sfsuphysics
Supporting Member
My BIL was watching the house... er cats while the wife and I went to Florida, swam with manatees, toured amusement parks, ate so much tasty food we thought we'd be 10 pounds heavier but walking 500 miles a day in the parks for many days seems to have negated all of that... SCORE!
Anyways, I really don't trust my BIL terribly much, so I decided to go on full auto. Auto-feeder (which I've been using the past couple weeks to see if its enough), auto-top off I've been doing (on one tank), left Jan 3rd came back last night..er this morning (engine problem on plane... great!) and when I got back...
tank 1 - my "main" tank... the one that has had better days had a bunch of snails on glass, tank was a bit cloudy, entire reservoir of water gone, pump sucking in a tiny amount of air due to low sump. Well snails probably were because the acrylic was covered in diatoms, so mucho food source, one that I've been fairly good at knocking down as of recent (one you nab the hard brown spots its easy to clean off the "dust" unfortunately hard brown is back again *sigh*). Think cloudy came as a result of the kalk precipitate at the bottom of the top off. Also noticed a bit of filamentous brown algae/diatoms or something, not sure where this came from maybe auto-feeder is feeding too much, water change is in the short future regardless. Overall tank was fine, now some elbow grease to get the tank viewable again.
tank 2- my "anemone" tank... which as of late has been overrun with bubble algae, either way, this one was in worse shape because there is no auto-topoff in place. Unfortunately the pump was running dry for who knows how long, tank temp was absolutely frigid because the heaters are in the sump and not the main tank, but but a bit of a care (top off water) and over night the water running through the sump (pump still worked) everything seems no worse for the wear... anemones still look pissed off though.
Overall I'm happy I didn't have my magnificent tanks of old because Murphy would make sure worse would happen, and with a few tweaks I can go away on another 2 week vacation, maybe if I can get one of those auto-glass cleaning robots
BTW. if anyone was having a convo with me in another thread I'm sorry I've ignored you, however I've marked all messages as read as there were way too many to read through (I start work tomorrow for crying out loud!)
Anyways, I really don't trust my BIL terribly much, so I decided to go on full auto. Auto-feeder (which I've been using the past couple weeks to see if its enough), auto-top off I've been doing (on one tank), left Jan 3rd came back last night..er this morning (engine problem on plane... great!) and when I got back...
tank 1 - my "main" tank... the one that has had better days had a bunch of snails on glass, tank was a bit cloudy, entire reservoir of water gone, pump sucking in a tiny amount of air due to low sump. Well snails probably were because the acrylic was covered in diatoms, so mucho food source, one that I've been fairly good at knocking down as of recent (one you nab the hard brown spots its easy to clean off the "dust" unfortunately hard brown is back again *sigh*). Think cloudy came as a result of the kalk precipitate at the bottom of the top off. Also noticed a bit of filamentous brown algae/diatoms or something, not sure where this came from maybe auto-feeder is feeding too much, water change is in the short future regardless. Overall tank was fine, now some elbow grease to get the tank viewable again.
tank 2- my "anemone" tank... which as of late has been overrun with bubble algae, either way, this one was in worse shape because there is no auto-topoff in place. Unfortunately the pump was running dry for who knows how long, tank temp was absolutely frigid because the heaters are in the sump and not the main tank, but but a bit of a care (top off water) and over night the water running through the sump (pump still worked) everything seems no worse for the wear... anemones still look pissed off though.
Overall I'm happy I didn't have my magnificent tanks of old because Murphy would make sure worse would happen, and with a few tweaks I can go away on another 2 week vacation, maybe if I can get one of those auto-glass cleaning robots
BTW. if anyone was having a convo with me in another thread I'm sorry I've ignored you, however I've marked all messages as read as there were way too many to read through (I start work tomorrow for crying out loud!)