Im on board with Christy here, I think GFO will work some wonders for you.

Sent from my HTC Desire HD using Tapatalk

Its funny you brought this up. I also started my tank with all dry rock in hopes to avoid all of the problems you have mentioned. So far, I have aptaisia, bubble algae, and now a wicked outbreak of cyano. I just started the zeo method in hope to starve out the algae issues, But i refuse to take off the GFO, while cyano is going on

Fts look nice man I saw how bad the hair algae was so I know how much you e turned it around! The background looks cool how it's got the varying texture between blue and the darker bits. Red planet looks big too. Wish I saw more gorge in there but when you think you're ready you can have some off mine (yours).

Tony, where did your pipes end up after this pic? Care to post a new one?
Thanks
http://www.canreef.com/vbulletin/sho...&postcount=244
http://lh3.ggpht.com/_ujFD9DxsrV8/TI...2/IMG_1443.JPG

Tony, as per our chat yesterday, this is the dosing schedule G. Alexander had suggested for my 200g water volume...

~1.9l of zeolites, water flow ~ 200 US gallons per hour changed at 6-8 weeks. If you have recently started zeovit I would recommend to run the reactor with a 3 hour on / off interval for the first couple of week

0.75 liter activated carbon flown passively

Dose Coral Vitalizer @ 4 drops/2 x weekly

Dose Amino Acid HC @ 4 drops/2 x weekly

Dose Zeostart2 @ 0.7 ml 2 x daily

dose Xtra @ 4ml/ 2 x weekly

Dose Zeobac @ 8 drops twice weekly

Dose Zeofood7 @ 4 drops twice weekly

Agitate reactor once daily

I'm also a huge proponent of new clean rock from the real live ocean! Rock will adsorb nutrients over the years, and using any used rock, dry or otherwise, can and often will lead to algae issues. Yes, you save a few bucks, but I find saving a few bucks in this hobby often has a cost.

I don't think the zeo system works on the more is better principle, and I suspect that it will eventually work for you, but you have a ton of PO4 to suck out first. GFO may help accelerate that, or perhaps change your zeolites more often.
Not sure about running both, never tried it, but starting with new rock (20% maybe older from previous tank), running zeo from the start, my PO4 is 0.02 or lower. I also change 25% of the water biweekly.

Hi Greg, I will take a picture under the stand and post it tonight (will be late tonight though I won't be home for a while). But in the meantime I can try to describe it. It's nothing too complicated, basically both pipes drain down into the sump just underneath. They both have small horizontal jogs to get past the edge of the sump since the sump sits inside the stand which is framed of 2x4's so the edge sits right under the bulkheads. As a Herbie style overflow the shorter drainpipe is the main drain and has a gate valve on its horizontal jog so to allow the water line to be up at the overflow teeth. I keep the waterline basically about 1" lower then the main display (basically hovering at the emergency standpipe height with a small trickle going down the emergency overflow). Anything more than 1" and you hear a waterfall sound.

Cool thanks for that. Ironically though my current dosing recommendations are from the same dude over there. But I'm curtailing things back nonetheless just to see if the trend reverses. So far it's been "more zeo = more PO4" so we'll see.

I am very tempted to run GFO in conjunction but it has been recommended not to several times. I remember Dez in his thread complained about tip burn after adding GFO on top of zeo. In general however it is certainly true that a rapid reduction of PO4 is basically deadly, and the irony is that apart from a few pieces in the minority, most of my current SPS are handling 0.18 just fine. The colours could have more pop in some cases but on the list of things to complain about that's pretty minor.

For sure. I don't remember the exact makeup of rock, some of it is BRS shelf rock, others formerly dried rock, and a good portion (at least 1/3 - 1/2) was wet rock that had been cooking in a 50g rubbermaid for a while. So while some of it was pretty skanky to begin with, after a while it cleaned up at least visually. But also true that basically none of it was "new" rock. I can see the benefit of going all new and if I ever do this again I might go that road but the flip side is that even newly collected rock will eventually become a few years old and it would be nicer if we could find ways to keep the stuff we have already out of the ocean to be useful for longer rather than planning to replace it all every few years.

Thanks for the advice though! This week is my experimental week of dosing less - come the weekend I want to see if I notice a smaller number or not.

Thanks for the info. I should have been clearer with my question.
What I meant to ask was where did your standpipe heights end up.
You answered 1/2 of that. Now I have a starting point :wink:

Hey Tony, what day/time do you wanna go? Lets plan something.

Its funny how none of us are ever happy with our setups!

Couldn't be truer right now! I just spent another two hours with a pair of scissors attacking my algae :neutral:

Why don't you guys swing by tomorrow night?

Oh ... sorry. The shorter standpipe on the left is still like that, the taller one on the right is extended all the way to the top of the overflow. The strainer is gone but to keep wayward fish/snails/etc out out of the standpipe there is a flat strainer instead (it's basically eggcrate). Had a work function last night and didn't get home last night until well after lights-out on the tank so couldn't take pictures. I'll try tonight.

Why are 'you' apologizing? :wink: I'm the one with the badly worded question.

Oh sorry man, just logged in, after getting home from beer and wings. Could of come tonight, but too late now.

What days do youhave open? Tony, how about you?

Thursday this week probably the only evening, I could also maybe do Friday during the day..

No pressure guys... it'll be here a while lol. Thursday's fine if you have the time though.

Us Westcoasters are feeling left out :cry:

I live 10 minutes from him and I'm feeling left out :-(

Wait, why are we talking about Brett's tank in Tony's thread?!

dood i invited you on that other site. you ignored it not my problem!

and this thread needs a little action. why not?

You did? I must've ignored it.

Even went out and bought a new TLF reactor as an excuse to have you over. Guess you needed one REAL bad.

I still need one! Just not REAL bad. Running carbon passively ATM until I get my grubby hands on that tlf.

Thought this was kinda neat. Just uploaded some LPS shots for another thread and was looking at older pictures of the same corals. Funny how coral growth sort of sneaks up on you that you don't really see day by day or even week by week but throw a few months or a year under the belt, and "wow."

Red blastomussa:

Now:
http://i305.photobucket.com/albums/n...f/DSC_0005.jpg

A year-ish ago:
http://i305.photobucket.com/albums/n...f/IMG_1910.jpg


Purple/green Blastomussa:

Now:
http://i305.photobucket.com/albums/n...f/DSC_0009.jpg

A year-ish ago:
http://i305.photobucket.com/albums/n...f/IMG_1932.jpg

Need to get some updated shots of the Acans and a few of the SPS. The Red Planet in particular is crazy how much it has grown.

Verrryyy nice :biggrin:!

What growth form are you getting on your Red Planet Tony? Have any photos?

Very nice! Howzabouts a fts?

Nice growth Tony.
Glad to hear you're getting growth on the SPS as well. Looks like you've gotten over your SPS jinx.

Nice Tony.

Thanks guys :)

The Red Planet is an extraordinarily difficult coral to photo. Every time I try, basically you get the edges completely washed out and overexposed whereas the inside bits are too dark. Compensating exposure in any direction makes the other worse. So I've had rather limited success with photos with a number of cameras.

Did manage this one with some random experimenting with post-processing. So this is more mangled than I usually do but at least it "sort of looks like how it looks for real."

http://i305.photobucket.com/albums/n...DSC_0013-1.jpg

Compared to a year ago:
http://i305.photobucket.com/albums/n...f/IMG_1926.jpg

Or another way to look at it:

A year ago:
http://i305.photobucket.com/albums/n...f/IMG_1914.jpg

Now:
http://i305.photobucket.com/albums/n...f/DSC_0031.jpg

"We've come a long way, baby."

Scored this red flowerpot from Snappy a few weeks back:

http://i305.photobucket.com/albums/n...f/DSC_0002.jpg


Acans now:
http://i305.photobucket.com/albums/n...f/DSC_0054.jpg

http://i305.photobucket.com/albums/n...f/DSC_0093.jpg

http://i305.photobucket.com/albums/n...f/DSC_0092.jpg

http://i305.photobucket.com/albums/n...f/DSC_0090.jpg

Acans a year ago:
http://i305.photobucket.com/albums/n...f/DSC_0014.jpg

http://i305.photobucket.com/albums/n...f/DSC_0013.jpg


Duncans now:
http://i305.photobucket.com/albums/n...DSC_0009-1.jpg

Duncans a year ago:
http://i305.photobucket.com/albums/n...f/DSC_0012.jpg

Squammy and a Hippopus:
http://i305.photobucket.com/albums/n...f/DSC_0017.jpg


Clowns-n-carpets:
http://i305.photobucket.com/albums/n...f/DSC_0016.jpg

And the rose:
http://i305.photobucket.com/albums/n...f/DSC_0056.jpg

Fish!

The King: Man this guys loves to pose. I'm happy to oblige. :)
http://i305.photobucket.com/albums/n...f/DSC_0060.jpg

Lavender and Crosshatch:
http://i305.photobucket.com/albums/n...f/DSC_0055.jpg

Lieutenant tang (my son calls him "Lieutenant Worf.") Son of a nerd .. whatcha gonna do.
http://i305.photobucket.com/albums/n...f/DSC_0063.jpg

Lavender again, showing off his freckles..
http://i305.photobucket.com/albums/n...f/DSC_0065.jpg

http://i305.photobucket.com/albums/n...f/DSC_0066.jpg

http://i305.photobucket.com/albums/n...f/DSC_0078.jpg

Naughty potters...
http://i305.photobucket.com/albums/n...f/DSC_0080.jpg

http://i305.photobucket.com/albums/n...f/DSC_0076.jpg

http://i305.photobucket.com/albums/n...f/DSC_0084.jpg

C. rubriventralis
http://i305.photobucket.com/albums/n...f/DSC_0086.jpg

Male bellus angel..
http://i305.photobucket.com/albums/n...f/DSC_0073.jpg

http://i305.photobucket.com/albums/n...f/DSC_0067.jpg

And his lady:
http://i305.photobucket.com/albums/n...f/DSC_0072.jpg

S. virgatus:
http://i305.photobucket.com/albums/n...f/DSC_0071.jpg

Oh Tony, what a tease :razz: Love all your fish, especially the butterflyfish called something mountain or pyramid there. How big is your potter angelfish ?

These guys don't really belong in this thread but I don't have a journal for my 65g fowlr .. (I should probably fix that sometime.. oh well).

http://i305.photobucket.com/albums/n...f/DSC_0040.jpg

http://i305.photobucket.com/albums/n...f/DSC_0039.jpg

http://i305.photobucket.com/albums/n...f/DSC_0038.jpg

http://i305.photobucket.com/albums/n...DSC_0037-1.jpg

http://i305.photobucket.com/albums/n...f/DSC_0032.jpg

http://i305.photobucket.com/albums/n...f/DSC_0041.jpg

http://i305.photobucket.com/albums/n...f/DSC_0046.jpg

http://i305.photobucket.com/albums/n...f/DSC_0049.jpg

http://i305.photobucket.com/albums/n...f/DSC_0051.jpg

http://i305.photobucket.com/albums/n...f/DSC_0094.jpg

http://i305.photobucket.com/albums/n...f/DSC_0109.jpg

More ... :neutral: How many fish do you have in total ?

Nice Tony, your fish are awesome! Glad to see you're having some success with the SPS :mrgreen:

There have been a few SPS losses along the way too. I think the ones I have now are fairly resilient to elevated PO4. I've pretty much quit zeovit altogether although the zeolites are still in there (too lazy to pull them out). I pretty much quit dosing everything zeovit related however about 4 weeks ago just to see how things would go, and I was astonished at how well the tank has reacted to the absence of that dosing. :neutral: PO4 has gone up, however, so the zeovit was keeping it down "somewhat" but other than that it didn't seem to be helping the overall "look" to the tank. Weird. I'm going to switch over to GFO soon but am carefully considering how best to get on that as a sudden PO4 drop is usually pretty disastrous.

Thanks, and yeah, pyramid butterflies. I have a soft spot for butterflies. These pyramids are reputed to be among the most reef safe of butterflies so I thought I'd try them. So far they have been well behaved for the most part. I did catch them once sampling carpet tentacles once but the clowns chased them off and so far it seems that was the only incident (touch wood).

Have had the potters for a few years now, she is about maybe 3.5" long (and 2" wide :lol: )

Hmmm let's see. In the 280g we have:
2 - pyramids
3 - tangs (Red Sea sailfin, lavender, lieutenant)
3 - chromis (was 4 until this last week :( )
2 - clowns
3 - angels (m/f bellus, potters)
1 - crosshatch trigger
2 - wrasses (canary and rubriventralis)
1 - diamond goby for sandsifting
2 - mandarins (m/f)
1 - rabbitfish (S. virgatus)

So 20 I guess, wow! Oof.

In my 65g there is:
1 - C. ulietensis butterfly (double saddle back) (not the least little bit reef safe, as it turns out :) )
1 - flame hawk
1 - rabbitfish (S. doliatus)
2 - pair Hawaiian flame wrasses
2 - pair diamond gobies for sandsifting (they seem to act like a pair anyhow)
1 - golden dwarf moray

If you lived in BC I would definitely beg to come to your place to see your tank and the beautiful fish you have. They are so gorgeous and I think you feed them well :biggrin:

If you're ever out this way, drop me a line. You're totally welcome to visit, the cost is you have to endure listening to my 6 year old talk your ears off about Star Trek or whatever else it is he's nerding out about at the time. Usually it's Star Trek however. Every so often we'll let him watch an episode and then it's 6 weeks of dawn to dusk blah blah blah blah GENERATOR CORE blah blah blah KLINGONS (the weird thing is he'll go on and on about Klingons even if it wasn't an episode with actual Klingons) .. blah blah blah blah WARP REACTOR .. I mean don't get me wrong, I'm a total Star Trek / SciFi geek myself so I never thought I'd catch myself saying this but it totally turns out there is such a thing as "too much Star Trek." On a totally unrelated note, we're going to go see the whole NextGen cast when they come to town next month LORD HELP US ALL WHAT HAVE I DONE.

I digress - what I meant to say is, "if you're ever out this way, drop me a line, you're welcome to come look at fish." :)

What a coincidence :p My husband could talk about Star Trek the whole day if I am willing to listen to him. He is a BIG fan ! I am sure he would love to talk to your little boy more than me. You will regret for inviting us to come to see your tank, because I can sit there for hours just to look at your fish and your sps corals :razz:

Looks great! I will be starting a project similar to this in the coming weeks - just on vacation now - have to set up all the details and measurements when I get home.