FarmerTy

Have you thought of the possibility of a fish disease? Uronema? Chromis are pretty susceptible to it. I doubt the emerald is the one to blame. He's just doing his job of cleaning up.

Welcome to every other system out there Sascha! [emoji13] Almost all of our systems have a disproportionate amount of phosphate being imported into the system versus exported. You just had the perfect amount of macro, skimming, and lower bioload to thwart it up until now. Out of all the options, I like the reactor/GFO option best. I might have mentioned before but lanthanum chloride works great to remove large amounts of phosphate in huge water volumes but struggles to remove the levels typically below 0.1 ppm. GFO will be more effective below 0.1 ppm depending how low you want to take your levels. I prefer 0.03 ppm for SPS dominated tanks.

I've had plenty over the years and I've only had one ever take a chunk out of a coral. Typically, they just pinch their claws around... almost as if tasting it with their claws but never trying to tear at it. They are opportunistic feeders so there is always the possibility. For me, it's typically been the exception to the norm. Even the one that took the chunk out of the pagoda cup never really went back to do it again.

I'd just reglue and keep an eye on that. Judging by the crack, I'd worry if the glass panes are giving too much and caused the cracking of the plastic trim... or it might just be as simple as the trim is getting old and cracking.

Just as Jestep mentioned, it will be highly effective for nitrates... you'll basically end up with near zero nitrates... but it will only minimally remove phosphates. For that, GFO is the answer. If you truly have 2.5 ppm of phosphates, then I'd use lanthanum chloride first to lower your levels to 0.1ppm and then from there, if you desire to lower it further, use GFO in a reactor. Main reason is lanthanum chloride is cheaper so use it to drop the bulk of your phosphate level down to 0.1 ppm (usually about its effectiveness, getting below 0.1 ppm with lanthanum chloride is hard to do) and then use GFO to remove it lower it to whatever level you want below 0.1 ppm. If you plan on using a TLF 150 for the biopellets, you'll have to modify it as the current design is not very effective for biopellets. They will eventually clump together rendering the biopellets very much less effective. I'd took a concave piece of plastic and fit it into the bottom of the reactor and then cut up the bottom of the downflow pipe to make it more effective. It didn't work perfect but kept the pellets tumbling for 2 years before I switched tanks.

RJohn, is the phosphate concentration a typo? Did you mean to put 0.025 ppm? Or 0.25 ppm?

Great crew! Only thing I'd add is maybe an emerald crab or two down the line once there's actually stuff to eat. I like the brittle star additions!

Well, I felt the need to finally make a skimmate reservoir to hook up to my skimmer for extra skimmate storage. Since the Skimz skimmer already comes with a port for an external skimmate reservoir, all I needed to do was buy the tubing and hook it up to a container. I'm surprisingly starting to run out of room below the stand so I went with a 8 liter pet food container that fits nicely back there and is easy for me to remove to empty. For now I've just shoved the tubing into the container but when I get a chance, I'll add a float valve and program my Apex to shut off my skimmer when the float valve is activated and send me a notification to get my lazy butt over there to empty the extra reservoir. I had a little helper today.

Rjohn, just curious why you have decided to run biopellets? I've had good success with the original ecobak biopellets. I tried the new formula for a bit but hadn't run them long enough before I shudown the pellets on my system to give a good review on the new formula. Only advice I have is don't use the instructions on the package as a guide. Basically, take what they tell you and divide that by 1/3rd and that should be what you really should run on your system.

Haha, actually, emerald crabs are the only crabs invited in my tank. It's the hermit crabs that drive me nuts!

Oh, I guess the gray blob on the back wall is pretty hard to see. It's a fighting conch. They sometimes get silly and try to climb the glass in search of greener pastures.

Mine are masters at hiding in my SPS colonies. I don't even see them until they want to show themselves.

Well said! Don't be a RK Rob Lowe, be DirecTV Rob Lowe instead! Just kidding... I think nvrEnuf nailed it right on the head!

The tank looks awesome Josh! Hope that hanna phosphate trick bought you some time to dissolve your reagent! Just a quick thought, from how I'm reading it, it seems like you have your RO/DI water automatically fill up when your topoff uses any water at all. I had a system setup very similar until I realized that the dirtiest water your RO/DI system makes is in the first few minutes when it starts making water. If you have it plumbed to fill up immediately when used, then you're basically using the dirtiest RO/DI water your system makes to topoff your system. What I've done is put in a manual lever and when my ATO bucket gets low (every 5-8 days), I turn the switch and presto, it fills up entirely and then stops via my float valve. I hope to have this switched out from a manual switch to a electronic switch that I can activate via my apex. Then I'll just program it to actuate every 5 days and fill up my ATO bucket. Then the only thing I'm responsible for is flushing my membrane every month or so.

So I'm assuming the chromis use the blue portal... does that mean you have anthias that use the orange portal? <--- Sorry, slightly obscure reference! [emoji57]

I'm exhausted just reading that you did that!

Thanks Kim! I hope so too!Found this guy lobbying for a fish free tank! Dude... you don't need fish! I'll entertain you all by myself! Look at me free climbing like a boss! And I don't even have an opposable thumb! Or bones!

Do buckets of salt count?

That's awesome!!! Did someone say SPS? [emoji16]

Too bad about your cleaner shrimps. I'm a little worried about mine once my two new wrasses get introduced to the tank. I've never kept a snowflake eel but I just remember them getting to a good size. They seem to be one of the more peaceful eels in the hobby.

I just have them keep the fish in the bag and I grab it directly before it goes into any of their holding tanks. I understand the desire to buy hard to acclimate species from a reputable source... divers den on liveaquaria makes sense for those scenarios.

They look newly hatched to a couple days old. Mine usually start out bright orange when first laid and then start turning dark gray as it progresses. I have never tried to raise them but I'm sure there are a million articles on raising clowfish eggs through various forums. Congrats on being a grandmother!

I love all my beer the same!

When there's nothing swimming around in the tank, a picture of the tank or a video of the tank pretty much look the same! [emoji6]

Before all the marine velvet chaos hit, the last additions to my tank were going to be a couple of fairy wrasses. Well, I went ahead and added two fairy wrasses to my fish tub. I added a male terminal phase red-headed (in honor of my wife) solon fairy wrasse and a male terminal phase yellow flanked fairy wrasse. I've never actually seen a yellow flanked fairy wrasse before or even heard of it... but in person, it is ridiculously awesome! I've never been so enamored by a fish before... it's a crazy assortment of colors, with a giant orange spot on its side, and then to top it off, the back end of it looks like it has dragon scales! I hope you don't mind I borrowed your stock picture Peter! (Coralimports) Live aquaria stock pic To total off the list of the dead: Powder blue tang, two chromis, midas blenny, and two mandarin gobies. [emoji20] RIP! I plan to still add the regal angelfish and the mandarin pair soon to the tank directly and let them acclimate to the tank as I observe them. If they seem to be doing well and show no signs of illnesses for 2 weeks, then I'll reintroduce my fish population back to the tank. I may replace my midas blenny and that will be the end of my fish stocking plans.