Finally getting around to an update. Life's been hectic or I've been slack - maybe both.
Firstly I did a quick edit to my previous post in this TJ on building bommies & added some pics. Not as detailed as I would have liked because things got hectic when I was doing it. But if anyone has a question just yell out as always.
I acquired quite a few frags & corals, mostly through members here on these forums & ended up loading up two frag racks in my
wife's tank (That TJ updating next). Also picked up what I'm pretty sure is a purple tipped crispa anemone from a member here & a clown, both of which went into Donna's tank after a three hour drip acclimatisation. Unfortunately the only other fish in the tank, a Royal Dottyback, bullied it from the start and we couldn't catch either. The clown was dead next morning. Kama though, the clown must have fought back as the dotty was majorly stressed and developed what appeared to be marine ich (whitespot). Visibly only a couple of spots but it was dead within days & before I could get it down to hyposalinity, despite it eating well on home made marinara & garlic mince plus a daily portion of newly hatched brine shrimp. Although I've had fish with ich before, this is the first time I've lost one to it and I'm a bit frustrated at losing a critter to PITA ich.
On the second day I got the nem to eat a piece of fresh squid but it has rejected target feeding since, however it's thickening up its tentacles and seems to be thriving under the 150w MH light. My tank's still a little young for a nem yet so it won't go in there for a while.
My tank is now fully operational although I don't have the skimmer yet, still saving for that but there's little bioload anyway & no fish yet. Balancing the flow from my weir and my 3500lph return pump is a bit of a trick and as soon as I lose a cm of water to evaporation, the return pump creates a vortex and sucks air - sending microbubbles into the tank. An automatic top up is definitely on the cards.
I do have a T piece on the return above the pump with flow controlled by one of those horrible & useless pvc ball valves but the balancing act continues. With power off I only have a gap of 5mm between the water level and the top of my sump so I can't add more water. The real problem I think is in the sump's first baffle, it reaches to within 2cm of the sump wall height and so that compartment retains a depth of probably 28cm. I'm pretty sure I'll need to cut that baffle down a bit to allow a greater depth in the refugium and return area.
If I remember correctly from my firefighter exams, to prevent a vortex the depth of the intake underwater must be at least double the circumference of the hose drawing water. I'm running 25mm return line but only have about 25mm coverage above the pump at the moment.
I discovered that my moonlight controller & two of the 3 led diode units were dead & in my search for 2nd hand replacements, a very generous person offered me his moonlight system (Fishbowl Innovations - same as mine) as he broke his power cords & hasn't used it for some time. All for just the cost of postage. He, like me, enjoys paying things forward occasionally. So I'm waiting for that and I'll make one up from the two sets. Just a note here: the damage to my moonlights was my own fault, it had nothing to do with quality of the unit, which I'm very happy with. Stupid me forgot it was an american 5V unit & I plugged a 12V power supply into it.:eek
Okay a few notes to myself since my memory is crap
(pinching Chimaera's idea), then on with the pics. Today:
- Transferred two frag racks from seed tank to my DT.
- Fragged up a few plugs of zoas using the single/double polyp method as an experiment.
- Transferred 2nd coco worm to DT.
- Moved experimental acro frag back to frag rack at side of tank.
- The suggestion to use golf tees as mounts for single polyp fragging doesn't work - they float.
- Put bag of carbon in sump.
- Diatoms starting to develop on substrate and a few rocks. Changed 3 of the six bulbs. Do rest asap.