FarmerTy

I don't have a fancy acylic look down box but the water was nicely still enough and the MHs were just at the perfect angle to be mostly out of the way.

Sounds like you're back in business!

Hmmm, maybe it did precipitate out. That would explain your lack of ability to increase the alk. Were you able to gain some ground on the WXM connectivity issues?

Mine have the orange mouths too. They're called Ty Dye Green Razzleberry Plates. [emoji6] Sorry, my wife says I suffer from the "I think I'm hilarious" disease. Here's a picture of the fungia factory.

I did the same as Juiceman.

Tank looks great! How's that skimmer now that it's been broken in a bit?

[emoji26]

Good "before" shots! I'm looking forward to seeing these things grow out and color up even more!

Haha, you're on the top of the list... because I like my corals to go to good homes and I have a pretty good idea of your tank parameters by now. [emoji4]

Oh yeah, there's still plenty of good sized colonies. This one is still considered "big", he just needs to grow back together again. Haha. I've done the "gluing little pieces all over a plug" trick many times and it always comes out as a nice colony. I'm sure you'll get the same results!

I'd dump that cali tort in that front display at Niko's and call it a day. The tank has been looking really good lately.

Inventory sounds great!

Welcome Matt! I like your style... diving right into the deep end with the new hobby by starting out with an awesome tank!

Sorry I didn't follow up with my question I had asked before about how long you let the silicone cure but I do 1 week minimum. I've heard too many issues with silicone leaching chemicals to get it wet any sooner than that. I think carbon is your friend right now and if you can, I'd totally air it out for a few more days if possible.

Yeah, with mariculture, it's hit or miss. I just try to avoid the "sirens" of the industry, such as acropora spathulata, which look ridiculously gorgeous when imported in but have dismal survival rates and they rarely keep those amazing colors. Once the fish are reintroduced into the system and everything balances out again, I'll probably order a bunch more to stock the left side of my tank and boot the placeholder corals over there currently. Then just watch them grow and color up and boot the ones I don't enjoy as much as the others. I'll keep my fingers crossed on those diamonds in the rough.

Great writeup indeed and welcome back again! No big surprise about the dated and ineffective sump and drain setup. I won't say anymore on it but nice guy, just dated concepts in my opinion. Sorry you were victim of it for so long! That's awesome that you were able to complete your microbubble eradication journey. Some problems never give you quite the closure you want but I'm sure it was quite satisfying in this case. The new setup looks great! I smell another salty build thread coming up... sans the microbubbles.

A lot of times a healthy coral loses it's coloration in transit and appears to be pink or beige. Not to be confused with white. After a few months in a good tank the coral will start to develop different colors based on the zooxanthellae that it grows. There is almost no way to tell what it will look like beforehand. Some will turn out to be solid greens or reds, but sometimes you get one like Ty got there. It's very exciting!Yeah, super excited! Part of the new joy I'm deriving from mariculture these days.

[emoji24] Hilarious! I'm so sorry I missed that joke... actually partially ashamed but ol' Aggie was correct to advise me to ask my much hipper college grad school wife about it and she showed me the punchline of the joke. Too funny and I'm so sorry I missed it. Of all people, I truly appreciate subtle social cued jokes so it's more painful to me that I missed this one. [emoji30]

Very nice! That attack from the cleaner shrimp reminded me of a scene from Aliens!

You're talking about the mariculture coral right? It used to be more in the middle under a slightly more yellow bulb (I use cheap plusrite bulbs at $13/bulb so color spectrum varies sometimes) and it was more of a 10k spectrum (hence more yellow and brown) and the coral itself was probably at 300-400 par. I moved it over the holidays to directly under my right MH which gives a more 14k-20k look with 700-800 par and it slowly went from a brown stick colony to the colony in the last pic. It was a pretty surprising transformation in the last couple of months. It was this close to getting booted from my system but it must have heard me and did it's best to stay. I will say I also let my nitrates get to around 10 ppm to see how it would affect colors in my sps and didn't like it. When I moved it back down to 5 ppm, I still didn't like it. So I have since moved it back down to 0.25 ppm and everything has ditched the brown for the most part and colored up.

I don't understand. Were you a victim of autocorrect?

Have you ran two tests using the same water but with the different amount of reagent to see what the offset is? Since it is a colorimeter, the amount of liquid is important as the amount of color change via the reagent to the original sample is what determines the result. I would run it as a check. That's great that it dosed the correct amount of alk last night. The programming skills are strong with this one! [emoji6] I was just asking about the alk mixing instructions so that you'd double-check yourself just to be sure you didn't accidentally miss a step or measured incorrectly. I'm trying to think of potential sources of error to troubleshoot. Sadly, I can't offer much help with the wireless modules as I don't have any equipment that currently uses them. I find the Apex forums to be of great help though so I'd look there first for answers.

I don't know if I was convinced it was going to pretty up. It was in the danger zone for being sold soon.

Boom, the Capt.'s all over it! Good to have to you back man.

I say lookup CPR backpack skimmer and see if you can find an old manual online.