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Yeah getting to that inner nut is very difficult on them. On the nano overflow there are little pieces of acrylic along the side so you cannot use your fingers at all. I have a hand wrench either from the kit or it was just laying around that I use. The hard part with the nano version is that since there is only one hole the box can rotate around while you're trying to tighten the nut. So you finally get the nut tightened and realize the box is crooked so you have go back and re-adjust. Other than the issues of getting the bulkhead installed mine's been a great overflow though. I did have to play with the flow rate a little to get it to be dead silent, but at least that's an option. No amount of tinkering with my megaflow overflow boxes will quite those guys down with their design. My clownfish fry are getting their second stripe now. They are starting to look more like the true perculas they are. 
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Mar 24, 2010 19:30
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Apologies if this has been asked, but I did some searches and found nothing relating to this specific topic. Previously, I had my cheato in an open topped container, suction cupped to the side of my tank, but last night I discovered that my turbo snail has acquired a taste for my precious algae. Currently I've got the cheato separated in a little breeder net inside the tank, but obviously this isn't optimal, as it's a huge eyesore. Can anyone recommend something to keep my cheato in? In my mind something solid all the way around, with little holes for water and other particles to pass through would be best. Like a wiffle ball sort of. Am I going about this the wrong way? Any help would be most appreciated.
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Mar 25, 2010 20:25
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How about a refugium?
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Mar 25, 2010 20:38
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A refugium might work, but I'm fairly cash strapped so I'm trying to find a relatively simple solution.
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Mar 25, 2010 20:55
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Like, literally a HOB filter that you take the media out of and just run the thing as a 'fuge. You can probably do it for $20, mini light fixture included.
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Mar 26, 2010 01:20
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Target had some clear plastic shampoo holders for sale. It has suction cups, is covered in holes and is clear, so it should work pretty well.
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Mar 26, 2010 03:08
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Here are a couple new pictures from my tank. 
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Mar 26, 2010 03:44
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Those are some beautiful pictures. What kind of lights are you running over it?
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Mar 27, 2010 00:00
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I've been getting back into keeping reefs after a 6 year hiatus. It's amazing how much has changed just in the last decade. My first tank I got off Craigslist - it had a hair algae problem but it's doing much better now, and the coral was all very healthy. I am picking up a new 48x24x16 rimless starphire tank this afternoon, and I have an acrylic nano that I am setting up as well. Here are some pics from my 75.... FTS Galaxea GBTA. This guy is getting big! Zoas Monticap under actinics only Green mushrooms. Green Star Polyps Candy Cane. These look neon green from above, but pretty pale through the glass. Open Brain Kenya Tree. I find branches of this thing stuck to my Vortech almost daily. I am glad I find them there instead of sprouting elsewhere! My Powder Blue Tang
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Mar 27, 2010 13:48
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I'm thinking about setting up a saltwater tank after I next move house. I'm not going to worry about coral this time around, just fish, coral can come in another tank later (my house is basically made of empty fish tanks, I accumulate them like odd socks). Can someone point me in the direction of a good resource, or just tell me what I need, as from what I've heard a tank without coral or living rock doesn't require the same maintenance or equipment. I'm thinking about sticking some local saltwater (coastal/estuary) fish in it, not necessarily 'reef' fish.
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Mar 27, 2010 14:08
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fishmonger posted:I've been getting back into keeping reefs after a 6 year hiatus. It's amazing how much has changed just in the last decade. My first tank I got off Craigslist - it had a hair algae problem but it's doing much better now, and the coral was all very healthy. I am picking up a new 48x24x16 rimless starphire tank this afternoon, and I have an acrylic nano that I am setting up as well. Here are some pics from my 75.... Rids! posted:I'm thinking about setting up a saltwater tank after I next move house. Where are you located? What you need depends on tank size and habitants. What are your local fish? You'll want a refractometer or hydrometer to measure salinity, and some sort of filtration, it's hard to say what without knowing what fish you're going to get or tank size.
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Mar 28, 2010 01:38
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Since it's an estuary and not an NSW reef environment, how much do brackish salinity fluctuations factor into the life cycle of the fish you want to keep?
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Mar 28, 2010 01:52
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I'm on the NSW/QLD border. The fish I'm looking at are fish I see both out on the reef and in the river mouth so I'm not concerned about fresh/salt fluctuations at the moment. edit: 4 foot tank edit2: arioch how do you know I'm in Australia? Rids! fucked around with this message at 06:42 on Mar 28, 2010 |
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Mar 28, 2010 06:31
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Rids! posted:I'm on the NSW/QLD border. The fish I'm looking at are fish I see both out on the reef and in the river mouth so I'm not concerned about fresh/salt fluctuations at the moment. When you said not necessarily reef fish, I thought you meant you lived in subtropical coast line. In your case you're just going to want to look for the usual setup for a Fish Only with Live Rock tank. I would check out this forum for more specific information. I'm not sure what's popular right not for FOWLR tanks. http://reefcentral.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=139
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Mar 28, 2010 06:43
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ludnix posted:Fish Only with Live Rock tank. This sounds like me, thanks.
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Mar 28, 2010 06:54
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Vigilantly Vigorous posted:Those are some beautiful pictures. What kind of lights are you running over it? Thanks, I am using a 150W metal halide with a 14k bulb. Here are a couple new ones I took tonight. I am just starting to take top down shots.  
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Mar 29, 2010 02:54
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Phoenix 14k bulb? If so, they're awesome.
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Mar 29, 2010 03:09
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rrOjKpSZ8PI Figured you guys would get a kick out of this, if you haven't seen it already! Probably one of the funniest things I've ever seen in relation to this hobby. (Hitler ranting, AEFW subtitles substituted in)
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Mar 30, 2010 15:37
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Hoping someone here has any helpful suggestions related to my tanks problems. Its getting really frustrating to the point I would really like to take it down and start with another tank completely. I'm just going to link my 2 threads from RC. The only change since posting is that I now have a Deltec MC500 for a skimmer. http://www.reefcentral.com/forums//showthread.php?t=1775869 http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1773706 Basically all my fish are doing happy (2 clowns, a purple chromi, and a diamond goby). And some of my corals are doing great while others are doing terrible. I have some candy canes that I saved from another reefer that have just taken off, also a frogspawn that is working on splitting and does great. I have 2 frags of zoas that are great color and open fine. While all my other zoas havent opened in weeks/months. I have a GBTA that opens and gobbles up food, looks good. Also have a leather that I adored in my old nano since it was huge, but it hasnt opened in weeks/months either and I'm worried I'm going to lose it. In the middle of this current situation I started dosing a small amount of kalk in the top off and the leather actually opened for a few days again but then closed.
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Mar 31, 2010 15:04
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Is it possible that the softies don't like the amount of flow in the tank? Two K3s is pretty hardcore in a 33g.
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Mar 31, 2010 16:43
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I've thought of this and tried moving things around to lower flow areas with no benefit. Also many have said things like never too much which I don't really believe. And the 2 zoa frags that are doing best are right in front of one powerhead.
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Mar 31, 2010 16:58
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Were the corals doing well under your dual 175w MH? You went from 350w of light down to ~216w. I also agree with Trillian that 2 K3s, even in a 4' tank, is probably too much flow for anything but hard corals. I had to use a K3 in my 90 while I waited for a replacement impeller on my Vortech MP40, and while I have the Vortech set to about 75%, the K3 was way more direct and powerful. I pointed it straight up towards the surface and was still knocking over frags at the opposite end of the tank. Your algae bloom could definitely be caused by the lighting change, or some change in your water. I had a small algae growth when my RO system's DI resin perished and I didn't use the TDS meter to check it. It went from 0ppm output (~8ppm from the tap) to >200ppm output (basically giving up everything it took out previously). A new set of filters and resin and a couple large water changes and everything went back to normal. As far as PH goes, your swings are not really anything to worry about. I wouldn't be dosing kalkwasser unless you have too low calcium and dkh, which your levels are fine. I've read that one surefire way to get rid of hair algae is to bump the magnesium levels slowly over the period of a month or so to ~1500ppm. The hair algae won't survive and your corals probably won't tell the difference. You can also try this the natural way with some chaetomorpha in a refugium. It'll pull out the nutrients that the HA is feeding on faster than the HA can, and thus starve out the HA eventually. I have a 1x1' chamber in my sump just growing chaeto under a cheap compact florescent flood light bulb -- it grows so quickly that I'm throwing a ziplock freezer back of it out every few weeks.
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Mar 31, 2010 17:04
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The fact that your other zoo frags are also not opening up is worrying. Have you tried placing them higher for light? I find that zoanthids really LOVE light and that in my tanks even many of my deep water zoanthids thrive under high powered lighting. Some of my (more "regular") zoanthids are even under the same amount of light that I put my high-light-loving acros under (400-600 PAR at the surface). I use high powered LED lighting, one tank has a custom fixture and the other has a PAR38 unit from Nanocustoms. I don't have any experience with leathers, but I'm guessing flow as well. VAGENDA OF MANOCIDE fucked around with this message at 17:17 on Mar 31, 2010 |
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Mar 31, 2010 17:15
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Do you by any chance use phosban? The white pellets have been known to contain an aluminum bond which can close softies for some inexplicable reason.
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Mar 31, 2010 17:45
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Woops should have mentioned that I got rid of all the HA, have some cyano now but I feel confident I can conquer that as I have before. The HA really bothered me. Nothing really changed when I switched to T5s, I felt like the lighting was just way too much since I didnt really plan on keeping any SPS besides a few caps I already have. Everything was doing just as bad or worse under MH. I have some zoas on the sand, some on the very top and some in the middle. None of them are opening. While I cant see anything, I was thinking maybe they were infected or something of that sort. Should I try dipping them, if so with what? I've been wanting a vortech but wasn't sure how to position one in the tank, seems like in a 4' tank I would need two which is definitely out of budget. e: I use carbon and GFO that I get from a local club member which many others in the club use in a TLF reactor. Man looking back at pictures of the tank when I first set it up, it just looks so much healthier. And I noticed a lot more corals that I've lost. A kenya tree (i thought these were invincible) and my mushrooms have shrunk by half at least. streetlamp fucked around with this message at 17:54 on Mar 31, 2010 |
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Mar 31, 2010 17:47
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streetlamp posted:I've thought of this and tried moving things around to lower flow areas with no benefit. Also many have said things like never too much which I don't really believe. And the 2 zoa frags that are doing best are right in front of one powerhead. I have an MP20(between 500-2000 gph in reefcrest mode) in my 25G and my soft corals are fine. In fact I moved a leather right next to it and it has never been better. Many leather corals will shed a layer of mucus every once in a while to keep clean. When they do this they can stay closed for a few weeks. I read on your reefcentral post that your oxygen levels are low. Why not try adding a hang on filter like and AC70 http://www.fosterandsmithaquatics.com/product/prod_display.cfm?pcatid=3610 I don't know if adding macro algae would noticeably effect your oxygen levels, but it would certainly help with your other nuisance algae outbreaks. When you do water changes are you using RO/DI water? If you are, when was the last time you checked the TDS?
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Apr 1, 2010 01:23
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Hypnotized posted:I have an MP20(between 500-2000 gph in reefcrest mode) in my 25G and my soft corals are fine. In fact I moved a leather right next to it and it has never been better. The MP20/40 can move a ton of water over a large area.. the K3 is more like a water bazooka (even without the little directional attachment). If there was something right in front of the K3, I could totally see it getting pissed off.
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Apr 1, 2010 01:33
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It's amazing to watch my MP10W ES at work with the ES NTM mode. (It does a long period of standing wave generation, then switches to moving a HUGE volume of water, then back to the standing waves)
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Apr 1, 2010 02:40
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Yes I make my own water, filters were just changed a few weeks ago when I read 4-5TDS. I'm well aware of leathers shedding and have experienced it but this is months now.
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Apr 1, 2010 03:55
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In other news, I just replaced my 6x54 T5HO with a cheap Odyssea 2x250 HQI fixture from aquatraders. The results are, well, see for yourself: 6x54 T5HO - only 4 of the bulbs lit (missing 1 10K and 1 460nm)  2x250 HQI 15K Odyssea bulbs  I think I'll let these bulbs break in for a little bit and then see how I like their color output. At first, it was very yellow but turned to a bit more mild white after an hour or so. The ballasts don't seem to be as overrated as some people have claimed, but I still may swap the 250s with some 150w phoenix 14ks or ushios or something.
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Apr 1, 2010 05:30
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Man I love looking at people's aquariums. I can't wait to get mine set up. I'm having a cabinet and canopy built now. Cabinet that came with the tank is, in short, a nice looking POS with bad construction. I'd love to do it myself but a lack of a garage kinda killed that. Today I painted my tank. I thought about some sort of background that wasn't permanent but I decided it would look like poo poo and just went with paint. I used a spray-on appliance epoxy that should be durable as hell and stick forever. Ready to paint. Good thing I'm not married. All this stuff is where a living room table should be.  Click here for the full 2048x1536 image. 5 coats applied. Dried for about 2 hours by this point, still shiny as hell. A lot of bugs decided to die on the paint, but you won't be able to see it when its against the wall so I'm not worried. If you got closer you can even see the little death throes they went through before they gave up and decided the paint didn't taste nearly as good as it smelled.  Click here for the full 2048x1536 image.  Click here for the full 2048x1536 image. porksmash fucked around with this message at 21:53 on Apr 3, 2010 |
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Apr 3, 2010 21:50
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You're going to love having the painted background. You'll never get the water stuck between the background and glass, and if you keep the back panel clean of corraline and green algae it will really make your corals stand out. Most the corals in my tank are doing great. I have been having problems with pocillapora lately though. I think raising my alkalinity might help, but I'll just have to see. Strange how it only affects the pocillapora colonies and nothing else.    
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Apr 5, 2010 19:33
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ludnix posted:You're going to love having the painted background. You'll never get the water stuck between the background and glass, and if you keep the back panel clean of corraline and green algae it will really make your corals stand out. I wish I painted the back of mine before I filled it up. I taped up one of those plastic background sheet things (blue fade), but you can only see the blue when the lights are off (something about the air gap between the acrylic and the background that makes it impossible to see). I've considered draining 90% of the water (so like 70+ gallons) and unbolting it from the studs and moving it like 6" so I can run a roller of paint across it, but too much risk.
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Apr 5, 2010 21:40
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Welp, running a wavemaker in the biocube made the bottom spring a leak, so I guess I have to advance my plans for a new tank ASAP. Current plan: custom acrylic tank, 35-45gal range, shallow (11-12" high), wide, eurobraced.
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Apr 5, 2010 23:06
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I think wavemakers are really ideal for coral flow, but like your experience, they are hell on tanks. I don't think I could ever run one without absolute assurance the tank can handle the additional stress. If it weren't for that I would be all over them.
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Apr 6, 2010 00:44
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I think I'd be alright with an eurobraced, welded, acrylic tank. I'm really addicted to wavemaking now, wouldn't really want to give that up. I'm aiming for a shallow 40B-style of tank currently. A friend's just grown out of his custom 45G-ish tank and stand (tank is 11" tall), so I might jump right on that and just add the eurobracing with like, 1/8" acrylic. Other stuff I'd have to get: sump skimmer lighting for tank (thinking about a cheap $100 MH setup, DIY as a pendant) lighting for sump (I might take down both the biocube and the 5.5g in which case I'd use the Nanocustoms PAR38 LED for the sump light, even though it's got 3 blue LEDs, the 2 whites should carry the chaeto growth perfectly) plumbing including pump (friend would help with this) Hmmmm, doesn't look too bad right now. To save on cash I could probably do without the skimmer for a few months and just run on carbon/GFO bags/water changes while everything settles down...
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Apr 6, 2010 01:08
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Hmm, it's actually a custom 35g-ish tank. 34"x22"x11" (the edges on the original acrylic cut were not suitable so he had it cut down by 1" on all sides except top). I'm going to have a guy roto out an euro-brace for it, drill a hole in the bottom for an overflow in the smack dab middle of the tank, then do my rockwork surrounding the overflow. Next, I just need to think about doing the sump. I've decided instead of MH pendants to go with a T5HO setup with 6x39W tubes. A 36" fixture over a 34" tank shouldn't be terrible. It'll save on the electricity bill and it's a shallow tank so I wouldn't have to worry about light intensity/penetration too much and I can worry less about heat transfer.
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Apr 7, 2010 01:06
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arioch posted:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rrOjKpSZ8PI Thats pretty hilarious.
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Apr 7, 2010 01:28
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My new toy, underwater HD video to follow. newer FTS 
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Apr 9, 2010 07:20
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Welp, didn't really want to have to do this so quick, but have to jump right into the new tank by the seat of my pants. Sump construction done, pretty basic affair, 20 long 30x12x12 with 7" skimmer section (for ASM mini-G skimmer), 3 layer baffles 1" spaced, 9" fuge area, 2 layer baffles, 3" for heater/equipment, 1 layer, then about 5" for a return pump. Going to have a guy do the work on the eurobrace this week, probably have that back by Friday or next Monday. Going to work on the stand while the acrylic work is going on, it's a 40" stand to keep the shallow tank relatively high, what I need to do is make a thing to hang the lighting fixture from, and add shelf space below the tank. Then I'll waterproof the inside and paint the outside... Tomorrow I'm going to pick up some lumber pieces, some paint/sealant, and plumbing. Hopefully I can have everything together ready to water test in under 2 weeks, and after that I'd have to really jump the gun on a quick cycle (going to put in some dry rock, some live rock, some sand, some live sand, dump in a couple bottles of bio-spira, then piss in the tank for good measure ... and run a phosphate reactor). Can't delay moving out from the BC14 any more than that. On the plus side, I'm already thinking about stocking the new tank (on top of putting the clowns in there). Current plan is to try to order a couple of the new CB Mandarin dragonets from ORA (which are supposed to come already trained on frozen and pellets). VAGENDA OF MANOCIDE fucked around with this message at 03:15 on Apr 13, 2010 |
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Apr 13, 2010 00:52
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