75 Gal w 30 Gal Sump Reef(I told you guys Im back)

[bauder1986]

Well update time for everyone. Tank is running smooth. Smoother than any tanks Ive had in the past. Parameters are all at near 0. Skimmer is running smoothly. Carbon and GFO reactors are doing their thing.

Added a frag or two of zoos and a nice frag of aussie green branching Duncans.

Also picked up a 4 point auto doser. Using that to Auto dose the ATI complete 2 stage and also for my water top ups. These dosers really make life nice and easy and lazy. Just need to figure out how to auto spot feed my coral at night...

Next thing to work on is add a Sand Dollar to keep the substrate in good order and a nice 6 line or 8 line wrasse to add more life to the tank. And then build a refuge in a reactor container.

[bauder1986]

Well Couple of months in and I have to say that the tank is running fine as feck. Honestly its abit disconcerting how well this tank cycled and stabilized compared to previous systems of mine.

So like I said, I picked up an auto doser. Pump one and two on it are running 95ml per day of the 4:1 RO/ATI Essentials mix Part 1 and Part 2. That stuff is honestly the shit. Its a full water change in a bottle. I have only done one water change and it was a small 5% one to stabilize my salinity that slowly dropped due to minor salt creep and dumping the skimmer over a few months. Pump 3 is just for topping up my water. Honestly, Im that lazy. And since Im home everyday I can decide to keep the hose in the RO water for the tank or just pull it out before the next programmed dose time of RO water. Once I get more funds Ill change that into an actual ATO. But for now Im okay with this.


Sump Needs cleaning....Thats for another day.




Also added some more livestock

Yellow Tang. Healthy and Hungry lil Bastard. And pretty curious too.


A Neon Dottyback. I really enjoy watching this guy. He is a hell of a swimmer.


A sand sifting star fish. Curious little creature these are. But it does the job keeping the substrate from turning in a rock of its own.


A small Lobo Brain. Loves its nightly feeding of cyclopods. I hope its colors improve with time.


Neon Green Aussie Branching Duncans. God damn these things grow fast!


A Blue Gonipora. Just starting to reach out.


A Green Gonipora. Happy as can be.


Pretty certain this is some kind of Rhodactus Mushroom. Big Guy once it stretches out. Bright too.


Chaos Palys!!!!!! So So So Bright! And they grow soo fast!


Mystery Palys. The skirts on these were brown when I got them. But are now starting to turn a nice Red.


And then there's everything else in the tank thats from before. All doing good.









And last but not least. FTS

[bauder1986]

I don't know of anybody else uses the ATI Reef essentials 2-part kit. But if you do I recommend you watch your salinity on a weekly to bi-weekly basis depending on the size of your system. I guess one of those parts has sodium in it which does actually increase your salinity.

I just had to spend some time dropping my salinity from 1.028 down to more acceptable parameters.

[bauder1986]

Got bored, here's me progress(or there lack of) with getting the right camera shot.

[bauder1986]

Well, since this is basically just me rambling off, then I shall continue!

Went shopping


Chucky's Bride (At least I think they are)


Incinerators


Blue Constellations


Pink Hippos


Purple Tip Octospawn


Planet Earth Gladis


Green Flowerpot(****ed off from just being moved)


Red Flowerpot (****ed off from being moved)


Nuclear Green Paly


Candy Apple Red


Rainbow Cloves


Tank Shots

[titus]

Hello

Lots of goodies. I see lots of opportunities for POTM.

Titus

[Dash]

I’m impressed with your photo of rainbow cloves. I can never capture the colour of mine on camera - they always look blah

[bauder1986]

Originally Posted by titus

Hello

Lots of goodies. I see lots of opportunities for POTM.

Titus

Yeah, I'll try for sure haha. Still alot of other more mature systems out there though

Originally Posted by Dash

I’m impressed with your photo of rainbow cloves. I can never capture the colour of mine on camera - they always look blah

Thank you!

Well. I used an underwater camera on underwater mode with the light filtering set as close to 10K as possible. So far that's the best I could do without buying the clip on light filter for camera's and I took the photo when my lights achieved max setting for the day.

Hope that helps.

[mseepman]

Tank is looking good! I find photos to be really tough. We have become so used to our phone having a good camera and they just take horrible pics of the tank.

[bauder1986]

Originally Posted by mseepman

Tank is looking good! I find photos to be really tough. We have become so used to our phone having a good camera and they just take horrible pics of the tank.

Thank you

Yeah. You need a really good phone to do a decent job. There's this one guy at the LFS here in Red Deer who has a phone that's capable of 10000K white balance in pro mode. Plus he clips on a lense onto his phone that further filters out the blue light making some pretty decent pictures.

But nothing compares to a good camera with a macro lense and light filter.