Who's Into Saltwater?

[Tony]

After a crystal clear tank for two days, I decided to put the rock back in the tank. Not such a good idea. Not an hour after putting it in the tank, the tank started to foam really bad again. I'm out of ideas on this thing. I just can't seem to win with it. I'm leaving it the way it is and I'm going to let it run and see what happens. If it crashes, then the tank is going in the cellar. We will just have to wait and see what happens.

 

[murankar]

What can cause that, is the rock clean? Is it the porous and causing it?

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What can cause that, is the rock clean? Is it the porous and causing it?

 

[Tony]

It's something that was on the rock. It is live rock, or was, and yes, it's very porous. I think some of the buffer that caused this issue last time was still on the rock. However, you would think that with 100 gallons of fresh saltwater that I have put NOTHING into, not even clarifier, that it would be so reduced that it wouldn't matter.

I still have 200 gallons of salt left and once it's gone, if the issue is not fixed, then the issue will not be fixed. Because I'm out of ideas.

 

[murankar]

Could the additives be defective or contaminated?

 

[Tony]

I'm thinking something broke down and created something that is causing massive surface tension. the bubbles are very dry and very hard to pop. You can get a handfull of them, squeeze them and your hand will just barely be wet. I'm looking for ways to remove this by pure agitation but have not come up with many solutions. I will figure it out though, or it will be the end of my saltwater dreams until I come into enough money to totally redo this whole tank with all new equipment and substrate. Oh the joys of saltwater lmao.

 

[murankar]

You have to love it to deal with those issues.

 

[Tony]

I don't know if "love" is the correct emotion lol.

 

[Tony]

So the wife did something that I would have never thought of. And it's so simple, it's stupid lol. She took two towels and placed them over where the bubbles were coming out of. The towels not only bust the bubbles but obsorb the chemical that is causing it. She actually slept on the couch to make sure it wouldn't over flow lol. Now that I know this, I will just leave the tank running and so a couple 50% water changes to see about removing the rest of it. So far it looks as if the bubbles are starting to reduce. Only time will tell.

 

[callsign4223]

Have you figured out what is causing it yet?

 

[Tony]

The only thing it can be is the PH buffer that I put in it the last time. There had to be some left on the rocks when I put them back in the tank.

 

[callsign4223]

I wish you luck on getting it straightened out. Keep us in the loop, I wanna see pictures of that tank with fish in it.


Edit:

Oh yeah, I forgot to show you this, I found it at the hobby shop on western and i-240.



One more thing Edit:

I was poking around craigslist and found this guy. Don't know if these are good prices or not, but if they are it might be worth saving his number for when the tank is up and running.

http://oklahomacity.craigslist.org/for/3344481592.html

 

[Tony]

Why does everyone keep telling me about subs lol. and I have seen that guy with the coral frags. There is also a guy in norman with some green stars that I really want.

As an update, I have some good news (wonder what's going to happen next lol). When I came home from work I noticed that the wife had taken the towels off of the tank. I kicked the light on, and there were still bubbles but they were not as bad as they were. When I woke up, the bubbles were completely gone. There is nothing that would explain why it would just go away, but it did, for now.

Because of this, before I came to work I went ahead and acclimated the 4 Chromis to the 90g tank. I poured in the nitrifying bacteria, then I put the fish in the tank. 10 minutes later I put a little food in there to check their health, and they were eating like they were in the other tank.

As of the time of me coming to work, they were doing pretty good. I kicked the lights off before leaving and I will check on them later.

Below is some pictures of the way the tank looks right now. The rock placement is not finalized and is only in the tank to cycle. I still need to order some live rock to seed this rock with everything it needs. You can also see the 4 remaining Chromis in one of the pictures although they moved and are blurry lol.

 

[Tony]

Well everyone, so far so good on the 90g. The bubbles are completely gone and the 4 Chromis that are in there seem to be doing great. Still eating very well and swimming back and forth constantly as they should. Because of this, I decided to do some modifications to the lights. Yes Matt, this is the light that we are working a deal on. No worries, the deal still stands.

The mod I made can be seen in the picture below. I added 10 15,000MCD LED's to the light strip. I was only going to put 6 in there, but I was worried with the limited spread of the LED's that I would put 10 to cover the whole tank. Well I should have stuck with 6 lmao. These LED's will have to be put on a power supply that is less than what it's on now.

At this time, I'm just running them on the fan circuit. That is 7 volts at 200mah. These LED's are rated for 12v adn I would blind the fish if I did that lmao. I'm thinking I need to drop these down to 3-4Vdc to get the light I"m wanting. But this will have to do for now.

I love the look of moon lights and always have. These are perfect, just too bright. The pictures below do not do it justice. But, I figured that since the tank is doing so well finally, I would add some more things to it. Once I order my 3w LED's, this light will be coming off of the tank and I will be adding about 150w worth of LED's to it that will be completely dimmable. Complete with sunrise and sunset as well as lightning, cloud cover and all at random times. This tank is going to be great once it's done. But, that is at least 6 months down the road.

Here are the pics, let me know what you think. What you can't see is the shimmer that these give off. Maybe I will upload a quick video of it here in a bit. I have time lmao.

I know you can only see 8 of the LED's, but there are two more towards the center that you can't see.

 

[Tony]

Yup, couldn't resist. The phone doesn't pick up the blue very well and almost blurs it out, but you get the idea. If you triple the shimmer that you see in this video, that is about what it looks like to me sitting here.

 

[wolfman76]

Sweet good deal Tony looking good

 

[Tony]

Lets just hope it stays that way lmao.

 

[Tony]

Just a quick update on how the tank is going. As I posted above, I have had an issue with the bubbles again, but they have seem to completely go away and I have no explanation why. Once the bubbles went away, I put my 4 chromis in the tank. Well it's been a few days, and they are just as happy now as they were in the 10g tank. so things are going well there.

I have not checked any of the levels, but they should all be low. I will more than likely check them when I get home in the morning. The wife is going to go this week and pick up another smaller Percula Clown Fish to mate up with the one we have since we lost one. Once they start swimming together, we will put them in the 90g and I will tear down the 10g.

So far, that is about all that is going on. I'm fighting trying to get the water flow in the tank just right. One way, there is not enough movement, the other, it's blowing the sand all around. Just one of those things I guess. I will try to keep you all updated with other things that happen in the near future.

 

[Tony]

It's been 5 days or so since the last update and I'm glad to report that everything is going pretty good. So far all of the parameters are in check, the temp is great and the tank is clear. I think I may actually have something here this time lmao.

Today however was not that great of a day for the tank. I tried to do some aquascaping with the rock to make it look better, but I couldn't get anything to look right. I don't know what the hell I'm doing wrong, but it just looked like crap no matter what I did. If you read my blog, you know that last night I tried to make two videos and they were both crap so I deleted them. I just can't seem to get a grasp on any of it this weekend.

I did however order my LED lights for the tank and they should be here next week I hope. Once I get the LED's on the tank, then things should go faster since I will have more than 4x the light on the tank. Once I get my brown algae bloom and it goes away, I can start adding more fish as well as corals. But before I do the corals, I have to get this rock placed first. I'm thinking about scraping all of the rock that is in the tank and getting new rock in all honesty. I think it would just be easier. But that will have to wait a while.

Just thought I would give a quick update. As stated in my blog, there will not be any videos this week since I couldn't make anything work.

 

[Tony]

Here is another update even though it seems that this thread is falling off a bit...

I ordered the LED lights last weekend and by Tuesday the website was still showing "Awaiting fulfillment" meaning they had not shipped. I sent them an email stating that I was wanting to have this lighting thing done by this weekend and if they had not shipped them yet to just return my money and I would order from a company that can ship in a reasonable amount of time. They replied that they had shipped out Monday and I should get them on Friday. Maybe now they will keep up with the website and update people's orders lol.

So this weekend I will not only be doing the things that I need to with the site, but also working on the tank. I'm going to cut two rather large holes in the canopy and mount the lights on the top of the canopy so that not only can I get the 12" of space to the water that they require for the 60º lenses, but also to get the majority of the heat OUT of the canopy.

I know you are asking, "is heat really an issue? You have to run a heater in the tank...". The answer is yes. With just a dual bulb T5 setup, I left the tank glass tops on the tank and didn't put a fan in the sump and it just so happened that day it was warm outside so it got warm inside. The tank temp got up to about 84ºF when it's supposed to be around 78ºF. Needless to say, I had to put a fan in the sump to cool the water as well as removing the glass tops to the tank again to help cool the tank off. This evaporates the water rather quickly and in turn cools the tank.

The answer to your next question is yes, LED's do run cooler than the T5's. However with 48 3w LED's, they still get quite warm. So with all of the heat that will be generated they will be mounted on two different aluminum heat sinks with fans on them. All of this will be outside the canopy so the heat comes into the house and not into the tank.

The other thing that has happened in the last 4 days is the levels in the tank. More specifically the Ammonia and Nitrites. They are at a very high level and I have determined the Nitrifying bacteria that I put in the tank has not done a damn thing and the tank is still going through the whole cycle as it did on my first tank. This is a little upsetting since i spent $24 on that little bottle and I'm still having to wait for the tank to cycle. And also I have fish in the tank riding this out and nitrites as well as ammonia is very toxic to them. But they are just as happy as they can be and are still eating and swimming around.

So I should have another update this weekend with some pictures and maybe a video of the new lights. Stay tuned.

 

[Tony]

Here is a quick update to what is going on with the tank. As of last night, the LED's are built and hanging over the tank. I have not mounted them in the canopy yet but will do that probably next weekend. I don't like all of that light coming out from the top of the tank. Even when there is no glass top, the water reflects a lot of the light back into the room.

I will say this, the lights are very bright. I had the worst headache and I'm sure some eye damage from setting these things up. But they are done. I have also done some work on the rocks and it doesn't look like it does in the video below. Also in the video below the tank looks very pink/purple. I can assure you it's not, it's bright as hell lmao.

Also below the 90g video with teh new LED's is a video of my True Perc Clown Fish. These are my babies. The larger one is a female and we thought we were going to lose her. If you remember a while back we lost the other male and we think he has what's known as "Brook". It pretty much suffocates them and they die from lack of oxygen. well I told the wife that I was tired of the meds that we were giving to them that wasn't working and to get some copper based meds. this is highly effective but Clowns are pretty sensitive to it. I figured what the hell, she is about to die anyway.

I had another tank given to me so we bleached it and left it as a bare bottom tank with just a coffee cup in it for a hiding spot. As you can see in the video, both clowns are doing great and after a week or two in the copper, we will put them in the 90g where they belong.

Take a look at the video and let me know what you think.