NateDawg

You'd probably either want to sell the tanks as a whole (will probably be harder to sell this way) or start by selling live stock/live rock then the equipment. As far as pricing, that's gunna be more based on what you feel it's worth. Live rock usually goes for around +-$2 per pound on the forum. I'd suggest looking for some other entire system sells in the classified section of this forum and see how they sold there systems.

I use an ender 3 and an ender 5 for printing, both are under 500 and I've had successful prints from the very start. Non dyed ABS is going to be the plastic you want to print with if it's a part that will be under water for long amounts of time. It's hard to work with and needs a high temperature to not warp when printing. So I'd say look for one that's enclosed so you can control the temperature better. PLA is a easier plastic to print and works great outside of a saltwater environment. Its non toxic but since it's made from corn, it will break down over time much quicker than ABS but it's what I would suggest to start printing with first.

Maybe I need to switch to more efficient equipment 😂

On 12/2/2019 at 1:00 PM, TheClark said:

Looks like I am pushing $60 a month in electricity.  Honestly that feels pretty good for 450 gallons.  

So that comes out to what?  720 per year?   I should probably sell a few frags now and then to at least break even!  

 

That seems really good for the water volume! I'm about $30 per month down here in Albany, OR with only about 90 gallons. How much is electricity up there? It's about $0.11 per kilowatt here.

Could changing light fixtures be cause of microbe change?

You'd probably have to contact a plastics company for black ABS. I've only ever found them on-line down here in Oregon.

2 hours ago, Saltfishlover said:

Thank you! I'll do that.. so far no, nothing is reaching up.  I do have a leather that won't fully extend polyps.  

No problem! I've never had good luck with leathers personally for some reason but the increased light might help.

Do you have any coral that look like they are stretching towards the light? This is really visible with zoanthids and palythoa. If you've had it running on %50 for a little while and nothing is closing up or bleaching, I'd say it's probably safe to bump up the intensity 10-15% a week or every other week.

There are quite a few factors that will determine this. From my understanding, the only use for a diffuser is to make the various spectrums of leds to blend together better. And then the amount of light can be adjusted with the intensity knob. The amount of light needed for soft coral is generally pretty low and without a par meter or knowing the par of that particular light at various depths of the tank it will be hard to say what percentage to have it at. I think the best thing to do is to start low and work your way up, coral won't generally suffer from to low of light in the short term but can easily be damaged or killed if exposed to too high of intensity of light. Is this the first light th you've had on the tank or do you know the wattage of the light that was used previously? The light that you are using is rated at around 90 watts of light output at 100% in reality this will most likely be less. So if you were previously running 90 watts or more, then it would be somewhat safe to say that you could run at 100% but it's still a good idea start lower. Another factor with leds is that if you can run them lower they will last longer too.

I betcha you could swap both some water and a few small pieces of live rock from other people's tanks if you wanted some more diversity. I've got a relatively new tank compared to yours and I, most of the time, will add the water from other people's tanks into my tank. That can be risky so make sure you have a good idea about how there tank is doing first. But I haven't had issues yet and have a large diversity for a tank that's only two years old that I started with dry rock and sand.

11 hours ago, albertareef said:

Yep - I had issues with this for a long time until I finally picked up one of Kim's special algae destroying purple tangs that outgrew it's tank. @Emerald525  It is certainly true that not all tangs are created equal in this regard as I had others in the tank before and they would just ignore the GHA.  I still see it in the overflows so know it's around but man, that tang does it's job!

This is one of the "conundrums" regarding nutrient levels as you can measure low but still have pest algae problems.  Potentially an issue with nitrate/phosphate balance but it's hard to really be sure.  Eli may have some thoughts about that.

I wish my purple tang ate GHA, actually for that matter, I wish he ate algae period.... he's the most picky tang I've ever seen. The only thing I can get him to eat is dried red algae. I just picked up a cute little dolabella sea hare today from CNC to finally start eating the hair algae, hopefully... 

Back on topic, since there is algae in the main DT, there must be a nutrient source for it. I wonder if my api nitrate test kit isn't good enough to pick up the nitrates. I'm wondering though, if I start a small carbon dose, just enough to boost the bacteria and strip the nitrates all together and starve out the algae. And also start adding amino acids and tiny small polyp based foods for the coral (such as reef chilli) to as a food source instead of the nitrates and phosphates? Is that more of a flawed idea, or maybe possible and helpful for data for collection?

5 hours ago, pdxmonkeyboy said:

If you have low nutrients then you do NOT want to start dosing carbon.  

What do you suppose is causing the GHA then? Everything thing looks minimal to zero for testing, but something must be feeding the nasty stuff.

Looks nice! Did it effect your PH at all?

Yeah, I haven't done any so any would be fine, though my tank does struggle to keep alkalinity above 8 so I'd say either the ethanol or your carbon additive. I haven't seen really any nitrates in my tank but I do have issues with GHA so I know they're there.

Count me in! I've never carbon dosed but was just doing some research on it a couple days ago and debating on trying it out. This would give me a reason to do it.

3 minutes ago, Salem Reefer said:

Okay perfect! I'm in Salem but I don't mind if I need to drive.

Salem is good for me, I'm in Albany bit drive to north Salem 4 days of the week, so it's no issue for me

18 minutes ago, Salem Reefer said:

Natedawg, I'd like to get something unique if I can afford it haha. Sometimes Zoas get up there

Yah, they definitely can. I can take a picture of what I've got when I get home and I'll PM you them. If you are near Paradise Coral in Hillsborough, that's where I've gotten quite a few of my collection from.

+1 for paradise coral! Amazing collection of zoas and palys!

Are you looking for higher end zoas? Or just some of the more regularly seen?

1 minute ago, SuncrestReef said:

After enabling the "Notify me of replies" option, I'm getting messages in my personal email account about the reply, but the bell icon at the top of the PNWMAS site is not triggered.  

I think I just fixed the issue, in the notification settings there is a couple options that allows new content in a thread your following to send a notification and for me, this was disabled. Must have been caused by a website update or something.

That's my issue as well, quoting works for me but just the general adding onto a thread doesn't give notifications like it used too when you selected the "notify me of replies" slider at the bottom.

Hmm weird, I wonder if there was an update to the website recently?

Is anybody else having issues where they're not getting notifications that someone has replied to a thread that is set to send a notification if someone does?

22 hours ago, Cobalt said:

 I'd get an Utter Chaos and Blueberry fields if you were headed in sometime. I work from home weekdays so can usually meet up someplace like C&C. I also live close to downtown.

 

Yeah, I'll plan on making a trip to CNC this weekend and I'll have those guys with me. What times work for you?

58 minutes ago, Cobalt said:

Hi Nate, Headed in to portland this weekend?

Potentially, week days work better in terms of going to portland for me but I'd be willing to go up there depending on what your interested in.