Joey's RSM 650 Tank Thread

Joeys Tank

Joeys Tank

Well-Known Member
Hmmm, I will have to email Richard at TB.

I like finding a balance in the tank and crabs do serve a purpose. Perhaps I will have him substitute something else in and have him send only a dozen blue legs. That way they can work over the rocks and not be starved for "meatier" foods.
 
Oxylebius

Oxylebius

Well-Known Member
I like having hermits, but I have more snails then crabs. IMHO you have too many hermits. And too many cucumbers also, they eat a lot and when they die, they can foul the water.

In my 65g tank, I have 1xhawaiian hermit, 4xred hermits, 2xblue hermits. And that is enough. I have lots more snails: 3xmex.turbos, 1xfighting conch, lots of nerites, lots of cerith, 6xlg.nassaris, and 1xsmall nassarius. Plus 2xcleaner shrimp and 1xpepermint shrimp, which are also great cuc.

You have a bigger tank, so you can double these numbers, but with what they were gonna sell to you, you are gonna have die off. And those hermits will go after each other and your snails for new shells. Keeping lots of empty shells in the tank for your hermits helps to keep snails alive, but w/140 hermits, whoa.....
 
Choff

Choff

Well-Known Member
I used to think crabs were ok, not anymore. I won't say I'm part of the crabs are evil society, because they are not, but I don't like them.
 
Joeys Tank

Joeys Tank

Well-Known Member
At the end of Day 8 of tank cycling ....

Looks to be going well for me. Ammonia is dropping (0.5 -> 0.2) and Nitrites are still holding strong (around 0.8).

Settling in for week 2. Not a whole lot of excitement to post about.

I now keep oscillating between a dozen hermits to none at all and just utilizing the hitchhikers. My plan is once the first cycle completes, to email Richard at TB and have him swap out the hermits for .... more snails? It seems the CUC that comes with the "package" has a lot in it for 175 gal. Not sure if I need more than 75 turbo snails. Will probably reduce the sea cucumbers down to two also. Perhaps swap in peppermint shrimp?

Ok, throwing it out there to you :) How does this look for a 175 gal tank?

3 brittle stars
2 (was 6) tiger tail cucumbers
0 (was 150) blue leg hermits
100 (was 75) turbo snails
5 (was 3) peppermint shrimp

So many differing thoughts out there.
 
Mark9

Mark9

Has been struck by the ban stick
If I extrapolated my CUC to your sized tank, I would have
- 2 fighting conch
- 12 trochus snails
- 20 nerite snails
- 20 nassarius snails
 
Choff

Choff

Well-Known Member
Looking on their price list I only see astrea snails. The only place I see them say turbos is in the package contents page where it says .5 turbo per gallon. I would confirm which it is. I much prefer astrea.

Otherwise I think your change looks good. I tried blue leg hermits and have since rid my tank of them and all other crabs except for my acro and porcelain crabs. The crab thing is one of the more personal decisions you will need to make. No right or wrong.
 
Joeys Tank

Joeys Tank

Well-Known Member
I am liking the controller very much. Aside from the neat things you can do with your phone/internet, I like the alarm system. Ideally, I would love it to death if there were digital probes for Ca, Alk, Mag so that these testings were continuous without the use of test kits. In a perfect world, I would see plots of the chemistry of the tank to compare/contrast events and to help identify when something bad is occuring.
 
S

stevenic

Member
Joey... Did you figure out if you can use the Apex to control your LED's? Steve's didn't have a kit for the 500 yet when I originally setup my tank but I can see that now he does. :) I agree with you that I'd love to see probes for Ca, Alk, & Mag. Assuming probes aren't possible for those or prohibitively expensive.
 
Choff

Choff

Well-Known Member
In a brief attempt I couldn't get Steve's to work with my apex. One of these days I will set it back up and give it a shot.

I have all of the probes except dissolved oxy, which is crazy expensive. Love orp! I just found out I need to move my temp probe to the same module as my salinity probe to make that function correctly.
 
Joeys Tank

Joeys Tank

Well-Known Member
Snapped a decent pic of one of the hitchhikers this morning ... Red Mythrax Crab? I have been trying to capture him with "shrimp in a glass" for a few days but the brittle star decided to spoil the fun last night (no more shrimp).

 
Roy Page

Roy Page

Active Member
Joeys Tank said:
I am liking the controller very much. Aside from the neat things you can do with your phone/internet, I like the alarm system. Ideally, I would love it to death if there were digital probes for Ca, Alk, Mag so that these testings were continuous without the use of test kits. In a perfect world, I would see plots of the chemistry of the tank to compare/contrast events and to help identify when something bad is occuring.
Click to expand...

Joey I am really with you on the electronic measurements of water chemistry.
In today's world sensors improve and are developed almost on a daily basis.
My aim is to be able to see my tank main values just like I can see the weather in my own back yard from anywhere in the world.
Here is my current weather http://www.g4dyr.com/weather.html
And my weather over last 36 hours http://www.g4dyr.com/last36hours_weather.html

Trends are so important, and with continual data, it is so easy to see something going in a wrong direction.
It also helps to give a complete understanding of what happens over 24 hours.

Roy
 
Joeys Tank

Joeys Tank

Well-Known Member
Jolly good morning, all.

With the Vortech pumps on sale (15% off), for a 150 gal DT, should I go with 2 MP40s or 1 MP60?

Looking at the EcoTech calculator http://ecotechmarine.com/calculator/

2 MP40s cover flow for both LPS and SPS but the MP60 appears to be a little too powerful for LPS. I know I can dial down the MP60. 2 MP40s would allow me to alternate flow to simulate ebbing and flowing of tides.
 
Roy Page

Roy Page

Active Member
Joeys Tank said:
Jolly good morning, all.

With the Vortech pumps on sale (15% off), for a 150 gal DT, should I go with 2 MP40s or 1 MP60?

Looking at the EcoTech calculator http://ecotechmarine.com/calculator/

2 MP40s cover flow for both LPS and SPS but the MP60 appears to be a little too powerful for LPS. I know I can dial down the MP60. 2 MP40s would allow me to alternate flow to simulate ebbing and flowing of tides.
Click to expand...

I really think the 2 MP40's will be the best way to go and you can program them to work with each other to give you the best flow throughout the tank.

Roy
 
Choff

Choff

Well-Known Member
Here is the thing with the mp40 (which I have), anything above 3/4 power starts to get loud. I only run one and I have it on the opposite side of the return line which I have an elbow directing the flow horizontally across the tank.

I don't know if 2 is necessary, I think 1 dialed down 60 would be fine. Ideally I would consider 2 60s and I would dial the power heads in the back chamber to minimum or possibly turn 2 off.
 
S

stevenic

Member
Roy, I agree that it would be awesome if you could monitor Ca, Alk, & Mag in real-time as you could conceptually automate all of your dosing. Given that we don't have any probes for that there are still a few features I'd like to see added to Apex Fusion.

I'm a bit of a data junkie like you and it bugs me that Fusion can only track 7 days of historical data. It would be nice if they rolled each days data up into high/low/average data that they saved for ever letting you go back and generate charts for any time period.

I want to do all my charting through Fusion so I'd like to see them add a tool for at least recording my weekly test results which I could then correlate overtime with my other historical data. Furthermore, if I am dosing, include a dosage calculator function for all the popular dosing products that will automatically adjust my tanks dosing based on my latest test parameters.
 
Roy Page

Roy Page

Active Member
stevenic said:
Roy, I agree that it would be awesome if you could monitor Ca, Alk, & Mag in real-time as you could conceptually automate all of your dosing. Given that we don't have any probes for that there are still a few features I'd like to see added to Apex Fusion.

I'm a bit of a data junkie like you and it bugs me that Fusion can only track 7 days of historical data. It would be nice if they rolled each days data up into high/low/average data that they saved for ever letting you go back and generate charts for any time period.

I want to do all my charting through Fusion so I'd like to see them add a tool for at least recording my weekly test results which I could then correlate overtime with my other historical data. Furthermore, if I am dosing, include a dosage calculator function for all the popular dosing products that will automatically adjust my tanks dosing based on my latest test parameters.
Click to expand...

In total agreement with you Steve !
It seems to me that there is plenty of room in this hobby for digital chemistry sensing and data collection, display and analysis.
I write much of my own software so all I really need is the sensors giving me variable DC or Ma output which I can feed into a A-D converter and convert & store in relevant values.

Roy
 
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