33 Gallon Reef

[Sidius]

A little update... I added a Eshopps PSK-100H HOB skimmer and so far it's working like a champ.. Installed it late last night and by morning it was already pulling skimmate.

Also, I added my first coral!!
I picked up a couple frags over last weekend from another Canreef member. Pulsing pom pom Xenia and an Orange Rhodactis. Both detached from the glue that was used to attach them to plugs by the second day. The Rhodactis went for a walk about and ended up tucked away in some rocks. I liked where it ended up and it seems happy. The pulsing xenia unfortunately, never took after I reattached it to a rock with fishing line and melted away. I was looking forward to the movement the pulsing xenia provided so I may try another frag down the road. For now I'm just going to let things settle and adjust with the new Skimmer. I was planning on waiting longer to get some corals but couldn't resist trying out some softies.

[Sidius]

Time for another update!

I have added some more clean up crew members so here is my current livestock list.

Fish:
Purple firefish

Invertebrates:
Scarlet Hermits (x3)
Blue legged hermits (x4)
Trochus snails (x5)
Astrea snails (x3)
Spiny star astrea snails (x3)
Cerith snails (x3)
Fighting conch
Orange lip conch

I've noticed a large increase in pods. They were all over my glass until I had to scrape it clean and I've seen them scurrying around on my rocks as well. Also, there's small spots of coraline algae popping up all over my rocks.

A project that I completed and added to the tank last night was converting an old Aquaclear110 into a HOB refugium for chaeto. I've been monitoring my nitrates and they were hovering around 10ppm with only one fish and the inverts listed (feeding Vitalis pellets once daily but a very small amount). I'm planning on adding more fish and possibly more inverts down the road and I'd like to keep the nutrients down closer to 2-5ppm. I'll be posting some pictures but essentially I built a containment device to keep the chaeto from getting into the tank out of egg crate and used some black plastic pieces to build a wall that comes up around the light to prevent it from lighting up the tank when the IM Chaetomax comes on at night. I dialed the flow back a little bit and used an old Aquaclear attachment to skim the surface water instead of pulling water from the lower water column. It's only been running since last night but I had fun building it and used almost entirely old parts laying around in my bins of aquarium stuff that I've collected over the years.

[Sidius]

Question for anyone that might actually be reading this... What do you do regarding moonlights at night?

My T5 fixture has small blue LED's on it's own channel so I've been leaving them on 24/7. The aren't really noticeable during the day but do add a tiny bit of shimmer which is nice. The reading I've done online seems to show that there isn't any effect on corals (even though I don't currently have any) but I would love to hear other more experienced Canreefers opinions on the matter.

[Frogger]

As long as it is not too bright that will work. My ATI fixture has a built in moonlight which stays on at a very low level.

[Sidius]

Originally Posted by Frogger

As long as it is not too bright that will work. My ATI fixture has a built in moonlight which stays on at a very low level.

Thanks for answering!!

Mine are not that bright either. It's an Aqua Medic T5 fixture and has 5 LED moonlights in total I believe, stretched across the 36" fixture.

[Skimmer Juice]

I use a led strip for my moonlights , works great