactor looking things...2 of them are reactors. The large one is a small Avast Marine Davey Jone's Skimmate Locker. The reactor on the left is a Reef Octopus MF-300B running GFO and the one on the right is the ViaAqua Poly Reactor PR20/20 running Rox 0.8 Carbon.

The only difference between the two models is that the Reef Octopus one is $20 and the Reef Octopus comes with nicer tubing.

The via aqua was on back order and I though there was a problem with my order so I ordered a TLF Phosban 150 and had setup for a week before the via aqua showed up. Thankfully! This one is 10x better.

Very happy with the reactor setup, it is really working quite well. My biggest challenge with this build is the amount of extra space inside the stand. Most reactors and equipment are just a 1/2" too big to get inside.

 

[d5332]

What do you put auto feeder? Flakes, pellets

 

[oh207]

Thank you for the link and for sharing this information. This will be another weekend project for me.
Those reactors look very sleek and thin. Looks like they can easily fit anywhere and I like that they can stand on their own.
I had a BRS Deluxe reactor setup for 2 months running a mix of Carbon and GFO. Took it out 2 weeks ago and I'm keeping my fingers crossed. There is no easy way for me to fit it back into the stand.

 

[lnevo]

The only issue with those reactors is the lid takes some getting used to. Once you know the trick its cake. Gotta make sure the down tube is in good and the rim of the lid spins so you can screw it tight without having to turn anything else. So just gotta make sure that tube is in and pressed in a little and the rim screws down perfectly. My only complaint but they are really nice otherwise.

As far as the feeder, yeah its an easy project. I put both pellets and flakes in it and it works great. Pellets sink and everyone grabs em then they attack the surface for the flakes.

 

[SteveZ15]

Cool set up for the mixing ,I dig the sight tubing nice touch.I might make a mini version of that as the algae scraper and bucket is kinda lame considering all the fancy equipment that is on the tank.

 

[lnevo]

I posted a few shots in the PW FTS contest thread and realized how much growth I've had just in the past 3 months. I'm going to post the before and after and a few shots of when I got some of these...

 

[lnevo]

http://youtu.be/VT8sS3ZzQCM
http://youtu.be/_4J1UtzXaDQ

 

[SIReefer]

Very nice tank, thanks for sharing