Rebuild and recovery of a dead tank

[Poeticlydead]

Looking good J
really like the mystery wrasse

[jason2459]

Strange. Shows someone has posted in here but I don't see it?

Well, thanks for posting I guess what ever you said...

[jason2459]

Originally Posted by Poeticlydead

Looking good J
really like the mystery wrasse

Wow, crazy now I see your post. Thanks! The mystery wrasse has been really shy so far. The fairy and two sharks have been all over the tank. But every time I walk into the room the mystery wrasse jumps into one of the pvc pipes. I have to peak my head around the bathroom door to try not to be seen to see him.

[jason2459]

Posted this in the intended fish purchase thread but though I might as well post it here for any input.

Thought I might get some input here. I'm getting restocked and have one or two more fish I might like to add.

Currently my 55g w/ hob refugium and 75lbs of live rock will be housing:

2 false percs
1 ywg
2 sharknose gobies
1 long fin fairy wrasse (female)
1 mystery wrasse

several shrimp, snails, and small hermits.

I'd love to eventually get back a mandarin but wasn't sure how much the wrasses will be eating pods and if they will out compete the mandarins. I know a six line wrasse would if I understand it correctly.

I was also thinking of finding a slightly larger male long fin fairy to try and pair up with the female.

If no on the mandarin I was thinking of trying a royal gramma again but not sure how agressive he may be.

Any other suggestions?

[jason2459]

I guess I can add I'd be interested in anything that is around 3" or under, reef safe, vibrant in color(s), and not going to pick on my other fishes to death.

[ROB2005]

Jason, how is the new skimmer performing for you so far? Pulling out far funkier stuff than the Eshopps?

[jason2459]

Originally Posted by ROB2005

Jason, how is the new skimmer performing for you so far? Pulling out far funkier stuff than the Eshopps?

It's been a wetter skim but much much stinkier. It's still breaking in. There are some microbubbles still making it to the main tank. The noise is slowly getting quieter. Still not near as quiet as the eshopps 100h was. I doubt it will ever be as quiet as it is a much bigger pump pulling a ton more air. The two really aren't in the same ball park.

I'd say for a tank up to light to moderately stocked 75g the psk-100h is good. I wouldn't put this sro hob on anything less then a heavily stocked and fed 55g and I think I'm pushing the lower ends as it is with this thing. I do plan on stocking on the heavy side and bump my feeding up to at least twice a day if not three times. I'll have an auto feeder dump some pellet/flake mix in the middle of the day and I'll feed some frozen food when I get home at night.

If I still have some microbubbles after a month of running then I'll look into modifying it. There is just so much water volume and air right now that it just pushes the microbubbles under the bubble chamber and back up and out of the skimmer right now.


Edit: I think I can confidently say that the lx-2000 is probably the most powerful HOB skimmer out there right now with the bubble blaster 2000 pump on it. Even the ATB mutli-use and Deltec MCE 600 only pull about 350-450 lph of air. This skimmer is getting well over 1000lph of air pull!!!

[SaltLifeLove]

Hey Jason, and everyone else! Good to know I was missed...lol I was just crazy busy with the Holidays, and I am back in school, which takes up a lot of my time as well as planning my sons 4th Bday! I haven't had any issues with the tank and haven't had any dire need to get on for advice. I just spent some time catching up...Jason, it looks like you have been busy! Nice Job!
Nothing really exciting going on with my tank...I havent been able to afford any new coral, and I had my first fish die. I only had it for about 24 hours so I wasn't too attached it was a Labout Fairy Wrasse...it was an expensive death but oh well. It managed to find the 1/4 inch gap that isnt covered...jumped and baked to death under the lights.
An updated stock list if anyone is interested is a Yellow Tang, Flame Angel, Pair of Clowns, YWG, Six Line Wrasse, Midas Blenny, Firefish, and bicolor psuedochromis. As far as coral, a good size colony of some mint zoas, 2 rose tip anemones, frogspawn and a big green mushroom I cant remember the name of. My Linkia star fish isnt looking so good at the moment, but other than that things have been going well. Oh and my husband bought a serpeant sea star, and the thing just freaks me out.

The husband is also trying to convince me to down size to a cube...even though we have had the success of a healthy tank thus far, the maintenance is driving him crazy. It is a family tank and hobby, so all opinions are being considered.
Ok well thats it for now, hope everyone is doing well

[jason2459]

Hey Ali! Good to hear everythings going good with the tank besides the jumper. I really don't think going to a smaller tank will resolve maintanence tasks and could even make them more difficult to maintain. More water volume the easier it tends to be to make things more stable. Sure, water changes might be bigger but you may end up having to do more of them with a smaller tank. You'll still need to do everything on the smaller tank you do on the bigger one. 75g is a great sized tank BTW. Not to big and not to small. I would like to have a little more front to back room in my 55 which a 75 has. I don't think I'd want anything bigger as then the cost of running it really starts going up. I also know I wouldn't want anything smaller then a 55.

I have a couple wrasses now too and will be fitting some screen around the inside and back of my canopy. So, if one does jump they'll just slide back into the water hopefully.

[Aquarist007]

Hi Jason
I have been trying to catch up on reading your thread. In Canada we seem to have relied on the Remora and Remora Pro for hob skimmers. However the pro maxs out at a 125 gal.
How much is your skimmer rated for and what is the app cost of it?

[jason2459]

Originally Posted by capn_hylinur

Hi Jason
I have been trying to catch up on reading your thread. In Canada we seem to have relied on the Remora and Remora Pro for hob skimmers. However the pro maxs out at a 125 gal.
How much is your skimmer rated for and what is the app cost of it?

The lx-2000s is rated for up to 150g and I totally believe it. The air draw for this is very similar to many in sump skimmers rated up to 200g. I really think I'm pushing the lower end limits for this thing.


I'm still waiting for the microbubbles to subside. I'm going to give it a full month to break in before I do any modifications to the skimmer to remove them.


The cost for this skimmer seems to be going at $389 US. I got it pre-order from Premium aquatics for something like $330

[Aquarist007]

Originally Posted by jason2459

The lx-2000s is rated for up to 150g and I totally believe it. The air draw for this is very similar to many in sump skimmers rated up to 200g. I really think I'm pushing the lower end limits for this thing.


I'm still waiting for the microbubbles to subside. I'm going to give it a full month to break in before I do any modifications to the skimmer to remove them.


The cost for this skimmer seems to be going at $389 US. I got it pre-order from Premium aquatics for something like $330

thanks for the info---that's not a bad price with the Remora Pro coming in just around 300--and that is without the internal skimmer. It is another 60 bucks.

[jason2459]

Don't think I've mentioned this yet in here but I have repositioned my K4's yet again and think I've found a permanent place for them. I kind of have them behind my rock work and pushing water through two openings I have built up around the pumps. One on the left and one on the right and deflecting right off the front glass. Makes some good water flow and movement in the tank. Plus it kind of hides the K4s.

[img]http://i50.*******.com/qpp5cj.jpg[/img]


Along with putting up the screen around so fish can't jump out I also need to paint those ATO pvc covers for the float valves. They really stick out like a sore thumb right now.

[jason2459]

Looks like my inverts have been having a "party"

Nerite eggs everywhere and one of the peppermint shrimps has a tail full of eggs. I got a hold of the shrimp and put her back in the refugium. I might get some free shrimps out of this. I'll have to watch for them to be released and pull her back out to the main DT after that happens.

I'll try and get a pic. of the peppermint with the eggs.

[jason2459]

These are about as good as I could get of the peppermint with the egg sack.

[IMG]http://i45.*******.com/29w4twh.jpg[/IMG]

[IMG]http://i45.*******.com/28v6iaf.jpg[/IMG]

[jason2459]

Well, this is interesting.

Before I was running ozone through my Eshopps psk-100h skimmer (not the best reactor I know) and going full blast (50mg/h) I could get my ORP levels up to around 200. With out the ozone running my ORP would fall to around 120. pH was always around 7.8-8.2.

Since switching over to this new sro lx2000s skimmer I have not been running any ozone as I'd like to create a much better reactor (thinking of doing the RHF tube reactor). My ORP initially crashed down to the 120 level but after over a week now with the new Skimmer with massive air draw, compared to the old skimmer, I'm up to a solid 220 and I haven't seen my pH dip below 8. Pretty awesome if you ask me.

BTW, I did end up getting a 400mv ORP calibration solution and after 10 minutes my probe finally climbed up and read 400 on the dot. After 15 minutes it read 403. Which is good because I've always let the probe sit in the tank for around 10-15m before reading it.

[mr9iron]

Jason, how do you think SRO preforms to other skimmers like the Remora, Euro Reef or other HOBs? I'm trying to decide between a couple of different skimmers and want to get the most bang for my buck.

[jason2459]

dbl post

[jason2459]

Originally Posted by mr9iron

Jason, how do you think SRO preforms to other skimmers like the Remora, Euro Reef or other HOBs? I'm trying to decide between a couple of different skimmers and want to get the most bang for my buck.

I don't have any experience with the Remora (other then hearing that it's very noisy and you need to find the right pump for it) or the Euro Reef (other then they are out of business and I don't really like their venturi design).

The performance of the sro lx2000 has been very good in pulling out some very nasty smelling skimmate. It is getting slightly darker now but still very wet. Still wondering how long the break in period of this thing will be. Could be several weeks.

I've used a octo bh-100, coralife ss65, and an eshopps psk-100h. Oh and for a very short period a seaclone. I've read up on a lot of skimmers over the past year or so as well. I find them very intriguing. I'd love to try out a SWC HOT Extreme, ATB Multi-Use, or a Warner Marine Hx2. All three look like power houses as well as having some great reviews on them.

Octo bh100 was very basic. It worked but the 55g I have probably maxed it out. Not to noisy but the small collection cup was a pain as I had to watch it to make sure it would not over flow. I also didn't like the o-ring adjustment.

The seaclone was just an awful design. The microbubbles did not have anywhere near enough contact time to really do anything productive.

The coralife ss 65 was not a bad skimmer. The rio-1100 was a noisy pump though. It was a cheap skimmer and did produce some decent skimmate. I did have an issue of it overflowing while it was breaking in the first week or so. After that never had an issue with that. Never had any problems with needing to constantly adjust either that some say they need to. Again I think my 55 with a decent bioload was maxing it out. I ended up tweaking that thing out to it's max as seen earlier in this thread.

The Eshopps psk-100h is a great skimmer. I'd say it is a good fit for this size of a tank (55g). Break in period was extremely quick and with in 1 day was pulling nice dark skimmate.The design is much better then the Coralife SS 65 and includes some great features for a cheap skimmer. It is also the quietest skimmer I've used. Review on that also earlier on in this log. Just not to big of a fan of the mesh wheel. As I was having a hair algae die off I needed to clean out the mesh a lot more often then I'd like. 3x in a two month period I believe.

So, right now I'm going total oposite of the spectrum and trying out what I believe is the most powerful HOB skimmer out there in terms of water flow and air draw. This doesn't mean it will be the best out there if the body of the skimmer can't take advantage of the pump. So far that's up in the air. The skimmate is getting slightly darker like I said above and the microbubbles are calming down a bit. It's still one of the loudest HOB skimmers I've used right up there with the coralife SS 65. I can definitely see this being able to easily handle a 100g plus system with my 55g way low on the spectrum of what this thing should be ran on.

[Aquarist007]

Originally Posted by jason2459

So, right now I'm going total oposite of the spectrum and trying out what I believe is the most powerful HOB skimmer out there in terms of water flow and air draw. This doesn't mean it will be the best out there if the body of the skimmer can't take advantage of the pump. So far that's up in the air. The skimmate is getting slightly darker like I said above and the microbubbles are calming down a bit. It's still one of the loudest HOB skimmers I've used right up there with the coralife SS 65. I can definitely see this being able to easily handle a 100g plus system with my 55g way low on the spectrum of what this thing should be ran on.

Can you post some pictures of the skimmate it is drawing.
The remora pro is a good skimmer but on both remoras there is no air adjustment--you just raise the skimmer cup--which IMO is rediculous

[Aquarist007]

Originally Posted by jason2459

Don't think I've mentioned this yet in here but I have repositioned my K4's yet again and think I've found a permanent place for them. I kind of have them behind my rock work and pushing water through two openings I have built up around the pumps. One on the left and one on the right and deflecting right off the front glass. Makes some good water flow and movement in the tank. Plus it kind of hides the K4s.

[img]http://i50.*******.com/qpp5cj.jpg[/img]


Along with putting up the screen around so fish can't jump out I also need to paint those ATO pvc covers for the float valves. They really stick out like a sore thumb right now.

be interesting to see how the surface of the sandbed does with this arrangement.

[jason2459]

Originally Posted by capn_hylinur

Can you post some pictures of the skimmate it is drawing.
The remora pro is a good skimmer but on both remoras there is no air adjustment--you just raise the skimmer cup--which IMO is rediculous

Here's about a day and a half of skimmate. It's pretty wet but it is the smelliest skimmat I've ever smelled. It's gotten a little darker as it's starting to break in. In another week I'll take another picture of it.

[img]http://i50.*******.com/15d2q39.jpg[/img]

[jason2459]

Originally Posted by capn_hylinur

be interesting to see how the surface of the sandbed does with this arrangement.

The left one has moved a little bit of the substrate but not much. The right one hasn't moved any of it. Though I do have a dolomite gravel and not a fine sand.

[jason2459]

Here's my first and hopefully last attempt at jump proofing my canopy. I had a firefish once that jumped and hit the side of the canopy and got stuck. So I have put screen around the back and the inside. Hopefully now if a fish jumps it will just slide back into the aquarium. I was wondering at first how I would support the screen in the back but I have so much stuff back there now it pretty well supports the screen. I just used a staple gun to attach the screen to the canopy.

[IMG]http://i49.*******.com/vr7g39.jpg[/IMG]

[IMG]http://i45.*******.com/4skuok.jpg[/IMG]

[IMG]http://i47.*******.com/259y1d0.jpg[/IMG]

In the last photo you can see the autofeeder I just got. Will use that to feed dry foods at around noon and then when I get home I'll feed some frozen foods.

[ROB2005]

In your present pic of the skimmer Jason, are you wet skimming for the time being?