agarg 210 tank upgrade

[bshriver]

Brett, its prob the media that has some mag in it.

Hey Don! How are things? I need to check out your latest thread.

 

Yes, it is my assumption that the new media is keeping the mag up. I got the media with a used reactor. It is GenX CRM. I have never used it before. It must have a lot of Mag in it because I used to dose a ton of Randy's mag supplement every day just to keep it at 1300~1400 (both systems). Now my mag is up around 1600 and it won't come down without dosing. The same thing happened in the 110/66 system when I switched it over to the Gen-X media!

 

I used zeo mag in CA reactors before and it did not seem to keep mag levels up at all.

 

I also got some zeo mag like stuff with this media, but I did not put it in both reactors, yet both reactors started maintaining Mag after I switched to the GenX media.

 

I thikn my coral skeltons are a little stronger now as well. Perhaps due to more strontium in the media?

[dtfleming]

Could be.

[bshriver]

Lookin Good.

Ron

Thanks Ron! Our new group buy corals should find a spot in there somewhere after a month in QT I might put the scroll coral in the 110 though. It's lights are not quite as intense.

[bshriver]

Coming down the home stretch here for equipment. I added one of the final pieces - a custom fuge (NAGA) under the stand. Under the tank is now full and, note that behind the tank is too

 

Only remaining things may be a phosphate reactor and ozone eventually. Or an LED light for the fuge, which you then be followed by a frag rack or two of course But for now my 66 gallon frag tank has plenty of room - now that I got all of the colonies out of it into this tank anyway

 

Pics:

 

Fuge

 

 

 

Behind the tank:

 

 

Thanks for looking!

 

Brett

[El Camaron]

nice looking tank and corals man.

[bshriver]

Thanks!

 

Your chalices will show up on the sandbed soon!

[dtfleming]

Looks good Brett, Couple of questions about the fuge. I assume you are having a pump feed it and just letting it flow back out into the sump? Are you planning on adding any sand to it. I just got some more different macro algaes in, so I can give you some to add to the fuge. What light are you lighting this with? Looks neat and something I may want to add to my sump, so I can have a display fuge with pipefish.

[bshriver]

I may add a DSB or a container in it as a DSB. My 110 system fuge has a DSB as does the 110 display. The display DSB is 3.5 years ol now and going strong.

 

This tank I went with a shallow sb so I may still add a DSB to the fuge.

 

Flow is super simple. In the second picture you can see the drain hose from the display in the back right corner. It drains straight down into the fuge. There are two 1.5 inch bulkhead drains that gravity feed to the sump.

 

Lighting is on te cheap too. Two clamp on flood lamps from home depot. The bulbs are 120w equivalent 5.5k pc flood lamp bulbs from home depot for $7 each. Par at the chaeto is around 120. Plenty for chaeto to grow well. If I ever add a frag rack to the fuge I will add LED lights.

[zoozilla]

Coming along quite nicely, Brett!!!

[bshriver]

Coming along quite nicely, Brett!!!

Thanks Dan! It was good meeting you on Friday. LMK how the frags do.

[bshriver]

Well the female balck clown seemed to die of old age. She was around 6 years old. I had a normal morph ocelaris pair as well that was six years old and lost that female too. Is that how long the females live?

 

Anyway, I decided to put the two males together in the 210 and see what happens. They seemed to have paired right away. Pics in a sec.

 

 

 

Chalice row

 

[bshriver]

So a friend came by with a DSLR and got a few decent pics. Better than my iPhone anyway

 

I messed with the return and stirred up a bunch of debris. Plus the tank is just getting over its first small bout with cyno (old lights, bad pump - both fixed), but there are some good shots despite my tank

 

 

Note, the leather is recovering from some major recent fraggage

 

A few FTS with fish in various spots. Followed by a bunch of random coral/fish shots.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[watson_barrett]

looking great, another 7-8 months and things are going to get crazy in there. nice work.

 

U plan to add any more livestock or have plans for anything anytime soon?

[bshriver]

Thanks! Now if I can just can a water change regimen greater than once every 6 months, my SPS growth might take off again

 

I have no real plans for any more livestock. I may add a couple more lyretail anthias and some smaller fish like a clown or lemon goby. I have an emperor juvenile in my 110 gallon seeing if he will eat coral or not. So far so good. I have never had trouble with angels eating coral - so far I have had long term luck with a coral beauty, a flame angel and a grey poma angel. Now I have had the emperor for a month or so. If he works out, I may get rid of the sailfin tang and move the emperor up. I suspect I will be pushing the bio load as it is with the 5 tangs that are still growing so adding an emperor on top of that may be too much.

 

I think one of the lumenbright reflectors on this system came from you, but I have trouble remembering everybody I get stuff from

 

I got a rebel T1I DSLR camera for xmas. Here are a few shots I took playing around with it the first day. The first is the best but I am not sure why the purple color shows up on the edge of color transitions. Perhaps a camera buff can fill me in on what I am doing wrong. All of my shots with the white balance setting I was using tended to mix some purple in on the blue tang and my blue devils.

 

 

The view from my favorite chair

 

and some other random ones

[bshriver]

Well, I had the camera out today and took some snaps of my fish in my 110. My son cleaned up the glass so you could actually see in It is turning into the worlds biggest tube worm farm.

 

 

 

 

 

Anyway, some of my favorite fish are in it.

 

 

 

But first, some old flourescence shots from a few years back. A guy who studies flourescence in corals came to a CMAS meeting a while back and sold glasses and blue flashlights? Well I used them to take these shots.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Now the fish and inverts from the 110

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited January 17, 2011 by bshriver

[bshriver]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[bshriver]

Get this hermit off my back!!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Peek a boo - I broke off a bunch of the tube snails and he got covered with some of the slime.

 

 

 

 

And two shots from my 210

 

 

 

 

The leather is starting to heal from the free fragfest from a few weeks back. I owe people some PMs for the next one.

 

Edited January 17, 2011 by bshriver

[L8 2 RISE]

Wow, I just stumbled upon this from the link in your sig, Any updated pictures? The tank looks really cool!

[bshriver]

Thanks! I have not taken any pics in a while - at least not any good ones. I got a new Canon 100MM Macro lens too, so I have no good excuse.

 

Both the 210 and 110 are plugging along as well as possible given the lack of TLC this past year. The fish are all doing well as is the coral at the moment. My 210 got a little out of whack over the summer when the CA reactor ran out of media. I lost a few pieces before I had time to replace probes and refresh the media.

 

Maybe over XMas I will have time to clean it up and take some new pics.

 

I am building a nice LED fixture for the 110 (the tank with the powder blue and the emperor angel in it). It is alomst complete.

 

The emperor angel will eventually move to the 210 if he continues to eb coral friendly.

 

Thanks for looking!

[bshriver]

A fellow reefer took some awesome shots

 

 

 

 

These were all shot with a Nikon D7000 and a Tamron 90mm Macro Lens. Coral shots are on-tripod with a remote shutter, and the Fish shots are in-hand. More specific details about each shot (aperture, shutter, ISO) are available on Flickr under actions > view Exif Info if you are interested.

[zoozilla]

Looking Great!!!

[bshriver]

Thanks! The next task is to move the emperor angle into the 210 from the 110. So far he has been a model citizen. I just need to make sure the 210 can handle the bio-load.

 

I am thinking of turning an old calcium reactor into a recirculating bio-pellet reactor that allows you to control the flow through the unit while keeping the pellets tumbling. LMK if anyone has any experience doing this!