Turtle's Sushi Dream

[SashimiTurtle]

Over the weekend I glued the new corals to the rock. They are both looking happy and healthy and I'm happy with their placement.

I also got the KH Director hooked up and recalibrated the pH probe in it. It had been dry since shutting the 250 down and was reading something like -25 million pH... I soaked it in some RODI and it went thru calibration without any trouble. I did one test with the 7.5dKh refrence solution and it was dead on. It is currently reading my tank at 6.5dKh. The Hanna was showing 7.5, which I recall the same thing happened last year when i initially set it up on my 250. That is why I bought the refrence solution, so I could verify which one was the accurate result.

My alk doser (pump 4) is also hooked up but turned off for the moment until I am certain the KH Director is reading properly. This afternoon I plan on figuring out a starting dose to slowly raise my alk up to 8.0 and going from there.

 

[SashimiTurtle]

Did some calibrating with the KH Director yesterday. I didnt have a really solid feeling it was reading accurately. I only ran one test with the refrence solution, and the first test on anything is usually way off. So I ran 3 tests back to back with refremce solution after flushing the measurement cell with RODI and then completely emptying it. It came up with 7.1 all three times.

I knew I had the pH probe calibrated, so I went to the sample line. The machine needs to know how long the sample line is, because it runs the doser backwards to completely empty the line after testing, then when the next test starts fills the line with fresh sample water plus the sample volume of 80ml. So I got my graduated cylinder out, ran the pump until the line was full, emptied 20ml into the cylinder and put that in the program.

Then I went thru and calibrated each of the heads on my dosing pump. 1 and 3 are sample and watse, and were a few ml off. They run at the highest speed and were 37 and 36ml/minute. 2 is the acid andruns at the slowest speed and only made 5ml/minute and 4 is my alk doser and it runs at the second slowest and was 11ml/minute.

After that I ran another test with my refrence solution and got 9.1. I ran one more test and got 7.4, and ran out of refrence solution. I'm hoping, that second test was true as it usually is.

While spending the afternoon testing and calibrating, I was also baking some baking soda. I made up a gallon of Randy's formula 1 alk solution. I havent completely decided on a dosing product yet, although I'm leaning towards the ATI Essentials Pro. I've had success with it in the past and I like that it is a true 2 part system with magnesium and trace elements included.

I left the alk doser off over night so I could see what the KH Director would test. After thoroughly flushing the cell, we started at 7.8dkh last night, which is a little differentthan the low 7s I was recording. Over night it dropped to 7.7 and then 7.6 this morning. I decided to dose 20ml at once, and then set up a 40ml per day dose split into 12 doses. Alk came back up to 7.7, and stayed there for the following dose. I'll continue to keep track of everything and adjust if needed before unchaining the KHD and giving it control.

 

[SashimiTurtle]

So far, so good...

 

[SashimiTurtle]

I'm not dead, I promise...

 

[McPuff]

I just bought a KH Director and the Profilux 4e controller. Hoping to get them online by next weekend. Because my apex is no longer supported I felt it was time to make a change and didn't feel like going with the newer Apex for various reasons. I will also take my Calcium reactor offline as I have had so many issues due to the lower pH. Yes, there are fixes for this but I think that going back to dosing will simplify everything and it should result in just as stable of ALK due to the Director. It's good to read your thoughts on the system. Thanks for sharing.

 

[SashimiTurtle]

I just bought a KH Director and the Profilux 4e controller. Hoping to get them online by next weekend. Because my apex is no longer supported I felt it was time to make a change and didn't feel like going with the newer Apex for various reasons. I will also take my Calcium reactor offline as I have had so many issues due to the lower pH. Yes, there are fixes for this but I think that going back to dosing will simplify everything and it should result in just as stable of ALK due to the Director. It's good to read your thoughts on the system. Thanks for sharing.

Thanks for checking out the thread. Stick around I usually update weekly but I've been busy with my little human frag I made.

The Profilux 4 and KHD are great pieces of equipment. Youll love them. When setting up the KHD make sure you get the proper measurements on your lines and you should be good. The 7.5dkh refrence solution is a good thing to get to double check you are testing right. Once set up, you can really dial in your alk tho.

 

[SashimiTurtle]

Oh wow, its been months... well for starters, I'm not dead. Neither is my tank. Life has just been busy with an almost 4 month old to take care of.

I haven't really added anything to the tank, other than a red stripe/black tail/eibli dwarf angel I just HAD to have. It arrived while my wife was home and I had her place it in my acclimation box, as I do have a magestic angel that is skightly larger than this guy. I arrived home that afternoon and observed everyone completely ignoring the new guy in the box amd released it once the lights had gone off for the night. It stayed pretty reclusive for the first two weeks, but is now an active swimmer and hunter of tasty things on rocks. It is also eating algae from clips and taking frozen. It is not, eating any coral, of which it has zoas, blastos, trumpets and acans to pick from... dontread that twice tho you may anger the reef tank gods.

I've mostly just been letting the tank mature, feeding the fish and not messing with anything... like, nothing. I'm not even dosing currently. Some corals hate me, others couldn't care less. Trumpet, acans and one goni are severely ticked, recessed tissue and constantly closed. The neon green goni, blastos, zoas and frogspawn/hammer(i keep forgetting which one it is even tho I know the difference) are happy as can be in the low alkalinity.

I've discovered an issue with my GHL KH Director, where it slowly picks up on changes in alkalinity over the course of 3 days... try getting it to control things in real time with a 72 hour delay. I did a 40 gallon water change on father's day, June 19th(total sump capacity with pumps off). Siphoned out as much water as I could, took a shop vac and removed the rest and any detritus that collected in the bottom, and refilled with fresh mixed salt water. It took 3-4 days for the KHD to slowly register the alk swing.

When I ran out of two part I mixed up some baking soda ash for alkalinity, but as I didnt have an easy calcium suppliment I decided to just hold off on buying anything for the moment, and only having one dosing pump to automate things I wanted to research kalk stirrers, kalk slurry, any highly consentrated all in 'one part'... and with the new baby in the house... research got placed on the back burner.

We also went on vacation last week.

It was the first time leaving the tank... things went fairly well. We had a great time with my whole family. Left detailed instructions for the house sitter as well as one of those week long medicine containers with a daily ration of LRS Fish Frenzy inside each day.

Somehow the return didnt come back on after a power outage/flicker from a nighttime thunderstom, then when I was informed then next morning and could get it reset thru my GHL app, the ATO timed out from having to refill so much. It was timed out for 3 days until I returned home and ended up having to add 5 gallons of top off to get back to normal level.

As you can imagine, 5 gallons low in water, even a 200 gallon system would be pumping air, and it was pumping a LOT of air. I changed out my filter floss, emptied the full skimmer cup and cleaned the glass. After a few hours the tank was looking SUPER clear and looks even better today.

 

[SashimiTurtle]

New coral over the weekend. Finally got a few extra dollars to spend on the tank. Got some more frozen food, went with the LRS Herbivore Frenzy this time figuring I have 3 tangs and 2 angels, and picked up a nice piece of purple gorgonian.

I also finally got my GHL connected to my laptop, and when it did somehow it auto updated the firmware and I lost all of my calibrations and settings. I got everything set back up and functioning mostly, I still have a few minor programming things to get set up but it's functional as a basic controller for now.

 

[SashimiTurtle]

Well, I haven't been on here nearly as much as I'd like to be. Hobbys got put on hold really hard last year. Spending all my money on my mini me frag and not coral frags . I've been keeping the tank maintained but at the bare minimum. Fish are healthy, tank is healthy, corals for the most part are healthy. There just haven't been many new additions.

The last additions were in October at a local show. I got a neon green nepthea that is doing very well. A large Montipora spongodes that has half died back but its the shadded areas and a frag I made from it is slowly growing on the frag rack. A blasto that didn't make it, and a pocillopora that I thought died but is slowly regrowing.

The trigger is really growing fast, incredibly fast... It was not quite 3" when I bough it last March, and it is pushing 6" or better now. Needless to say it loves food. It and the sailfin are the largest fish and run the tank. The sailfin is the most aggressive in terms of chasing, but nobody messes with the trigger. It gets plenty of space without having to be aggressive. All of my fish currently get along well tho.

 

[SashimiTurtle]

Got a new coral last week. First one in several months. I was at a LFS getting a heater controller (more on that later) and saw a green and blue frogspawn. It's nothing special, but it was a nice fat head and I liked the color.

Right after bringing it home, pineapple sponge hitchhiker included. Pretty sure one of my angels demolished that out quickly.

Open and happy on the rocks.

I decided to remove the GHL from the tank. I had been having problems getting it to stay connected they the app and while performing a water change last weekend, finally got fed up enough trying to get into the app to turn on maintenance mode, to just ditch it. That is why I needed a heater controller. I run 2, 300W titanium heaters and the GHL controlled them thru the temperature probe. I'll list all the GHL stuff for sale soon and put that money towards another controller type. I've been looking at the CoralVue Hydros controllers and they seem to be pretty reliable and the interface looks a lot more user frendly than GHL's.

Everything is doing very well considering I haven't been dosing or doing regular water changes.

 

[fishguy242]

Reef check...

 

[SashimiTurtle]

Reef check...

Heh... been a while. Life gets in the way sometimes. I'll try and get a good update together this week. Tank has been a bit neglected, algae is growing but nothing that isn't reversible. Just got this installed today tho...

 

[Gumbies R Us]

Heh... been a while. Life gets in the way sometimes. I'll try and get a good update together this week. Tank has been a bit neglected, algae is growing but nothing that isn't reversible. Just got this installed today tho...

Glad to see the tank is still running! Can't wait to see the update!

 

[SashimiTurtle]

Well, the tank has been all but ignored for the last six months or so. I've been somewhat keeping up with topoff, and occasionally changing out filter media... sometimes I don't remember to fill the reservoir until the return pump is cavitating, and sometimes the filter goes a few days without being changed, or without any media at all.

Rewind to a year and a half ago, about the time I started up this build, Mrs Turtle and I both took lower paying jobs with a lot more free time when we had our little turtle, (and little turtles arent cheap themselves) as we were both working a shift work schedule, and that wasnt going to work with the little one. So my ability to add anything to the tank slowly dwindled down to become non existent, and that effected my willingness to spend time on it.

Fast forward to present day, I've gotten a substantial raise at my job, and Mrs. Turtle just started a new job at a Dr's Office in town as a medical assistant that includes better pay and even better hours than her last job. Which means... The Sushi Dream doesn't end!

I would be absolutely flat out lying to you if I told you it looked like a dream tank. It's more of a nightmare. This past saturday I did approximately a 25% water change, I completely emptied the sump, scraped the gunk off the walls and floor, removed the 5g bucket of chaeto and slime that had grown out of control, and the rocks, took my shop vac to all the detritus and algae I scraped off, removed the skimmer and deep cleaned it... when I say I emptied the sump, it was empty of all equipment and dry.

When I was done cleaning, I put all my equipment back and started filling with fresh salt water. It took my entire 44g brute, plus a few gallons I had to mix with the absolute last of my salt bucket to fill all the way.

Once full, I picked thru the bucket of chaeto to find the best bits, and added about a soft ball size back. It is illuminated by 2 of the water proof Tunze refugium lights now. One on the front glass and one on the middle divider. I installed the filter cups and put polyfill in each... it lasted no more than 12 hours before it was clogged initially, and 24 hours after that.

The following day, my corals thanked me. The gorgonian had been closed for 2 weeks and algae was getting stuck to it. I cleaned it several times but it never would open.

(I made the zoas mad moving them for a better photo)

 

[SashimiTurtle]

I've changed up some equipment recently too. Most notably, the GHL is gone. I sold it a month ago, and in its place I will eventually have a Coralvue Hydros system, but we gonna get a few things back on tract before we worry about automation.

First purchase, Reefmat 1200. This thing is big... also, it'll keep my water clean when I don't bother changing the filter floss for days or a week. Once I get the tank clean, a roll should last a few months. I'm not expecting this first one to last long at all.

Instalation requires removal of the filter cup/sock holder and its baffles. I also had to trim the main drain to attach the flex hose for the inlet to the filter. The hardest part was getting the razor between some of the panels. Even using the super thin flexible razor knives, it was a chore to cut out, and I broke one of the glass panes while cutting it out. The top of the glass under the plastic cup holder is also unpolished and will cause red stuff to start leaking from your finger.

I was able to overcome my grave injury and persevere to complete my task and get the Reefmat installed and programmed to the Red Sea app.

Currently(after manually advancing to take up slack from installation, it has used 14 inches of mat.

 

[SashimiTurtle]

I've also switched up my lighting. Originally when I bought my tank, I wanted 2 Kessil AP9X lights over it. I was convinced to go with 3 Red Sea RS160s instead because it would have been a better deal ordering as a package.

Well, I never was happy with the lights. I wasn't happy with the spectrum. There is no adjusting the blue spectrum, and it was MUCH too purple for me. The only way to change the color is add more white, and that wasnt what I wanted. I wanted a pretty royal blue that wasnt washed out. Instead all I could achieve was either white, or purple. (Older photo with less algae)

So I took them all off, and hung my dusty, but trusty Kessil AP700 over the tank. It doesnt reach all the way to the sides, but most of the corals I have are near the center of the tank so it works for now. (Most recent FTS).

Now, you can see the extent of the algae problem. It has taken over pretty much all of the rock work. It is easily removed with a tooth brush, but it is everwhere. The plan is to kill it off the natural way, by cleaning up the water and siphoning the sand, and stocking up heavily on CUC.

 

[SashimiTurtle]

Well, if you're on the fence about getting a filter roller. The Reefmat is amazing. My water has never been cleaner, the glass does not get film on it like it used to, and the overall healthy of the tank is looking better. I still have a ton of algae to conquer, but that battle is coming.

The mat has slowed down to less than an inch a day of useage. I haven't changed anything as far as feeding the fish so waste in should be the same as before the mat.

 

[SashimiTurtle]

Picked up two freebie corals over the long weekend. Frags of multiples a friend had. Frogspawn and a goni. I believe the goni is getting a little bit more flow that its used to or likes on the rack. The side facing the powerhead was closed yesterday.

Growth on the massive GHA invasion seems to have stopped. Some of it looks to be trying to die off. Massive CUC order will be happening soon.

 

[Gumbies R Us]

Picked up two freebie corals over the long weekend. Frags of multiples a friend had. Frogspawn and a goni. I believe the goni is getting a little bit more flow that its used to or likes on the rack. The side facing the powerhead was closed yesterday.

Growth on the massive GHA invasion seems to have stopped. Some of it looks to be trying to die off. Massive CUC order will be happening soon.

Nice frogspawn and goni!

 

[SashimiTurtle]

Nice frogspawn and goni!

Thank you. Glad to see you back in these waters!