Blue Z Reef

Just curious, how high was your phosphate getting to? I know you had the rock leeching issue but maybe after things calmed down a bit?

what do you keep your Mag at?

I feed prime reef flake 1x per day. Sometimes I use SA Hatchery diet but it floats too much for an auto feeder unless you have one of those food chutes. The rest of my feeding is frozen or nori.
 

Also, when you say algae outbreak, what are we taking about? Hair? Cyano? What type?

I keep you Mag at 1400 and with my feeding my phos is usually around .03-.09. Only algae is some brownish film type on the sand but never gets worse than discoloration and doesn’t go everywhere (snails seem to stir it up). Haven’t had any hair issues. My only cyano outbreak was remedied with one chemiclean treatment.

4 hours ago, obrien.david.j said:

This spring, I too started over.  Complete overhaul of the equipment room.   (sump/etc)   My conclusion, best thing I've done is build the RO and SW mixing station, and connect them up with DOS pumps to do Daily Auto Top Off, and Daily Auto Water Changes.    Why didn't I do this 15 years ago!

And now, I'm overhauling the display tank side of the system.  Working my way up to taking the existing display tank down and putting its replacement in place.   This will happen in October.  

I am in the same boat, although it was a pain to run lines all around (under the house to the garage for me), it was well worth it for my mixing station/AWC setup. The automation we have available now makes things so much simpler. This was my big change for my most recent reef iteration (started early this year).

If I were to start over today, I would probably make minor changes to my stand to reinforce an area or two better, but otherwise happy where I’m at.

Nice looking setup, I look forward to it growing in. I hear ya, it’s tough when you blow the budget on equipment and have an “empty” feeling tank. My wife holds my equipment costs over my head LOL! End of the day though, the dosing equipment will pay dividends later.
 

Not sure how much experience you have with this group, but we have a great group of reefers on here, many of whom are very generous, especially with sharing corals. I would look to your locals for some deals on corals to get things filled in.

VIPARSPECTRA Timer Control Dimmable 165W 300W LED Aquarium Light Full Spectrum for Grow Coral Reef Marine Fish Tank LPS/SPS https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07SMY9KWF/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_-MGCFbQWS7NGX
 

They have there own spectrum, but pretty similar to OR. Controller is similar, just digital for the dimmer setting and had a timer (no ramping, only single setting and on/off times).

Bump, still have these

You have some pics of the corals and equip?

Also...if you ever think down the road you want an Apex, the ATK kit at $200 can run independently of the apex (until you get one), has dual optical sensors plus float valve shutoff and pump. The pump itself is a tad noisy but not horrible. Food for thought...

Your color coordination makes me jealous lol!

just a heads up, the DOS Reservoir is problematic with whatever you put into it shorting the circuit board and causing the optical switch not to register. Mine is out already and it’s only 6 months old. Debating sending it in for “repair”. You could probably open it up (screw on under side of top) and use some silicone to seal it better. Or a guy on eBay sells a wire only harness with no circuit board for pretty reasonable. Just something to look into.

Usually I source that stuff off eBay from China. Down side is it takes like a month to get here lol.

given what all you need, you may be able to get ahold of someone’s old black box for parts. They usually sell for around $50 working or less. By the time you get a few drivers, dimmers, and fan control you might be into it $30 anyway and a month of waiting.

My pH has been relatively close, not enough to quantify any changes from it. 
 

I did just for safety sake (and it was more or less due) swap my carbon out. 
 

Before I forget and fall asleep on the couch again... #dadlife

One free member ticket for Nero please

@Jack-the-reefer right up your alley!

20 minutes ago, TheClark said:

Too many years way back when with the RKL, glad you are an APEX guy now

My expectations are so low from my years of RK use that I feel like my apex just keeps popping up with secret freebies all the time 🤣

So just now I learn there is an App....man I feel dumb LOLOL

33 minutes ago, SuncrestReef said:

Keep in mind the Heartbeat alarms are not instantaneous.  It will send the first alarm after the Apex has been unreachable for 30-40 minutes.  As the outage continues, the heartbeat alarms will decrease in frequency, so it can go for hours before the next alarm is sent.

This is why I have my Apex and my Internet router connected to small UPS batteries to keep them online for a period of time after a power outage, and the Apex itself sends me an alert immediately that the power is off.  I outlined this in my Apex Power Monitoring tutorial:  

 

I am ok with the 30-40 minute delay mainly because I have Comcast...self explanatory lol! It will drop connection randomly at least once a day but gets going again within a minute or so. I definitely plan do get a UPS setup, I’ve seen videos of people simply adding a deep cycle battery to one and they last super long.

12 minutes ago, pdxmonkeyboy said:

They are cheaper than you think.  My little honda 1,200? watt generator (which is great) was $1k.    I got that standby generator for $1,800 and it is 8,500 watts.  It turns on and off automatically by itself and even turns on once a week automatically to "exercise" itself for 5 minutes.   I calculated I can run it for like 15 days with my 200 gallon propane tank.  

It runs everything in my aquarium, the circuit that the TV is on, and my refrigerators. 

That is cheaper than I thought! I swear every time I ogled at them in the past the starting prices were like $4k and up. Was hoping battery tech would take a leap forward so the “power wall” style backups were more reasonable and more storage dense. I’m sure we will see some leaps in battery tech pretty soon though.

7 minutes ago, TheClark said:

Its darn impressive their uptime.  First time I have ever had this happen!  Was saving a virtual outlet and got an HTML screen of death!

Is it crazy down there?  Pretty calm still up here.. But the color of the sunlight is different with all the smoke..

Yeah the winds have been nuts, I have 2 coworkers that can’t work from home today because they lost power. Lots of tree limbs everywhere lol

thanks for the heartbeat tip, enabled it now!

That’s funny, I literally just refreshed mine before coming to the site. 
 

with the crazy wind around here I used to yesterday to make sure my power was still on lol! I’m assuming if the power was out it would have some error, right? Never had an Apex through a storm yet 🤣

Holy crap! I thought you would have broke it apart and saved some real estate by now lol! That’s maaaaasive!

Dang! You have been on a super awesome nem streak lately! I’ve never seen one like this before 🤤. Hope someone local gets it and propagates it!

Yeah that’s high. Don’t get me wrong, the stand looks nice. People can sink a ton of money into a stand to look nice, but doesn’t really add a ton of value to the setup. The tank is probably just an aqueon 40B which retails for $50 at petco. Sump looks like a DIY aqueon also so it was $20 new. There is DIY work and materials involved but there are better deals to be had out there.

I wouldn’t worry about plumbing. It’s pretty simple in general. Tons of people here can help too. Usually takes at least 2 trips to get PVC at least before your finished lol

Tank you choose depends on budget. Are you trying to be all in for under $700? What about tank size? Lots of factors. Personally I prefer bigger sizes for stability but that again depends on you and what you want out of it.

Did I not make the list somehow...

I’m a sponsoring member

You have a lid for this? Don’t want it to become cat bath trough lol

you are getting pretty dang good at the single drain/returns!

I am a supporting member

forgot about membership till I saw this...just renewed mine 👍

I’ve been running my trident since end of February, it’s been awesome as well. Definitely feel like I was missing a lot in the past not testing enough, but it’s amazing how much you can dial in your Alk throughout the day when you test this much. I am running 8 per day, it’s awesome. Definitely helps you level the curve out. 

Only issue I ran into was only due to COVID causing reagent scarcity. I found some and bought up a bunch to get me through the year.