First post

[tdwyatt]

Originally Posted by REEF-DADDY

Thanks

I did not think of that, it really makes sense. Do you see that rock in the upper left corner? Can you reccomend a coral that would like the high light of that area? It's about 6" from the surface. The rock is actually 12" across.

Any number of stony corals will do well in that location, just make sure that they are reeftop species of stonies, and that there is sufficient strong current (think Tunze Stream) to match for this location. General good R-O-T for specimen morphology would be frags from thick-branched specimens that normally would be accustomed to these conditions. Specimens with thin or fragile branched morphologies usually come from lower light, lower-intensity current conditions, and would be less likely to have come from a reeftop location originally. The IDEAL would be that frags and specimens would come in with some type of indexing that would identify their original depth, lighting, and current intensity, but we unfortunately are limited to rule-of-thumb guestimations for most of the specimens we as hobbyists receive.


HTH

[skeety]

Originally Posted by ChrisPrusha

I love the "shelf" look of the rocks!

Ditto! That's just COOOL!

Doing something like this myself, in the year to come (in-wall picture frame tank). I like the way you made the display a bar as well! If you don't mind, I think I'll copy that!

AWESOME tank. Hang in there, and I'm sure the corals you have left will come back twice as strong!!!

Also a BIG fan of Tom's advice. I like getting frags WAY more than buying larger pieces. Easier to place, I like watching them grow, cheaper, and in MY experience, they tend to do better (higher survival rate).

Welcome to TRT (VERY glad to have you), and for the love of god, MORE PICS!!!!

[REEF-DADDY]

Well Murphy has struck again. My wife called when she got back from work and said the tank was so milky that she could not see through it and that the pumps and lights were off. Looks like the skimmer may of overflowed triggering a chain of events that ended up with the autotop off spewing its contents into the tank and the tank somehow filling the autotop off. I think the power may have been on and off. PH was 8.4 and temp was 83 degrees(mystery). I think the temp may have been higher and came down when the power was off. It's normally 80 . Alk is super low today which really baffles me. The fish seem OK but I've lost still more corals. To be honest if this tank was not part of my house it would be coming down. Not that things don't happen but this is disaster #9 since I've been in the hobby.

[dobejazz]

Oh no I'm so sorry to hear about this! I'm glad you aren't able to give up! Lots of very nice, knowledgable people here that will help you get back on track!

[ChrisPrusha]

I am so sorry for your losses!! Hang in there, REEF-DADDY...this is a good place to get advice or even just to vent! What's the tank look like now?

If it was easy, everyone would be doing this!

[REEF-DADDY]

Originally Posted by ChrisPrusha

I am so sorry for your losses!! Hang in there, REEF-DADDY...this is a good place to get advice or even just to vent! What's the tank look like now?

If it was easy, everyone would be doing this!

It's got the nuclear winter look going now. Very original!

[ChrisPrusha]

Any thoughts of a water change? I'm not sure how your mood is at the moment (prolly not good), but you can do this, man! Hang tough!!!

[VWD]

Great looking Tank!!!

[ChrisPrusha]

What's the latest, REEF-DADDY?

[REEF-DADDY]

Thanks for all the kind words. This is what happened:


1. The skimmer overflowed frying the auto topoff.
2. The auto topoff pumped its contents into the tank.
3. The skimmer, still overflowing got an extension cord wet.
4. Power shuts down
5. The outlet of the auto topoff is now sumbmerged and has created siphon filling the ATO tank with water from the display.


The skimmer was overflowing because there were tiny bits of pvc in the airline from when I vented it to outside air.

I did a 45 gallon water change and set the skimmer to kill and prolly skimmed out another 20 gallons over the weekend. STN on a couple colonies but the fish are all OK. I am going to give this one more whirl, heres my plan:


Solution:
Tunze osmolator
Get cords off floor.
Overflow bucket with shutoff for skimmer.

[ChrisPrusha]

Auto topoffs have always made me nervous, but that's just me!

Good luck!!

[dobejazz]

wow what a chain of events! I'm glad all the power shut off when everything got wet!

[REEF-DADDY]

Chris,
Me too, but I've gone through as much as 15 gallons per day. Theres no way to keep up with that maually. I have about the worse case senario for evaperation. Stove for heat, fans for cooling and alot of surface area.

dobe,
Me too it really could of been worse!