FarmerTy

Ha, I never noticed it.

What the heck is it? It looks like an custom acrylic tank built with a red sea prism skimmer stuck to the back of it. If that's the case, I think you're missing the skimmer pump.

Yup, that's the world of SPS there. I was ready to sell that colony off and then poof... pretty.

Ahh, one showed up to work today at least.

Well funny thing, I just got a text from DHL saying it's arriving tomorrow. I guess it really did ship from NJ... either that or they are shooting it over with a long-distance canon tomorrow morning from Hong Kong.

Well, that should have taken it to 8.0 dKh. Are you sure you mixed the dry alk solution correctly from BRS? Let's see if the dosers actually dispensed 107 ml in your test.

How many ml did you dose total last night? You used the BRS additive? What's your Ca level right now?

Thanks! I got lazy. I was going to highlight the original size of the coral in the final growth shot to you can visualize better the growth but then I decided I'd rather go to sleep at that point.

Perfect, I can grab back my dollies and straps from you Lara after we move Chris as well.

The hecklers have all gotten complacent Jim!

I guess that would be more in line with the Frankenstein story... parts from others.

Yes, in this case, the daughter colonies came from the death of the parent coral. You can cut and frag the parent too but I find the results undesirable as the new frags don't always "round" out and don't always grow a new mouth.

It should. I've had others that have done the same.

Agreed. That is pretty annoying when you break it down like that. I just got lucky because my router is on the other side of the wall.

Something very odd happened. I jumped on to Fishstreet to order another WP40 pump. I didn't realize they have a New Jersey location now... I'm assuming its a large distribution warehouse in the US for them. So I looked through the NJ location stock and they didn't have much, but they did have WP40s. I ordered one pump and the shipping was just $3. I was pretty shocked by the low shipping cost... to ship anything from NJ should cost more than $3 but who was I to argue. I double-checked and tried to order one straight from Hong Kong and it was +$10 for shipping so naturally, I assumed that the $3 shipping was legit and that it was actually shipping from NJ which was quoted at 3-5 days. I went ahead and ordered it and this morning, I get this email in very broken English saying it has shipped. I clicked on the tracking and the origin was Hong Kong, destination, Austin!? Wuh? Is my pump really coming from Hong Kong? Crazy! At least it was only $3 for shipping. Anyways, thought people would get a kick out of it.

I like it better... the smaller middle brace between the doors gives it cleaner lines. I may steal some ideas for my own stand reboot down the road.

I thought it would be a good idea to cut the base plug off one of my mariculture colonies last night as the cycle that occurred after the fish were removed from the system caused some algae growth... probably from the removal of 5 large tangs as well. Naturally, one would cut with bone cutters at a unnaturally high height without holding on to the colony itself. This is probably what gig' em felt like when he slammed his colonies down on the ground like a football player who just scored a TD. [emoji87] I did my best to revive it from the dead. All the blue growth tips got knocked off of the colony with the impact but I did my best Frankenstein on it to put it back together.

That's no fun! Cat5 is cheap... I ran one from my router to my Apex through the attic instead of going with a wireless dongle. I assume you already had it working outside of your home network before and this is just it being difficult and just randomly going offline? Do you think your internet went out? That's my biggest fear... to toggle the ATO pump remotely and then the connection break... HOW DO I TURN IT OFF!!! AHHH!!!

Thanks bud! The oregon tort is the one I'm most proud of... they're known for being one of the slowest growing SPS in the history of the earth. Okay, maybe not that bad but they have that rep for a reason. Compared to other SPS, they grow at a snail's pace. That thing has gotten giant and if it continues this rate of growth, I couldn't imagine what it'll look like next year! The other favorite is that mariculture. It went from a brown collection of sticks, to a prettier tree-like structure with great form... but still brown... to look at me... I'm slightly peach colored with blue-ish/purplish tips! What did it take? Time... stability... and a whole heck of a lot of par (750). Sam was right, those maricultures love their par.

Haha, I still reference the A&M report on St. Augustine grass to help keep my lawn nice and pretty in the back. The front is hopeless with only 1 day/week to water so once the wife graduates, it's xeriscaping time!

I'm tentatively slated to host the April Meeting for now. I'm a big believer in bribing people with spring rolls and eggrolls so don't miss out on that one. Just a thought with stocking plans, I'm not sure if I missed it but will you be setting up a QT tank? Have you decided on 2-part or a calcium reactor? Also, if you're a big SPS person, curious if you'll go the mariculture route or just start collecting small frags and growing them out? With my old tank, I made it a point to only collect 2" frags or smaller and had the satisfaction of watching them all grow into large colonies. When I made the jump to my 215-gallon, after losing a bunch of colonies in the transfer, I ended up opening it up to mariculture mini colonies to jump start my tank. I was chatting with ol' aggie, another SPS obsessed reefer on the club who just recently upgraded as well, and we both shared the appreciation of stocking with a bunch of mariculture and then filling in the gaps with some of the classics, Oregon tort, Hawkins echinata, pink lemonade, red planet, etc. It's hit or miss with maricultures, you either get the diamonds in the rough, an ugly brown stick tree, or it just dies on you. The new joy I found was not watching my tiny frags grow into colonies anymore, but watching mini mariculture colonies grow and possibly color up into something spectacular. Either way, excited to see the build go up! Sorry for the long post!

I'd throw it right after the fallback statement. How'd it turn out this morning? Is your alk spot on from your calculations? That's awesome about the pumps being setup on the WXM module already. Wireless control and seamless integration... you got to love it!

Woohoo! GSP! I'm going to put it right in the middle of my rock work and do a time lapse video of how long it takes to devour my entire rockwork. [emoji6] That's not cool that the cold kept you guys from really enjoying Austin. At least you don't live too far away.

Just a quick programming check. I would add the statement "Set OFF" to your programming to define your starting mode. As I understand it, you want it to wait 10 mins at the start of each hour, then turn on for 21mins and 24 seconds, then turn off for 28mins and 36 seconds, every hour from midnight to 5am? I am also assuming you tested your actual flowrate per minute on the dosers and calibrated them for the amount of desired BRS alk solution dosed per night?

Oh man, very exciting! I wish I could have caught you before you went to bed for the night. I'd highly recommend running your first day of dosing into a container for a test run. One slip of the programming could nuke your tank. It's a small chance but I think worthy of one dry run just for the risk of it. Either case, I'm sure you'll be fine. We will see what the results are in the morning.