I have now reached the point in my updates where Coronavirus takes hold and the UK along with pretty much everywhere else in the world goes into lockdown.
I allowed Sunny (the Anthias) three weeks to settle, making sure that he was eating well and healthy looking. During that time I noted the nitrates/phosphates levels were continuing to fall so I thought I should get some more fish in there pronto. Since there was no way I could source any new stock from the LFS due to the lockdown I decided to move some over from the Reefer. I had purchased a fish trap ages ago but never got the chance to put it to good use, it was the smallest trap that I could find (the Little ocean small fish trap) but even so there was no way it was going to fit into the tank as it was, some coral need to be removed. I cut out a significant branch of the Pinnigorgia gorgonian and gently (as far as I could) snapped off the yellow Dendrophyllia and Balanophyllia from the rockwork. I took the time to scrape off every single head of Utter Chaos zoanthids that had grown onto the Balano rock as I'm not going to be transferring these 'pests' over to the the new tank. Once the yellow Dendro was out of the way I carefully slid the fish trap into the front left side of the tank. Unfortunately the magnets are on the other side of the trap in this orientation so I wasn't able attach it to the glass, I had to simply lay it on the sand. I expected it to take a while for the fish to get used to the trap but within a few minutes Jessie the Rainford's goby and Kandy the Spotted Mandarin had popped inside to check it out. The fish I really wanted to catch first though were Rei the Yellow wrasse and Spike the Firefish but they were not impressed with the new state of affairs at all. Rei immediately vanished into the sand and Spike just kept well away at the back of the tank. I waited for 2 days but it became clear that neither Rei nor Spike were going to venture anywhere near it any time soon, in fact Rei actually decided that sleeping in the sand was far more preferable to eating. On the third day I decided my plan of catching specific fish was a non starter so I opted to try to catch any fish that I could. Jessie the Rainford's goby was first in and the trap worked perfectly, a quick tug of the cord and the door dropped down with the fish safely inside. Two days later it was Edna the Possum wrasse, the day after that it was Kylie the Pink Streaked wrasse and the next day it was Kandy the Spotted Mandarin (actually Kandy loved the trap so much that he spent more time inside of it than out). The newly transferred fish seem to like their new home and it's a pleasure to watch them weave in and out of the caves in the rockwork. Unfortunately it seems I am currently person non grata, whenever I approach the tank they all vanish at breakneck speed and it breaks my heart just a little bit every time. Hopefully they will forgive me in a few weeks. Feeding has been a bit hit and miss in the new tank and I have been worried about the Kandy especially. He used to feed extremely well on frozen food in the Reefer but in the new tank all prepared foods were refused. I decided to set up a second Tisbe pod culture since it seems lots more might be needed. Fortunately after two weeks he's back on the frozen again (PE mysis rocks!) so I'm a little less worried about slow starvation now. I have also transferred over the Orange Dendrophyllia and both of the Tubastrea corals so now I have a little NPS garden going on in the new tank. It's such a pleasure to be able to easily feed them at the moment, there's no fish trying to steal the food or corals overgrowing/around them and I don't have to bash SPS corals with a pipette trying to reach them. I wonder how long that's gonna last for.
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Just a short video of Milo the Venus anemone shrimp (Anclyomenes venustus) hanging out in his Heliofungia home. These shrimp also go by the name of clapping shrimp because when a threat approaches they wave their front claws around frantically back and forth in an amusing clapping motion. Once the cycle was complete (fingers crossed it was) I switched on the light (I say light because at that time I only had the one unit up and running at that time) to encourage the growth of diatoms. By day 34 the tank looked like this: I decided it was time to add some clean up crew and a fish. I'd spent a lot of time thinking about what to add as a first fish and I emailed several shops asking about special ordering fish but only one bothered to reply to my query, very disappointing. In the end I decided to go with whatever was available in the shops. We visited two different places and I ended up with 5 black foot Trochus, 5 teeny tiny hermits, a conch and a Sunburst (aka Fathead) Anthias. The anthias settled in a treat and is a really lovely fish. To begin with he hung out at the darker end of the tank (the side without the light) which is pretty much as I expected but after a week or so began exploring the whole tank. The snails and crabs got to work on the algae straight away, I did sadly lose one of the Trochus after 11 days but the rest were fine. Since the fish and CUC seemed to be doing fine I decided to try transferring over a few tester corals from the Reefer. I decided to move over a couple of the gorgonians first, both have been severely shaded by other corals for a long time and deserved a break plus if they didn't make it I wouldn't be overly upset about it. Anyway as it happened they were totally fine, bulletproof it seems, and are loving basking in some good light again. The Plexaurella was quite bleached (and a bit deformed too) but is looking much happier now. The Muricea is hidden at the back of the tank but is also looking much improved. I know that gorgonians are not everyones cup of tea but I really like how they sway about in the current. Once it became clear that the gorgonians were not going to keel over and die I decided to press on with a few more transfers especially since the second lighting unit had arrived and been hung. I was also starting to feel a bit of pressure by the rest of the family to just get it done already. I keep having to remind them that slow and steady wins the race. This time I chose to move a couple of more accessible corals, ie the ones not actually welded to the rockwork. The Heliofungia (plus shrimp) and, gulp, the Scolymia. I was particularly nervous about moving the Heliofungia in case Milo, the resident shrimp, decided to jump off and vanish into the rock-work or be eaten by a hungry fish! I needn't have worried Milo was not going to leave his home no matter what, wherever the coral went he was determined to go too, phew! I wouldn't say that the Helio or Scoly are entirely happy in their new home, they are not as expanded as they were in the old tank. I'm hoping that they are just adjusting to the different lighting and/or the reduced nutrient levels. I hope that they will settle given a bit of time.
I began the tank cycle on the 2nd February 2020 with a bottle of Dr Tim's One and Only plus the recommended dose of ammonium chloride. Thereafter I tested ammonia, nitrite and nitrate every day for 27 days. Needless to say the levels I recorded in my tank did not look like the neat and tidy graphs I see posted online. I added further doses of ammonium chloride, as per instructions, on days 3 and 6. I also boosted the ammonia again on day 15 and 17 to keep things ticking over. The lights were left off during the cycle but there was some overspill from the Reefer 170. Here's what the ammonia and nitrite levels looked like. And here is nitrate. By day 10 the nitrate level had reached the upper limit of my Salifert test kit so I had to dilute the sample first by 1 in 5 and then later on by 1 in 10. On day 15 the nitrate level had reached a whopping 250ppm!! I envisioned having to perform water changes every week for the next 6 months or so. Things were starting to look a bit grim. The largest water change I can perform at any one time is 30% so on day 19 that's exactly what I did. The following day I recorded the level at 180ppm which is exactly the amount I expected following the water change but what I didn't expect was to see an increase in the nitrite level again. I continued my daily testing and not only did the nitrite levels fall back down again but the nitrate levels kept dropping and dropping till on day 27 they read a rather acceptable 5ppm with no further water changes required. How weird! I have a feeling that the off the scale nitrate levels were probably due to interference by nitrite, either that or I have a super duper nitrate reducing system in my tank. Patent pending. Whilst the tank was cycling my tank cover arrived and I was somewhat disappointed to discover that there is what I consider to be an excessively large gap between top of the weir comb and the mesh lid. What's that all about? Why can't the level of the weir be designed to be more in line with the top of the tank?? I don't have the D-D branded cover but I can't imagine that sits any lower than any of the other alternatives. Anyway there's more than enough room for any of my small to moderately sized fish to squeeze through and since there is no cover on the weir they'll end up stuck down inside it or take a ride down into the sump. Neither alternative is acceptable so I plugged the gap with some clear acrylic sheet. There is still a small gap to the right of the weir comb that I haven't fixed but it's pretty narrow so hopefully my fish won't discover it (famous last words I know). On day 11 I fired up the skimmer, an Ultra-Reef UKS-160 mainly for aeration purposes. This is not a new skimmer but you wouldn't know it, as soon as the pump was fired up it went completely crazy so I left the cup off for the time being. Plenty of air going in there to be sure. 10 days later it showed no signs of calming down and I was getting a bit sick of the salt creep everywhere so I fitted the cup with the drain plug removed so that the water overflowed into the cup and back into the sump again. As you can see protein scum began collecting inside the cup. Skip forward another 13 days and still the skimmer was in overdrive despite the flow restrictor being wide open and the unit sitting in exactly the right level of water. I decide to craft a stand to raise it up a bit, eggcrate, PVC pipe and cable ties later...ta da! That was version 1, since then the pipe legs have been cut down a bit as the skimmer was then sitting a bit too high (typical) but it's started working well now. I have read that skimmer collection is reduced in tanks where roller filters are also employed but it's definitely pulling out some stinky stuff. Talking of the X-filter, I must hold my hand up and admit how I eagerly watched and waited for the motor to turn for the very first time, yes I'm sad like that. It seemed to take an age for the water level to rise up and trigger the level sensor, lol. The excitement has since worn off a bit as I've become used to the motor just doing its thing, it is quite satisfying to see the used dirty brown roll. Better out than in (I hope). On day 27 I considered the tank to be pretty much cycled. Diatoms were beginning to take hold on the sand and rocks so I decided to add some Tisbe copepods. I wanted to encourage the growth of these little critters as much as possible before transferring any of (my pod loving) fish over from the Reefer. For a couple of days I thought the tank must be toxic and I'd killed them all off as I couldn't find a single pod on the glass but then they bit by bit they slowly started to appear. This made me one extremely happy reefer (I'm easily pleased clearly). On the same day as adding the copepods I fired up the refugium. I'm a big fan of refugia not just as an area for the growth of macro algae but also for the reproduction of beneficial critters (and also as a place to relegate any naughty crabs etc if needed). I wanted to keep the light spill down to a minimum inside the sump itself so I designed something to sit in the cupboard to the left of the sump with the pipework entering and exiting via the existing hole in the cabinet. I didn't want to have to modify the cabinet in any way and I almost, just almost, got away with it. The pipework was a tight fit but worked out perfectly, however the tank height was out by just over a millimetre, arghh! I had to sand down the back wall of the cabinet a touch to get it to fit. Ooops! I decided not to make the tank myself this time as it would be a lot bigger than my previous set up and hence more water to worry about leaking, instead I got Wharf Aquatics to make it for me. I'm running a Kessil H80 for the time being (that one I had lighting the Reefer refugium) but I may switch to something more viewer friendly at a later date, I'm not really a fan of the red/purple lighting to be honest. Here it is looking clean and tidy (needless to say it doesn't look like this now, far from it!). Incidentally even though I did not directly add any copepods to the refugium some have made it down there anyway from the DT and it's now buzzing with pod activity. I have the X-filter bypass controllers fully closed but still the pods have managed to find a way through the filter, past the skimmer and through the refugium pump/pipe and into the refugium, which I find pretty amazing to be honest.
Now that the return pump was up and running, the water at the correct temperature and the salinity adjusted to 1.026 I fitted the ATU. I knew that I wanted a large top up reservoir and since a love my Reefloat ATU on the Reefer 170 I decided to go with the same agin but this time the one with the 50l container. This beast sits nicely in the corner of the room to the left of the tank. I like to have the controller on display because then I can easily see if the green light is flashing indicating an issue (usually skimmer related). The last thing to do on my list before beginning the cycle was to clean the glass of all the scum it had accumulated after adding the sand. It was during this clean that I discovered a bubble. It's not a big bubble but it sits there right in the front pane of glass, it catches the light and now that I know it's there seems massive to me. According to D-D bubbles in low iron glass are quite common so therefore a large number tanks on this forum must have them too, right? Do you have any bubbles in your glass? There aren't any in my Reefer 170 and there weren't any in my old 7ft tank and that was an awful lot of glass. I guess once I've put a scratch or two in the glass from cleaning the bubble won't bother me so much.... maybe. UPDATE: I've since found another fault in the right side piece of glass too. Very disappointing quality control D-D!!
Once the tank had been filled and the return pump fired up the X-filter was switched on. I waited for the flushing noise to subside fully expecting it to take a whole day of adjustment. For a while I really did think that I'd set the pipes up wrong or fitted the X-filter incorrectly because the gushing noise was deafening but a simple tweak of the gate valve and all became silent. OMG the gate valve is fabulous!! Naturally there wasn't much happening with the X-filter at that point as I needed to wait for the water level inside to rise before seeing some action.
When I got up the next day eager to admire my newly running tank there was a glaring problem with the outflow pipe. When I had fitted the pipe it did seem a bit loose but I thought it must be just normal but when the return pump is switched on the force of the water makes the pipe sag down resulting in a rather fine sand storm. I decided that a washer must be needed so I ordered one online but when it was fitted it didn't help matters at all, the outflow pipe was now pointing upwards and out of the tank. I had never read of an issue like this being posted on UltimateReef (or anywhere else) so thought that maybe it was just me being an idiot. Perhaps I was being overly cautious screwing in the pipe in place, I must admit I was kinda worried about cracking the glass so I got my husband to try but no joy either. We both agreed that the outflow pipe was useless with or without the new washer. We had water spraying out of the tank at one point, lol. It's a pity I didn't have a camera recording at the time as I'm sure you all would have found it quite amusing. I however did not! Anyway in desperation I went out to the garage and rummaged around in the old pipework fittings box and incredibly I found another seal from an old bulkhead fitting, it's not an exact size but it was the correct width AND it fitted. Finally I can get the water circulating through the sump but, oh what a faff!! Maybe I should have gone with the Red Sea Reefer after all..... An e-mail from D-D later informed me that an o-ring should have been supplied with the tank. Now that the outflow pipe was secured I wanted to try fitting a random flow generator to it. I had ordered the Innovitech RFG at the same time as the X-filter but when I saw it in person it looked huge, the family thought it looked ugly and also.... wait for it..... it wouldn't fit, lol (I wasn't doing very well there was I, in my defence I did ask before placing the order but Reefolution didn't know if it fitted either). The RFG fits on to a 25mm outlet but the Reef-pros are 20mm. The RS Reefer 170 has 25mm pipe but the D-D 1200 which is double the size has just 20mm, why? Anyway I didn't like to be defeated so I set to finding how to connect this ugly duckling to the outflow pipe. There turned out to be a few ways to connect it and this is the option I went for. I removed the duckbill and lower 90 degree bend and fitted a 1/2 inch 90 degree threaded elbow with a 20mm to 1/2 inch male adaptor, the RFG now simply slips on the outside of the male adaptor. It is not exactly low profile but it's as low as I could get it. I hadn't fully decided whether to keep it in place or not but once the tank was actually running it didn't stand out quite as much as I'd initially feared (I can't speak for rest of the family) perhaps it will turn into a swan? I do feel it's more suited to larger tanks (update: since then I've learnt to live with it). Naturally a new tank requires some shiny new equipment. First up was an Innovitech X-filter. I like to feed my livestock a lot and that will surely increase as my NPS corals grow bigger, the roller filter will hopefully help me keep a handle on nutrient levels. In order to fit the above I had to modify the sump a little. I removed the first baffle and the bits of glass that were designed to support the filter socks. I also took the opportunity to replace the standard ball valve. I really, really hated the valve on the Reefer 170, it was so tricky to adjust. Why manufacturers still produce systems using these fittings I'll never know, they clearly have no care for the sanity of the poor reefers who spend endless hours trying to balance the water level afterwards. I had purchased a gate valve for the Reefer 170 ages ago but never got around to fitting it because I don't like to mess about with important pipework when a tank is up and running. It was good to put this purchase to use finally. Fitting the pipework underneath the tank was a bit of a nightmare, the instructions suggest you slide the tank over to one side in order to get better access to the joints but firstly, the tank is god damn heavy and secondly, I had the Reefer running to the right of it so there was just no space. We tightened the joints as best we could and got on with a wet test. The joints leaked naturally so we took a deep breath and had another go at tightening the joints and fortunately that seemed to do the trick.
Since my trusty Tunze Silence pump was too small to power the new tank I needed a new return pump. I opted to try a Sicce Syncra SDC 6.0 this time round. It has a nifty app for control which alerts you if there is a loss of connection, the rotor is blocked or if the water temperature is out of bounds. I thought these kind of notifications would be very useful in the future until I switched the pump on and got an alert that the rotor was actually blocked. What the...? Out came the pump for inspection and the rotor checked but all seemed fine so back in it went again. It started up fine but I just kept getting an alert. Another removal and check but all appeared as it should. My stress levels were rising now, lol. A quick e-mail to Sicce determined that the pump was fine but the controller was faulty. Two days later a new controller turned up and everything worked as it should. That's a great service from Sicce in Italy. For this system, for the first time ever, I'm using manmade rock. This is not because I dislike live rock, I really don't. I'm actually one of those rare reefers that loves live rock and all the lovely hitchhikers that come with it (with some exceptions naturally). I found two mantis shrimp in my 7ft tank, awesome critters, anyway I digress. When searching for live rock (in stock or due in stock within a couple of months time) there was none available at all. I agonised about what to do but decided I didn't want to wait an indeterminate amount of time before live rock finally became available again. I decided to try TMC EcoReef rock instead, it looked to be the nicest of the artificial rock choices. I ordered a box of that and will add some of the live rock I already have in the Reefer 170. Of course when Indonesian live rock became available again it was two months too late for me, typical! This is what you get in box A of TMC EcoReef rock. A few bits had been broken off in transit. In person this stuff is actually quite nice and natural looking. It did smell quite faintly of something chemical, from the paint maybe? More on this subject later. I must admit it was really rather refreshing to be able to take some time with the rock and glue it together securely, no hastily shoving live rock in to preserve as much of the bacteria/critters as possible. No more worries about falling rocks in this tank either (falling frags yes but not falling rocks, lol). I honestly had very little to do with the aquascape except for mixing of the cement (we used Nyos reef cement and it really was excellent stuff). My eldest son wanted to be involved here and I just let him get on with it. I just stipulated for as many caves/swim throughs for the fish as possible. I'm not keen on super minimalistic rockwork where there is no place for the fish to hide/sleep. I like to think fish are happier with caves and this makes me a happier reefer. There are two separate structures and these were a little higher than I'd like. This tank is not as deep as the reefer so coral placement at the top will need to be thought about quite carefully. Since I have was going to be transferring over my Yellow wrasse and pistol shrimp/goby pair I needed some sand. I went with Caribsea Seaflor special grade again as I already had some left over from setting up the Reefer. I used a 40lb bag plus the remainder of the old bag. My eldest was very useful here again as he helped to rinse the sand before it went in.
The long slow fill.... So, wow it's been a year since my last update! Where do I begin? A lot has happened over the last year in more ways than one. If I can get myself organised you can expect to see numerous posts in the following days/weeks as I try to catch up.
Shortly after my last update I decided that the time had come to upgrade. The Reefer 170 was becoming overgrown with corals and honestly my Yellow wrasse was no longer content to live in such a small tank. After much lobbying (and no doubt whingeing, lol) I managed to convince my better half that I really, really needed a bigger tank. Finally permission was granted and the search for a new tank began. Various options were considered but in the end it came down to either a Red Sea Reefer 350 or a D-D Reef-pro 1200. At the time there were a number of worrying Red Sea cabinet issues coming to light and as a result this pushed me toward the D-D tank. I also found that I preferred the tank dimensions (increased front to back width), the weir position and increased height of the cabinet. Before common sense could prevail the order was placed. The tank arrived just before Christmas last year and Jaws seemed more than content to keep it warm for me over the festive period. My plan was to take it slowly and cycle the new tank whilst the old tank was still running, then I could transfer stock over minimising stress for them and me. |
AuthorHi, my name is Lisa and I live in Derby, UK. I am a self-confessed reefaholic! Archives
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