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KJoFan's SCA 150g Build (1 Viewer)

After the brown mulm mostly went away and the fallow period for the corals had ended (around the first of April) I moved a few things over from the frag tank.

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Euphyllia:
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Blastos and Leptastrea:
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Lighting situation:
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Hodge Podge Z & P garden that hopefully will fill it as it may:
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In the meantime after years of a couple Brute cans and a Python and pump I moved back and forth between cans for a water storage system I decided it was time to upgrade. Mostly because the difficulty of the existing setup ended up deterring me from doing regular water changes because the setup just wasn't ideal.

So...one day I came home from work to this:
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Which, with a little work turned into this:
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Now, the only thing still not ideal is draining the old water from the tank, but with a python and pump it works alright. The central pump in the station works well for re-filling and transferring water. I put a bit of hose on the barb out front for easy re-fll of top off container and filling buckets if needed. I'm really happy we made the upgrade and wonder why we waited so long!

However, all was not well. I was struggling with sps in my frag tank, even though it had long established rock in it and everything else was fine. Some sps would practically RTN as soon as they hit the water. Nitrates were and continue to be on the high side (25 ppm usually) but that alone should not cause the RTN. Alk was stable around 7.5 via dosing so I didn't think that was it. I had one of those ATI ICP tests I hadn't used so decided to take my sample of RO water (from the top off container under the tank) and a sample from the frag tank and send it in. Results came back showing metals in both the tank water AND top off water. Granted, my DI might have been at end of life or a bit beyond when I took the sample and it had since been changed, but I was on the hunt for the cause.

The float valve in the RO holding tank:
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And magnet from ATO sensors in the main tank:
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I am hoping I found the culprits. I purchased some Cuprisorb a couple weekends ago and added it to both tanks in hopes of removing the metals from there. SPS was moved to the main tank when I just was having no luck in the frag tank and they seem to have perked up some, though they along with the leptastreas have really paled in the past couple weeks, I don't know why though. :(

Of course both 55g storage containers were full when I discovered the test results so I've continued to use the water up and let the Cuprisorb hopefully take care of anything unwanted in there. I pulled the float valve right away and have at least re-filled the freshwater tank, so I'll probably wait maybe another fill or that tank before I send in another test and see where I'm at.

My booster pump has also been leaking for awhile and seemingly on it's last leg, it finally quit all together this past weekend. I have a new one to replace it, just need to set it up.
 
So, we are mostly up to date at this point. We finished cabinetry and storage around the tank area within the last couple weeks. So I'll wrap this up for the moment with pictures of the current state of the area.

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Now, I need to work on getting the tank stocked up and growing!


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Finally hung my fuge light tonight, five days without light on the chaeto was probably long enough....

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This is the light I picked up: Growstar UFO LED
I might have overdone it getting the 300w version vs the 150w version but time will tell. I figure I have a pretty large refugium area to light and most recent findings have shown that chaeto likes strong light, and so it was.

The chaeto doesn't have much room right now as I have a basket of Aquaforest Life Biofil and a basket of Siporax in there already.

The idea is to remove one or both of those baskets if the chaeto can take hold and keep nutrients down. If so, I'll also stop the AF NP-Pro and Pro BioS probably.

But, did a test of nitrates today. 10 days ago nitrates were at 25, tonight, 10, maybe less. So the current method is working. I'm a little scared to "fix" what isn't broke but I think a fuge is more beneficial overall, especially as I'm aiming for Leopard wrasses down the road.

The odd thing is that I'm experiencing some paling of my sps and I'm not quite sure why. My bioload is low and they don't even get fed daily, but according to tests, nutrients are there. Alk was sitting at 6.9 last night. I bumped the doser slightly to try to bring it up. I'd be happy with that sitting around 7.5. Regardless, the reason for the paling is not obvious to me.
 
Tested PO4 and got 1 ppb. So essentially 0. Sigh.

I’m going to set up my auto feeder to feed pellets 3x per day. Maybe that will help register some PO4?


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looks great! Doing the same thing with my mixing station. I have been using brute's temporarily and they are a pain if not plumbed. I have all the plumbing etc to upgrade but that's taken a backseat to set up QT system as I lost all my fish over a month ago. I am halfway through my fallow period in my DT and have have three new wrasse just waiting in QT. once that is done then upgrading my mixing station.
 
OldNemo said:
looks great! Doing the same thing with my mixing station. I have been using brute's temporarily and they are a pain if not plumbed. I have all the plumbing etc to upgrade but that's taken a backseat to set up QT system as I lost all my fish over a month ago. I am halfway through my fallow period in my DT and have have three new wrasse just waiting in QT. once that is done then upgrading my mixing station.
Click to expand...
Sounds like we've been down similar paths. :) I've not been a QT'er of fish in the past much, but after losing the majority of mine I will give it a try once again. You will really like having an upgraded mixing station. I am so glad I made the upgrade. Though, be mindful of valve control and closing them when finished. I've already made that mistake once, I didn't fully close off my saltwater when filling my ATO jugs and likely had a bit of cross contamination. Now, I make sure to close them all every time I'm done using it.
 
Noticing growth out of my Forest Fire digi. Not exactly the most difficult sps to keep but any growth is a start to greater things.

When I received it on February 23rd:
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Tonight, April 30th:
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Just read your post on R2R regarding Coral QT. Did you decide to QT all things new incl. corals and inverts before they went back into your DT after fallow period? Trying to decide if the whole ICH and Velvet attaches to non fish is fable or real.
 
I did keep coral from infected tank fish free for 6 weeks. I did not do the 76 day stint because I didn’t have ich. After the six week period I introduced a fish from a different tank that hadn’t been sick or exposed to the infected fish or tank and didn’t have an issue.

So I can only assume my fallow period worked as far as eradicating velvet.

I do not QT corals now though.


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