Paint + Skimmer = Volcano
Painting the office this week as the conversion to nursery begins. Yesterday consisted of priming the walls and the first coat of green (turns out it was the wrong color, but that’s a different story). Taking a break from painting, I heard a distinct waterfall-sound coming from inside the stand. Low and behold, the skimmer was going nuts, and my collection jug was overflowing back into the sump (second time that overflow port has come in really really handy!!!). Easy solution – I shut off the skimmer for the time being.
What was really surprising to me was that I had specifically chosen “eco friendly” paints with low odor and no VOC’s. So much for Harmony. After seeing the skimmer react the way it did, I erred on the side of caution and kept my wife out of the nursery. Regardless of what the can of paint said.
I tried turning the skimmer back on a few hours later, immediately after feeding, and it foamed up a storm. I’ll try again tonight – but tomorrow I’m planning on painting again. Maybe I’ll leave the skimmer off all week and just do a water change every couple days. I’m certainly overdue, having gone 2 weeks without a partial water change.
Weekend Maintenance
Quick post on yesterday’s work – 10 gallon water change, cleaned the skimmer, pulled some halimedia algae from the rockwork, made top-off water. Still adding 2 rounded tablespoons of kalk powder to the 5-gallon bucket.
Dwarf Angel Spawning Attempt!
Unruly and I thought we may have seen some spawning attempts a short while back, and tonight I’m calling it official. The dwarf angels are definitely trying. I set up my laptop on the table near the tank and saw them soaring out of the corner of my eye. Decided to lay low and watch them from where I sat…
Both fish had grey flanks. The female would slowly rise towards the surface of the tank, the male would nip at her belly. At the surface they would part, swim away and forage for 5-30 seconds, and meet again for another rise. Eventually, at 8:45 on the dot, at least one of them released something at the top of the rise. A small milky cloud that quickly dispersed in the flow. They didn’t break the water surface, so I’m not sure it was a real spawn based on videos I’ve sen of other centropyge spawns. After the release, they both immediately changed colors to the normal dark blue flanks, and officially went their separate foraging ways.
I went to the tank to see what I could see. They released something – the clowns were gulping something out of the water column. Whatever they were eating is too small for me to see. ??
Either way, success or not, it’s an exciting evening!
Oh – and the pajama cardinals transferred eggs Monday night. I’m going to track this clutch and try to capture a larvae for measurement for comparison to some measurements Acroporas has taken on MOFIB.
Territoriality, More Maintenance & Housekeeping
Did a 5-gallon water change (using the clean, 0 TDS RODI water from the recent media change), cleaned the skimmer, and put in new GFO and Carbon in the reactors. Used ~3/4 cup of carbon and ~1/2 cup of GFO – that’s about half the recommended dosage, but I wanted to start low and slowly up amount of media. Also, since I don’t have a colorimeter to accurately test phosphates, I’ll be guessing when the media is fully consumed and planning on replacing it every 2 – 3 weeks.
Rearranged all my reefing supplies that I keep on a built-in shelf in the lighting canopy. It is much more organized now, but unruly made the valid comment that the true test will be if I can keep it that was for more than a week!
Annie (female clown) is starting to get territorial. When they see me near the tank all the fish assume it’s feeding time and gather around the clown’s corner. Yesterday we noticed that Annie was swimming down to get in the female pajama cardinal’s personal space. No nipping, but some subtle aggressive behaviors on display. For lack of a better word, lunging at the PJ, hovering within an inch, with the PJ cardinal giving off the subtle submissive signals like twitching. Is this a sign that Annie and Alvy are getting closer to breeding?
RODI Overhaul Tonight
Got my shipment from Bulk Reef Supply tonight (2 day ground shipping, nice!) – amazing pricing with the CMAS group buy that was set up! Bought enough supplies to keep the RODI system running smoothly for at least a year:
- 2 Sets of sediment and carbon filters
- Filmtec 75gpd RO membrane
- 3 batches of color-changing DI resin
- Secondary DI canister
- Dual in-line TDS monitor
Set the system up exactly as shown in the schematic I posted yesterday. Measuring TDS leaving the RO membrane, and leaving the 1st stage of DI. Changed every stage of the system to clean filters tonight, and I’m really happy with the performance. There’s a slight discrepancy between the TDS readings I’m getting on my hand-held meter vs the inline meter (to be expected) but it sure looks like I’m getting >95% out of the RO membrane. City water is well over 135. The first stage of the DI bed brings TDS from 6 to 0. Second stage of DI is there for me as backup, in case something gets by the first stage.
Frankly, I’m not sure my tank has seen this clean of water since we set it up. (Explains the nuisance algae, maybe?!?) The RO membrane was far from new when we set this tank up, and I sure wasn’t running the system correctly (massive TDS creep). I thought I had decent water coming out of the unit, since my DI resin had only half changed colors… I was wrong. With clean prefilters and RO membrane, I couldn’t get the DI output below 5 with the existing DI resin, with an incoming of 6! Ran a couple gallons through it and finally gave up and put in fresh DI resin. Happy camper now; the fresh resin brought it down to zero! :D
So moving forward, I’m going to be a lot smarter about how I’m making both RO and RODI water. I have the unit valved off under normal conditions. The RO storage tank is open to the gooseneck faucet for our drinking purposes. Twice a week I need to make top-off water for the reef tank. One of those times I will fill up the RO tank; the other time I will make 5-10 gallons of water change water for the tank. Each time I will flush the RO membrane both before and after use to keep the TDS creep to a minimum. I’m sure the system would operate better if I was making larger batches than 10 gallons at a time, but there’s not much I can do about that!
On a livestock related note, spotted two juvenile worms tonight after lights out that looked like they just hatched. Big difference in size and color. One was white and much larger (somewhere between 1/4″ and 1/2″); the other was red and much much smaller. The large worm had 14 body segments, with two red/orange eyes at the head, filament-like legs along the sides (looked like one on each side per segment) and a filament tail. I think it had just hatched because I literally watched it expand its body length two-fold and lose some type of thick covering. The red worm was too small and quick to see in any detail. If I had to guess, another couple bristleworms – looked like a white version of the worms I photographed in this post – same eyes, number of segments, etc. That’s cool, I can live with bristleworms :)
RODI System Schematic Diagram
Continuing along with diagrams of the system for use in an operations manual! I decided to start at the beginning, so to speak, and lay out the RODI system. I took some liberties and added some equipment that is on a UPS truck from Bulk Reef Supply. Not shown here are the legend, list of components and valves, and of course the operating instructions on which valves to open/close etc.
This one is sized a bit better than the last for web viewing and prints perfectly on an 8-1/2 x 11. Same issues with compression, and the fact that it’s a gif file means it’ll open in a new page and you’ll need to navigate back to the blog.
Reef Equipment Layout
