The Rebirth/Rebuild of my 180g sps thread

[Acronuts]

Update on my 180 gallon:

Purchased a probe to replace an aging one which kept telling me my PH was 11.46!
Once calibrated I am now looking at a PH of 7.96. Low to where it needs to be but at least I know I can slowly add a little kalk to boost it up into the normal range of 8.1 to 8.3.
Since I live in Florida I keep my home sealed because I want cool comfort not heat and humidity ! But there is a draw back! The amount of CO2 in my home while safe for us humans is a likely cause of my low PH.
I will run a test and open windows in the next couple of days as we experience a cool front lol! Then will see if I still have a low PH. Will let you all know.

As for the doser it is working like a charm!! I however made a dose time change on dosing ALK. Since I saw that the PH was low I decided to dose ALK in the am hours and CA in the evening hours.
The theory from what I have read is that ALK does raise ALK and PH. Will see if this makes a difference as well.

I was on Facebook and became friends with a fellow south Florida reef enthusiast. Michael sold me a frag pack and if I local picked up he would throw in a few extras to make my drive a little more palatable, lol!

His tank is amazing and he has been reefing for awhile now. I will post a FTS once I get his permission. He runs T5's and LED supplement and is doing ZEOVIT. His growth and colors are awesome!

Here are what I believe are tried and true sps that have stood the test of time and a few pieces I have never had!

Suhorsonoi


Ant Insignis


ORA's Joe the coral



ORA's Miami Orchid



ORA's Cali Tort

 

[Sniperhank]

Nice frags. Those zeovit systems are really interesting. Neat way of doing things.

 

[Acronuts]

Nice frags. Those zeovit systems are really interesting. Neat way of doing things.

Thx Sniperhank!
Agreed on ZEOVIT. I printed out the material to read up on it and see if this is a route I would like to go. Not sure yet though.

 

[Acronuts]

Here are some more pickups from Michael:

RR cornbread ice Dragon


RR cornbread creamsicle


ORA's Pearlberry


Palmer's blue milli


One of my absolute favs
ORA's Hawkins

 

[Acronuts]

More additions:
ORA Cali Tort - RR creamsicle - P rainbow


ORA's Birdsnest

 

[Sniperhank]

Thx Sniperhank!
Agreed on ZEOVIT. I printed out the material to read up on it and see if this is a route I would like to go. Not sure yet though.

I've read through it. If it wasn't so expensive I think it'd be worth the shot. I love how they do media reactors. I would kill for that, rather than having to take it apart to rinse media off.

 

[Acronuts]

I've read through it. If it wasn't so expensive I think it'd be worth the shot. I love how they do media reactors. I would kill for that, rather than having to take it apart to rinse media off.

Have not gotten into reading the material as of yet but it sounds very intriguing but you are correct it is rather an expensive way of maintaining a reef.

 

[Sniperhank]

But it makes sense. You end up finding a balance of the different bags and run them. It is the exact same thing we do with other things. I sometimes dose my tank for alkalinity where as you might not. I run my tank on distilled water and struggle with phosphates so run more media for that than anyone else I know. Every setup is different, which is their biggest point.

 

[Acronuts]

But it makes sense. You end up finding a balance of the different bags and run them. It is the exact same thing we do with other things. I sometimes dose my tank for alkalinity where as you might not. I run my tank on distilled water and struggle with phosphates so run more media for that than anyone else I know. Every setup is different, which is their biggest point.

Very true. Out little cubes of the ocean are expensive to maintain regardless of which way we chose to run our systems.
I still will give it a read sniperhank and will let you know what I think.

 

[Acronuts]

Update 5-4-2015
Things are going super well in the tank. My parameters are staying really stable.
The doser works really really well!
I am so far dosing 30ml a day of ALK to maintain a level of 8.4 - Red Sea test kit
Mag doses 35ml 3 days a week to maintain a level of 1400 - Red Sea test kit
Calcium 45mg a day to maintain a level of 425-450 - Red Sea test kit

Use kalk to top off evaporated water once a week.

I purchased a second hand Digital Aquatics controller from a fellow reefer who bought a Neptune and wanted a little of his investment back. My aqua controller Jr. while working just fine the LCD display light was barely seeable in daytime and at night was not viewable at all. This light went out almost 1 year after I purchased it. Never really had help from the rep and I just said ya know they just lost another customer.

Anyhow pics will follow soon. Just transferred and installed the PC4's, probes, and I do have to say the setup is way better than the aqua controller ever was!

Known issues:
Some acros are pale in color.

Not sure if it's a water parameter issue or lighting one. Checked mh bulbs, they need to be replaced so ordered three new ones and will be here tomorrow.
I will slowly acclimate my corals by starting with 3 hours and increase the source every week by adding an additional hour per week till I get the 5 hours per day of intense 250 watts radiums.

If I see that the coloring is improving then I won't do anything more. If it is not improving then I am going to take off the bio pellets. Will research how to successfully take these guys off a system.
If you all have suggestions please feel free to chime in!

Now for the fun part! New additions!!!

Strawberry shortcake
Got another because the one I do have while doing really well seems to be a look alike, lol!


Unknown but seems to be some kind of lower light acro. The mother colony was about a year old in lfs growout tank and it has a blue/purple body. The growth is definitely different from garf bonsai.


Frag off of a Golden basket millie. This pic does not do it justice and it has not acclimated to my tank yet. But under actinic it coloring is gorgeous! Can't wait to see its growth!



Beautiful acro mariculture piece. Correlates are really light green with blue tips


This acro will be hard to imagine and the pic is bad and it is not acclimated to my tank. a lower light acro, body base is green tips are mauve, the polyps are pinky/red and the outmost coralite area is white.


After dipping this maricultured colony is NOT a happy camper. Lets hope for the best and see what happens once it starts cooking!


Next week I get a frag pack from BSA corals. Will keep you all posted!

 

[Acronuts]

Well update 5-17-2015

Installed the DA controller and setup was fairly easy. The PC4's are labelled and I need to secure wires so that I have a neat setup.Will post those pics as soon as I finished that part of the project.

He is a pick of the controller showing current conditions:


A funny thing happened the other nite! I happened to wake up in the middle of the nite around 3am to a beeping sound. Immediately I knew it was coming from the reef tank. I got up out of bed and opened the cabinet door to find the dosser at work letting me know at 3am that I was out of AlK and needed to add more lol!! Well needless to say I turned the alarm off and now I monitor the jugs and and so far it takes two weeks to go thru the jugs. I may still opt to turn the alarm back on or I may have DA controller monitor it but I will need to add another PC4. Currently researching stuff about the new DA device called "Archon."

Anyhow the halides came in I went ahead and labeled them and started the process of acclimating the tank corals and fish to the new radiums. Started with 3 hours and am in the 2nd week and added an additional hour this week to 4. I plan on staying at around 5 hours total for metal halide photo period. I may opt for 6 hours but depends On how the corals are colored. In my past experience 4 hours was just enough and I had a colorful tank. But with all the new acro's I have acquired I am excited to "cook" them as sps aholics say lol!

As I had stated in the last update I had ordered some acro's from BSA corals. I came across this guy thru Facebook and those that have ordered from him are very satisfied customers.The corals came in and were packed very well.




After acclimating and dipping they were placed in tank. i will go ahead a dip again in 5 days. First dip revealed nothing the frags were very clean. But will do it again.

 

[Acronuts]

More from the coral shipment

 

[Acronuts]

A few more lol!

 

[Acronuts]

This weekend I did a water change and was up cleaning the salt spray from top canopy and I happened to look down into the tank I a noticed that the view was starting to look really nice and the corals were looking good.
Here a few shots I took. Some I could not get to because the lights just blocked me and since I am using an iPhone 6+ rigged with an old polarized lenses from a pair of sunglasses it lol was a big hassle so could not get as many as I would have liked to.

 

[Acronuts]

More top down shots!

 

[Acronuts]

a few more guys!