afboundguy's downsizing (or upgrading???) 25 gallon cube build

[afboundguy]

Also finally hooked back up my ATO for sanity purposes. Was waiting until I got the overflow box set up. It'll be nice to only have to fill up the reservoir every 1-2 weeks vs daily top off

 

[afboundguy]

Just a FTS and some pictures of the mandarin cruising around. I plan to sneak in a filter kit for the cell phone in my next order to be able to take better pictures with the cell...

 

[afboundguy]

 

[afboundguy]

And clowns are still doing the dirty deed they've just moved their location the past two clutches from behind the rockwork (where I laid the damn tile they were using). The last time created a huge mess and tons of algae built up there so they moved to a better spot this last batch...

 

[MrX]

KidsX see your pics of the Mandarin and they start bugging me for one again. Glad to hear this one is doing better!

 

[afboundguy]

KidsX see your pics of the Mandarin and they start bugging me for one again. Glad to hear this one is doing better!

Helps when you don't see the package getting flipped around by the delivery guy and can see it in person! Almost makes me want to get a 2nd one but that would be crazy in my small tank plus that would be 7 fish - 2 cardinal, 2 clown, blenny and 2 mandarin... That might be a little to much fish lol

 

[afboundguy]

Started to do the gravity fed refugium built a quick stand that I will paint to match the walls. I used the front of the tank to build it. I tried quickly drilling the 5.5 gallon tank but I'll need a drill press to do it properly...

 

[afboundguy]

Last week I noticed one of my Tetra cultures was clear after a week and I saw a nice brine shrimp swimming around and a few pods in the jar. Luckily I have two jars of each strand so I just split the good tetra culture and didn't think anything of it.

Fast forward a few days and I finally moved the pod cultures into a divided 5.5 gallon tank (tried it before but went from about 1/2 a gallon to almost 2 gallons all at once so they crashed) and as I was taking it much slower getting to 2'ish gallons I noticed large brine shrimp in the pod cultures. I sucked them up with a turkey baster and after a few days they were gone. Then I'd feed some phyto from the fridge and notice more brine shrimp a few days later so I just sucked them up again.

Last night was my water change night where I do 10% on my display tank and do the phyto splits and bottling and I turned off the airlines and noticed some huge brine shrimp in the nanno cultures. Luckily the cultures were very dark. I noticed some in the tetra cultures as well. That prompted me to check the bottles in the fridge and low and behold there were brine shrimp at the bottom of some of the phyto bottles. I strained everything out with 5 sieves and got quite a few brine shrimp. Tank inhabitants enjoyed the nice big shrimp for dinner lol. So just a reminder to sterilize and keep stuff separated so no cross contamination!!!

Also took a few pictures of the new pod set up and a quick video. Pods a plenty!!!

Video

 

[afboundguy]

About a week ago I woke up and afboundguy's better 1/2 looked a little upset. She told me to into the office and fix the issue. Well my ATO failed and pumped out maybe a gallon onto the floor. Luckily I have it on a timer so it only goes on for maybe 2 or 3 minutes at a time.

I finally got around to hooking up some redundancy with 2 extra float switches. It was weird because the float switch that failed intermittently started to work. Once I put the 2 extra backups the next morning it was up to the backups.

I figured the switch was bad so I swapped it out and same thing. All three switches worked like they were supposed to when they were out of water but then when I put it back in it stopped working. I think I figured out that the pump was causing some interference so I moved the pump around and got it to work so we'll see what happens in the morning.

 

[afboundguy]

Also been using some NSW the past month as well as replenished my CUC. Not sure which one to give credit to (prob more CUC) but tank is looking great and all the turf algae and other misc algae on the rocks are gone and tank hasn't looked better in quite some time. Sorry for the crappy cell pics tried to get different angles/colors...

 

[CAPSLOCK]

Looking really good. I love the duncans, they're underrated sometimes.

 

[afboundguy]

Few videos for the heck of it. Little late for the contest and done quite nonchalantly...

 

[afboundguy]

 

[afboundguy]

Looking really good. I love the duncans, they're underrated sometimes.

I agree and I have two kinds as well. Longer tentacles and a short thicker tentacle one... They have taken off and grown like crazy...

 

[afboundguy]

@CAPSLOCK they were only 2 heads back in April 2020

 

[afboundguy]

On another pet related note had a fun time last night. Went to take the dogs out to go the bathroom at 8:30 pm last night for our nightly routine of putting Harlow (younger half blind deaf one) in her crate to then feed Gunner (older one) his 2nd dinner and then go upstairs and watch TV before kicking him back downstairs.

Let them off leash as we have a fully fenced in back yard and Harlow goes right and I see Gunner start to book it left as he typically does when he sees a squirrel on the fence. I see he's looking at the bottom of the fence and was like oh wait that's weird and then I was like oh that looks like a cat.... Oh !&$;/=,# and I scream his recall command as I identify the critter but it was too late and I see a small'ish skunk inside Gunner's mouth as he's trying to eat it

Holy smokes I forgot how bad a fresh skunk sprayed dog smells. Needless to say we got home and got to bed at around 1am this morning after de-stinking him and taking him to the vet for shots. And to top it off Harlow wasn't a fan of the ER vet and they couldn't give her a shot so we had to dope her up to bring her to get her shots today.

#skunkslivesmatter

Doped up puppy

Non Corona QT look for the next 45 days...

What I do????

 

[CAPSLOCK]

Sad and funny. Probably more funny for us and more sad for you though.

 

[BiGGiePauls33]

Love the fresh skunk smell, my 2 doggos got wacked about a month ago.

 

[afboundguy]

Nothing major to update on the tank. I attempted to drill a spare 5.5 gallon tank for the gravity fed refugium project with my father in laws drill press but the diamond bits weren't square and straight so they weren't perfectly straight when they rotated so they shook the tank and ended up cracking the glass. Guess that's what I get for trying to use cheapo amazon diamond drill bits.

Still going strong with the NSW changes and I still have about 10+ gallons left from a few weeks ago and I've been doing every other week water changes and tank still continues to look amazing. Once I get my phyto culture back up to a good spot I'll start dosing phyto daily which will make it look even more amazing.

I've added a few new corals (a few acans, what I believe is a red finger gorgonian, an orange/gold'ish small hammer coral and some tree coral) as well as moved around some of the euphyllias onto the rock work to get them off the sand bed as it was getting a little crowded on the sand bed.

 

[afboundguy]

Little mandarin is easily more than double the size when I got her. She's constantly hunting and pecking and looking super fat. Still doing daily brine shrimp nauplii through the @Paul B spot feeder. It's almost to the point that every time I come to the tank she rushes over to the feeder....

And the DIY Pod hotels are blending in quite nicely now that they're covered in all sorts of algae!!!