Greybeard's Wide, Shallow Peninsula

[Greybeard]

So... took one bommie, rock and all, covered with nems... probably 15 of them, to the LFS. Traded for a box of purple painted reef rock, dry, in the box. Yeah, he's coming out ahead on this, but in a small town like mine, getting rid of a tank full of nems is a real problem. This is better than dumping them in the creek.

So, one bommie replaced with new rock. I'll give that a month or so, and do 'er again, with the other bommie. Eventually, I'll be nem free, ready to restock with corals. Still haven't decided the best path forward on that... but I'll probably just call WWC and see what they can do for me. Big mixed frag order, they usually send pretty healthy stuff, from what I've seen.

 

[Greybeard]

2nd Bommie done. Took another 18 or so Nems to the LFS. Got another box of dry, purple painted rock. Did a quick structure... I think it'll be fine. Also donated my 'pair' of clowns... a female cinnamon and a male maroon. They've been laying eggs together for years. In fact, the rock I traded with the nems on it also had a patch of clown eggs . Thought they'd probably do poorly in a nem free tank, after having a tank full of nems to live and play in, so I went ahead and gave them to a friend, along with a couple nems.

No, I don't glue rocks, and I'm not interested in fantastic NSA architecture. Yeah, it's cool, but I prefer something that looks more natural. IMHO, this suits.

What few corals I had left are there. Added a small fighting conch they had at the LFS. Oh, that net box of rubble is for a friend setting up a new tank. Just some starter rubble. It'll be there another week or so.

So... Got a 15lb bag of sand from US Live Rock coming to reinvigorate the tank's micro biology. Sent in a sample for ICP testing. Let everything settle for a month or so, and I'm going to be ready for a boat load of frags.

Wanting some montipora, plating, branching varieties. Always have had good luck with them. Wanting some encrusting corals... leptoseris, cyphastrea. Some euphyllia of some sort. Maybe a pretty echinopora. Couple clams... preferably squamosa or deresa. Gigas, even... never had much luck with maximas. Probably some sort of capnella and sinularia. I've always liked them, good space fillers.

 

[Greybeard]

Ok, tank is once again stable, parameters look just as I like 'em... Time for some coral.

Went to SLASH's, really Reefing USA these days, spring show in STL yesterday. Eh. Maybe 15 vendors, prices pretty high... I bought a few things out of one tank and moved on. Picked up a tiny cyphastra frag, a pretty little zoa frag, a green finger leather, and a very pretty, if tiny, aqua-cultured gonipora.

Pics below, didn't catch the name of the vendor, sorry.

On to the next stop. New place in the loo, Liberty Reef, way out in OFallon. Been seeing good looking stuff from them, and saw that the owner was USMC vet, injured. Semper FI... Let's go. New shop, 3 months or so. Owner's been working out of his garage for some time. Light on dry goods and such, but his coral selection was excellent. Not so great if you're wanting stix, but LPS? Oh yeah... and prices were quite good.

Picked up a fairly large long tentacle variety Fungia, a nice looking little duncan, a bit of caulastrea, went a bit overboard on the euphyllia... 3 hammers and a frog spawn . Oh, and a very nice 5" clam.

On that clam... Don't Maximas generally have smooth shells? This things got flutes like a squomosa. Doesn't really matter, I suppose, as long as he's healthy. Looks great to me.

I'd say it's a solid start on re-establishing my reef

Still need to get a batch of SPS. Want some montipora... branching, plating, encrusting... always been a favorite.

 

[Greybeard]

A quick bit... my Apex EB832 failed on me the other day. I'm using the EB832 that came new with my Apex EL, purchased 2019, so it's 5 years old. Just quit. Nothing plugged into it would turn on, auto or manual. LED status lights were correct, but no power to outlets.

A bit of emergency tweaking, I was able to get everything important plugged into an old PB8. Works, if not ideal.

An email to Apex said I can send it to them for repair, but no estimate on repair costs. Some googling shows they're quite expensive to repair, and turned up a bit about a failed step down power supply on Youtube. Same symptoms as my failure... Hm.

So, Apex never replied to my request for a price estimate, and the part on Amazon was $8... What the heck. Ordered one, and dragged my old soldering iron out. 1st unit Amazon sent me was damaged, returned that, got one in good condition.

The repair itself, check youtube, you can find several videos of people making this repair. The only thing I'd add is that the step down unit is supported, and connected, via 4 soldered header pins. I was able to reused 3 of these, damaged the 4th trying to clean the old solder off of it. Ended up using a bit of 18g copper wire... worked out fine. Still, cleaning the old pins was about the hardest part of this operation. I'd recommend picking up some new solder pins. Amazon sells 11.5mm header pins made for Arduino boards for a few bucks, it's be trivial to cut a few loose and use nice clean pins. A couple bucks will save you a half an hour of frustration

Repair resulted in fully functioning EB832, cost was $7.99, with next day delivery. Hard to beat that. Part number is NOADPB12500. I understand Ebay has it cheaper, but I've not had much luck ordering from Ebay over the years.

Oh, I picked up a 1.5" tiger tail cuke over the weekend. See if he'll help me clean up the sand bed a bit.

 

[Daniel@R2R]

A quick bit... my Apex EB832 failed on me the other day. I'm using the EB832 that came new with my Apex EL, purchased 2019, so it's 5 years old. Just quit. Nothing plugged into it would turn on, auto or manual. LED status lights were correct, but no power to outlets.

A bit of emergency tweaking, I was able to get everything important plugged into an old PB8. Works, if not ideal.

An email to Apex said I can send it to them for repair, but no estimate on repair costs. Some googling shows they're quite expensive to repair, and turned up a bit about a failed step down power supply on Youtube. Same symptoms as my failure... Hm.

So, Apex never replied to my request for a price estimate, and the part on Amazon was $8... What the heck. Ordered one, and dragged my old soldering iron out. 1st unit Amazon sent me was damaged, returned that, got one in good condition.

The repair itself, check youtube, you can find several videos of people making this repair. The only thing I'd add is that the step down unit is supported, and connected, via 4 soldered header pins. I was able to reused 3 of these, damaged the 4th trying to clean the old solder off of it. Ended up using a bit of 18g copper wire... worked out fine. Still, cleaning the old pins was about the hardest part of this operation. I'd recommend picking up some new solder pins. Amazon sells 11.5mm header pins made for Arduino boards for a few bucks, it's be trivial to cut a few loose and use nice clean pins. A couple bucks will save you a half an hour of frustration

Repair resulted in fully functioning EB832, cost was $7.99, with next day delivery. Hard to beat that. Part number is NOADPB12500. I understand Ebay has it cheaper, but I've not had much luck ordering from Ebay over the years.

Oh, I picked up a 1.5" tiger tail cuke over the weekend. See if he'll help me clean up the sand bed a bit.

Awesome! Nice job on the repair!

 

[Zionas]

Glad you got the repair done. Would you mind giving a list of your total fish stock right now? Thanks.

 

[Greybeard]

Glad you got the repair done. Would you mind giving a list of your total fish stock right now? Thanks.

Fish stock? Sure...

Female LaMark's Angel
Female Spotbreast Angel
Tomini Tang
Scopus Tang
Blue Stripe Cleaner Wrasse
2x Orbic Cardinal fish
Matted Filefish (Biota)

I think that's it...

 

[Zionas]

Ahh what happened to your other Cardinals and did you get rid of the Foxface?

 

[Greybeard]

Ahh what happened to your other Cardinals and did you get rid of the Foxface?

I've had many cards over the years. Great reef fishes. This tank, and my previous one, have had multiple re-boots, and several crashes over the years. I'm pretty sure that a big blue pistol shrimp I had was killing off my smaller fishes. Can't prove it, but the ochre striped cards disappeared while he was in residence.

The foxface I had belonged to a friend who had a tank spring a leak. Was getting too big for this tank anyway.

I'm probably going to have to rehome the scopus tang, eventually. He's probably 4", maybe a bit more, at this point, but they get big enough to be an issue in this shallow reef. I expect the other fishes will be fine, long term. The two angels will get pretty good size, but I think they'll be OK. The LaMark's is about 5" now, fat and healthy.