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Jimroth's Big Ol' Tank
- Thread starter jimroth
- Start date
Replaced the DC-8 power block for my Aquacontroller III. Not a durable piece of gear; three of the outlets have failed during the time I've had it. I had a spare so why not? I don't use it for much these days, just turning the lights on and off, and the top off system. When I go back to Ca reactor and kalkwasser, I will need it more again.
I have an idea of how to modify the Kalk stirrer I made to make it work better and not stall. I'm going to ditch the magnetic stirrer in favor of a small external pump, and replace the troublesome cap with one made from a 6" PVC union and cap I bought for the purpose a while back. More stuff in the works. Ordered bulkheads for the new sump and a refugium.
I have an idea of how to modify the Kalk stirrer I made to make it work better and not stall. I'm going to ditch the magnetic stirrer in favor of a small external pump, and replace the troublesome cap with one made from a 6" PVC union and cap I bought for the purpose a while back. More stuff in the works. Ordered bulkheads for the new sump and a refugium.
Changed the GAC reactor. Then pulled 4 buckets of water out while siphoning out the substrate. Some of it was quite disgusting, near the rocks. It was black in the siphon and turned the water in the bucket black. It stunk so bad that the boys in the livingroom upstairs caught a whiff and complained. Removed a lot of coral trash and live and dead monti caps, it's just making shade at this point and I don't need it.
I read that when the lemon meringue wrasse gets big, it eats all your shrimp and hermits, which might explain what happened to a lot of my shrimp and hermits!
Skimmer is chugging along very well at this point. Biopellets refuse to tumble properly, I think the sponges are the wrong thing for that reactor and I will take it apart and put in mesh to control the pellets.
I read that when the lemon meringue wrasse gets big, it eats all your shrimp and hermits, which might explain what happened to a lot of my shrimp and hermits!
Skimmer is chugging along very well at this point. Biopellets refuse to tumble properly, I think the sponges are the wrong thing for that reactor and I will take it apart and put in mesh to control the pellets.
Sponges and biopellets don't mix well. If you have the mesh screens take out the sponges and use the screens.
+1 The only place I have a sponge on my bio-pellet reactor is the pre-filter on the pump.
Tumbling much better with the screens.
I nominate the Foxface as the toughest fish in the reef. He got the velvet, was sick as a dog, hiding and with cloudy eyes, and he fought through it. All better now, swimming around. I guess the chromis and the lemon wrasse never even got sick. Dunno how I'm going to pull everybody for the fallow period. I know the wrasse will end up in the overflow eventually. I may just set up a Q-tank and keep everybody there for a couple months, they're tough enough.
I've been doing some preservation in my post-crash tank. There's a few survivors I want to try and save. There's a patch of acro on a rock way down low that I think is my old pink-and-blue millie. It keeps trying to come back. I'm going to pull the rock out of the structure and give it some primo real estate. Also rescued is the remnants of my green nepthea, first coral I ever grew, in culture since 1999. There's a tiny colony of ponape birdsnest tucked into a corner. If I can get a decent frag out of that, I'll nurse it along. I started with MUCH less, just a 1" frag.
Clean up continues. I don't know the best way to eradicate the remaining hair algae. The urchins are still chugging along but there are some places they won't go. I can starve it out, or hit it with hydrogen peroxide. One damnable thing is that now that the poison or whatever is diminishing, my green mushrooms are EVERYWHERE. I will never be rid of them at this point unless I cook my rocks. It's going to be a holding action from now on.
Going to remove all the pile of rocks from the right end of my tank, give them a couple of weeks in a barrel of dark saltwater, and vacuum out the substrate underneath. Should be quite nasty.
I've been thinking about how to change my Ca-Alk-Mg regimen, and here I go reading that some people are doing the whole thing ( or almost the whole thing) with kalkwasser again! Including the admirable Dan Rigle of PA, who I hugely admire. I had my first acro tank, my 58G, with just saturated kalkwasser pumped from a reservoir, and I grew a buttload of acros in that tank. I think that may be the way, just add another barrel and fill it with kalk solution, let ATO fill in any gaps, and dose 2-part when the alk needs raising. Simple, and without the tweaking of the Ca RX.
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Everything old i new again. LOL
Pulled about 50lbs. Of rock from the badly laid out right end of the reef so I could vacuum out the substrate under it. It wasn't as nasty as the other end of the tank under the rocks, the water circulation must be better on that end. It's tough to remove substrate by siphoning, the hose keeps clogging. I'm going to need to pick up the coral trash more or less by hand. Most of the rocks went into a barrel in the garage with a pump to cook for a few weeks. I clawed out of the rock work the rock with the little patch of Millie. Damn that stuff is tough, that colony started from a broken piece, back when i had loads of it. it's never grown up or died but it keeps trying. It's all I have left, so it gave it a good spot and hopefully it will take off.
that end of the tank now looks cleaner and more open.
my first use of reef crystals salt also.
that end of the tank now looks cleaner and more open.
my first use of reef crystals salt also.
Jim I spent the last 2 nights reading your whole thread since I was confused where the brown crud came from and the intial crash. Sorry about the whole thing, I am glad I do have a generator to run the tank and a tv for that very reason. Have you thought about using a uv while fallow? might knock out whats killing your fish..
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I don't know what happened. I am starting to look on it as a good old fashioned tank crash. I went back and reviewed my posts and found that for after the blizzard power outage, for a while this winter, things were pretty good, not fantastic but pretty good. The everything went blooey! The brown stuff caught my attention but I think the hair algae had been taking off before. I think there was maybe a hidden invert that died. I also had a couple of stupid things where a tank babysitter kept dosing carbon (VSV) when the skimmer had quit working, and there was no way to export the nutrient (bacteria) produced. I think that could be a culprit. I have found a good deal of what i would call stankiness in the substrate. Large die-offs of the microfauna in the reef (astererinas, pods, ministars, etc, etc) also point to toxic conditions in the tank.
I have thought about running UV for a bit, especially since I have a big honking pond UV unit someone gave me just sitting there!
One interesting tidbit to file away is that a 2" bulkhead cannot be easily fit into a rubbermaid tub's existing bulkhead hole just by enlarging it to 3". There are some existing support structures on the inside which would have to be removed in order for the back of the bulkhead and seal to seat against the side of the tub. I am going to have to create a new and separate hole just for the 2" bulkhead andI will use the existing hole for something else, the skimmer feed perhaps.
A weird coral note: Of all the suffereing acros and montis in my tank, the one genus of coral that seems to shrug off everything that's happened is cyphastrea, both the red and blue superman/meteor and the all-green Emerald City varieties. Other corals that don't mind include the mean and tough hydnophora and the long suffering green pinapple type brain I've had since 1999. Just doesn't bug 'em.
A weird coral note: Of all the suffereing acros and montis in my tank, the one genus of coral that seems to shrug off everything that's happened is cyphastrea, both the red and blue superman/meteor and the all-green Emerald City varieties. Other corals that don't mind include the mean and tough hydnophora and the long suffering green pinapple type brain I've had since 1999. Just doesn't bug 'em.
do you put any flow through your rockwork piping besides to vacuum? Sounds like that could be a big problem your having. Even though you are sucking the junk out, does the water movement displace some of the nasty stuff to the water column? Could be a reason you cant seem to get the upper hand.
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I WILL PREVAIL!
Now that everything has gone so wrong, I am fired up about the challenge.
When I set up the reef, my plan was to run some of my return flow through the pipes. Someone wisely pointed out that that was a great way to accidentally siphon every last drop out of my tank in a power failure.
Now, since everything old is new again, I am back to the idea. I am going to start with just a basic submersible pump feeding the PVC network and see how that goes. Since I am back in experimental mode, I don't care about heating up the tank with the pump.
The rocks I'm cooking are already stinking up the garage. Yuck.
New giant red cyano outbreak in the reef. Small patches of the "golden gunk" (dinos) too. What the hell? I think I exposed nutrients when I removed substrate. I'm feeding very minimally, just a teaspoon or so of NLS pellets a day. I bumped up skimming and pulled a full five gallons of skimmate yesterday.
I went to change the big GFO reactor and found the GFO had solidified Into something like concrete. It was really hard to get out, I had to chisel it out with a long screwdriver and a hammer. Not fun. I then tried to get the new GFO to tumble and found that the output hose was almost completely blocked with a calcium deposit. Another strange manifestation of my reef's chemistry. I had to replace it, it couldn't be cleaned. Weird. Tumbling now.
That could really help turn things along with all the general house keeping you've been doing! Hang in there! And run that beast of a skimmer!!!!
Lost several of the urchins since changing the GFO. Also a few hermits. Starting to suspect some sort of toxicity. Could there be an issue with the GFO since I only recently switched to the high-capacity type. I wonder what a copper test kit costs.
RO water is coming out at 16PPM, probably need to change the DI filter.
Rock cooking doing well, water has cleared and the smell is gone. Probably give it a few more weeks and then swap with a new load of rocks from the tank.
On the plus side, I'm going on vacation in a few weeks and for the first time in four years I don't give a crap what happens in the reef.
RO water is coming out at 16PPM, probably need to change the DI filter.
Rock cooking doing well, water has cleared and the smell is gone. Probably give it a few more weeks and then swap with a new load of rocks from the tank.
On the plus side, I'm going on vacation in a few weeks and for the first time in four years I don't give a crap what happens in the reef.
Hmm very nice build..ignore the bong comment. Been reading from the beginning
Interested to see what the reef looks like when I get back from vacation. Current thought is that I will continue to UNBUILD and cook rock until the tank looks like it did in the beginning. Hope I don't lose my remaining (TOUGH) acros, but I have to get it "back to where you once belonged...".
Time to do another complete round of tests and try to get that cord loose to see if that's poisoning the tank!
Time to do another complete round of tests and try to get that cord loose to see if that's poisoning the tank!