As I continue to rehabilitate my crappy reef, I hit upon an idea that never occurred to me before. I stuck a hunk of bonded filterpad in the trough overflow right before the screen while I was stirring up some of the incredible amounts of detritus in the reef, and cleaning stuff in the tank. It gets clogged within only a half hour or so, and then can be tossed, much easier than a filter sock and nothing stays in the water stream for very long
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Jimroth's Big Ol' Tank
- Thread starter jimroth
- Start date
Got a replacement cleanup crew from LiveAquaria:
All the snails arrived dead and stinky. The ceriths were just dead. Everything else was fine except they shorted me on scarlet hermits. The peppermint shrimp went into the biocube. They're going to credit me for the sails and I guess I will order another load, because I need snails!
Have now quit carbon dosing in favor of the biopellet reactor.
I have a giant mound of alkaline powder bulting up in my sump. The last time I tried to remove it, it released alk and the pH shot up enormously. Not gonna do that again. It has trapped the cord of a burned out heater so I can't get it loose and it's starting to block the intake for the return pump. I plan to shut down the pumps, remove the water from the sump, and dissolve it with vinegar, then vacuum out the vinegar. Oh boy that's gonna be fun.
| CN-89182 | SW - Dwarf Blue Leg Hermit Crab (BYO) | Qty: 40, Price: $0.80 each = $32.00 |
| CN-89192 | SW - Astraea Turbo Snail (BYO) - Large | Qty: 40, Price: $0.80 each = $32.00 |
| CN-89184 | SW - Scarlet Reef Hermit Crab (BYO) | Qty: 10, Price: $2.50 each = $25.00 |
| CN-89194 | SW - Cerith Snail (BYO) | Qty: 5, Price: $1.75 each = $8.75 |
| CN-89191 | SW - Peppermint Shrimp (BYO) | Qty: 2, Price: $3.75 each = $7.50 |
| CN-89178 | SW - Emerald Crab (BYO) | Qty: 2, Price: $4.25 each = $8.50 |
| CN-89179 | SW - Sally Lightfoot Crab (BYO) | Qty: 2, Price: $5.00 each = $10.00 |
| CN-89165 | SW - Pincushion Urchin - BYO | Qty: 1, Price: $5.00 each = $5.00 |
| CN-74651 | SW - Shortspine Urchin - (BYO) | Qty: 2, Price: $5.00 each = $10.00 |
| CN-89180 | SW - Sea Cucumber - Atlantic (BYO) | Qty: 1, Price: $5.00 each = $5.00 |
All the snails arrived dead and stinky. The ceriths were just dead. Everything else was fine except they shorted me on scarlet hermits. The peppermint shrimp went into the biocube. They're going to credit me for the sails and I guess I will order another load, because I need snails!
Have now quit carbon dosing in favor of the biopellet reactor.
I have a giant mound of alkaline powder bulting up in my sump. The last time I tried to remove it, it released alk and the pH shot up enormously. Not gonna do that again. It has trapped the cord of a burned out heater so I can't get it loose and it's starting to block the intake for the return pump. I plan to shut down the pumps, remove the water from the sump, and dissolve it with vinegar, then vacuum out the vinegar. Oh boy that's gonna be fun.
One cool thing from the Biocube: the orange strip goby finally paired with the smaller candy cane pistol. So I now have two working teams In the little tank. It's amazing how much braver the shrimp gets with a goby, the are willing to come right out of their burrow, hard to see them .
I changed the chemical media I've been using in the tank and the water quality improved. They claimed 4-6 months, I did not get that much use out of it.
I changed the chemical media I've been using in the tank and the water quality improved. They claimed 4-6 months, I did not get that much use out of it.
Purigen in the little packet and ChemiPure Elite.
I would change the Chemipure elite in my Biocube every 2 months, but sometimes a little longer when the LFS didn't have any in stock. I did not go longer than 3 months.
So every day I am putting a filter pad in the trough and hitting the brown cyano/dinoflaggelates stuff with a turkey baster. Then I ditch the pad after rinsing it in the sink a couple times. It's amazing the amount of brown fishy-smelling gunk I'm getting out of the pad, it's like squeezing a big teabag. And I am making a lot of dark brown skimmate, probably due to the biopellet reactor. It seems I'm making headway, the hair algae is visible in a lot of spts where it used to be covered with brown goo. I never thought I would be glad to see algae. The tang and foxface are working on it, I think the brown stuff is foul-tasting and probably poisonous, it keeps everything away.
When my order comes my urchin population will be at six, which means to me I'm going to give some awya once this all blows over. I like the long spined and painful diadema, but the cheap Caribbean packages don't offer those guys.
The MRC is definitely on the docket. Right now I'm getting good (16-40 oz/day) results with the ETSS, so I am reluctant to mess with it. It will need a tower cleaning soon, I'll do the swap out then.
Oh believe me, you're on speed dial.
One thing I am going to take care of soon is the pile of broken coral and other rubble towards the front of the tank. That is a potental detritus trap and nitrate factrory that doesn't need to be there. A lot of it is broken monti caps pieces.
I'm also going to remove the minimal substrate that is on the bottom, retaining only a small "bed" for my wrasse. It's only 0-1" and a lot of it is fused and cannot be removed, but the rest is trapping detritus.
I moved my old favia brain (purchased in 1999!) to the front of the tank, since there's less coral to look at now. I can focus on improving its health and also remediate the forgotten area behind my rock cave where it's been sitting. There is a nice layer of cyano and detritus (and substrate) back there, it's gotta go.
I woke up in a cold sweat with the thought that if I saw a flatworm at this point I might just tear the tank down! I can't go through THAT again. No new corals go in until I get this situation fixed completely, it's a flatworm paradise in there.
reefsandrotts
NJRC Member
jim
great article and a solutionn to your flat worm nightmares
http://www.advancedaquarist.com/2002/5/short
great article and a solutionn to your flat worm nightmares
http://www.advancedaquarist.com/2002/5/short
Very bad things today. Short power outage. During the power outage, I hooked up my for tech battery backup. It immediately popped and started to smoke, so I threw it out the front door. It burned out the controller for my vortech mp 60. The power outage also seems to have burned out one of my ballasts. Fifteen minutes, $300, what the hell. I swore I would switch to LEDS before I replaced another ballast, but crap I don't know what to get. Don't need this right now.
Jim, that's very nice of you but that is from ten years ago. I don't have flatworms yet. When I did, I tried C. Varians and found it to be pretty useless. It doesn't do well in current, it likes to get sucked into powerheads. Cool to watch it eat flatworms though.
Sucks to hear, we lost power as well for several hours, our neighbors on three sides had power but not us. Luckily nothing blew and we did not hook up our vortech backup battery but when we do I will absolutely keep an eye on it. I know there was an issue with one of the cords that they issued a recall on for fire issues, might want to look into it.