So let's start with the easy stuff. Since my calcium was low, but my dKH was correct, I decided to just mix up a gallon of CaCl and dose that into the tank over the next few weeks. Rigged up a simple bottle for that to pump out of, and hooked it into the doser. That should fix the base calcium levels.
Second, I hooked the Kalk stirrer up. Went with an Avast K2. I really like Reef Octopus stuff, but I've heard lots of bad things about the motor units on those. The Avast one, they advertise that you can run that stir motor 24/7, as opposed to periodically, so, ehh.. Went with that one. Hopefully it was the right choice.
Normally on a big tank like this, the thing to do would be to hook it to the ATO. As a plan, this is super problematic for me. First off, the ATO is a Neptune ATK. This device has an RO feed that goes to a safety float switch. This way if your ATO turns on, but your water level is high, it does nothing, because the float keeps the water off, despite the PMUP running. You simply cannot connect a kalk device to this. If ever the pump turned on, and the float was closed, it would overflow the stirrer.
Second issue is, my tank doesn't have the calcium demand just yet for an ATO dose. There are two ways to run a kalk reactor when you don't need it's full power:
1) Mix the reactor to full strength, and then attach a dosing pump to the inlet, and dose it as needed.
2) Hook it to an ATO, and adjust the kalk concentration as needed.
The second one there, sounds like a complete nightmare. Until the coralline kicks off on the new rockwork, I have roughly zero calcium needs right now, and the dKH is rock stable, so, I kind of don't need any kalk dosing yet. So currently, it's just filled with RO/DI water and nothing else. But I hooked up the dosing system.
As you might recall, I built a simple doser out of a Kamoer 24v pump connected directly to an Apex 24v outlet. I connected this doser to the RO/DI reservoir, and then into the Kalk stirrer. The output of the stirrer goes to one of the sumps. The doser puts out a known quantity of 83ml/min. So I have a simple OSC statement in the Apex that runs it once a day right now. As my needs change, I will up it to a few times per day with math. This will slowly cause the Neptune ATK to run less often, and at a certain point, I'll have to stop, because I'll hit the evap point. But during the early stages of the tank, this makes things easier.
However, placing the kalk output into the left sump, raises another problem that has been driving me insane anyhow. Currently the vinegar doses into that sump, and a few inches away is the pH, ORP, and Salinity probes. 4 times a day, the vinegar dumps in, and the probes all freak out for a few seconds, alarms fire off, and it makes me crazy. Know what will make that even better? Dumping 12.0 pH water in there a few times a day.
So the probes all have to move. 3d printer to the rescue.
This little bracket didn't come out perfectly, but it did come out. Printed from eSun PETG. It will hold the 4 main neptune probes, and the little clip on the bottom will hold a temp probe from one of those little suction cup thermometers, (I keep on as an emergency sanity check). Now I can relocate the probes to one of the drain towers on the tank.
So in the realm of calcium, I returned to an older project. I have a Reef Octopus CR140D calcium reactor. I mentioned this awhile back, and that I had lost the O-rings for it, and the pump was dead, so I ordered one from CoralVue. That showed up. Time to get the body assembled.
So this is what the pump swap kit looks like. I have to say, CoralVue hit this one out of the park. Amazing. Makes me want to buy more stuff from them.
It comes with the new pump, which basically is the totally wrong physical shape from the one this reactor shipped with. But they give you this pile of pipe fittings, and detailed instructions. The fittings kit, has a bit of extra space on the fittings, so you put the new pump into place, and then carefully measure and cut down the supplied tubes, and everything then fits this new pump. You toss the old input setup entirely. It came with every imaginable part I would need to do the swap. All I had to do was carefully cut and measure the bits, and it went together like a dream.
Before:
After:
You would seriously never know this wasn't stock!
I also had the O-ring problem to deal with, and as I mentioned, I purchased a bunch off the O-Ring store (amazing..) and had them sitting around. Turns out, this one fit perfectly:
3.5 x 103mm. Dead on, super happy. They even put some saltwater taffy in with the shipping bag. For what was basically a $10 order. Amazing service.
Now a quick caveat and warning. As I plumbed this up, I was trying to make sure that everything lined up perfectly. This involved gluing the tubes together while the whole assembly was on the reactor. My mistake, was leaving it to dry like this. It turns out that PVC cement causes acrylic to craze. So there is a little bit of ugly now at the bottom of my reactor. Reader beware. Luckily, I pressure tested the whole assembly overnight, and there were no issues, it's only minor surface ick. Oh well. We learn things.
But all of this brings me to the actual title of my post. I wanted to add life to the tank. This was, well...
So I ordered 5 peppermint shrimp, 5 trochus, and 5 ceriths from the Algae Barn. Went with 3-day because they have the arrive alive guarantee. The Phoenix post office however, was bound and determined to screw that up. The box floated around in Phoenix for 3 days before getting to my door.
The trochus were all super sad. One was unresponsive, the other 4 would barely move. One shrimp was in 2 pieces, and 2 were dead. The ceriths were all happy. Oh well, nothing to be done, it all goes in.
Shrimp went in, immediately disappeared into the rocks never to be seen again. The trochus were all placed on a rock. Overnight, 2 of them moved away, and the other three didn't. Checked in the morning, shells were empty. My clean up crew found the dead ones, and literally stripped the shells empty overnight. Effective!
So long story short. In theory I have 2 tiny peppermint shrimp, somewhere, and 2 trochus, and then 5 ceriths. My wife of course, said "what were you thinking, you should have bought like 25 of each, do you know the size of this tank?" The problem is, no. I really don't. I cannot wrap my brain around the size of this tank still.
Normally, one would buy just a few of these things, and slowly scale up. You don't want a ton of snails that wipe the algae out and then starve back. But I was totally off scale here. 1 trochus has managed to barely handle 1 rock in 1 week. That means I need like.. 25 just to pass go. I probably need more like 50 at this point. That's an insane number to me. I would never put 25-50 snails in a tank where I just turned the lights on.
I'm way off here. I need to hit the store and buy real quantities of life. The numbers just boggle me, and I can't keep up with it mentally.
My 120 has, 6 rocks. My brain says, 800/120 == 6. So that means I take the numbers from the 120, and scale up by 6. Right? No. Scaled up, the rocks would be like 36, not 75. I need to be operating in the range of 12-15 TIMES what I do/did to the 120.
I am way off. The 120 would start with like, 2-3 trochus and ramp up. I should have gotten 25-40. I should have gotten like 15 peppermint shrimp, maybe 25. It's insanity to me.
Utterly boggled by numbers, I slip off to bed...
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