FarmerTy

Haha, that's hilarious.

If it is an April Fools joke, kudos to you sir. It was well worth the brain power I expended! [emoji23]

Oh, no way! I'm part Eskimo! I'd die in 82 degrees in the house. Just my reef tank... average is about 82 degrees. I did think about pulling an April Fools joke but then again, I'd thought I'd be nice for one year.

Yeah, been running an average of 82 for 3 years now with no issues. 85 is a bit higher than I want to go but that tank looks perfectly normal today so I guess it's been good that I've been conditioning them to handle the heat. [emoji5]

Nothing like a temp spike last night to get my behind moving on moving my Apex to a different location. When I added the chiller, the exhaust was setup to point to the back of the tank so it could exhaust up and out my canopy vent fan. Unfortunately, that's where my Apex head unit is near and on days where the chiller runs longer, it has overheated my main head unit and caused some odd temp and pH readings. For some reason the Apex defaults to 18 degrees when it loses connection to the temp probe. So for the better part of 4 hours, my heater, based on the 18 degrees that the overheated apex unit was telling it, was cooking my tank to try to bring up the temp. Combine that with 3 400-watt MHs and I got up to a whopping 85 degrees in the tank! Luckily, my ambient temp is 81-82 degrees so it wasn't too crazy of a spike. Oddly, not a single coral/fish has any negative symptoms of the temp spike. Go figure?! I went ahead and programmed my Apex to not have the heater run if the temp probe reads something ridiculous, like 18 degrees again. That should at least help avoid this near disaster again. I've also relocated the head unit away from the heat exhaust of the chiller.

A free pat on the back for however can guess what we're looking at. [emoji41]

I love the concept! One thing to think about, would you be using a battery to hold the reserve charge? We did something very similar for a client back in my consulting days with a solar powered groundwater remediation system. We used deep cycle marine batteries (4 of them) and used solar panels to keep the batteries charged. A DC pump was utilized to pull contaminated groundwater out of a well and into a giant baker tank, which was pumped out biweekly. It worked like a charm but two unique attributes of the system... 1) it was setup in the great IE (Inland Empire) which was mostly desert so there was plenty of sunlight and 2) it was not critical if the system did not have enough energy for a few days as that would just allow the contamination to start pooling up and then when the pump ramped up again, it would just pull more concentrated water. I'm sure you're still in the design phase but I would look into a reserve battery system and aim for the panels to charge the battery... and then the charge used to power the air pump. Another potential problem to think about is whether there will be issues cause by the stirrer being offline from time to time. I've never actually used a kalk stirrer but I might look into negative issues that can stem from the stirrer being offline for extended periods of time and if that'll affect your system. If it causes inconsistent alk dosing, then I'd be concerned about alk swings. I really like the experiment Jim! I could only imagine the possibilities! If you need a SSR, I know a guy that has a couple laying around. [emoji6]

SOLD!!! Better go adjust my CaRX now before my alk starts to shoot up with that monster gone!

I have no idea what you're talking about! I work hard on the 240g... I swear!

Hey Shawn! That's a shame about the bacterial infection but I'm glad you were able to save the clown! We learn a lot from these steps backwards and I'm sure the experience will help you diagnose the issue quicker next time and be ready to act. I know I can spot marine velvet from a mile away. I enjoy the benefits of a skimmer run tank very much but back in my nanocube days, it was all water changes and it worked out well. The skimmer would have definitely helped with minimizing water changes for me but a nano sized skimmer was hard to find back in the day. That should be a great project for you with the ATO and it'll be very rewarding to have technology help a bit with the day to day upkeep so you can spend more time enjoying your tank... but you'll probably do what I do and get bored and start experimenting on your tank. [emoji30]

That's awesome that it got so big! You got a frag of that waiting for you whenever you want it sir... free of charge.

Boo! Glad you're still doing your thing though and keeping up with reefing!

When/if they perish, hit me up and I'll give you some screaming green birdsnest frags to use as an indicator coral.

Ahhh, science nerds. Got to love 'em! Echinata at night with polyps extended. Excuse the washed out look in the first one... I took the pictures immediately after turning on the lights as the echinata will retract is polyps very quickly to the light. Took a picture to document what the polyps look like normally in the wee hours of the night. It is normal for it to do that at night so this is not an effect of the UV. Here's the mariculture with crazy polyps too at night. Just for fun since he was just sitting there... my blue mille.

Perfect. I'm not saying move them yet but if you find yourself with stalled results, maybe give that a try as an option.

Just a thought, but I had a long conversation with Reburn over LEDs yesterday and he mentioned height over the water column to be a huge factor with LED placement. It seems like you are getting potentially better results very early in the new lighting setup but if it stalls or doesn't look any better, perhaps try to mimic the height that Sam has his fixtures at and see if that may help as well. Sorry I'm just throwing ideas out to you but I am deficient in the firsthand experiences with LEDs.

I'm going to stick to anecdotal observations for now. 1) I noticed odd polyp extension today. I usually get pretty good polyp extension normally but there's usually a couple of non-compliant SPS that just don't play along. Not tonight however... most interesting was the fact that my hawkins echinata, for the first time I've seen during daylight hours, had its polyps out. Normally, I see them in the wee hours of the night with a flashlight only. Same here... I don't usually see the new white growths so fuzzy with polyps. This guy... hard to describe but the polyps just pop more to me... almost more defined than normal... as if someone just turned up the contrast on it. Lastly, this guy hasn't shown polyps on the terminal ends in months... until tonight. It usually had polyps on the base but not terminal ends. Is any of this an effect of the UV? Who knows. I did also kick back up my GFO so that could be a cause of the changes observed as well. As stated... all anecdotal.

Ummm... so... I'm glad I went into environmental science and didn't stick with marine biology back in school. It took a whole 5 mins of looking into the microscope for me to get motion sick. In my defense, I get motion sick pretty easily. Not much of a defense I know but it's the best I got.

I always enjoy looking at pictures of everyone's tanks, corals, and fish. I don't always feel the need to comment though but that shouldn't be taken as the lack of enjoyment.

Order so far: 1) Mframe 2) M6SK1K3 3) Robb 4) Reeflover I'll update once it's sold and picked up. Thank you.

Great! It's nice to have his input on the LEDs and for you to be able to mimic his settings. Did you find out his actual height above water line and above the corals to set that similarly as well? What percentage does this have you running at?

Clam is the one pictured in the video below. I got it from Toxic when he was shutting down his tank. Very healthy and happy, just spawned yesterday! Why am I getting rid of it? 1) Want my sandbed back and it takes up a huge portion of it, 2) My cleaner wrasse thought it'd be fun to divebomb it all day today so I'd rather it enjoy a non-pestered life in another tank. Proceeds will go to the Toxic "getting back into the hobby" fund. $100 cash... no bitcoins accepted Victoly. PMs are the key. Thank you! -Ty

Looks like a wave correlation chart for surfing... let the three swells go by and then start paddling for that first wave. If you don't get up before the guy beside you does... abort and try to catch the next one.

Quick... to the microscope Robin!!!

Shampoo is better! No, conditioner is better!