220 Reef system Diary

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By Top up im talking about the water lost in evaporation. As i said, i topup with about 10 gallons of RO water for this purpose.

As for water changes, I used about 20% (about 25 gallons) of salt water/sea water mix. I have always ran my tanks on seawater, i still would run my large one on this if it didnt need such a large amount for a water change :grr:
 
Thanks for that. I will follow this up if i dont make any progressin teh next few weeks :thumbs:
 
With that much water loss through evaporation, do you find that your room starts to smell a little bit?

Also why do you lose so much? is it because of your lights and no roof?

Cheers
 
The surface area of hte tank is quite large 7ftx2.5ft. I have no heaters in the system at all yet i struggle to keep the temperature below 84 degrees in summer (its now a comfortable 78). The mix of halides and a very warm house doesnt help in keeping the system cool so this does play havock with the tanks evaporation. Thankfully witha tank of this size it doesnt effect the SG of the tank :*)

The house doesnt smell at all with the evaopration loss. The house is well ventilated but even the water that i change during a water change doesnt smell, its just a faint wiff of the ocean shuld i put my head near the bucket and sniff hard :p
 
Ozone does a lot for the smell of tanks, helps that skimmer get out all the organics that are rotting in the water.

As for the berghias, they are VERY safe to use even if you do have a die off of a small population. They are not a very large nudi, and they don't have the same levels of toxins like some of the more powerful nudis out there that can nuke tanks. I am also wanting some berghias, I can get them for about $20 a piece (EXPENSIVE!!!) I may just break down and buy about 6 of them and take a shot at raising them, my aptasia problem is barely under control right now, and it is a very hard tank to go through and kalk the aptasia one at a time being about a 32" tall aquarium.
 
Im very envious Superman. The simply cannot get these nudis and we do need them badly :(
 
Believe me, if there was a way for me to get them to you I would, but I don't think they'd survive the trip :sad:
 
Ok sorry its later than promised but here are the new additions to the system since the meeting i went to on my birthday (March 5th) :*)


This is a Silver bellied Yellow wrasse. Very active little fish, lots of character and very peaceful.
yellowwrasse.jpg


Long nosed yellow butterfly fish. (NOT REEF SAFE). Although i did purchase him to munch on unwanted pests in the system he has proven all the books wrong and been extremly well behaved and not tuched a single coral! (He has eaten all the tiny tube worms on my liverock though,
longnosedbutterfly.jpg


My pair of Skunk Clowns. Been very well behaved so far and no problems or issues with the already resident Percs i have.
I now have 2 pairs of clown in my tank and neither of them will look at any of the anenomes in my tank nor the sarcophyton (which is usually a great favorite). Just goes to prove that even if you do buy an anenome there is no guarentee that clowns will host it. :/
skunkclowns.jpg


My very shy Blue faced angel.
bluefacerock.jpg


Here is abetter piccy of her. There is some discolouration onthe face but this was because it was kept on a poor diet before i had her so with some TLC the colouration should rturn in time (I got her real cheap because of this ;) ).
newblueface.jpg


Sadly my most expensive purchase never left the shop :-( :(
I had aranged with a friend to collect an emperor angel that was too large for his system. Sadly the fish died in transit and never made it out of the shop that day. A sad loss as it was a gorgeous fish (alive when i took ownership of it :/ but it had polluted the bag during the meet without us noticing and basically the resulting ammonia spike finished it off. :-(


My favorite little wrasse. This is a Splendid Leopard Wrasse/Vermiculate Wrasse/Peacock Wrasse. Grows about as large as a 6 Live wrasse and very peaceful.
peacockwrasse.jpg



I have a couple of nano photos that i will add to the nano section later but for this tank this is all for now. :)
 
Loving the Leopard Wrasse :wub:
Got to get another one myself I think :p

Oh, by the way the Brain Coral has all but died off so there's not much point in bringing it down but cheers for the offer to house it :sad:

Still, the plan is to smash the boulder up into rubble for the external (it's still a 2.5kg lump of live rock afterall) so it's not a total loss :/
 
Sorry we couldnt make it down after the meet aqua, we were a little disheartened after the loss of the emperor and really didnt want to chance the fish with travelling any further than they needed too. :/
 
Totally understand, the coral was on it's way out anyway after the Majano/Aptasia attack as you know so it would have been a long shot. Sod's law really as we're down in Newquay next weekend and could have dropped it in :/
Still have to come down to see the tank though, it's looking fuller and better than when I last saw it :D
 
Awesome tank! :good:

I'm glad I read this, at least I know I'm not the only one who might make a big mistake. It's good to see that we all make a little boo boo here and there! :blush:

I'm having some what of the same issue as you, my 150 is slowly crashing from ich and corals are all thats keeping me sane! So far to ich I have lost a Achilles Tang, and today my Hen. Butterfly me and my girlfriend were posting about the fin growing back. But its the mistakes we learn from, sometimes we make twice lol, I bought from a chainstore got ich saw some new irrestible fish (zebra dwarf lion) and had to have and got it again (the ich came on the puffer and probably the lion they were both on the same system which are both dead)!!!!

Trying a UV sterlizer now hopefully that will save the rest, if not lessons will be learned.

Best of luck here out on your tank! :good:
 

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