Pickupman66's 180 gal Glass box - Update for July 2013

Happy Father's day! I have a wonderful wife and kids.

Bicolor Frogspawn. purple and green in the same head and on the same tentacle!!!


Beautiful Atlantic Blue Juvi. eats great and gets along with all tank mates already.

 

Congrats on the great adds and family. Happy Father's day

 

Camera time. WOW this tank is starting to grow some coral. in 8 months, my Zoanthids have gone from maybe 20 polyps to well over 200. go back a few pages and check out the old photos.
here are the new ones.
Grape Sherbert Acro

Zoanthid Takeover

Blue Indigo Stag

Aqua Delight (had just a few weeks)

??? Acro..

Milli


Tinkerbell Acro

FS I got for Father's day


???? acro..

Pickupman's Pink Poci its almost 3" across now.

Cute little Blasto

Rainbow Poci. I have three colonies of this. these two have encrusted over.

Robin's Egg Acro

Green Table

Tricolor.

 

Full tank Shot


Link...

 

Awesome pics! and amazing growth!

 

Awesome growth, tank looks wonderful, congrats

 

Man I love your across.

I'm strong to the finish cause I eats me spinach. I'm ReefBruh the reefing man. Toot Toot.

 

Issues issues issues..... That has been the last month.. I have been traveling a TON for work. this let to some neglect of the tank. first sign was the beautiful frogspawn decided to brown jelly 4 out of 5 heads! UGH. I have one left that is doing well. hopefully I can get things right and happy. also, several of my acro's were losing tissue at the tips. Overall they looked like Crapola!!!! UGh.. so here are the lessons learned

1. if you use Ecobak, FEED more than just a pinch of food daily (every other day when out of town)(thanks honey). Ecobak works best in a well fed tank. so go ahead and feed them fat fish more. I now feed them two or three times daily. Hopefully this will help as I feel (after reading TONS of threads) the water was TOO clean.
2. Also, Dont run GFO once your ecobak is broke in. there is no need as you starve the bacteria of phosphates they need to process the nitrates etc.... Ugh...
3. Check your PH probe calibration regularly. mine was about .3 off. yea.. it read 8.16 but was actually like 7.8. after learning this, I check the KH more closely and realised it was like 6.1!!! maybe this was part of the issue. So, over the last three days I now have it sitting at 8.3KH. It was really swinging the PH too. now my PH is hovering around 7.9 ish. I plan to check it again nightly for the next week to make sure the CaRx is keeping up. (likely it was not)

Ok. so the lessons I learned are helpful. I used to run a "dirty" system (no skimmer, no pellets, no waterchanges, no carbon). now trying to run a ULNS is the exact opposite. I was feeding like it was my dirty system.

One piece of equipment I did invest in this past month was a Reefkeeper. it started off as a RKL with a PC4 and Sl1, but has been upgraded to the Reefkeeper Elite with the net module. Soooooo....now I can actually monitor the tank from afar. I dont have everything on the system yet. currently it just controls the lights, fans and closed loop pump, monitors the PH and temp and gives me readouts, but I do have other plans for it. I will need about 3 more PC4's, and then I can get everything under the RKE's control.

Still Hesitant on using it for temp control as I have a really nice Medusa controller and a Pinpoint for the CaRx.


now as of this morning, the KH was testing right at 9.3 on the Salifert kit. this is where I feel the tank needs to be now. lets just keep it churning.... gotta check the CaRx daily as I think I had it too low once I had the growth shot and that drained the tank. plus me travelign and afraid to go up and all that.... UGH.

 

All great tips, thanks.

 

It really sucks having to learn from experience but it seems to be the best way since all systems are different.

Glad you have found a balance with your new system style. Stay on your testing to increase your confidence level and don't let up on your findings. I let my findings be forgotten or ignored and my system suffered; stay with it and you will have a fantastic looking tank.