barbianj's stuff Time for a new reef tank

Thanks!

You're welcome, Cheryl.

Lucky you, Vinny!

Thanks, Bruh. It's a Canon D-10. The same camera that I use for in-tank shots at home. It has an underwater compensation setting on the camera, so post processing, all I have to do is a little histogram tweaking. Most of these I just used auto correct, and dialed the brightness back down a bit.

The first trip was at Pennekamp. It's a little shallower, and not as many fish as at the second trip, which I believe was Little Conch Reef.

Thank you very much.

 

A few videos that I took at Little Conch Reef. There was a pretty good swell for snorkeling.

Click on the pictures to watch.

 

Stopped by a friend's house today, and picked up an accidental frag. I had commented on how nice the color was on his blue stag, and he offered to give me a piece. A whole branch broke off, about 7" long, and nearly 3/4" thick at the base. I had intended to put it in the frag tank for a while, but the tips stuck out of the water, lol. So in the DT it went.

 

It's a beauty. I always like any blue Acropora very much. That almost looks like a Tortuosa. Will be interesting to see if it changes coloration.

 

That's what I'm interested also, Cheryl. He has MH supplemented with T5, and I have all LED. It's up at the top in good flow, so we'll see...

 

I have heard and experienced for my self that the most intense lighting is needed to keep those blues. Knowing nothing about LED's myself I will be interested to see if they can maintain the blue. I find it the hardest color to keep.

 

Great video!! Grabbed a handfull of fire coral on that reef.Ouch!!!
Nice fragzilla!!!!Good luck with it Jerry!!8)

 

Decided to take the plunge and get a Reef+ Angel controller. Received it last week Monday, and so far it's controlling the pH, temp, lights, and pumps. I had trouble getting the wifi module running, but I think it was an issue with the router. Once I switched it out for the router at work, everything ran fine.

I can view the status of everything that it controls, and turn them on and off using my laptop, and my Android phone. To feed the tank, all I have to do is pull out my phone, press feeding mode in the RA app, and the pump and powerheads turn off for 15 minutes, then turn back on again.

This particular controller is open source, meaning that the owners collectively do the programming themselves. There has been enough work done by others that I have not had to do any actual programming so far. There is a new Wizard that walks you through all of the basic steps, then uploads the code to the controller. By far the hardest thing so far was getting the wifi going.

I still need to get the ATO running (a JBJ is currently installed) and get the skimmer connected. After that, Ill be looking at the dosing pumps. I'm starting to go through a lot of 2 part. Then I want to get another relay box to control the fish side of the system, and possibly the salinity module.

My pH has been running between 8.12 and 8.14. I don't even know if that's good or bad. I've never been able to measure it that accurately.

There is so much more that can be done with custom code. This thing will keep me busy for a long time. ;D

 

Congrats on the controller I have a 'regular' Reef Angel, but love it the same. You can use just one float for ATO if you want, which leave you the other for another purpose (I use it as a high water alarm in case my overflow box ever lost suction).

 

I was looking at the reef tank yesterday, and thought that something looked different. It took me a bit to realize that the green bubble algae was melting. Fast. Most of it is more white than green now, and a lot of the bubbles are popped and withering away.

My theory is that with the low volume return pump, most of the nitrogen cycle was taking place within the tank, not in the sump. I did manually remove some of the bubbles, but I was not careful about popping them. If conditions are not favorable for it to grow, it won't.



My Favia has had a giant carbuncle on it for a while now. I found that it had overgrown a vermitid snail that was irritating it. I broke the snail's tube and pulled the end of it out of the Favia. It was covered in white slime, kind of looked like a little Q-Tip.



Finally got the stone for the 300's stand. My son finished it this morning. It's a leathered granite. Makes the tank look huge in real life, which was the intent. The wood panel is removable.