Parker's 265 Build - Thread Retired

[Parker]

Some pics from today,

All three lights running again..


Peaches & Cream


I need to find a better place for this one


Bucket sized, doesn't really look like it in the tank though.






Left side


Right side

[Dez]

Looks good. Go easy on the lighting period because remember, many of those corals you got from me were shaded so you gotta ease them into full lighting. Your lights are 400 watts as well, so you don't wanna shock em.

[Parker]

Originally Posted by Dez

Looks good. Go easy on the lighting period because remember, many of those corals you got from me were shaded so you gotta ease them into full lighting. Your lights are 400 watts as well, so you don't wanna shock em.

Thanks for confriming my thoughts... when I put everything I backed my lighting down to 5 hours per day for the next little while. I haven't noticed any bleaching yet, I've been keeping a good eye out for it.

[chris88]

what Kelvin is your lighting?

[Parker]

Originally Posted by chris88

what Kelvin is your lighting?

Hey Chris,

The two outside bulbs are IceCap 10k and the middle one is Icecap 14k

[lastlight]

400w 10k? Wow be careful lol.

How are you mounting those colonies? None came with rock still attached I'm assuming. It's going to be pretty tricky but it looks like you've managed to attach some already... wedged the rest?

[Parker]

Originally Posted by lastlight

400w 10k? Wow be careful lol.

Only running 5 hours a day right now. I was actually laying in bed last night trying to come up with a nice way to hang the pendants, make them look decent and have the height adjustable so I could raise them up in these situations.

Originally Posted by lastlight

How are you mounting those colonies? None came with rock still attached I'm assuming. It's going to be pretty tricky but it looks like you've managed to attach some already... wedged the rest?

A couple came with rocks/plugs attached. The rest are wedged into the rockwork for now untl I'm satisfied with where they are.



Not maintaining this thread any longer.

[Parker]

I told myself I wasn't going to update this thread any longer because I was getting tired of typing out all of my frustrations, most of which I still have.

Now it's time to go to extremes, the tank comes down this week. Not to sell off or get out of the hobby but to figure out a different way of doing things.

On the list of things do:
A) Rebuild Sump - it's been off-line for a year.
B) Re-plumb the tank, quite a few leaks have developed for some reason.
C) Take full advantage of my Apex
D) Figure out a better way to run reactors
E) Figure out my lighting situation - fix what's causing the issues with my ballasts or switch to a different form of lighting.
F) Aptasia - I had two file fish that took months to start eating them and once the tank was looking great they up and died, the aptasia is back with vengeance. If I don't get this problem sorted the next step is to just burn my house down, that’ll kill it!
G) RO/DI still doesn’t work correctly along with the auto top off – the solenoid valve no longer holds back water, the secondary float valves works fine but I like having the redundancy of two valves.
H) Aquascaping – I hate what I have.
I) Canopy, time to make this thing look good.

Damn, that’s quite the list – now I’m really depressed.
J) Consume vodka meant for tank…..

[lastlight]

sorry to hear man. smart move not to take it down tho. much easier to sort these out with a dry tank. and you can cook the rock in the dark for a few months while you do it. maybe that would kill the pests?

[Parker]

Originally Posted by lastlight

sorry to hear man. smart move not to take it down tho. much easier to sort these out with a dry tank. and you can cook the rock in the dark for a few months while you do it. maybe that would kill the pests?

From what I hear / read, aptasia can't be killed by light deprivation. It needs to be controlled by a predator, killed manually or I'll need to nuke my rock and start over with dead rock and re-seed with new clean live rock.

I'm not a big fan of the predator route, they comes back once the predator has been removed, the tank to too big to remove manually. ( at least at this point in my busy life ) so I may chuck the rock in the snow for a month.. lol