icebear's blog

[icebear]

Hubbo won't let me put holes in the ceiling to hang my halide....



so he wants to try and build some sort of light hanger thingie... like those plant light bar dohickeys- they look like those freestanding clothes hanging racks...
i dunno. i'm all for just putting holes in the ceiling. put a painted piece of 2x4 to the studs add a pair of sturdy eye bolts and hang the chains. its not that heavy and building a light stand sounds like a PITA to me.

[icebear]

Got the halide up last night! Hubby looked over the wiring and decided it looked better than he had first thought..lol
we did actually end up using a clothes bar to mount the light. its a decent looking bar he found at "BloodBath and Beyond" (sorry, that's what i call 'em) so it doesn't look half bad. hubby had to extend the width using extra metal pipe because the dimensions stated on the box was a bit misleading and because i had to sidemount the skimmer.
I took a pic but i'm trying to show my appreciation for the board by uploading my pics to the TRT Gallery instead of using my Photobucket account, i'm not as skilled in the TRT Gallery uploading procedure, so it is taking me some extra time. I'll post the pic in the next entry.

Anyway, the light went up easy once hubby got the hangar figured out and i got it installed over the tanks.

When he switched it on he was a bit freaked out by the way it starts up and he didn't expect it to take time warming and brightening up. it was nice and dark out so i shut off all the lights in the house and got to gaze at the awesomeness. It is such a clean and bright light source, the sparkle is just incredible. I have only ever seen MH light in brightly lit aquarium stores and it was a long time ago...

I was so thrilled i was all giddy, i felt a bit silly, but its nice to be excited over these things
Hubbo was even impressed, though he said the brightness was a bit painful.

I let the lights be on for 2 hours today, but i had to force myself to turn them off. i took lots of new pictures. The tank no longer has that dingy look to it, i was always so embarassed by how the pictures came out because of that. It is a nice tank, its not the most spectacular tank, but it certainly was not as dirty as the pictures made it look. Now i can get very close to true appearance with the combo of these lights and my old camera. that itself is thrilling.
the corals don't fluoresce much more than before, but the colors are less dingy... i wonder if i can get more pop out of 14k... but i don't want that dyed blue look.... i'll have to ask around and read some posts if i can find them.

i think that is it for now. pics will come as soon as i am done posting them and if Rory does not end her nap early.

[icebear]

prettier pic under these lights!



i'm not so embarrassed to show pics anymore!

[icebear]

now i have to do something about the rockwork. i bought so much new stuff (about 95% of the corals are from BZA and they send big pieces on large rocks) i might need to remove the polyps and remount them on my nicer LR, once i get that redone...

that will be the next big project!

[icebear]

ho-hum.... acclimating to the new light is going to take some time... till then, no new critters or re-rocking....



something is bugging one of my new zoa rocks... they are shrinking in some spots. i can't see anything doing it, no other rocks are being affected yet. i looked with a red light. this rock was declining before the new light, so i can rule that out. i may have dropped that piece on one of my brain corals, so maybe it was that...?

[icebear]

i committed double murder last night...





ine was a gorilla crab that was in my blue/green shroom rock. i couldn't coax him out and i was too tired to screw around with catching him, so i just kalked him and superglued his hideyhole into a tomb.
the other thing i killed, looked like some nasty fat aiptasia without a stalk, but it was not pretty, was not anything i wanted to keep and it looked like it explained what was happening to some polyps surrounding it. so i kalked it. i'm not relly sure what it was, but it didn't resemble any "ok" hitchhiker i have seen, and i didn't have time to stop and ask questions... if it was going to be moving around in my tank i didn't want to have to chase it all over, i killed it while i had it in front of me.

i'm glad i happened to take a look with the red flash light last night before bed, cause i could not have found either under the MH lights. it makes the shadows too deep, being lit sideways by a red light is what made these two things visible.


still have to figure out what to do about the purple shrooms. they have simply bleached out in the shade, white and squinched

i'd like to not lose the remaining 3 polyps, but i don't know if the mh will fry them at this point? maybe i'll start a thread...

[icebear]

well, the purple shrooms still exist, yeah i know only 3 days since, but i had taken them out from the shadow of the overflow box so i didn't know what to expect.

i don't think my light is as powerful as i thought it would be compared to my previous lights. i mean it is undoubtedly more powerful, but maybe not to the extent i thought. i thought even with my slow acclimation schedule i'd get some retreating shrooms or some zoas refusing to open, but it dosen't seem that way---- UNLESS the edges of the mushrooms reaching up are a sign of too much light... my first impression is that they are reaching for the light as if it is too dim or not a long enough photoperiod.
i'm not using the right search terms to find out cause i can't get a thread on it... i guess i'll go start one.


....lights are on for 3 hour 15 min period today

[icebear]

made and installed functional hofer gurgle buster today. watching closely in case it alters flow rate... also hoping i don't ever end up with a lovely ring of bubble algae to clog the bell. supposedly if it clogs, the airline tubing will fill up and cause the overflow to be loud again, this acts as an alarm of sorts... i don't know how long the assembly can go without attention in that case before damage occurs. but i'm a SAHM, so i'll be around to keep an eye on it!

photos of HGB are in the Gallery under DIY

[icebear]

ok, the HGB is doing fine.


tried to raise temp on the tank cause it seems 75ish is too low- well at least i am the only member of this board with such a cold tank.
problem is that the heater has not warmed it more than a half a degree though i moved the dial up more than 1 degree, maybe i need to get it into an actual increase notch, i bet the half a degree is the MH warming the water.

the old lights with the glass top caused 2 degrees of heat throughout a 10 our on cycle.

[icebear]

RODI should be in today. not much else going on. MH on for 6 hours today. 5 and a half yesterday, nothing seems worse for the wear with a less careful acclimation.
looking for frag plug info, don't know when i will be able to do anything with it, but collecting info... also whether i should get Koralias... i like them but they are so big! MJs have always worked very well for me, i may just stick with that brand and just go bigger.

[icebear]

RODI came in, Looks great, just like pictured. Took the TDS meter to my tap water and we have 234. I'm sure the rain has stressed our city water and it probably is a bit less when we don't have as much water to process.

i won't be able to play with it for a few days, i need a faucet connector first.

[icebear]

have not been able to hook up RODI to even try it yet. i knew the kitchen sink was not usable for it because of the faucet we have, and the plumbing to the sink underneath was so badly messed with by the previous owners, there isn't room for anything.

i was intending to use the bathroom sink, but that faucet does not have a screw-off thingy, so i can't just get an adapter... we have a replacement faucet, but the way the previous owners had the current faucet installed, we will have to cut pipe to replace things. hubby won't let me install it inline for no particularly good reason. i might just ask my dad to show me how to do it right next time hubby has to go away for a weekend work thing. i'll get it installed somehow. this is my house too. he's got tacky ham antennas all over the fricking place.

my Koralias are expected by Friday. i got a pair of K2. these should blow my little MJs away. i don't know why i got such little powerheads when i got the MJ 900s. i must have been going by some antiquated total GPH rule of thumb and i just made the minimum.
the MJs will live in the sump once the Ks come in. i don't think the sump is getting stirred enough at all with just an ancient Aquaclear powerhead, the thing is so old that i can't read the model number anymore, but it was all i had left to use.

tank is now about 80 degrees. my probe thermometer battery is dying, but according to the sticker types i have, its at 80ish.

i found a big nudi yesterday. it looks like a ZEN, but like 4x the size of the ones i had pulled out earlier in the year. still not very big (about 1/4 inch), but way bigger than the almost microscopic ones i had before. i hope it was the only one- but it could explain the slow wasting of some of my zoas (i thougt maybe it could be bad placement under new lighting also), but i have been looking for these nudis. actively. with flashlight and everything since i got my first new order of them. i look for ZENs and sundials very carefully cause i have had both before. the sundials were in my first tank and they ruined most of a nice mixed rock that i could barely afford at the time.

so.... i guess that is it for now.

[icebear]

discovered that the kitchen faucet does unscrew at the tube (its a handle type sprayer nozzle if anyone is reading this) and should take an adapter... male i think... now where to find one. i tried the Aubuchon own the road, but didn't find one, its an odd item.

hopefully i can get someone to help me find it online.

[icebear]

the K2s came. interesting things. i was expecting a stronger flow i guess... i think it is the flow pattern, its not concentrated like with MJ type PH, so it is definitely movement but not a hose type pressure stream. i like them tho... they are borderline on being too big, just under the wire i think as far as bulkiness goes.

[icebear]

things have been going pretty well, params all nice and stable. Mulcher disappeard though, about 2 weeks ago. no trace of him on carpet, there was some algae still in the tank, and i rocked some nori for him and the snails because it was getting pretty slim pickings, but he was a pretty big LMB... anyway . but otherwise all seems to be going well, a ZEN will surface here and there, big ones tho, like 1/4 inch suckers! i stay on the lookout for them and seem to be winning.
that lovely velvety black stomatella seems to have multiplied, i have a bunch of his tiny replicas all over the tank and i have the regular pearly colored ones appearing now as well.
i have noticed since the algae has been under controll, that i have very few pods kicking around, i don't have anything in there that i put in spesifically to eat them, so maybe it is just too tidy for them?
anyway, since things have been so nice and stable and the water quality has been excellent i decided to go ahead and add some fish. people come over and see my zoas and like them a lot, but they don't understand the concept of a tank without any fish, and Todd hides too much and he's in the sump... so i'm getting a tiny pair of regular Ocellaris and a neon goby. also getting some peppermint shrimp and scarlet/skunk cleaner pair. they all should be here tomorrow.

hoping that FedEx doesn't screw this one up... out of all my BZA orders, fully half of them have been bungled by them.

on a side note, if you find Blue Zoo Aquatics on Facebook, you can get a 10% off coupon code... just a cool fyi

i was going to begin a major fragging project, but i simply don't have the time with the kids and family and all else, so i'm just setting the frag rocks on my live rock and letting the colonies spread over it, then i will move the frag to another spot and let it spread from there, maybe later i will trade/give/sell the original frags. my live rock is really looking good now, getting lots of coralline and very little algae, i do have that annoying green coralline, but not very much.
all in all, things are looking nice enough for me and i'm quite happy with it all.