150 setup just about a year ago

It was just about a year ago that I changed the 150 over from a planted fresh water tank to the reef. Lots of interesting things have happened in that time.

Here's looking forward to another great year of SPS growth!

Calcium Reactor online

The Coralife Calcium reactor I won at the CTARS conference is now online and .. um .. reacting?

There were a few wrinkles to iron out while setting it up. First, there was a leak in one of the fittings. For the life of me I could not figure out how it came apart, so I had to use some super glue to try to seal the leak. It seems to have held for the past 24 hours.

And when I put my regulator on the CO2 bottle, it was reading 0 pounds of pressure. But when I connected it all up and got the pH controller setpoints working correctly, the CO2 started flowing normally and I've been able to maintain the proper amount flowing for over 24 hours now. I either have to get my regulator gauge looked at or I really have very little pressure in the bottle. I'm not sure.

I checked the chemistry today after it's been running for 24 hours and everything still seems fine. The one thing I don't like is now I don't have a pH probe in my tank so I don't know what the pH in the tank is. Perhaps its time to look for a computerized controller for the whole system.

CTARS conference

My reef club, CTARS had a reef conference one week ago in Cromwell CT and I gotta say it was a blast. Lots of great speakers, a great raffle, great vendors, sold out attendance, a good lunch. What more could you ask for.

In the raffle I won a $50 gift certificate to Reef Doctor Micromussa, a $25 gift certificate to DFS, a Coralife Calcium Reactor, and a nice coral shown in the picture to the right.

Pictures of the event are posted here.

I'll try to append this post with more impressions about the conference soon.

Cabinet Modifications

I recently added another 120mm fan to my canopy to keep the lights cool in there. When I only had one fan, the lights tended to heat up. Now that I have two fans blowing in there, things seemed to have cooled down alot. I am, however, getting a lot more evaporation which is causing the temperature to run a bit low. This will probably be a good thing in the summer though as it did get into the low 80s last summer.

The photo is one of my favorites from the January photo session, highly cropped.

Photoshop Express

I signed up for a PhotoShop Express account, check out some pictures here.

Low magnesium

I did a few test with my new Elos Magnesium kit and it looks like I'm running a little low. Assuming I did the test right, and it's pretty hard not to since Elos' test kits are very easy to use, I'm currently at 1100 ppm. So off I went to the supply closet to dose some magnesium. Its going to take awhile to raise it to where it should be ( 1300 -1350 ).

Perhaps the low Magnesium is the reason I've haven't been seeing some of the corals growing as well as they had in the past. I say this because from what I heard at the last club meeting, the only usable calcium is the calcium thats in a 3:1 ratio with magnesium. So at 1100, I only had about 350 ppm of usable calcium even tho normally my levels are about 400 to 425.

Time will tell.

What a slacker

Ok, been way to long since I've written a post. I had been waiting for some pictures from my cousin who came by so that I could attach a picture to each post, but it appears the pictures aren't coming.

So a few changes recently.

About two weeks ago I got a sample of Tropic Marin salt and I've been using that for water changes lately. I have to say the corals seem to be responding well to it. I like the coloration I'm seeing and the growth is good to. Tropic Marin claims to have all the of the trace elements found in the ocean in their salt and calcium products. Neither of my previous to salts make that claim. Two weeks is barely enough time to really say it's made a difference, but it looks promising.

I seem to have finally beaten my algae problem. After months of straining my frozen food before feeding, I've noticed a rapid decrease in the amount of algae in the tank. So drastic in fact that I can almost claim to have no more algae!

Tonight I started using some new supplements. I just added some of Elos' Omega amino acid supplement and in about an hour I'm going to add some of the Skimmer Plus coral food. In the talk that Mike Paletta gave my club awhile back, he recommeded the amino acid supplement outright and said that the coral food supplement was good if you're not willing to make your own 'papone' ( Italian for milk ). The recipe is pretty nasty so I think I'll stick to the commercial stuff for now.