So it's been awhile since my last update. I have finished my sump/refugium project and am pretty happy with it. I purchased some chaeto off ebay, and have added some LR Rubble. I had an established 12G SW tank that become vacant when I built my 75g and moved all of the Live Sand from it to refugium. I have a Decorator crab in my refugium along with a newly added Emerald crab.
The 2 Emeralds in my main tank died. Well 1 I found dead and I never saw the other again. He used to make perodic appearances then one day just dissapeared forever. I replaced them today with 2 new emeralds.
In the mean time I have upgraded my lighting to T5's and added a Beautiful Rose BTA. My tank probably wasn't as mature as I would have liked it to be but the oppurtunity arose and I took it.
I had done alot of research on the BTA as far as feeding and general requirements and behavior. One thing I totally missed along the way was that they don't get along well with powerheads. Well one morning I had a very unfortunate incident. The powerhead naturally won and while the Rose BTA tried to make it, it ended up losing the battle.
As stubborn as I am, I decided to quickly try again with a cheaper and well not as appealing Normal BTA.. The LFS said that it was actually slightly different than a normal BTA that it had lil red tips at the end of its Bubbles.
Either way, at first he would float around the tank quite often trying to find that 'perfect' spot.
He finally settled down after a week or so and stayed put. So far so good. I have had him for close to a month now.
This led me to my next project. A closed loop system. I pretty much mirrored the design over at
melevsreefs. The project took alot longer than expected and I fell short on funds mid way. I finally finished it about a week ago and I used a Mag 9.5 and my pump sits on the ground which is about a foot or two longer than he has his.
This left me with a few problems. The closed loop w/ scwd works perfect but the flow isn't near what I would like. I was used to 2 Koralia 4's and after it was all said and done, with the upward push and scwd efficiency I was getting 400gph flow through the closed loop. This ends up to be 7 seconds between intervals with the scwd.
Feeling really low in the flow department I tried experimenting with my Koralias. I tried the sheer pantyhose method but lost nearly all the flow the Koralias put out, so I ended up putting the Koralia opposite the BTA without the pantyhose and the one next to it with (even though its near worthless).
I still have bad feelings about the powerhead and plan on upgrading the closed loop in the near future. However, I'm really not sure what to go with. I know there is a Mag 12 but I don't think that would be worth the gain, so probablly a Mag 18.
My cleanup crew was getting rather depleted so I added a few things today.
5 more Cerith snails, 10 red legged hermits, 3 Large turbo's, 3 emeralds (1 in refugium), and last but not least a Porcelain Anemone Crab. He hung out in some rocks below the BTA for most of the night then he found the BTA and started pushing it around and got situated next to it.
The pics didn't upload right so I am redoing them and will add them to the next post.