JoeBlog

I feed the tank once a day (sometimes missing a day) a home brew of: Frozen seafood medley from the supermarket Vitamin enriched flake Couple different pellets: Salifert Energy plus granules and something else can’t remember Spirulina flake Frozen cubes: Mysis, Brine, Marine Mix, etc… Fresh shelf fish Fresh squid And probably some other stuff that I can’t remember. Drop it all in a food processor and then freeze it in ziplock bags. I feed a small 20 cent sized portion defrosted and rinsed in tap water. I just bought an Eheim auto feeding and will give that a try soon. I want to keep some smaller fish that require frequent small feedings, but want to avoid the PITA of the feeding routine. This will use flake and pellet, given that it works well. :-?

3 x 250W DE 10000K XM (using DIY Luminarc reflectors)

SWEET looking skimmer. Can't wait to get back to see that thing in action!!!

In the mean time, TM has DE bulbs mounted in his reflectors. Maybe we can convince him to take a picture of his bulb mounting setup and light spread as well?! Don't you love it when I volunteer you for things TM?!

That's the place that I bought my stuff from, but it wasn't anywhere near $60 per sheet.

I would say that they are a bargain then!

Ohhh, I did misunderstand. :oops: They certainly appear to be quite nice and are much cheaper than what the Luminarcs sell for in the States. Cheers, Steve

I haven't seen Jetskisteve's version in person, but the pictures of them look great! In fact, they look so good and so much like the real deal that I was a bit worried that they may get in trouble for patent infringement. I have the plans for these off of the RC DIY section, which started this whole deal. Evidently, the dimensions were not perfect and Pies sorted that out on his and the replicas made by Jetskisteve. (Maybe Pies or Jetskisteve could be convinced to sell the corrected plans instead?!?!) However, I made mine from the original plans using sheets of aluminum specifically sold for reflectors and riveted them together myself. The first one took MANY hours, but the learning curve is very steep. The last one took me about 20 minutes. For four of them, they cost me just over $20 each for material. (just for the reflector, not the bulb holder since I already had those) If you are using DE bulbs, you will also need to buy toughened glass as a shield, but that wasn’t expensive either. As per Chimera’s statement of them being flimsy, mine certainly are. They would definitely take the brunt of the damage from a punch. However, they only hold a small bulb securely suspended above me tank, didn’t cost me very much, in expectation will last forever and do a great job spreading the light evenly over a large area. TM also had some made professionally from these plans, which he posted some time back on his new tank thread. His reflectors are absolutely awesome and crazy strong. You could stand on them with no problem. I would love to have some like that, but they were quite expensive (to me). :oops:

I get back in country on the 25th. I will try to remember put post some up then.

I thought it was PAR?

I agree that they are not designed for DE bulbs. In fact, Luminarc is supposedly creating an optimal configuration for DE. However, I am using (as well as TM and many on Reef Central) the same design (or rather very similar) as those offered by Steve for 250W DE bulbs. I think they work great. You get the benefit of the awesome spread and the lower electricity consumption. Maybe TM can chime in here on his opinions of the 250W DE bulbs with this reflector as well. Chimera's move to the 400W SE bulbs motivated my original question regarding intensity between 250DE vs 400SE. If there are some bulbs that are in fact the same in intensity, then using these reflectors with 250W DE bulbs may be a good option for those with 2 foot deep (or less) tanks. I certainly want to save as much money on power as possible as well!! On my 5x2x2 (setup very similar to Chimera's), I have three 250W XM DE 10K with these DIY Luminarc reflectors and supplement with two Actinic and two 10K four foot T5's. I find that provides heaps of well dispersed light and nice combination of color. (the color factor is obviously personal preference )

Is it true that the 400W SE are approximately the same as 250W DE driven by HQI ballasts as far as intensity goes? It probably depends on the bulb make and color, but are there at least some that fit this criteria? I've heard people say this from time to time, but wondered what are people's thoughts from experience.

I have to agree. I use the XM 10K DE 250W and love them.

I wish I had known that I didn’t need to bake the BS ages ago. :oops: The PITA of drying it out in the oven and then getting the damn stuff to dissolve (which more me was a nightmare) is the reason that I bought my CA in the first place (after spending all that money on the dosing system)! :evil: Oh well, I’m just glad my CA is finally tuned and all is stable (at least until I have to change the CO2 bottle again).

TM said: Awesome picture!! Is that piece in your tank TM? If so, are you spot feeding, how often and what type of food?

Order over the internet. This is one item that may still be economical to do so since they are obviously light and not significantly affected by the increase in shipping costs. I used to buy mine from Marine Depot. I've heard of others buying from Australia, Singapore, etc... Just take a quick look and you will surely find some deals (on brand names) better than what you are facing now.

How is having a set reactor any different from having calculated the amount of Ca, KH and MG consumption for your tank over a given time period and then routinely just make up the dosing recipe each time according to that ratio for the dosing pump that's set on a timer? There's no difference in need to check the parameters. Personally, I check my parameters AT LEAST weekly regardless of the method I use. It's just part of ensuring the best environment for your fish and corals.

I'm using the Korallin C3002, but I believe with an Eheim 1250 instead of the 1048. One thing that I am definitely not happy about with this reactor is the poor quality of the gate valves. They leak, clog up quite easily and are probably the biggest attributor of difficulty fine tuning. :evil: I'm looking to find some replacements, but haven't found any yet. What is your trick to avoiding clogging of the outlets? I read somewhere (possibly even earlier in this thread) that it is best to use a long length of hose and adjust the drip rates via friction. I am thinking of trying this, but again seems like a rather large fixed cost of fiddling (the whole lazy thing factoring in again :oops: )

Hey Chim- I believe that I have the same reactor as you. I’ve certainly had HEAPS of trouble getting mine set from time to time. (Not exactly Plug-and-Play!! :evil: ) TM can attest to this as well since he is taking care of my tank while I am abroad and had a few headaches resetting it after I refilled the C02 bottle just prior to my departure. (Sorry about that TM!! :oops: ) Further evidence that these things aren’t that obvious to setup is the REALLY long thread on RC solely dedicated to helping owners of our type of CR to get set properly. At any rate, when I finally got it set, it worked really well, i.e. spot on levels for the entire duration of the C02 bottle, and I’m very happy with it. From what I remember, Pies has the same CR as well (only bigger) and from what I remember, he has been fairly happy with his as well. (Pies feel free to comment here!! ) The differences from my setup to yours (I believe) are that I have the one size bigger Eheim circulation pump, i.e. twice the flow as the “out of the box CR†which the representative said would make it run much better, and my input is teed off from return pump, i.e. quite high pressure in the reactor. I believe that the instructions recommend that the reactor is fed with a pump to increase pressure rather than simply gravity fed from the tank (sorry, can’t remember how you said yours is fed). The extra pressure from the pumped input certainly helps with keeping my output lines from clogging, but I still had to open the valve to blow out all the crud about once per week to keep the drip rate consistent. The extra circulation from the bigger pump may help to avoid clogging since I’ve never had a problem with my pad getting clogged. When the media finally degraded and needed to be replace, it just got to a point of being fluidized. My bubble rate was a more than 1 per second. My drip rate was quite high. I have both outlets open (thus two drip rates) that are both around 2 drips per second. I haven’t seen my tank in almost 3 months, so this is from memory. TM can probably fill in whatever mistakes I’ve made here in reporting the current rates. As for my media, I just bought a bag of (what was labeled) Aragonite (looks like 2-3mm white gravel to me) and some dolomite for maintaining Mg. From memory, I think ~20% of the media in the reactor is dolomite. As for comparison to the dosing method, I did that for quite some time before investing in the reactor. I bought one of those IKS triple dosing pumps, and thus dosed all three parts of Randy’s DIY recipe continuously. Each week I made up new 15 liter batches of all three, which I found to be a bit of a PITA. The big issue for me was getting the baked baking soda to dissolve. I had to essentially boil the water and slowly add the baking soda or else it would just form large, very hard clumps, and thus not provide me with the appropriate concentrations. Also one of the mixes (can’t remember which one now, I think it was the Mg), would crystallize in the bucket over time, and thus providing me the incorrect concentrations as well. I also had much more build up inside my pumps and had to clean those every few months. With the CR, this hasn't been a problem. For those who use this method, do you have the same issues? Given this, I personally find the CR to be a better method for me. Basically once it is set, I just flush the outlets every so often and all is good. Steve

Turbastrea coral. I previously had both the orange and yellow versions of this coral. Absolutely beautiful, but eventually got rid of them since I grew tired of the feeding requirements to keep them from receding. I can be a bit lazy. :oops:

Well, he explicitly states on pg. 1 and 3 that this tank is ~1 year old and at least some of the corals have been transferred over from his previous tank (presented on pg. 2), which definitely has that “grown reef lookâ€. I love those anthias as well. I just hope he has better success with them than I have. :oops: I would say, give this tank a bit of time and we'll probably see it as a future RC TOTM. Speaking of RC TOTM (and a bit off topic), we should nominate some of our NZ tanks for consideration. Some of the pictures that I've seen of various NZ tanks are certainly worthy of the title.

http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?s=8b07d730ea1f620f9016d0a437006724&threadid=859730&perpage=25&pagenumber=1 For those interested in bigger tanks, here's a pretty nice one with amazing equipment.

Has anyone had any trouble with Red Bugs? And if so, how have you gone about treating it, i.e. did you use Interceptor (DOG heartworm medication)? For those of you with dogs, is this stuff available in NZ and how much did you pay for it? I don't have red bugs (at least that I know of), but it seems to be a nightmare of a problem for many SPS keepers. I am thinking of buying some Interceptor and bringing it back with me just in case I have the problem in the future. But if it is already readily available in NZ for relatively cheap, then I won't bother. Thanks, Steve

Another stop on my trip around the US brought me to Inland Aquatics in Terra Haute, Indiana. Basically, it’s completely land-locked and in the middle of no where. This shop/research facility would be impressive in any big city coastal area, and thus incredibly amazing to be located in small farmer town USA. Here is their website if you want to look them up and read more about their philosophies:http://inlandaquatics.com/ Unfortunately, I didn't have a digital camera. So, all these pictures are taken with a disposable and scanned in. Sorry for the terrible picture quality. :oops: The place is huge!! They seem to be focusing on trying/establishing new husbandry/propagation techniques for coral, marine fish, macro algae and invertebrates. They are also heavily involved in education of young and old about aquatics with a focus on preservation. Here are a few pictures of their educational area: Now that's a DEEP sand bed! Which is a common theme around their place. Also notice the lack of skimmers. I didn't see ANY, but was told that they do use some on their smaller display tanks. This picture shows one of their main types of filtration used at the facility, i.e. algae scrubber (the box on the right) Control, where are you??? Wasn't it you always pushing this algae scrubbing technique?? This is another very interesting tank in the educational area. The overflow is the edge of the tank and then down to a basin below where the return pump is located. This is one of their display tanks with the MASSIVE sailfin I mentioned in another thread. It isn't really obvious from the picture, but this fish is considerably bigger than 12"!! From the big to the very small, this is what I'd call a serious nano. Notice that the only filtration on this tank is a biowheel, deep sandbed and rock. They have a front shop where they sell off their creations: Some of the frags they have available forsale: Here is a picture of some shark eggs that they had for sale. You could actually see the little guys squirming around inside. Now to behind the scenes where the breeding, propagation, experimentation, etc... takes place: This is an overview of one corner of the facility showing the holding tanks for fish waiting to be moved to the front sale tanks. I think you may be able to come back and purchase directly out of these as well. Here is the frag tank: They had row after row of huge plastic/fiberglass drums for breeding. Unforunately, the lighting was so poor that none of these pictures came out. :oops: They also had at least three of these types of breeding areas: They also had numerous huge reef tanks for which I presume they are studying husbandry techniques and trying to create natural environments: Check out the huge RBTA: This leather is at least two foot across and notice the massive clam next to it: They also had numerous 5-6 foot deep tanks: They grow their own food: Now to the interesting husbandy techniques... They don't use any skimmers and don't do any water changes, and I am talking about YEARS have gone by!! They have VERY deep sand beds (adding new top layers of sand from time to time adding to the depth) and employ "non-traumatic water movement, as provided by Archimedes Screw Pumps or Water Blowers" as seen below: They use quite large algae scrubbers on all the big tanks. Here are a few pictures of the inside: And here is one dumping: Here are three in a row on one of the big tanks: They never touch the sand bed. In fact, in most areas there is no way to even get to it since the growth is so crazy. Here is a picture showing how they create the reef structure with trays stacked at various levels. The fish in these tanks are more healthy, larger and exhibiting more natural behavior than any I've ever seen captive. The extremely large fish were also quite old, e.g. 10-15 years. The experience of the visit has sure opened my eyes to alternative husbandry techniques and made me think twice about my sterile looking barebottom. Not to mention, the maintenance on these tanks is nil, i.e. feed the fish, top up with fresh water and scrub the algae off the scrubbers once a week. All of their reefs look better than mine and not one $2000 skimmer in sight. :-? Better not let my wife read this!!

~800 litres total, run 1 x 300W and 1 x 200W heater, an aquamedic temperature controller and a lot of fans (also hooked up to temp controller). No real problems with temp control.