Busy week so far, so I haven't had much time to post. (I give props to those who can actually do a tank build and still find time to post actual updates as they go.)
In the last couple of days I have had the time to power wash all of my new rock and moved all of the current rock to my other tanks. I have sorted all the LR and placed rock with no corals in my frag tank. (sorry for the bad pics I am using my phone, didnt want to break out my SLR just for these)
The few miscellaneous loose corals and a few that are attached to rocks I moved into my 40g Bowfront. Eventually I will stick these all in my display while I redo my frag tank.
I also figure out how I want my new aquascape to go by building different formations on my kitchen island. This is the formation I decided to go with.Â
Front
Top
I still think I will end up buying additional rock or trying to incorporate the LR i already have after I finish "cooking" it.
One thing during this process that I realized is that it is much easier to create some neat rock structures when they are on the counter but it is much harder to recreate those same structures in the water. This is what it looked like when I finished. It looks a little empty But I am hoping to fill it up with SPS once things are good again.
Lights on but cloudy
I am dosing the tank with MB7 to help build the micro bacteria back in my tank. I am kind of concerned about the levels of biodiversity in my tank and probably need to get a little sand from other members tanks to help get this going. So far with the new rock, I have had a minor spike in my p04's but I have also been dripping SeaKlear to fight this rise. My p04's got to about .46ppm but with the dosing, I they have dropped back down to .24ppm as of yesterday after noon. I need to do a test on these tonight to make sure my numbers are still dropping, but I am happy to see with the addition of the new rock that I have been able to keep these levels relatively low. I also noticed that a few of my other levels are off, so I will need to make sure I keep them in check during this change so I dont cause more stress then I have to.
An issue that I have found during this process is that I had stray voltage in my tank. When I was moving rock, I happened to have a cut on my finger and got a little zap. So then I spent the next few hours trying to track down where the stray voltage with a voltmeter. I assumed it was a bad heater or bad powerhead leaking electricity, but it actually ended up being some strange issue where my WXM module connects to my EC8's aquabus. I am not sure how this was causing a transfer to the tank, but once I disconnected it, the voltage disappeared, when I plugged it back into the same port, it reappeared. Luckily this was an easy fix by just plugging the the WXM into another port on the aquabus.Â
I have no idea how long I have had this stray voltage or if this was created or added to the other problems I have been having with this tank. I do have a grounding wire for my tank but apparently with all of the moving around of return pipes/skimmer I inadvertently pulled it up out of the water and I wasnt able to see this due to the location I had placed it. Hopefully I wont run into this problem again in the future.
That is all for now, hopefully I will have some time later tonight to work on the tank.
Edited by chk4tix - May 08 2012 at 10:36am