victoly

Do you get a thick skimmate or more of a tealike wet skim? I've never been able to pull anything substantial with mine. Could be because i tend to light feed and do sizable water changes every week, but still.

Right, but it certainly makes it easier than if you were to try and keep things under control if it was rampant on your main rock work.

1) Yes, many corals are pretty odoriferous out of water. Totally normal. 2) Breaking off pieces is how caps are propagated. You should be fine 3) Seriously, try to segregate the xenia on a piece by itself. It can and will take over your tank. It's easier to catch the runners that way.

for about tree fiddy

This is super nitpicky, but the text color is really hard for me to see :/ Other than that, thanks so much for your comparison!

Seriously, the tank looks outstanding. Thanks for your detailed description, this is bound to be useful to some club members.

The only comment that I have on that light is the color may tend to be a little blue (14k + more blue). However, that's more of an aesthetic thing than a growth thing. As for quality, the LEDs being used are the lower quality bridgelux (as opposed to cree) so your mileage may vary with long term usage. Dimmability is nice, price is reasonable. To echo patrick's comments, 120w is way too much for your tank size, but if you can dim it down, it should be ok. If you aim to upgrade, dimmable fixtures are helpful. In my own selfish interests, i say give it a shot and let us know

$2.50. I win. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

$10 Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Shrimp + goby would be my vote Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Aquadome has some good looking stock Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

I can't remember whether you have an apex or not, but if you have temp logs it would be a factor that you could quickly eliminate (maybe a temporary power outage that fixed itself when you returned home?). Otherwise, I'm trying to think of the parameters that would cause losses in such a short time period...Alk/Ca/Mg wouldn't cause receding, just lack of flourishing. So you're left with contaminants (painting, cleaning chemicals), pH issues, NH3, NO4, NO3, or something else?

it's been a pretty crazy hot week. how are the temps looking in the tank?

emily/rolando came to pick it up.

what size was your DT?

I have had it where peristaltic pump tubing needed to be replaced it developed a small crack over time and lost suction I did not notice till week later when corals were not looking good and my alk dropped to 5dkh. I have now switched to ca reactor I love it. In theory if you don't have nitrates or phosphate issue you should never need to do water change as all the trace minerals are being replenished from the ca reactor media while two part you still will need to do a water change to replenish what trace minerals are absorbed by the corals. If you switched to full balling method then you are truly replacing all what the corals need Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Good point about replacing the tubing on the head regularly. However, i still feel as if this failure is in the "it broke but didn't kill everything" category. The same type of failure could happen to a reactor, and therefore makes them even.

I built my own reactor for less than $50 out of 4" PVC. I ran my system on manual, which means one less thing to fail, a pH controller. I had an extended system that including 500G of refugiums, growout troughs and 150G display tank. I had oppossite photoperiods and had no problems with pH stability. Initialy there was much testing and adjusting for several weeks. Once calcium was slected as the concentration to monitor, there was no more tweaking required. Maintenance required was twice a year at less than one hour of labor in one year. When you put the labor cost in the equation, calcium reactor wins, imo. I thought the thread was going to deal with failure analysys. Worst case sceanario. Patrick You are running a special case tank which is heavily dominated by CO2 sinks. Most people don't have the capacity to safely absorb the quantity of gas that could potentially leak out of a system that doesn't have timer/pH control. However, your point about labor cost is totally valid. When you amortize your "time spent" mixing solution, over the life of your tank, it might very well be worth the extra couple bucks in startup cost if safety isn't a driving factor. What is a CO2 sink? You assume that because of no timer or pH controller, I have no control. I use a metering needle valve to set CO2 flow rate. If it fails, it would fail closed and block CO2. Worst case scenario would be low calcium and alkalinity. If the timer on your dosing pump fails closed, you will empty your batch tank into your reef tank. That does not sound like "best practice" to me. CO2 sink meaning a large consumer of CO2. All of the caulerpa that you have, in addition to the large tank volume, gives you a much wider cushion than the joe blow hobbyist. I have had a solenoid on a CO2 tank fail and nuke a previous tank, so it is possible to have mechanical failure on a CO2 based system.

Both for my own purposes and discussion. When i upgrade tanks (in like 15 years), you have to pick one or the other methods. I'm trying to figure out what the best application for my purposes will be. To your point about failure of probes/controller, that's why i feel that we as hobbyists should be doing our best to put hard engineering limits on potentially disastrous elements to our tanks. For example, instead of plumbing your RODI directly to the float in your tank, you have a fixed volume of water in your ATO reservoir.

oHHhhh. what kind of caps ?

I built my own reactor for less than $50 out of 4" PVC. I ran my system on manual, which means one less thing to fail, a pH controller. I had an extended system that including 500G of refugiums, growout troughs and 150G display tank. I had oppossite photoperiods and had no problems with pH stability. Initialy there was much testing and adjusting for several weeks. Once calcium was slected as the concentration to monitor, there was no more tweaking required. Maintenance required was twice a year at less than one hour of labor in one year. When you put the labor cost in the equation, calcium reactor wins, imo. I thought the thread was going to deal with failure analysys. Worst case sceanario. Patrick You are running a special case tank which is heavily dominated by CO2 sinks. Most people don't have the capacity to safely absorb the quantity of gas that could potentially leak out of a system that doesn't have timer/pH control. However, your point about labor cost is totally valid. When you amortize your "time spent" mixing solution, over the life of your tank, it might very well be worth the extra couple hundred bucks in startup cost if safety isn't a driving factor.

So to compare cost: CO2 year one costs = $646.33 Every subsequent year costs = $75.98 Dosing year one costs = $331.94 Every subsequent year costs = $79.99 So in terms of cost, annual operating costs outside of the initial startup cost are comparable. However, bang for your buck in terms of how much alk/ca/mag you can pound into your water is in favor of the calcium reactor. However x2 - (and this is the biggest for me) your chances of failure are greater in calcium reactors by design. I have personally had a CO2 reg screw up in a planted tank and dump lethal amounts of gas. If i had done to my reef tank, what I did to my planted tank, it would be catastrophic. The amount of CO2 contained within the tank is plenty to do serious harm in most hobbyists tanks. Dosing is limited (and therefore safer) by two things. 1) Dosing rate of the pumps, i have *never* heard of a pump failing in such a way that it pumps faster than intended. You might have a timer failure and pump longer than intended, but never faster. 2) Limit to the container size. This has the obvious downside of meaning a higher labor interval, but perhaps the risk is worth it.

Here's the dosing price layout: http://www.bulkreefsupply.com/bulk-media-additives/2-part-dosing-equipment/bubble-magus-liquid-storage-container.html (2 x $35.99 = $71.98) http://www.bulkreefsupply.com/brs-2-part-doser-1-1-ml-per-minute.html (2 x $79.99 = $159.98) http://www.bulkreefsupply.com/monitors-controllers/timers/eco-plus-dual-digital-timer.html ($19.99) Consumables (this is exceptionally hard to predict on a fictitious system) http://www.bulkreefsupply.com/bulk-media-additives/calcium-and-alkalinity-additives/brs-2-part-calcium-alkalinity-total-package-bulk.html ($79.99) Total Cost of operation for year 1 = $331.94 Also, I found this:

Oh I agree, I'm just trying to get apples to apples here for the apexless. I'll do the annual operating cost for dosing later this evening.