Cali Kid Corals

Mike's newest disaster...

Good call on the low value, I will have to figure out how to do that programming, it's an old Reefkeeper Lite that I just happened to have 2 or 3 of for some reason ($20 each with the powerbar, just could not say no to that).

Yeah I'm sure it's not condensation, I see the water on the floor absorbed into the old nasty linolium, although feeling around the entire perimeter I couldn't feel any moisture, and even around the base (the whole thing is on a foam pad) so I'm really confused where it could be coming from. There's nothing in the tank now except some power heads so I don't see anything splashing water out... eh... I'm hoping salt creep plugs whatever hole is doing it :D

Plan B (if it bugs me enough), drag my 300G Rubbermaid out of the backyard, scrub it clean, maybe fill it halfway with water, call that my temp tank, and do without a sump. Maybe make some platform and have the skimmer in the "tank", stick on an ATO that turns on a few times a day to try and keep the water level level. The more I think of it, the more I'm thinking of it...
 
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Plan B (if it bugs me enough), drag my 300G Rubbermaid out of the backyard, scrub it clean, maybe fill it halfway with water, call that my temp tank, and do without a sump. Maybe make some platform and have the skimmer in the "tank", stick on an ATO that turns on a few times a day to try and keep the water level level. The more I think of it, the more I'm thinking of it...

I can just see the local Hawks : "Hmm, brightly colored fish for a change. A bit odd, but still tasty. And even warmed up a bit for us"
 
Doesn't look to be any further leaking from the indoor pond, so the 300g tub will continue to sit outside. Maybe there was a gasket issue, or some water got on the floor and just didn't want to be dried up. Either way threw in a couple of test corals, a rock with a couple of green mushrooms, and a little tyree green toadstool. 250W halide is illuminating it, so there's a bright spot, and some less bright spots, but overall we'll see if it works out. Need to see if the cheap soft corals survive then test it out with an anemone.
 
Alrighty, had to move a little quicker than I wanted as apparently another heater went out on the older tank. And popping a temp probe in the tank apparently it was sitting at 67.4 degrees, fish seemed no worse for the wear though. But I didn't know if that lower temperature was going to work long term, so moved all the fish over to the indoor lagoon, yellow tang, purple tang, kole tang, tomini tang, foxface rabbitfish, 2 percula clowns, and 1 "lyretail" anthias (orange ones with blue eyes). Also moved over a single turbo snail, apparently that was the last snail in the tank, as well as 7 rose bubble tip anemones, those were doing a good job not wanting to let go of the deep holes they were all planted in, but now they got halides to roast under instead of the gradual increase in light with LEDs, so we'll see how well they do.
 
So threw on a plastic bird net mesh to prevent any leaping fish from turning into colorful mummies on the floor.

7 anemones, and managed to get them out fairly easily... we'll see how well they like being under the halide in one of the more brighter areas
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Really think I'm going to need to start another thread when I get the real tank up!

Please excuse the pics, got a low spec version of Samsung Galaxy type phone, so I'm sure the camera, hardware, image processing isn't anywhere near an S7 or iPhones

So these are a few of the corals I bought, from top down, some type of millepora, something that may be tenius or "deepwater" acro, and some "stag", the bottom one is actually the largest frag I got it just doesn't show from the top pics. I'm really hoping I can keep these up and going, as I'm really looking for the "diamond in the rough" corals and of course my old motto "Brown is a color too!" (with the following addition) "But any color but brown!" In all seriousness, I have a 250W metal halide lamp over this, the blastos love it, the anemones don't seem to mind, so why not try and grow some stuff out in the meantime
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5 more corals, I was interested in the knobby nature of the top guy, had to get the one under it due to it being encrusted onto the plug, the brown looking one I did see some purple trying to peek through, and the other two honestly look the same.... but we'll see! There is a 9th piece, but it's a very tiny (baby) rhodactis looking mushroom, looked like it had blue and red coloration to it, it did not come out too well in the picture, and unfortunately there's too much light glare if I try to take a picture directly over it.
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My anemones decided they didn't like being directly under the lamp even though the lamp is a good 2.5-3 feet off the surface, so they of course started wandering which is fine. Could also be due to the flow, I only have a single Tunze 60xx (non controllable) and the return pump (set to low) as flow. I'm thinking of adding one of the Jebaos to a corner to see if I can't get some additional wide flow, but just haven't gotten around to it
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Well the coral in the middle of the top picture has some STN going on, not sure what to make of that could be that the white I see in the picture was the beginning of it. Other corals seem fine though (man, I need to fish out my old camera to take some proper macro shots so I can get a feel for how they're doing.

Also finished my taxes today, love my little guy, getting a good chunk of money back, that can very easily go towards a new tank... once I get the floor finished. Think I've decided on 7'x3'x'2', having been tank sitting the past week I like the 30" width, but I dunno, something just lacking makes me want the extra 6", plus it will make it that much more impressive from that direction. And as an added bonus a piece of 3/4" plywood fits perfectly on that with a 12" overhang in two directions for me to have a little granite bar top of the two viewable sides.

Now just to find time to do constructions.... bleh.
 
Well it's a matter of time, I need to balance the act of doing stuff on the "livable" part of the house versus "my space", and "my space" has a low priority (unfortunately). doubly so since there's a lot of clutter and mess in "my space" so I need to rearrange and then build, and then rearrange back... not fun :D

Although if your little work truck/van can care 4x8 sheets of plywood I might hit you up when I get to that part :D
 
It can. They don't lie flat by like 2" cause I got the passenger model which has a stupid plastic trim piece. I can make it work tho. I really mean it that I'm happy to help time permitting. Even if it's moving crap from one place to another then back again. I've been there, done that, and I get it. Not to mention I've been in your new parent with a remodel going on shoes recently. Sometimes things seem silly to ask for help with if they aren't a huge task,but that's the task that needs to get done first, so why not have some help?
 
Ok definitely getting bummed, there is a leak somewhere in my pond, it's not big but I can see the wetspot on the floor growing where as I originally thought it was just me being sloppywith putting in freshwater. Gotta think of a way to move fish to a temporary tank, then move everything out, throw away all that garbage, then put everything back into a new tank (hey that 300g rubbermade might get some use), and hopefully there's not a whole lot of cycling due to the abundance of LR already in. God damnit, this is just pissing me off too because my kid's birthday is in 3 weekends, and I'm booked up the next 2 weekends with kids parties as it is (although at least 1 of them I can get out of, so maybe in a couple weeks I can move everything while my wife is out).

Although I've been keeping an eye on the salinity and it really hasn't dropped considering the amount of water I've put into it, maybe most of it is still evaporation after all.


That said, I had another idea for what to do for my main tank, involving sheets of PVC and me building it myself. Full disclaimer, I have been pretty hopped up on cold meds the past couple days (no one told me *I* was the one who was going to be getting sick from all my kids little play friends!). However might have to shoot that down as I thought I had a 5 foot pane of 1/2" glass sitting in the basement (after holding onto it for at least 8 years, I think I threw it away sometime last year). I kept the idea in my mind because it would be something a bit more creative than a rectangular box, and would seem kind of cool. So if anyone knows of a broken glass tank with 1/2" glass that can be salvaged, maybe 10 feet worth (not in one single pane) keep an eye out for me :D At least until one tank builder gets back to me on whether they can do a notched out glass panel like the Keith Grandt tanks.
 
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Alrighty, bummed be gone! 300G Rubbermaid is installed, and has been filling up (slowly), fish have been moved in (they didn't like being moved out). This guy is definitely an upgrade for a temporary holding tank, and I wouldn't mind if it is a long term temporary solution so I won't feel quite so rushed to get stuff done. There have been some problems getting it installed, first of which was a leaking gasket, which is at the bottom of the tank, long story short got that taken care of, then I needed to move it a little bit closer to the washing machine to squeeze my sump on the side ... yeah 100g of water made that a bit difficult so drained most of the water again and kind of jerked it over... we're good. Downside is my little 20g sump is supposed to service 300g of water... I don't have any other tanks I can squeeze in there.

Now you know what a problem is with a 300g tank that's 25" tall? one full garbage bin of water fills the tank like 2" max... and being as there are already fish/coral there it's not like I can just fill the rubbermaid (which I will now call "The New Lagoon") with fresh water and mix salt together, so one Brute at a time... over and over, mix, dump (don't even heat it, it only drops the tank temp about a degree).

Here's some images, unfortunately I'm 1) taking pics with a low end smart phone, and 2) the lights make it very hard to take pictures without seeing a reflection of them so I have to take from a low angle which means nothing looks very good.
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On the far side is my new overflow, simply made a box out of whatever acrylic I had lying around, and going to hold it to the side with a magnet (it's already there holding it), figure there's going to be only a slight amount of force on it, there's going to be a buoyant force because the tank water is going to be slightly higher, but there's also the weight of the acrylic, it hangs there without any water touching it so it should be good to go. Unfortunately I'm going to tempt fate and do a siphon overflow as I don't feel like drilling a hole in this thing just for an overflow, my plan is to use some fairly beefy PVC (1.5") then connect it with clear vinyl so I can keep a good eye on if there's too much air in it to break the suction, then attach an aqualifter to a timer to turn on maybe once a day to suck out any air. We'll see how well this plan works out :D

My original plan was to just throw the 20g sump into the Lagoon, then the entire edge of the sump is an overflow to skim the surface, granted the water level in the Lagoon would have been low but the deciding factor to make me think something else was that all the rocks wouldn't be submered (more on this later), and as evaporation happens the sump will end up low on water and the pump might run dry if I'm not right on top of things. So overflow it is! It has been going for quite a few days without enough water yet, and I can definitely see the issues without having a skimmer.

Here's another shot, the fish really love the more open feel, where as with the pond liner they stayed in the smaller bottom section without really swimming the top which kept them in maybe 20-30g worth of swimming space. Now they have like a 5' x 6' semi-oval to swim around... They like very much. Well except the Tomini tang, not sure why he stays in the caves and rarely comes out (even to eat) I worry I might lose him as I did my orange lyretail anthias, he was "fine" one day (eating food like normal) then I moved a pump in the tank and his body came rolling out from under a rock when the water blew him out. Oh well.
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So lights are a 250W metal halide which pretty much gives great coverage, as I don't need to have coral growing amounts of light everywhere in the tank. And the other is my homemade LED I had over my 40g breeder, use it mostly for the blue lights as the halide is on maybe 6-7 hours a day (forgot what the time is set at). So I'm not particularly happy with the egg crate with rocks on top, it worked much better in the pond, but here not so much as I can see way too much of the egg crate for my tastes. When I get some time and I clean off the rocks from the old tank I might toss more in here. I might also rearrange the rockwork, just put my swimsuit on and sit in the lagoon and move things around, give more night time cave sleeping spaces.

Current flow in the tank is a non-controllable Tunze pump, one of those Jebao WP40s (adjustable Vortech look a like), and a *60 (forgot the prefix, it's the Tunze Stream clone), unfortunately the 60 doesn't like to start form an off state, but works fine if it's on all the time, the 40 is on some weird mode where it stays on for a really long time, then off for a long time, not sure if the controller is busted or if that is an actual mode, but regardless I like it :D When I get time I probably will pull my Vortech MP60 out of storage and slap that on the side. Although I am tempted by those new Maxspect Gyre pumps, one of those on a flat edge might be pretty bad ass... plus it might help get any detritus into suspension a lot better. But regardless, my kid's party is next weekend, so I have much to get ready for, so no new stuff until at least after that :D

FYI, I actually like this lagoon look, and if Arnold gets a SF tank tour up I won't be embarrassed to show this off, even though this is a temporary solution :)
 
Hahaha yeah, IceCap makes a reef cam but at $200 it better be more than 0.9MP, seriously at that price I can just make sure there's no surface agitation and look from the top.
 
Ok took a couple weeks, but I finally am skimming again!

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Made this out of 2" acrylic tube, and shoved it into some PVC elbows, threw an aqualifter tube inside it in case airbubbles start forming, and voila! siphon ovverflow. So that's the good news. The bad news is I can't quite dial this in, almost like it's not pulling as much water as I'd like. Oh well protein skimmer already pulled out a few inches of super dark gunk in the past 24 hours so I'm happy. I'll see what I can do to dial that in. Might have to bite the bullet and drill the tank and toss in a uniseal or two though.

Good call on the low value, I will have to figure out how to do that programming, it's an old Reefkeeper Lite
I really wish I figured out how to do this... when I fed the tank today I noticed now nice and warm it felt... then I looked up at the reefkeeper and saw the temp was 65 degrees.... then I looked to where the temp probe should have been and it was not in the water... crap crap crap. Tossed it back in the water and bammo 86.4 degrees, almost 10 degrees warmer than it should be. The upside is that 300 gallons of water takes a while to warm up, the downside is I have a 1000 watt heater in there. Oh well fish look happy, anemones don't look too pissed off, and my corals aren't all dead yet. Evaporation and radiation do your thing! There's no way I'm going to be able drop the temp quickly enough. I think things will be fine, but stupid me should ziptie that probe to the side somehow so it doesn't move.
 
So the pond is doing fine, great storage tank, but damnit if I'm not losing a few gallons a day to evaporation just due to the surface area.

Minor news is I got "The tank" now what The Tank™ has evolved from is different than what I have originally planned. Originally I wanted some tank in the 300 gallon range, preferably longer just as a gift for my tangs and foxface. What I ended up with was something smaller, 200g tank, that is 4' x 3' x 27", the Marineland Deep Dimension tank. This decision ultimately was me boiling down to asking myself "Ok how much tank do I really want considering this whole 'new kid thing' might occupy a few minutes a day more than I anticipate" along with "How much do I want to spend to stay in this hobby with a new tank?", and what it came down to really was I have had a 4'x3'x2' tank before and it was fabulous, and it could possibly give me "Piece of the reef" look without requiring as much effort as say a tank twice as long plus the price on the tank was really too much of a good thing, not quite $1/gallon petco sale... but at $2/gallon I was pretty much hooked in. And while I did want a longer tank, I think I'll live with this choice (unless another fantastic deal comes up :D)

So with the help of Mario, his brother and Son we all went to get tanks, luckily he had a van that his tank and my tank could fit into, of course the guy tells me he also has a 300G tank, and I'm thinking "why didn't I know about this!". At the end of the day though I think I'll be more than happy with what I got, it's glass which is what I want, weighs a crap ton, and it's actually brand new still on the pallet and wrapped in cardboard and plastic. And it'll stay there until all the construction work gets done, this might be the semester that I have ample time to get weekend work done!!! *crosses fingers*.
 
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