Melev's new 280g Starfire tank thread

[NanoGurl]

Ahhh.. sorry

[FroMan]

Originally posted by melev
I've always wanted a Potters Angel. I may get one as I don't have any angels in my tank ( for over 1.5 years now! ). I love Flame Angels but I'm simply not going to gamble with them.

Marc -
I've had a potters for about a year now. Very nice peaceful fish. Doesn't bother any of the corals in my tank (I only have softies). He will occasionally nip at a shell of a hermit or snail, but I think he (or she) is just looking for food.

The toughest thing was getting it to eat at first. It took about 2.5-3 weeks before it visibly ate while I fed the tank. I would leave some algae strip in the tank until it finally took some. I eventually got it to eat flake. It now eats what ever i throw in the tank., although it does seem to prefer flake food, but it does eat the mega marine angel.

[purebullet417]

melev did u ever finish that slanted front tank im realy thinking about getting one but i want to see yours first

[melev]

Not yet. I need to get a slab of marble and hopefully I'll find that this week. It is what the tank will sit on. I've got everything else except some SpaFlex tubing.

[bklynmet]

Marc,

I need your advice on this - though I realize you haven't had all the best of luck with blue torts...

I have one - california type is what I'm told as it's polyps are huge(if that make any sense) compared to another blue tort I have which you'd barely see polyps on. It was doing geat, nice blue tips for new growth, etc. Well, I put some kalk paste in the tank to kill off some aiptasia in the vicinity of the tort about a week or so ago. The tort RTNd/bleached at the very tips of four branches - but the polyps are still fully extended. I gave it two days to see if it was a temporary thing. The bleaching hasn't spread since, but there's some algae beginning to grow at the tips. Is it common to have a coral RTN/bleach but still have the polyps some out fully extended? Should I frag those tips off?
-Joe

[melev]

I don't have any advice for the care and needs of Blue Tortuosa. They don't call me the Tort Slayer for nothing.

With other SPS, if the tips die and grow algae, we usually trim that off to prevent nuisance algae from taking hold. New tissue tends to cover the bared skeleton quickly. Polyps that were retracted may appear soon after that.

[fishfanatic06]

Hey melev, have you ever witnessed your Copperband Butterfly fish nipping at your zoanthids or suspected it of doing so? I am thinking about putting one in for aiptasia control and I am afraid it might take a bite out of my tub's blue zoas.

Thanks!

[chrisqueenz]

Great pics!

[melev]

Originally posted by fishfanatic06
Hey melev, have you ever witnessed your Copperband Butterfly fish nipping at your zoanthids or suspected it of doing so? I am thinking about putting one in for aiptasia control and I am afraid it might take a bite out of my tub's blue zoas.

Thanks!

No, not zoanthids. It did nip at maze / brain corals though and caused significant damage to them.

[Stile2]

Marc,

Have you figured out what could be causing your RTNing? I have been going through some of the same thing, as are quite a few others, both local and on RC. Could it be a possible disease?

My water parameters are close to prefect, athough my lights were pretty old. I changed my XM 15K for Hamilton 14Ks. And man do I like them better. Hopefully the corals do too.

[melev]

I'm just going to have to blame this on the salinity swing from 1.020 to 1.026. I don't know how long the tank was too low, but there definitely was a reaction to bringing it back up. I've considered that it is way too high, but all my zoanthids are wide open and in the past if it gets too high, they close up. I've had a few colonies just continue to implode over the past week. I'm hating my tank right now.

I tested the water:

pH - 8.25
Temp - 79.6F
Salinity - 1.026sg
Alk - 12 dKH (a tad high, so the CO2 is turned off to the calcium reactor)
Calcium - 500
Nitrate (NO3) - 7ppm
Magnesium - 1420ppm
Phosphate - .5

Phosphates are up because I tried out Pappone twice, plus some food I got in New York. And I'm sooo bad about overfeeding. It has caused an ugly cyano outbreak here and there in the reef (red, green & brown cyano - nuts!). I used Phosbuster Pro to bring PO4 back to 0.

[melev]

I'm just going to have to blame this on the salinity swing from 1.020 to 1.026. I don't know how long the tank was too low, but there definitely was a reaction to bringing it back up. I've considered that it is way too high, but all my zoanthids are wide open and in the past if it gets too high, they close up. I've had a few colonies just continue to implode over the past week. I'm hating my tank right now.

I tested the water:

pH - 8.25
Temp - 79.6F
Salinity - 1.026sg
Alk - 12 dKH (a tad high, so the CO2 is turned off to the calcium reactor)
Calcium - 500
Nitrate (NO3) - 7ppm
Magnesium - 1420ppm
Phosphate - .5

Phosphates are up because I tried out Pappone twice, plus some food I got in New York. And I'm sooo bad about overfeeding. It has caused an ugly cyano outbreak here and there in the reef (red, green & brown cyano - nuts!). I used Phosbuster Pro to bring PO4 back to 0.

[tbone28]

Hi,

I love the design of your sump. I saw the external dimensions of the sump on your website, but couldn't find the dimensions of the individual compartments. Could you please post them?

Thanks

[melev]

I'd have to go measure them for you. I'm pretty sure the refugium in the back is 12" wide x 30" long plus 13" tall.

The alley in the back left corner where water pours in is 4" wide.

The baffles are 2" apart, and 9" tall.

My skimmer uses an 18" x 18" footprint, so the skimmer section must be 24" x 24".

The rest to the right is the prop section/return and my Calcium Reactor is in there as well on a short 10" stand.

[sfilingeri]

I have to admit, you always seem to impress me with the quality of everything you do in this hobby!!

[melev]

Thanks!

[NanoGurl]

How are you zoas doing? Are you feeling any better about your tank?

I kinda know how you feel. We have Flat Worms now... or more accurately, I just now found out what FW's are and have to deal with them.

My gliders are looking a lot better now

[tbone28]

Originally posted by melev
I'd have to go measure them for you. I'm pretty sure the refugium in the back is 12" wide x 30" long plus 13" tall.

The alley in the back left corner where water pours in is 4" wide.

The baffles are 2" apart, and 9" tall.

My skimmer uses an 18" x 18" footprint, so the skimmer section must be 24" x 24".

The rest to the right is the prop section/return and my Calcium Reactor is in there as well on a short 10" stand.

Thanks!

[melev]

Originally posted by NanoGurl
How are you zoas doing? Are you feeling any better about your tank?

I kinda know how you feel. We have Flat Worms now... or more accurately, I just now found out what FW's are and have to deal with them.

My gliders are looking a lot better now

They are perfectly fine. As I was explaining above, when zoanthids close up that usually indicates that the salinity is too high. Since they are fine, I felt that salinity is not an issue in my quest to determine what is wrong with my SPS.

Since I came across a few threads recently about the Salifert Alkalinity kit possibly producing faulty results, I ran a sample of tank water to the LFS to have salinity and alk tested. My refractometer reads 1.026; the LFS says 1.024. I have no idea how often he calibrates his, but with a slightly lowered reading I'm not worried.

A few days ago, I tested my Alk and it was 12 dKH. The LFS tested today and said it was 8 dKH. So I bought a brand new kit (Tropic Marin) and tested it again when I got him. It was between 10 and 11dKH.

So what does all this mean? That I'm still unsure why those corals have RTN'd. The Alk may in fact be 11 as my Calcium Reactor was basically offline for 2 days (by turning off the CO2) to let it lower gradually. My theory was that the kit was telling me it was 12 when in fact is was 6. My theory was wrong because it wasn't in that dangerously low area after all. My tank is pest-free and I don't have nibbling fish to blame. I have other corals growing very happily.

My best guess is that this is just something my tank is going to go through because of the false salinity reading I had for who knows how long. And I've been stating that for about 30 days now. I don't think I can blame RTN on that indefinitely though. Soon I'll be making space for a few new corals to make myself feel better.

[spleen93]

You know, Marc, it's all part of that "planned obsolescence" that's built into everything these days - cars, TVs, cameras, you name it. Nothing's built to last any more - only built to last "long enough" and then you throw it away and buy a new one. Your corals are just joining the movement. We can probably blame China.

(in all seriousness, I hope that you figure out what's going on. And thanks for having us along for the ride)

Spleen

[Sparkss]

Originally posted by melev
My tank is pest-free and I don't have nibbling fish to blame. I have other corals growing very happily.

Weren't you battling AEFWs not that long ago ?

[raddogz]

Only on one colony as I believe.

Marc - for what it's worth you can re-introduce aefw via non-sps frags.

[melev]

That was about a year ago now Tom, maybe longer. And whenever I've had a coral in distress, I'd pull it out and dip it in iodine water to see if they were present. And they weren't.

[Sparkss]

ok, I was just wondering, as I hadn't really heard of a sweeping successs with just spot treating corals, but then again I haven't been reading up on the topic in some time now.

[melev]

That was the sounds I heard this morning when I started making coffee to start the day. And when I say morning I'm talking 11:15am. I had just pressed the on button when I heard a sudden surge of power and then battery backups chiming from a couple of rooms. Great, power outage.

However, to my surprise I saw the ceiling fans spinning and the coffee continued to brew. How odd is that? The reef tank was powerless but the VorTech was running on battery backup so I wasn't too concerned. The lights hadn't clicked on yet for the day.

It appeared that half my circuit breakers had power while the other half didn't. So I could watch TV in my room while sipping a cup of java while I waited for the power to come back on. It didn't, so I called the company. They referred me to another number which is automated, and it promised to restore power by 2pm. While annoying, I was willing to wait for that deadline before dragging out the generator. At 1:47pm a guy from TXU came to inspect the situation. A few minutes later he told me that the powerline behind the house had dropped to the ground and that they would have to come out to replace it. After mentioning my tank sitting without power, he told me that he'd leave the house with 50% power rather than kill it. Within 2 minutes he was back as he'd changed his mind and didn't want any backfeeding to hurt someone due to the downed power line. So he told me to fire up the generator, and left.

Since it was time to run it anyway, I pulled it out of storage. I really didn't want to have to run it because I worry it will get stolen. I chained it to something secure, and ran some extension cords into the house to power the reef, tv, etc. I ran a couple of huge floor fans to create some air movement in the house as we are now in the lower 90s with humidity. For the reef, I just ran power to the return pump and the window a/c to maintain temperature and flow, in addition to the VorTech pump. I could have run more stuff but just wasn't in the mood to go to that much trouble.

By 3:30 a slew of workers arrived to cut down all the trees & hedges encroaching on the easement (the area that belongs to the city to care for utilities). I counted 11 guys that worked the full length of my yard that quickly cut down and removed any branches that were too close for comfort. In about 20 minutes they were done and out front resting in the shade.

An hour after that, three trucks from the electric company came out and 4 guys ran a new power line, restoring power to our part of the neighborhood. They believed what had happened this morning was that due to high winds, a branch pressed the wire against the transformer and this caused an arc, burning it through until it dropped to the ground below.

I was able to power down the generator and get the house back to normal. The reef was 78.5F, but with the lights now on it is closer to 80F now.

Just another day, right?