melev

I've been talking about a new frag tank system all year. It's November and I'm finally getting it done. The frag tank was made a month ago, but I needed a stand. I'd considered a steel stand to match the rest of my setup, but the cost just didn't justify itself.

Yesterday, a friend came over and offered to assist (translation: made me) with the stand build, so we ran up to Home Depot for the necessary items:

• 1x3 Red Oak boards
• A box of Wood screws
• Gorilla Wood glue
• Glossy

...

I was out of town when my reef turned two years old. While traveling, my tank sitter did a great job keeping everything healthy and happy for me. And you.

Here are three pictures from today.

I got two more tests done today. Calcium is 450ppm, Magnesium is 1300ppm. I prefer Magnesium to be higher, more like 1400ppm.

My reef has a liquid volume of 450g including the sump volume and satellite tanks.

I took a graduated 8oz cup to measure solution into a plastic jug (formerly a pretzel container), and 15 of those cups filled it up. That's 120 oz.

The recommended recipe is 10 grams per 8 oz (or 2 tsp per 8 oz) of water, I determined I'd need 30 ...

Testing is something I always recommend to anyone, especially if their tank is seemingly off. But what about testing when everything is right? When talking to Joe Yaiullo of the Atlantis Aquarium (formerly the Long Island Aquarium), he mentioned how he tests repeatedly to make sure the results he gets are accurate. Specifically, if salinity is dead on, he tests again and again to make sure that it's actually correct and not a false sense of security. As he pointed out, when we see the numbers ...

One of the metal halide ballasts became problematic this week. I noticed about a month ago that it was occasionally not lighting the bulb on the left end of the reef, but with a little tinkering it resumed as expected. By tinkering, what I mean is taking down the ballast, cord, socket and bulb and hauling all of that into the kitchen to test it in a different outlet, and naturally it turned on just like when you take your car to the mechanic and everything works perfectly.

Last week, ...