Burningbaal

If you want a challenge, you can look at vivid creative aquatics, they've got several ... Ahem ... Creative printed reef products Sent from my SM-G935T using Tapatalk

I had to check. Looks like we'd really want ip68 for long term immersion Sent from my SM-G935T using Tapatalk

Care to give more details about how the assembly happened? Including the waterproofing of the heater top? I'm planning a giant fuge in my next build and want to have like 4-6 of these about 10" up in 23" water column (approx 36x36 footprint to light) Sent from my SM-G935T using Tapatalk

Finally looks ok! Chromis is swimming all over and all 3 nass snails accounted for about 18 hours after they went in! Sent from my SM-G935T using Tapatalk

Looks like there's a couple there I didn't know about (a lot of them are builders, a couple more are just corals), but all are not particularly close. If I avoid traffic, it may only be 20-30 minutes to a few, but with traffic...could be 80 minutes...oye. Maybe we'll get something more on the north side before too long. I just can't keep myself going to the close one, so I'll probably make the nearest petco my go-to unless I am up for the drive. For what it's worth, it seems there's not just natural variation between Petcos, the guy said there are different types of stores authorized, apparently the one in Marysville has even more. This one had several nemes, a couple (very small) tangs, a sally lightfoot crab, lots of clowns, cardinals, some dartfish, a beautiful dottyback, several LPS and SPS, mostly small frags on a rack. I liked it, I was impressed Anyways, I did my water tests, bear in mind it's basically 100% new water last week and no inhabitants until tonight, just rock and sand. zero all across the nitrogen cycle (I did see NO3 before the big change), zero PO4, 480 Ca, 1335 Mg, 8.2 dKH, 8.1 pH If the Calcium doesn't come down, I may do something about it, but it's been a crazy few weeks and it was obscene when the salinity was sky-high...so I'll just let it go for a little bit.

Been a while since I updated this thread. I bought a trio of pj cardinals a couple days after the wrasse because he was alive bit hiding, thought he could use some assurance there was nothing to be afraid of. Slow drip for them and they didn't make it to lights out, then two days later the wrasse was MIA, later found dead. Long story short, I found my refractometer was way off, my tank was probably in the high 1.03x range, maybe even 1.040. [emoji33] I did an almost 100% water change, am now at 1.025, and can't home today with a trio of nass snails and a chromis. The only close LFS I just really don't like. Tanks are too encrusted with Coraline and film algae to even see what's in half of them, aptasia, Xenia, and yellow polyps rule most of the tanks and I saw a clown on the sand that's probably been dead for 2 days given the rotting state. I think he just won't hire employees, so he can't get any maintenance done. Anyways, a Petco nearby actually does pretty well, frags and everything, so that's where my new inhabitants and new refractometer came from today. Barrier reef sounds awesome, but it's a tad far for a quick trip... Nothing else around appears salty, but please tell me if I'm wrong! Sent from my SM-G935T using Tapatalk

great stuff!

Hmmm it may not work as well with that ato. Mine is the jbj ato where the brackets hang on the edge of the tank. This picture shows the ato's water source line under one of the two brackets so it sits a tad higher that the other (they are both in the same position, so this is the only height difference). Sent from my SM-G935T using Tapatalk

One tip I got a while back, I think from @Jeremy if I remember right, that's really good in small tanks that don't have a return pump anywhere, or a very large return section, is you can put the two floats for the ATO on the same height, but stick the tube from the ATO pump under one of the brackets (the high-point one) so they are at very slightly different heights. This way they are only about 3/8" different in height (if you're using 1/4" tubing from the return pump) and you are likely to actually fill it 'on time'. I can try to take a pic or draw something if that doesn't make sense.

Just put myself on the map, don't know how I've been missing it. I used to work on Eastlake, which would have been super close to your work, but now I work in Bothell. FWIW, OnlineMetals.com is along the ship canal just between Queen Anne and Ballard; you could get your stand material from them pretty cheap (they do will call, so you don't have to ship it). I'll take a look at DIY cal solution, I have heard of some issues with purchased solution and with my wife and I's chemistry/biology background, we should be pretty decent at prepping it if we can trust our scale...that'll be the liability. Thanks for the link!

any change in water params in the past week or two? salinity swing? temperature? other params?

Hey, welcome to the area! (I live up near mountlake terrace). I like your idea, for sure. I'll be tagging along here as I'm excited to have more Seattle area people in PNWMAS! I just realized my first few fish (in the restarting 29g DIY AIO) died because my refractometer was way out of cal; hopefully I'll have corals later this year 😕

biowarfare? maybe another softie shedding or something? You could try throwing carbon in...just a guess

Regularly cal'd with rodi. But my Mg and Ca were way high, noticed I was adding more salt per gallon than seemed right. So I bought the cal solution. Now when I look with ro water it reads about 1.009 Sent from my SM-G935T using Tapatalk

I had a suspicion my refractometer might be off. Can and Mg are reading off the charts, stores are reading as really low salinity. When Petco checked my salinity, it was with a swing arm. I always call with rodi like it says to, but I decided to buy some 35ppt solution. Should read 1.0264 Sent from my SM-G935T using Tapatalk

well...welcome to snohomish county (I'm near Bothell)! I ended up giving away my 90g when I moved from Corvallis in 2012. It was supposed to be on a payment plan, but the person never paid me, so I got shafted. If I had been coming to my own house where I could have set it up, I probably would have just taken all my livestock to a LFS (probably TPA in Salem) and moved my rock in a brute can with everything else dry. Good time for a reset. But I was moving to a 1bed apartment while we figured out what we wanted to do long-term, so I ended up giving it all away free (on accident)...very sad. You can, in theory, bag everything, or put it in smaller vessels for transport, but you need to get them back in a big tank with rock and flow pretty fast afterwards or you're risking ammonia problems. You could try putting them in a rubbermaid with rock and water, but I think it's a recipe for disaster in the back of a box truck on the freeway. You could bag them, put the rock in a big semi-sealed barrel, and the first thing in the new place is to dump them out of bags into the rock/water. the params should be equal except any built-up waste in the bags, so you're probably pretty safe to dump them in without acclimation, but how quickly can you go from bagging livestock to driving 3-5 hours (Traffic) and then getting them out of the bags...Hence why I think I'd just bail on the livestock. I say you ditch the livestock, move all the rock and water to brute cans, dry out all the gear (I'd rinse the sand out thoroughly with a garden hose), and move it. When you get to the new place, stick a major pump in the brute cans to keep the water oxygenated. Once you're settled enough, set up the gear again, move the rock, put the sand in, maybe add a bag of arag-alive or similar, and fill up with clean water. minimal cycle since the rock has been going solid and you can start back in with livestock. that's my $0.02

so I'm learning, but it was about a 12pt salinity difference. I think I'm going to be stuck doing a QT in the future just so I can safely bring salinity up over the course of a few days.

Nevermind... They're toast Sent from my SM-G935T using Tapatalk

Help! I heard my wrasse might be hiding because he is alone in the tank, so I got three pajama cards today (Petco this time, but it's one of the nicer ones). I dripped for about an hour and a half (came with low salinity), then used safety stop for the first time. Just moved them from the blue to the tank and they're all dying! They looked fine in the blue! Sent from my SM-G935T using Tapatalk

Well, the LFS didn't have any chromis, and I couldn't try my first tank with a pair of clowns (all were paired). So I came home with this guy. While acclimating, I glued some window screen to the egg create and found this guy sleeping this morning. Sent from my SM-G935T using Tapatalk

I'll talk to my wife, I might be able to come down tomorrow with a little luck, but I haven't heard back. Tom: did you get my text last night?

do you live up here in WA? I'm in Bothell. I'm not sure I can set it up right away, so I might need a temporary answer for the livestock (my 29g isn't a good place for all of those), but I'm literally in the middle of planning a 180g build. This could be an enormous blessing. Texting you now

Looking at reefcleaners, what I've got kinda looks like the calothrix except there's no trapped air bubbles, but maybe because it's all so little. In any case, I figure I'll pick up a handful of snails and crabs along with my first swimmer and just chalk it up to normal new tank stuff. Sent from my SM-G935T using Tapatalk

Ok, I got 4 new test kits for the fundamentals and tested the tank. Also, I got some kind of algae started...I've never been good at distinguishing dino/diatoms/etc...doesn't really look like GHA, though. Figure it's a part of the new cycle, but I'm curious if anyone knows. Also, I got my test results, pictures are about right to my eye Indy the room lights I have no idea what to think with the pH, but I'm pretty sure it's above 8 Ammonia looks white, not yellow, but I'm thinking it's '0' Nitrite appears to be clearly '0' Nitrate is low.. color looks right to eye... Maybe 5? In other news, the damsel made a showing... I'm guessing about 50% of the body mass was disintegrated, so the near-zero nitrogen things and the spike of algae tells me things are cycled and safe, as long as the electricity is under control Edit: There's a little green up top, exclusively on the highest point right under the light. The fact that it's only in the brightest point makes me think it isn't just algae...it doesn't come up off the rock at all. I've never had green coraline, but I suppose it could be? Sent from my SM-G935T using Tapatalk

ah, so you have two water tight boxes wit bulkheads through the whole set using an extra gasket each. I guess that makes sense. I was thinking I could just have two partial boxes and use the tank glass as the 5th piece for each box...maybe it won't work....I'll have to keep stewing on this. FWIW, my 29g DIY peninsula 'AIO' has acrylic walls/baffles in the glass tank and seems to work fairly well, though I wouldn't know if there's a small leak since it's all wet back there anyways.