Twins

I got the sump drained down below the bulkhead that was leaking. I can't figure out what is wrong so I will replace the whole bulkhead, washer, and plumbing.
Today I will transfer the fish and try to clean the bubble algae. I cleaned the snails yesterday. The bubble algae was so dense that it was a 3/4" covering over the whole snail. I removed about 1 quart of bubble algae in total.

My flame angel is dead.
 
I just checked this thread for the very first time! Where the heck have I been all this time? You've learned a lot over the past few years, thanks for sharing it with us.
 
I just had shoulder surgery and am now only to use one arm. And of course I am in the middle of cleaning my system.

I checked the overflow of Tank 1. It was 90% full of bubble algae top to bottom. I bet I took out 1/2 gallon of algae. I was going to drain the lines and found out that I had only put valves on two of the three pipe runs. And of course the one I am working on does not have a drain. Something in the remaining water is slimy and dead and smells terrible so I have to figure a way to drain that line. So far the only thing I can think of is to dismantle the whole build. Unfortunately that is difficult with only one arm. The live rock that I removed is sitting in a tub but at some point I will have to clean the rocks also. Perhaps I should have planned better.
 
I had to saw off the plumbing and got water all over the place. I ran out of towels three times. Today I will start up Tank 1 by itself. I have put the 15g divided sump below with the DAS skimmer outside. I had to flush the drain in the tank 6 times to get the junk out of it.

I still have the rocks out for Tank 2. I got the major bunches of algae off and the rocks are now drying. My plan is to acid wash these and then use the pressure washer. I already vacuumed the sand and tried to get most of the bits of bubble algae out.

I hope there are lots of frags at the Swap Meet this weekend.
 
Stuff did not turn out how I planned. Go figure. My DAS skimmer leaks now. It was fine when I first fixed it but now I will have to do something else. I ended up putting one of my CPR BackPak skimmers on Tank 1. They do a surprisingly good job. I am holding the ReefOctopus out of the rebuild. I was always disappointed with it. I got the plumbing removed. I used up all my towels again. I am super messy. I got the sump off of the stand it was on and put a 29g on the stand to use as a fresh water turtle tank.

I have replumbed Tank 1 with a Durso and the divided sump. It seems to function just fine. I acid washed the rocks for Tank 2 using Muriatic Acid from pool store. I rinsed the rock. Next day I tried something out I never thought of doing. You all will laugh. I dry fit all the rock on a table in the kitchen until I got it to look OK. Then I moved each rock individually into the display. With some minor adjustments it looks OK. Last night I couldn't sleep and ended up plumbing Tank 2 with a plastic tub as a sump. The DAS skimmer went in as well as the Eheim 1250 for return. I did run into trouble because when I removed the Durso I took it apart and the parts got mixed up. Now I can't figure out what I did. I tried some parts I think are correct but the return is too strong. I will have to put a valve on the return to slow it down some.

You all will think this is dumb too. I got to wondering about my heaters. I think my heaters run my tanks at 74 which I think is low. I looked at controllers and got a Pinpoint. The only problem is that it only does one tank and I have 7. Maybe I should have gotten an APEX but the price and the programming always scares me. I did get the Pinpoint controller set up for Tank 2 and it works great. I can also hook a fan up for cooling. Is a cooling fan supposed to suck out the hot air?

I also hooked up the Tunze Osmolator to Tank 2 with the calcium bottle. I have been having some trouble with the controller for this. All the lights come on. Some one said I need a new one. That is disappointing because they are so expensive.

So far all my fish are in Tank 1 and I think I will leave them there. I do have some hair algae in Tank 1 but I think I will hand pull it off someday.

I have been using one of those cheap furniture dollies to put my water buckets on and then using a pump to move the water. I am getting too old and decrepit to lift a 5 gallon bucket of water any more.
 
Oh My Gosh! I changed out the Chinese LED fixture and put in 2 Kessil A350 Narrow beam in the canopy. This is on Tank 2 which is mostly SPS. What an incredible difference it made. The color, the intensity, the shimmer greatly increased. I used an odd spacing but it turned out really good. I wish there was a way to take a picture of it.
 
I had lost my foxface several months ago in Tank 1. I just recently changed out the T5 lighting to two Kessil A350's. Yesterday I was doing some much needed cleaning of the pumps. I was watching the flow of the return pump and saw something yellow in the Tank 1 overflow...it was the foxface. I had a hard time getting it out but finally got it back into the main part of the tank.

Running the Kessil's has already had an impact on the overabundance of green hair algae. It has diminished by half in about two weeks.

Oh, and of course when I pulled the durso pipe in the overflow my sump flooded all over the floor. Curse of the clean towels strikes again.

That darned Tulip snail is doing fine in Tank 2 but it keeps knocking over my frags. For some reason the epoxy does not seem to hold.
 
Folks,
I am getting old and my pain levels keep increasing. It is difficult to keep the tanks going even though they are pretty stable. I have trouble remembering whether its the day to feed the fish or the day to skip. Almost every day I think about stopping, but I am finally able to keep the SPS alive which has been my goal since 2007.

My foxface died. The blue cheek trigger died. I think I should have fed it more but the waste goes up so high so fast if I feed daily. So Tank2 just has a stupid yellow tang that hides all the time. Tank1 which is zoas is doing fine and looks great with the Kessils. My Reef Octopus skimmer finally works after several years. I guess it finally broke in.

The carnivorous Tulip snail is doing well in its own 29g tank. There are some zoas and one sprig of Turtle grass from taking down my planted tank.

I did change out the sump on Tank 1 to a tank with no dividers. It works as well as the one for Tank 2.

Last year I missed every single event and I probably will miss this year also. Life.
 
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