FarmerTy

+1, did the exact same thing with my old TLF 150. I've since switched to a conical reactor as well.I used the other half of a silly putty container as my conical bottom.

You're still on the grid and if there's a power outage, you're blacked out too. Can't have workers fixing the problem if you're pushing electricity.Aw man! No way to turn a couple of switches and be isolated when needed?

Tell us a little more about your system. Skimmer? Which model? How are you running GFO? How much media? Replacement schedule? High capacity GFO? How long is your photoperiod? How many fish? Water change schedule? Cleanup crew? What are your nutrient levels for nitrate and phosphate? What kits are you using to test? How have you modified the TLF150 reactor?For your specific question, no need to kill the skimmer or GFO as the biopellets ramp up. My advice is to always start with 1/3 of the recommended amount of biopellets in the instructions. Most often, that's all you'll ever need. A little goes a long way with biopellets. Also, once fully ramped up for the first time about 3-4 weeks in, I more often than not will get a bit of STN on some acros. Some acros will adjust to the quick nitrate drop well but some won't. For those that don't, I'm usually able to stymie any STN advance with just superglueing over the affected areas. I tell people not to panic as the corals will adjust to the new conditions and it just takes a little more time. I'd recommend feeding the effluent of the biopellets directly to the skimmer using a simple PVC Tee, no glueing needed. Just buy a tee that will slide right over your skimmer intake nozzle and stick the tubing from the biopellet reactor into an open hole, leaving the last hole open so your skimmer can pull additional water from the sump. Lastly, a gentle tumble is all that is needed. Just make sure they don't all clump together and not tumble. Don't blast them as you can release small fragments of solid carbon into your system and spur growth of nuisance algae, cyano, or dinos in the tank that will use the carbon.

Oh yeah. I love the shade it gives me for the backyard and on the house itself. The increased cooling costs if its gone like you said may outweigh the benefits I get from solar. The thought of not being entirely dependent on the grid is nice though.

Thanks for the compliment Bpb. My goal was the color wheel philosophy but sometimes corals don't play nice and color up the way I want them too. I did best that I could. Like what Bpb mentioned above. At worst, I tried not to put similar colors beside each other.

Some top-down shots with my T5s only. More red/blue supplement is their purpose...

That ORA Chips tables awesomely by the way. Corals look good!

I don't just tell anyone their skimmate is nice. [emoji6]

Nice!

Mine will snack on my Hawkins echinata tips every once in a blue moon but otherwise, doesn't mess with my acros. He leaves my flowerpots, euphyllias, and duncans alone though. Zoas are dead in the water... like candy to it. YMMV.

Nice!

Hey, look who's back! Thanks Makena!

I always run prazipro regardless... internal parasites and flukes. The way I look at it, I can't really observe their intestinal parasites so might as well treat to be safe. Either way though, prazipro is pretty reef safe minus issues with fan worms dying.

Yeah, it would be nice to attain the goal I was aiming for but with the life change, the more I think about it, maintaining that would be more work than I ever want to be involved with for the tank. Worrying about every snail, frag, or drop of water that hits the tank upon reflection sounds awful. Considering I'll have new priorities come next March, I think I've just made the decision to put all my fish back in and go with ich-maintenance. If the powder blue and achilles flare up, I'll treat them and pass them along. To answer your question though, 76 days after I remove the regal angel. To bolster my decision even more, that regal angel is worth 5 Achilles to me so anything to jeopardize its health like removing it and treating it is probably something I don't want to risk. Alright, thanks for helping me think it out. Fish going back in. I just need to remedy the additional heat from the UV sterilizer first and add a fan blowing across canopy area.

I thought you were done getting new frags? Hope you triple dipped it! I gave up my crazy sanitary ways. With a baby coming, that's not feasible anymore! Kidding, I did dip it like there's no tomorrow.I am however highly contemplating ditching the ich free business. I know I can make it happen now but with the big life change coming up, I'm more worried about being able to maintain it. The real answer is I won't be able to maintain it ich free so my thoughts lately are to just dump in all the fish, crank up that giant UV sterilizer and if that's not enough to keep it at bay against the Achilles and powder blue tang, scrap those two out of the livestock plans and move on from that experiment.

I swapped my Note7 in yesterday for a non-exploding model. I went ahead and shutdown my bowl of ice chiller and returned it to the cabinet. [emoji4]

A friend was nice enough to let me jump on their free shipping and 15% off at Live Aquaria so I ordered the ORA Laura's Purple polyp acro I've been coveting since they released it last year. It didn't disappoint!

Ty, you need to take some pointers from Jim. I did! I convinced her that this was furniture and it worked like a charm. [emoji6]

Nice!

Oh yeah, I Photoshop the heck out of them! [emoji14] Just kidding.For the iPhone pictures and video i posted last night, no correction used at all. I feel they are a bit oversaturated but that's my opinion. For my Samsung Note7 pictures, which were all the pictures before, I used their "pro" mode which allows you to tweak a slew of options, such ad ISO, aperture, white balance, and tone. By setting those options ahead of time, I feel no need to post process as they capture the real live look well. The only thing I still can't capture is subtle blue gradients in corals because of the blueish spectrum we run already in our tanks. The camera can't make sense of all the blue coming at it I guess.

I think you've paid for their kids college tuition by now! Those lids look so clean!

Iphone video

Ahhh, I gotcha on the phone comment now. Yeah, somehow I ended up doing everything in the house and I still make more money! I'll take that any day to carrying a child for 9 months though! Thanks for the advice!

Those pics are actually with her non-exploding new iphone7. All the pics before are with my potentially exploding Note7. [emoji4] Wife is doing well as can be. I am the fulltime cleaner, cook, grocery shopper, altogether house manager for her so all she has to do is come home and eat, shower, and go to bed. [emoji6]