Reef Warfare

Wow. After yanking out a few majanoe pest anemones from the tank, something coincidentally triggered a reef warfare among the yellow birdsnest coral (the dead, white coral in the middle of the pic) and the brown, stringy Pavona behind it. The Red Planet coral to the right of the dead birdsnest also suffered. There is some tissue death at the base of the Red Planet, but it has since slowed down, so I think it's going to stabilize. If not, I'd have to frag it to pieces so that I won't lose $100's of dollars of a worthy coral. Meanwhile, I've noticed that there are parts of the yellow birdsnest coral that have BGA at the base which seems to have protected it from further tissue death.

RKE updated

After determining that the RKE head unit was corrupt, I sent it in for repairs. It somehow got fried after I did the firmware updates. Who knows what did it? But, it wasn't too much of a loss for me since I actually got the free V2 head unit trade-in when it was available back when. So, I went ahead and purchased a replacement unit and it's been up and running since May 3rd.

With the NET module working, I was able to look at the data that's been recording. Temperature reflects San Diego weather that affects the house:

The pH is fluctuating with lights on/off as it should (a spike marks a water change):

I still haven't bothered calibrating ORP since I don't really use it to push the tank in either direction. The spikes correspond to the water changes that are done once every 2 weeks. The ORP is inversely related to the pH.

The data are not uploaded to any website just yet since the router I'm using is not able to act as an access point. I'll have to search Craigslist for some old router or get a fancy Airport Express that I can hook up to a sound system and listen to Airtunes for my big fat Airhead.

Hammers for Sale!

...and 5-6 heads of hammer corals for sale!

Here's an example of the Mother colony:

Fungia for Sale

Get your green, hot Fungia's for sale!

 

Unknown SPS on tall live rock

I've got to sell or trade this tall live rock with an unknown SPS on top. I've already got a piece of it growing elsewhere and I'd like to make room for other corals. I'm not sure what type of SPS it is and the coral's color might be better under another type of lighting (and other tank chemistry) other than what I'm providing.

A top-down shot:

RKE, still trying

Last night, I re-installed the firmware on the head unit, but this time I disabled Norton 360. The RKE looked like it was going to do much better. I was even able to use MyReef 2.0 to do some programming. But, this is what the head unit was doing this morning. I've been in contact with DA support and we're trying to do some troubleshooting.

RKE still no good

After re-reading all the notes for updating, I went ahead and re-applied the firmware to all devices after my last blog post. This time, I made sure to unplug everything from the PC4's while the head unit was going through factory default settings. It worked nicely afterward, but this is what I came home to today. Again, all power from the PC4's was shut off since who-knows-when after I left for work this morning.
I'm still waiting for a reply from DA support.
I've re-applied the firmware to the headunit and now it's up and running and it looks like the settings have been kept. Now, I have to figure out how to program the PC4's to just keep the power on while while the head unit randomly goes into crap-out mode.

RKE updated (regrettably)

I updated the firmware on all the RKE devices over the weekend and things were working well for several hours. I decided to feed the fish and use the RKE's standby mode, then the head unit "crashed". I re-programmed the head unit's firmware again, and it seemed to work even when I tried the standby mode. I thought that might have been the only hiccup during this updating process.

Unfortunately, this is what I came home to today at 7:30 PM:

Another, seemingly random, crash.

By the looks of it, it looks as if my main pump, protein skimmer, heaters and auto top-off devices had been powered off since 3:22 PM. LED lights and Vortech circulation pumps were kept separately on a good old-fashioned power strip.

The livestock looks healthy....so far.

Time to log on to Digital Aquatic's forum. Ugh.

Top-down shots

I was doing some maintenance on the lighting hood. It looked like BBQ ashes were collecting in the LED cooling fans and heat sink fins, so I had to blow them out with a can of air.

Anyhow, since the top was off, I turned off the pumps and tried to take some top-down pictures of the corals. It's difficult without an acrylic box to minimize surface water interference. I had to crop out the flask and camera's reflection.

Red Planet (oooh, ya, my favorite SPS)

Meteor Shower Cyphastrea.
The polyps aren't as wide open as I see on others' pictures.

There's a whole mess of these yellow zoanthids. There might be a little zoa pox going on, but I wouldn't mind if there was something to control their growth.

Clam

This Tridacna maxima clam is the latest addition to the tank along with a Halichoeres melanurus Wrasse that seems to be decimating the flatworm (red rusties and brownies!) population in my tank. Finally, a bioweapon that delivers results! Oh, and speaking of results, the new Tiger Conch I got from Pet Kingdom started to vacuum up the blue-green algae from the sand bed. I was surprised.
I got the clam at AquaSD for a resonable price (unlike the $400 for an equally-sized clam that this guy sells his for in NYC).