Hog Head

I have been thinking of doing the same thing. My fuge in my sump is fairly nasty and I wonder if some of my phosphate issues are coming from it. I do have a lot of unique sponges and stuff down there though. Thought it would be a good idea to just pull my entire sump out and give it a good cleaning. Let us know how it looks and if all seems good when done. I have got almost 4 years of gunk built up down there.

Everything looks good. I even moved equipment around to make maintenance a little easier.

siphon the water' date=' scoop the mud, shop vac the leftovers. Thats how I would do it,[/quote']

 

She's as clean as a whistle. The rubble is going in.

None of the macro algae is actually growing out of the mud so I dont know if it is actually doing any good. Plus the mud is 3-4 years old.

As long as you can get all of it out of there and not go back to the main tank - your ok.

The refugium area is isolated and would be completely cleaned out. My thought is the rubble and macro would be a little cleaner and hold onto less crap.

I am doing a water change and cleaning the refugium out at the same time. An idea hit me to clean out the sand/mud mixture and replace it with the plethora of rubble that I have.

Is this a good idea? Would you do it? What do you think?

My dad wants to get them' date=' he's in springfield. what's a good time and where are you located?[/quote']

 

I am off of River Rd. in Eugene. I will be going to work in the morning and won't be back until some time Saturday or Sunday. PM me with a number to get a hold of you and I will call you when I get home.

 

Thanks, Eugene

do you still have them? my parents are in eugene with those size tanks.

Yes I do. There are a couple of pieces with chipped corners but there are enough good ones to make at least one or two good sets.

Glass tops, Free to the first who wants them. I think there are 2 sets for a 75/90 and 1 for a 125. They will get recycled if nobody wants them.

I am clearing out the garage and ran across these. Two 10 gallon HOB filters. Free, just come and get them. If nobody wants them they will just end up at the dump.

You still got that light for sale?

Yes it is. A couple of people have asked for it but I still have it.

Bumpity bump!

Sale Pending.

Bump for a price change.

Selling my Marineland 216w T5 fixture plus 10 bulbs. All bulbs used for a year or less. $75 obo.

4 Giesemann Midday

2 Marineland Daylight and 2 Actinic

2 life glo 6700k

Plus 2 24" Giesemann 1 Actinic+ and 1 Aqua blue

Can one controller handle more than one tank? If so which one(s)?

I still have the reflectors/ballast and the pink bird nest.

 

The tag on the ballast says it was made in December 2007 and I bought reflectors brand new early this year and never used them. I couldn't find a tag on the box for the reflectors, but I'd assume they were made in 2011.

 

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Thanks. I decided to use what I already have.

Do you still have the Ballsat and reflectors? How old is the reflector? What is the date on the tag?

250 Radium are specked to run on HQI ballast (about 330W). 400 run on normal output (slightly less than 400W). Galaxy ballast will fire the bulbs' date=' but are not the ideal ballast. Some have used HQI to overdrive the 400W, but the bulb life goes down considerably. The select-a-watt galaxy has a 250 hi setting, which is about 280W.[/quote']

 

Thanks. So the HQI setting on the Select A Watt ballasts is putting out 28w and not 250w?

Have you seen the par of a 250w radium ran on the proper ballast vs the 400w radium ran on the proper ballast? They have vrey similar par numbers. See the 400w radium is not really pushing 400w like you would think' date=' it's pulling more like 360w. The 250w radium bulb ran on a proper ballast is really running closer to over 300w since an hqi spec bulb. So the difference between the 2 bulbs is very small when ran on the proper ballast.[/quote']

 

What is considered the proper ballast? I am using a Galaxy on mine.

I have some used 250w DE Ushio and Pheonix bulbs I would like to clear out. All were ran for a year or less and ran in sets of three in my 72" Maristar fixture.

3 Ushio 250w DE 10k bulbs - $20

3 Pheonix 250w DE 14k bulbs - $20

I had the same skimmer and it really was finicky as far as getting that collection cup just perfect where it would not pull wet skimmate.

It sounds like your collection cup may be a little low if its getting the tea, but maybe thats where you want it if its not raise it ever so slightly.

 

I agree that its broken in though.

Yes, it skims very wet. I keep raising it a little at a time. Hopefully I will hit the sweet spot. The plan is for a SWC Xtreme 230.

I have a fan going now. If it works well and will maintain no more than a 2 degree temp swing during the day, that will be the way I will go. It was a cool enough day that the tank temp never even reached 79 today.

Thanks for the help Franklin. The fan makes nice little ripples across the water. Not the quietest fan though. I can forsee a controller in the future. Now we just need some warm days to see how well it works.

maybe to much lube? it does not take very much just a thin coating

That definitely could have been the problem. It wouldn't suprise me.

Its already broken in. Maybe try a diffrent skimmer on your tank and see what kind of gunk you pull. Maybe your bio load is to small. Maybe you don't feed you fish enough.

The bio load might be light. One Maroon Clown, about a dozen Damsels, a Gold Rabbitfish, an Engineer Goby Plus coral. As far as the little footballs with fins not getting enough to eat? I don't think so. I do try to feed cleaner foods though. Seaweed and Spirulina based food for the most part with some plankton mixed in once in a while. I did just start feeding silversides to the anemones I just bought though.