Stone's 225 Carbonate Factory

[lastlight]

be nice if your colonies weren't all so MASSIVE. My eyes get sore from uninterrupted AWESOMENESS.

That efflo is going to bust your front pane out!

[Stones]

ORA red planet and Acropora granulosa I believe?

close up ORA red planet

[Stones]

And now for some recently aquired frags that seem to have some serious potential

[Stones]

And heres my sad attempt at some macros

[Stones]

And here are some comparison shots to show the effects the nitrate spike had on my tank:

2011

2012


2011

2012


And a few pics of the other tank inhabitants

[Stones]

Originally Posted by lastlight

be nice if your colonies weren't all so MASSIVE. My eyes get sore from uninterrupted AWESOMENESS.

That efflo is going to bust your front pane out!

Most would be alot larger but they really haven't grown much or at all since April when I started having issues. Since the color is finally starting to come back, I'm hoping to start seeing some growth tips again on some of the more stubborn species.

The key to getting the OK from the wife to get a bigger tank is clearly strategic placement of corals. After a year or two, if placed in a suitable location, they'll start to encroach on the sides of the tank.

So now when I show the wife that efflo, I say that poor coral is going to grow into the glass unless I get a wider tank. Checkmate.

[Skimmerking]

Hey man did u get alot of those corals from Dreef

[Stones]

Hey Mike, it's actually the other way around. Dreef got alot of those corals from me. There is the odd one in the tank that came from him but they are just frags at the moment. I have a few A. millepora colonies that I grew out from him and a nice A. convexa but I didn't snap any pics of them this last go round.

[Stones]

Now that 2012 has come and gone, I figured I'd try and update my thread a bit more regularily than I did in the previous year seeing as I only made 1 or 2 posts.

Since the family was going to be out of town for 5-6 days in a row for Christmas, I was getting my tank prepared to run fully automated for such a long duration as in the past I've always had a friend swing by to check up on the tank while we were away.

I upgraded my auto top off reservoir from a 6 gallon instant ocean bucket (which would last for 2-3 days) to a 15 gallon food grade plastic barrel that just barely fit inside of my stand. Sadly I forgot to snap a pic of the new setup but it's looking like I can now go 7-8 days without needing to refill the reservoir.

I fed the fish a 1/2 sheet of nori and setup my Rena automatic feeder so that they would continue to be fed while we were away. I then went upstairs to pack myself for the trip. An hour later I went back downstairs to do one final check on the tank only to be greeted by the aroma of burning plastic.






It seems the laws of physics defied themselves (quite typical in this hobby for some reason) as saltwater from the tank had managed to auto-siphon itself over my 3/4" thick eurobrace, run down the end pane of the aquarium and slowly drip directly on top of both of my vortech wireless wave drivers that were screwed to the inside of my stand. I'm still a bit baffled by how this managed to happen but the only scenario that I can come up with is that there was a small puddle of water left on top of my eurobrace by the PVC nori feeder tube that I had just used. When my wavebox fires, the water level in the aquarium rises up ~3/4" to just touch the bottom of the eurobrace, which conveniently has a 1" hole cut in the corner for running cables or PVC pipe through. Somehow the small puddle of water sitting on top of the eurobrace must have wicked up additional saltwater each time the wavebox fired through the hole in the 3/4" thick eurobrace until the point where it started to drip down over the end pane of the aquarium.

I'm sure this would be impossible to replicate again if I tried but either way, I'm just glad we hadn't left the house yet as I'm sure there would have been a fire.

In the past, I had also burnt out a wireless wave driver when a friend of mine had come over to help my wife take apart my return pump while I was away at work. The return pump failed to fire up again after a power outage causing a small scale flood (when my siphon breaks in the return line failed to do their jobs). My friend accidentally spilled some make up saltwater down the end pane of the tank and it dripped into one of my vortech drivers causing it to malfunction and not work correctly afterwards.

Seeing as this was the 2nd time it happened, I now have revised the way I mount these drivers to the inside of the stand. Before they were screwed directly to the wood on the end of my stand. And here is my solution to hopefully prevent this from ever happening again.



I used 3/16" foam spacers meant for protecting flooring from chair/table legs so now if water ever spills or drips down the end pane of my aquarium, the water should run behind the drivers and end up in the base of my stand which is sealed and can hold ~10 gallons of water.

On a related matter, if anyone has upgraded to the Ecosmart drivers and still has their wireless wave drivers kicking around, I'm going to be needing a new one as I only had 1 spare and 2 drivers were damaged by this little incident.

[lockrookie]

That sux bud you do know I'm only a phone call away if you need a tank sitter. I am glad you fought it in time