Fat Al's 93 Gallon Reef Cube

Discussion in 'New Tank Builds' started by fattytwobyfour, Oct 30, 2015.

  1. LJC6780

    LJC6780 Grouper

    I've got some on a rock too but it was on the rock when I put it in there and I know my nitrates are way too high. Phosphates are in check though!
     
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  2. huntindoc

    huntindoc RRMAS BOD Membership Director Staff Member

    Must be on the air. I've never had algae problems until recently. At least my coral seems to be happy.
     
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  3. fattytwobyfour

    fattytwobyfour Grouper

    I decided to try a sea hàre again. The first one I had got sucked into the powerhead. So I'm not sure if it would've worked. I've covered my powerhead. He's been in the tank about 7 hours. He's stayed pretty much in the same spot, but has cleared out an area 6 inches long. The rock is totally clean where he's been hanging at. So maybe this will be more successful. I'm trying an urchin again, and also some fighting conchs to work on my sandbed. But I'm still running GFO, and doing water changes every week. I'm gonna change my RO filters tomorrow, because it's time. Hopefully I can get this tank looking good. The anemone looks good, but I moved all my other corals to the nano. My magnificent foxface, yellow tang, fairy wrasse, mandarin, coral beauty angelfish, and starry Blenny have all been doing good, and all get along.
     
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  4. LJC6780

    LJC6780 Grouper

    Will you rent out the sea hare once your tank is in check? Lol :p:rolleyes:o_O
     
  5. fattytwobyfour

    fattytwobyfour Grouper

    Possibly, but they are only $13 on liveaquaria right now (until thursday) and free shipping on a $99 Order.
     
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  6. LJC6780

    LJC6780 Grouper

    I definitely need to stay away from live aquaria then! Lord knows I don't need to spend more money on livestock!
     
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  7. fattytwobyfour

    fattytwobyfour Grouper

    If I ever get this algae gone, this is what I want to do with this tank. I want to pack it with soft coral, and some Lps. You don't see enough soft coral dominate tanks in this hobby, and I think this is more awesome than the SPS dominate tanks that I see:
     
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  8. LJC6780

    LJC6780 Grouper

    I actually like soft corals and have been trying to add some recently. I now have zoas, yumas, discosoma mushrooms, rhodactis mushrooms, purple cabbage leather, toadstool, devils hand leather, the green leather and GSP from the meeting, blue cespitularia, blue clavularia and striped palm tree clove polyps.

    I also have a ton of LPS and a handful of sps ... now the hard part will be to get everyone mixed up nicely but not kill anyone in the process!
     
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  9. fattytwobyfour

    fattytwobyfour Grouper

    A lot of those were featured in the video I posted. I am thinking about making a trip to the Fish Bowl tomorrow and seeing what they've got. But I probably should wait a week or so and see if the sea hare is going to get my tank clean first.
     
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  10. LJC6780

    LJC6780 Grouper

    I got several of those from @whippetguy , because he's tearing down his tanks.
     
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  11. fattytwobyfour

    fattytwobyfour Grouper

    He had some awesome tanks. I hate that he did.


    I do have a question for you all about protein skimmers. I have a reef octopus xp1000sss in my sump. The bubbles never bubble up very high into the neck, and doesn't fill up the collection cup. How do I adjust that? I think that's a huge part of my green hair algae problem.
     
  12. LJC6780

    LJC6780 Grouper

    I'm not familiar with that particular pump but mine has a gang valve that you adjust very slowly to change the pressure going in and therefore pushing the bubbles up higher. Go slowly though and adjust like ¼" at a time because too much can make the cup just fill up in seconds.

    Making sure the water level is the same helps to keep it tuned in. I have a line drawn on the sump for pumps on and a line for pumps off so I can refill when doing water changes or making sure top off is correct. I also set mine up on top of something to raise it up a bit since I couldn't get it tuned with it down in the water so much.

    I need to clean mine!! It's gotten to where it doesn't want to skim much and it's covered in gunk! Yuck!
     
  13. huntindoc

    huntindoc RRMAS BOD Membership Director Staff Member

    How deep is the water in the chamber it's in? 5-5.75" is the recommended depth for that one I think. There should be a red knob that regulates flow. That is the primary adjustment. There also is a little thumbscrew on the air intake that can be adjusted.
     
  14. fattytwobyfour

    fattytwobyfour Grouper

    Sorry that I'm just now responding. I had a long work rotation. It's sitting in about 6 inches of water. I raised it about an inch last week by placing some Styrofoam under it.

    I tested my nitrates and phosphates today, since today is the day before water change. Nitrates are 4ppm and phosphates are .12 (the best that I can tell) I started vacuuming the sandbed ab9jt 2 months ago. I honestly didn't know that I should be doing that. I've slowly seen the algae reduce. It used to cover the sandbed, and now the sandbed is white. I've been changing my gfo like once a month, but I'm thinking about just changing it every weekly water change. It's probably being depleted so fast that it's not keeping up. So I think if I continue to do those things, get my skimmer skimming and the help of the sea hare and urchin, I can hopefully turn this battle around. This tank is in the middle of my living room, and right now I don't let anybody visit because of how bad the algae looks to me.
     
  15. fattytwobyfour

    fattytwobyfour Grouper

    This really bothers me to post this photo, but this is the current condition of this tank :(
    PSX_20170803_154339.jpg
     
  16. LJC6780

    LJC6780 Grouper

    Don't feel bad! My BC29 looked like that until recently! I think it was turf algae rather than hair, which is much easier to remove. I had a few patches of hair algae pop up in my 85 and they just plucked off with no effort while the other stuff I had to get a tooth brush after and scrub the rocks. My current battle is bubble algae, but I'm hoping the emerald crabs I just added will take care of it before too long!

    Does it come off easily or is it real hard? Oh! Another thing I did was to pull or brush off as much as I could and then add some filter floss in the sump area to catch it and filter it out. Then I could rinse it off and put it back in and repeat.
     
  17. fattytwobyfour

    fattytwobyfour Grouper

    It's green hair algae. I remove it at every water change. I have a filter sock going into my sump. There is zero algae in my sump.
     
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  18. fattytwobyfour

    fattytwobyfour Grouper

    Unfortunately, my sea hare died. I woke up this morning, and he was lying on his back. The urchin is doing good so far. The last couple I added quickly lost their spines, and died. (That's been 6 months to a year ago). I added one in both my tanks, and they've made it a week and not lost spines. Hopefully they will be alright.


    I guess the only option I have is to change the gfo every week, and keep manually pulling out the hair algae. I've got crabs and turbos, but not seen much difference with them. I know the best thing to do is find the source. My rodi water shows 0ppm on the TDS meter. I feed my tanks once a day, frozen food. I have never rinsed the food, but I think I'm going to try that and see if I can rule that out.
     
  19. fattytwobyfour

    fattytwobyfour Grouper

    PSX_20170824_132124.jpg
    Yesterday the fish bowl posted a photo of this coral. Its a pearl bubble coral. Their photo made it look much smaller than it was. I thought I could set it at the bottom center of my nano, but actually it was the size of a basketball with a huge wall skeleton. So I put it in this tank. I've still got the hair algae, but it seems to be slowly going away since I've started changing my gfo weekly. I've also been keeping a torch coral, and anemone in this tank with no issues, so hopefully it'll be fine. This photo was taken an hour after being put in my tank. It may still be expanding. But it's a beautiful coral.
     
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  20. huntindoc

    huntindoc RRMAS BOD Membership Director Staff Member

    Beautiful Allan!
     

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