SuncrestReef

I routinely trim back my chaeto every few weeks, but this time the chaeto has become contaminated with a lot of ugly green hair algae. Should I toss it and start over with clean chaeto, or just trim off what I can?

I still got to see what was left of it:

@EMeyer Any chance I can get in on the free analysis project? I missed the meeting because I was out of the country on vacation, but it's something I'm definitely interested in.

It took 23 hours of taxis, airports, and layovers to get home from France yesterday. While I was away, several cool things happened: My two clownfish who have kept to themselves in the upper corner of my tank for the past 11 months finally decided to explore the anemone! I had given up hope and almost sold the anemone last month because I assumed they weren't interested. But I was amazed when I got home to see the anemone hosting the clownfish: The other cool thing is that my Avast Marine custom porthole arrived. My Nikon 200mm macro lens is really long and the focus working distance makes it impossible to do top-down photos of corals in shallow water using stock camera portholes. I contacted Dan at Avast Marine and ordered a custom extra-extra-long porthole. Here it is alongside the standard and XL porthole: Now I'm able to position the camera far enough away from the coral while still having the porthole submerged: The trip was great, but I'm really glad to be home. And I'm really glad everything in my tank is looking healthy and happy! See you all on Sunday at CNC.

I’ve used Aquarium Camera app on my iPhone, but they also have it for Android. It’s much better than the phone’s native camera, however I still prefer using my clip on orange filter. http://aquariumcameraapp.com/

I’m definitely looking forward to it and even reserved space in my cabinet for the Trident when I built my system last year, but I’m being patiently realistic about waiting for it to officially come out. I laugh at all the angry posts from people mad at Neptune and spreading conspiracy theories that they are just dragging it out to sell more 2016 Apex upgrades. Given my obsession with automation and my already big investment in Apex gear, it only makes sense to add the Trident.

I’ve been in France for the past week on an amazing vacation with my wife for our anniversary. It’s been a bit stressful for me being away from my reef but my house sitter/dog sitter/aquarium sitter has done a great job, including sending me photo updates of how everything looks in my tank. Adding to my stress was my Apex salinity probe flaking out, after a year of accurate readings it suddenly started fluctuating between 35 and 29 ppt right before my trip and continues to flake out while I’m away. My tank sitter confirmed the salinity is normal, but it’s still unnerving to see such low readings on my Apex. On a funny note, today in Paris I got excited when I saw this store: only to be disappointed when I discovered it’s just a printing shop. 😞 We’re flying back tomorrow, and really looking forward to the Cinco de Mayo party!

It looks like my problem was from copying/pasting the email address into PayPal. When I typed it manually it went through fine. Paid!

I’m also getting an error in PayPal for your email. I’ll try again when I get back to the US this week.

Wow, glad I snuck a peek from France when my wife wasn’t looking! I’m in!!!

I was hoping the group buy details would be announced before my trip to France, but it looks like I’m out of luck. I’ll be gone until May 2nd so I’ll see everyone at the Cinco de Mayo party. When the deal is listed, I hope someone out there can put me down for the Space Invader and rainbow acan. 🤞

Have you sent a sample of your RO/DI water for ICP analysis?

That's interesting. I have two XR30 Pro's with diffusers that I run the AB+ spectrum at 80%, but I get ~400 PAR at the top, ~300 mid tank, and ~200 on the sand bed. Here are some of my PAR readings:

I have two leptos under 210 PAR and they seem to be doing well.

Just wait until you retire...You'll be on here posting random nerdy things 50 times per day too!!! 😂

I've been keeping a spreadsheet of every coral I purchase. It's interesting to see how many came from @CuttleFishandCoral: And a shout out to @Gil&Fin for being the runner up!

Since I recently helped someone else here set this up, I can just paste in the instructions for everyone: Purchase this Apex 12V auxiliary power adapter: https://www.bulkreefsupply.com/12v-power-supply-neptune-systems.html Plug your Apex Energy Bar into your UPS (Uninterruptible Power Supply) battery backup. Plug the new 12V power adapter into a regular wall power outlet and connect it to the Apex auxiliary power port. In Apex Fusion, click the Apex menu, then click Misc near the bottom of the menu Under the Power section, set Monitor to Enabled, then save the settings to your Apex. Once these steps are done, you can configure various outlets on your Energy Bar to react when your house power goes out. Here are some examples: Turn off return pump: Fallback ON Set ON If Power Apex Off 000 Then OFF Turn off heater: Fallback OFF If Tmp < 78.0 Then ON If Tmp > 78.0 Then OFF If Power Apex Off 000 Then OFF Turn on air pump: Fallback OFF Set OFF If Power Apex Off 000 Then ON In general, you should only run the bare minimum devices on battery power. Heaters, lights, and anything with powerful motors (like return pumps or skimmers) will drain the battery quickly, so they should be turned off. If you want the Apex to send you alerts when the power is out, you will also need your Internet router connected to a battery backup. In your Apex alert programming, add this as the final condition so it doesn't get overridden by any other alert conditions: If Power Apex Off 000 Then ON

All you need is a $16 auxiliary power adapter: https://www.bulkreefsupply.com/12v-power-supply-neptune-systems.html You plug this adapter into a regular wall power outlet and attach it to the Apex head unit. Then you plug your EnergyBar into the battery backup. You can then program each outlet how to behave when the auxiliary power adapter loses power.

I use a traditional UPS battery backup and have my Apex configured for power monitoring so it can selectively turn off specific outlets when the power is out. This provides a lot more flexibility than the EcoTech or Icecap batteries since you can power any type of device on battery. It's great to have the Apex send an alert so I know the power is out even when I'm not home. (obviously you need your Internet router on battery power as well for the alerts to be sent)

After a bit of research, I'm starting to thing these may be some form of tunicates.

I have several of these small brownish growths in shaded areas of my rocks, each about 1/4" diameter. Could these be some sort of sponge, or something else? I took these photos after lights out using a flashlight and my macro lens:

My UV is in line with my return pipe. I only use the valves to turn off flow to the UV for maintenance and open a bypass valve so the return pump still supplies the tank. I have a flow meter on the return pipe past the UV so it always reports the flow whether going through UV or bypassed. So basically my UV flow rate is controlled by my return pump speed.

And if you want to see a few different views of the final product, take a look at this post from my R2R build thread: https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/suncrestreefs-red-sea-reefer-xl-425-build.358990/page-3#post-4558220

Absolutely. I target feed my corals twice per week, and I doubt they're getting much food in between.

I'm not sure of the difference between the model I posted and the one at Marine Depot. AquaUV has a pretty wide range of products. Going 3/4" shouldn't be an issue. I originally posted the 2" model since the Emperor you initially posted was 1.5" plumbing. One thing to be aware of though is the recommended flow rates. A lot of people say the flow should be very low, but the longer the water is exposed the higher the radiation will be and it can kill things you might not want to kill. See this sizing chart from AquaUV's documentation, and read the footnotes below the chart: