Thanks Greg!

Coming along nicely Tony, and that Trigger is a beauty. Sorry to hear about the clam though.

Looking good Tony!! I'm having clam issues as well, this is the third one to go downhill since the start of the year. Frustrating as hell :neutral:

Lookin good Tony :biggrin:

So I think another one of the Tunzes is starting to crap out. One of the waveboxes chatters pretty badly lately, I tried cleaning it out but I can't find anything inside the impeller assembly. It will turn for a while but eventually just sort of stutters. It still moves water but like 10% of what it should be pushing.

I might ping Roger Vitko on this but does this sound like a motor drive unit failure? It's one of the old style 6200's. Anyone with a wavebox or a 6200 on its own that I could borrow an impeller from for an afternoon so I can see if it's the impeller? I'd order a new one but if that's not it then that's sort of a waste.

Well, got the Tunzes straightened out for now. It turns out that a 6261 which is the wavebox pump, is a 6100 but uses a 6200 propeller and cover. So I swapped out the pump for the one remaining 6100 I had in the tank and now both boxes are operational again. I replaced the 6100 with a 6105 from tinman who was selling two of them on the board recently.

Also I learned something about the waveboxes and it turns out I was doing something wrong with them. :redface: The sponge ring is not supposed to go over top of the pump cover (which makes it a prefilter in a way), it's supposed to go over the back of the pump. So fixed that up on the both of them, and wow what a difference when you do things the right way. :lol: I get about a 1/2" wave now with one running and almost a full 1" with both running. For now I am leaving both running but I'd be happy enough with just the 1/2".

Amazing the difference in polyp extension having those things running right though.

Some random pictures... I can't seem to get pictures in focus .. EVER :( But here are some that are not too terrible.

I think this is a green slimer. It was given to me as a much larger piece but started RTN'ing after a day so I fragged the tips off, attached them to the disk, and threw out the bottom part. A solid 2" of decent sized coral I threw out but I wasn't going to risk keeping it if was peeling back like that. Luckily the tips seemed to recover and are growing quickly now. The colour in the picture is off, this is a super bright yellow/green but I dialed the aperture right down so that it wouldn't show up as overexposed in the picture ... I guess I overcompensated but at least you can see the polyps and stuff.
http://i305.photobucket.com/albums/n...f/IMG_1944.jpg

Purple loripes from Snappy:
http://i305.photobucket.com/albums/n...f/IMG_1939.jpg

Two toned Bali piece from a couple weeks ago .. colour settling nicely:
http://i305.photobucket.com/albums/n...f/IMG_1934.jpg

Blasto:
http://i305.photobucket.com/albums/n...f/IMG_1932.jpg

Cali tort starting to take off:
http://i305.photobucket.com/albums/n...f/IMG_1931.jpg

Blue milli from Bluetang - blue for some reason doesn't show up well in the photos but it is a neat piece in person:
http://i305.photobucket.com/albums/n...f/IMG_1927.jpg

Red Planet from Lorenzo, really taking off now and is a real stunner in person:
http://i305.photobucket.com/albums/n...f/IMG_1926.jpg

Also here is a real quick video of the Duncans swaying in the waves. Wasn't sure how to link to it with a preview image so here's just the URL:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NoPUEbvqbiw

Thanks for looking :)

Holy fish poop them Duncan polyps are shaggy man! Glad you got the waves sorted out you def have some back and forth now. I guess since you're not prefiltering the water the waves are sorta dirty now haha ;)

Got some nice deep purples too which is something I'm really lacking and wanting!

sweet RP there Tony and I can sure vouch for how blue Westers millie is....

Looking good Tony; and love the Duncans doing the Watusi.

Love the wave action of the duncans :thumb: The sps seem to be colouring up nicely too

oh ya! I was gonna mention the cool Stevie Wonder motion of the duncans......but, one thing Tony.....I need a little more than 7 seconds out of my reef porn.....way to quick of a vid for me:mrgreen::razz:

Haha.. yeah sorry. Even Linda after seeing that said "what idiot uploads a 7 second video to YouTube?" ... I had this fantasy I'd try converting it into an animated GIF so that's why I kept it short but then I kinda never got around to the "make it happen" stage... oops! Tomorrow is a new day. Surely I'll have oodles of time for that tomorrow..

Go
 

Amazing photos Tony. I'm jealous!

Thanks man, I look at them still and think, "Geez when will I ever get an in focus shot" but at least some of the colours come through! I guess I'm due for an update, that red planet is growing like crazy. Some of the others show a little bit of growth too. For the most part the tank is in that "Grow! Please grow!" phase. It's a bit agonizing to look at corals that were .75" in January/February and see that they are now 1" but hopefully in time things will fill in a bit.

One bit of annoying news, the potter's angel has developed a taste for gorgonians and most of them now have nibbled tips. I might think about removing the potter's, the damage is starting to get noticeable.

Another is that valonia and aiptasia are also starting to let their presence be felt. Going to have to do something about that I suppose..

beautiful fish.
but, they sure dont look like that in the stores.
i'm guessing it is showing mature coloration? probably didnt look like that as a juvenile eh?

tank is looking good buddy!

It might be the adult colouration? Although he's actually looked like that at the store when he was maybe 3". So if it is a juvy/adult thing then this one turned adult colours pretty early. Mind you I have seen orange shoulder tangs at 3" and you'd think they'd still be the juvenile yellow at that size so I guess adult colours can come pretty much whenever they feel like it in the fish world. :)

A couple things that I have observed however between seeing lavenders in the stores, other peoples tanks, and in Hawaii - there do seem to be two major colour morphs. A darker one like this one, and a lighter one where it's more of a pinkish grey in the body with a purple/pink/lavender border along the fins and so on. (I'll see if I can dig up a photo.)

But, lighting can play tricks on you. I've had people see this fish in person exclaim that they didn't even realize the fish was that colourful because between swimming so fast and it being hard to look at because he won't sit still, and the light needing to shine on him just right, he can appear like a brown colourless tang unless you're really looking at him closely.

Of course there's also that fish store tanks are stressful places for fish with seldom the most optimal lighting conditions to showcase subtle colours on fish, so that could be a factor too maybe..

Ya I get that with my chevron too..... Most times he looks kinda drab and plain, but when the light hits him just right you can see the color and patternation on him.....sweet fish none the less Tony

One extreme to the next!! One min (ok maybe longer) can't grow an SPS to save his soul and now you are the King!

Love the coral selections Tony......everything looks amazing!!!

What are the two things that you changed that would attribute to this sucess?
(sorry if you are repeating this....I have had no time to read much these days)

I'm not sure I'm doing all THAT well yet but thanks :) I've just gotten lucky on a few frag purchases.

The only thing I can really think of that can explain the difference is that this is really a complete tank reset. All new rock, plus it was dry to begin with so the starting point should be as reasonably close to clean as I can make it.

Of course, 5 months in I have managed to get valonia, bryopsis and aiptasia in there and they are starting to make their presence be felt. I need to go hunting. Tweezers for the valonia, boiling water for the bryopsis, and I want to get an aiptasia zapper for those little nuisances.

Arrrrgh!! Looks like my third Tunze failure since the startup of this tank. I'm very frustrated right now!!!! Now it's a 6105 that's chattering. I don't understand. Is this a common failure for these things? The other two I could at least rationalize away that they were years-old second hand but even though THIS 6105 was second-hand, I thought they were still reasonably newish. Of course the fact that it WAS bought used means I have utterly no recourse (yet again) to repair or replace it under a warrantee. Yayyyyyyy.

Would just replace them all with a few Vortechs but that prospect is too expensive to consider. :cry: Why, why, why!!!!

At this point I think I would tell anyone considering the purchase of Tunze vs Vortech to steer away from the Tunzes. There clearly is a lack of proper QA being done..

sorry to hear about the tunze troubles mang....I personally have never had any issue with my tunzes......mine have all been new and I take pretty good care of them tho.......if it makes you feel any better we have a shelf full of broken vortech parts at the shop, so they aren't immune to problems either....

Controllable or non-controllable? I'm wondering if it's the variable speed that is the problem and supposing for a moment that's the real issue then I'm not real surprised to hear that Vortech's are probably subject to the same kinds of issues..

Annoying as hell, I hands-down just can't afford to buy another Tunze to replace this one. If it's unserviceable I'm going to have to make do with less flow in the tank for a little while.

both.......mind you Ive always just run the controllable ones(6055s) full blast (even tho I have a controller for them, there was money well spent:mrgreen:)

Well ok think I found something wrong..

http://i305.photobucket.com/albums/n...s/IMG_2631.jpg

... so this probably has nothing to do with controllable/non-controllable. How bloody odd, how does a wire get a knick into it like that?

<sigh> ... <grumble>

I cant remember now......do you have a trigger?

I have a small crosshatch trigger sporting juvenile colours still. I suspect she is a female, I have had her about 18 months and she's gone from 2.5" to about 5" in this time.

wel....triggers do have a reputation for chewing on cords..........and inverts:mrgreen:

Just noticed your post is reply 666, so I better reply quick and get past that number. :lol:

I think she can be exonerated in this case, the spot on the cord would sit inside the propeller cover, it's also on the inside of the bend the cord has to make to get outside the propeller cover. It could be that the insulation pinched somehow but I'm thinking maybe someone used something sharp to scrape coraline off when cleaning it. This particular 6105 I bought second-hand but I can't even remember who from, it's been a few months. I do remember thinking it was remarkably clean for a second-hand powerhead. :lol:

Tony it's ridiculous that one of our flagship builds gets so little action lately. It's update time bro =)

Oh my, nothing since May? :eek: Ok then, challenge accepted. :p New pictures will be up .. um .... as soon as possible. :redface:

wow a 280 gal and a 404 gal and still no updates. you guys should be ashamed......

Don't bring me into this. I shoot a new video everytime my fish take a poop. Not my fault your old-man eyes are missing them lol.

Check yaself befo ya wreck yaself Mikey :mrgreen:

you take a video of your fish pooping you are one sick person.
and I shouldnt talk when was the last update for me

Having personally seen Tony's tank of recent, I do say it is beautiful and YES, please post for the rest to enjoy.

Now Brett, I can't make the same comments about your setup, but would love to see it in person so I can.

Yeah some of the pieces last time had some super sweet colors I'm looking forward to an update. I saw a frag off his red planet at greg's and that also looked bangin.

Both you and Tony still have to swing by. I'm home all evening feel free =)

Well .. I think you guys are too kind, I've seen both your tanks and they're nicer. :) (And I'm not just saying that.)

Here are some FTS I was able to get tonight. Nothing too special, just what I was able to get before the camera battery died, and it turns out I forgot to charge the other battery so tonight's photo sessions ended early. Hopefully better luck tomorrow.

I find my FTS shots are always out of focus and lack any kind of detail. So I tried two things: The first is a standard "darken room, stand back from the tank, take a picture, crop the top and bottom." The second and third are stitching attempts. I think this technique shows some promise but a little more trial and error is needed. Of course being darker the exposures are longer so the fish are nothing but blurs and in one it looks like i have 3 pyramid butterflyfish (there are only 2 for real :lol: ).

http://i305.photobucket.com/albums/n...f/IMG_3429.jpg

http://i305.photobucket.com/albums/n...0Reef/fts1.jpg

http://i305.photobucket.com/albums/n...0Reef/fts2.jpg

I knew I had let this thread slide a little but I didn't realize it was since May already that the real troubles began. It has been, well, .. an interesting journey with lots of little (and maybe some not-so-little) frustrations along the way.

Essentially once the "newness" of the tank wore off, things started going downhill pretty bad. Sand was slimy all the time, cyano was taking hold, corals started receding. By the time summer came around, the tank was a disgusting mess and it was very discouraging. Algae over all the rock, many lost corals (mainly SPS and the gorgs).

I lived in denial about the cause for a long time because I really wanted to believe in the zeovit system and its ability to reduce phosphate. However, for whatever reason(s), in this tank, there are phosphates present in high levels. Back in November-ish timeframe I reached to the zeovit.com community for advice and was given some dosing advice by some of the more experienced members there.

What was suggested was to discontinue any secondary dosing of zeovit products and focus on Zeobak, Zeostart3, Biomate and Zeozym. Zeobak is dosed in at 12 drops every other day, Biomate is dosed in at 20 drops in the alternating days, Zeostart3 is 1ml twice per day, and Zeozym is dissolved in a tub tank water on the Zeobak dosing days but ledt to stand overnight and dosed in the morning.

Also in the fall a diamond goby was added to sift sand, and I've added some urchins. Snails don't seem to last very long, if I buy 10, I can expect 7 to be goners within a week or two. I don't know if this is par for the course or if I'm unlucky but at least the urchins seem to do a nice job of working the rock.

Following these changes, the slow transformation has been very encouraging. After a long time of nongrowing corals, I see new growth once again. The algae has been slowly retreating and exists only in a few isolated spots.

The downer of course however is that phosphate continues to read high levels for now. Tonight I did 3 tests, 2 with the Hanna checker, and the result is 0.18ppm. I have an older D-D/Merck low-range PO4 test kit so used that as well and got a reading of 0.06ppm (middle of the colour chart). Despite the wildly different numbers, the one inescapable conclusion is that PO4 is still too high. So .. this continues to frustrate me for now. I don't know how much longer I can mentally withstand the phosphate before I want to try something new. (Prodibio, GFO, pellets, or an algae scrubber come to mind as possible alternatives. Or Foz-Down or some other lanthanum dosing based solution.)

Despite the frustrations however, some hardy corals are doing well, for example and strangely enough, the Red Planet. The LPS seem to thrive as well (Acans, bubble, blastos, duncans.) I'll try to get some daytime shots tomorrow.

Tony
I'm a newb.. but I am wondering if starting a tank using some sort of GFO would help remove the PO from the tank, bypassing some of the new tank issues you faced?

This will become a real concern to me in a few days when I get my 72g and sump. I'll be moving my 2 nanos into it along with some fresh base rock. I already have a fair selection of mostly thriving SPS.. dont want to lose any...trying to learn what I can.

Hi Steve, if you were considering running GFO eventually anyhow then I would probably consider running GFO from the get-go. That way it will have to fight harder to accumulate, rather than you having to fight harder to reduce it.

I have a theory that part of the issue I'm facing is that I used dried rock for the scaping and was hoping it would reseed easily, plus that I tried to use fewer lbs-per-gallon to leave an open feel to the tank so that the tangs would have more swimming space. If I were to do it all over again, I would use precured rock instead of dry. I had this theory that if I used mostly (or all) dried rock then I wouldn't have to worry about introduced pests like aiptasia, majano, mantis, crabs, etc. .. and darn it all if that some of that stuff doesn't get in there anyhow (on the bottoms of frags and whatnot). So much for that theory.

Looks great Tony, although the photos could be bigger :razz:

Get some GFO in there, I don't care what they say about zeo, sometimes that schuff just don't get the job done.

Photobucket shrunk them to 480 wide I think. I'll have to poke around with settings and try again or a different photoshare maybe.