Krux

First shipments arrive tomorrow!

Looking forward to the first stock coming in from Fiji after a multi-year ban. What is everyone hoping to see again, anyone have any old favorites? I used to love my Fiji yellow leather, but don't really do softies any more - and Fiji is the land of softies. Some of the old caroliniana and loripes have my name on them...

I don't have any experience with LPS, but did you follow the multi day cipro dosing schedule, or did you just hit it once? This is pretty much to the standard regimen at this point, as advised by Aquabiomics: I used Ciprofloxacin at 0.125 mg / L. To achieve this I dissolved a 500 mg pill in 50 ml of RODI water, producing a 10 mg / ml solution (which I subsequently stored in the fridge). The aquarium system has 70 gal volume altogether (~265 L), so I added 3.3 ml of this solution to achieve 0.125 mg / L. I repeated this dose every 2 days for 3 doses altogether.

If I was a Lions fan I would not admit it publicly 😛

Bodianus sepiacaudus Pacific Redstripe Hogfish. Dr. Seuss is a soapfish, I believe they diverge at the order level, though indeed similarly formed.

Ok, progress! After spending the morning replacing the plumbing under the kitchen sink to fix a slow leak that has been plaguing us for a decade, it was off to the hardware store. My initial plan was to replace all of the WB plumbing right from the connectors and I ordered a complete set of metric to imperial unions. On closer inspection, the return line did not leave any room to cut off the piping below the union so I left a small section of soft tubing creating an excuse for anti-vibration for myself, and plumbed it from there. Ran 1/2” short on 1” pvc so bridged the gap with a spare union… thug life. Also added the OEM dual manifold for any future connections for UV or my Paxbellum algae reactor if I ever decide to bring it online again. The next challenge was that I needed the main drain to go all the way left, and needed the emergency overflow to run forward into the main sump. There is a weir that the stock design runs both into that overflows into the filter sock chamber. With a filter roller this path can not be used, so the plumbing gets rerouted. The only real issue is that the drains are backwards - the main drain is in the middle and the overflow is on the left. The solution was creative use of 45 degree elbows and ugly pipe runs. At some point I will redo these in sch 80 pvc but I was tired of waiting. These both required the metric to imperial unions. The last piece was connecting the drain to the roller mat. I found it helpful on the last tank to have this run be flexible as you need to take it out for thorough cleaning. A short run of silicone tubing and it was as good to go. Chose to use this section for the drip from 1.25” to 1” which is what the Clarisea prefers. The rest of the night was reserved for moving over the rest of the coral and fish, but I am seeing a couple more pieces starting to slowly lose tissue, I want to give everything another week before stressing everyone out with a move. Barring an emergency next weekend, I think I am one good workday away from consolidating back down to one tank. Please enjoy Pepper. TTFN

WHY ME!?!??!

Aforementioned tow truck

It is the same bus. A tow truck spent 6 hours trying to get it free overnight, at one point snapping a very thick tow cable trying to use the power pole as a pulley. They were able to get it back on the road, but then the rear of the bus slid back off into the culvert. loud cable snap, glad the driver was operating it from inside the cab… it thwacked the back of the truck with full force. my wife reports they finally freed the bus around 330 this afternoon

Thank you. As it turn out, one of my neighbors must have taken a photo this morning in the light - my front yard made it on the Portland subreddit!

whelp, it is icy in my front yard…

This will be the hot new Tiktok trend

Roads are looking to be unsafe starting around 1pm

Jeff has been soloing it for a few days without closure, if he is there and you swoop in remember to bring him treats or coffee!

Power was restored this morning right on the nose for a 70 hour blackout. I rewired the furnace and brought up the rest of the equipment on the tanks so I now have monitoring and full water movement again. Things looked ok today, but I left for work after about an hour of power running. Hopefully when I get home I don't find myself with a sweet hydrogen sulfide bomb and floating fish! It turns out there is zero alk consumption when there is no light, makes sense but I was afraid I had dipped dangerously low - when the trident came online it showed no change from the last sample three days ago. Temp dropped to 68 when the sump emptied into the tank, but it is back up to 74 now. Ice storm hitting in about 4 hours, I fully expect the power to go down again. Anyone who can would be wise to go get fuel and firewood if they need it 😛

Closing in on 60 hours. The PGE truck told our neighbor they hope to have power to us by 10pm tomorrow unless the ice storm changes their priorities. Until then my scavenging of gas cans from around the metro area has yielded great success! Hopefully we will be able to keep running through when I get off work tomorrow night and need to venture out into the ice to find an open gas station

So sorry to hear about the losses... We are still powerless, and at this point since they have not given any update on their site about our outage since 7:30am on Saturday I do not expect it will be restored today either. We are fortunate enough that we were able to keep heat going and the tanks circulating, but I have not been home and have no idea what is going on with water chemistry in the tank. If the power comes back on I didn't unplug my return pumps, so all of that water from both tanks is going to get pumped into the displays - not sure what impact that will have. As of this morning I had only lost two coral and all fish are accounted for thanks to some DIY and help from friends, but I am not sure how much longer things will be able to hang on without light, alk and cal dosing, salinity stabilization, and proper flow. I am going to try to get a powerhead going in each sump when I get home to at least move water around a bit. I feel for you, once everything is running again please post how we can try to help you. If you need to buy new cultures I would support a "GoReefMe" campaign and kick in towards them.

Generators sold out at Beaverton and Tigard Home Depot, as well as Tigard Lowe’s if anyone is looking for one. Was at those three yesterday looking for gas cans.

52 hours and counting…

Hour 26 with no power and no time estimate. Two colonies have started to STN, hopefully PGE decides to send a truck today.

The house got down to 50 degrees after about 8 hours of power outage and the heaters started to struggle, tanks dropped to 72. Phoned a friend who helped me wire up our furnace directly to our generator and now the house is back up to 62, tanks back up to 74. Siphoned gas out of the truck to keep the generator running another 6 hours. Fingers crossed they get the tree off the line soon as we have already eclipsed 12 hours of outage with no updates. on the plus side, wife has agreed to letting me finally get that generac installed that I have been wanting.

Glad I picked up that big generator a couple months back, it is pulling double duty circulating and keeping two tanks heated. Best of luck to everyone in Snowpocalypse 2024!

I will be in later for 160% off?

I enjoyed watching this shop tour of a new place in Australia. I was curious what corals that didn’t need to get shipped to the US might look like and what pricing was for them. There are a few things that would break your wallet if they made it this far. At any rate, if reefing in a coral exporting country is of any interest, give it a watch maybe.