I’m turning over a new leaf this week and starting into a series of reviews on my current equipment. I’ve been toying around with the idea of adding several pieces of gadgetry lately, and the first one is a new skimmer.
I upgraded to Sapphire Aquatics NC28 from the stock skimmer on my JBJ 28g HQI shortly after I bought it. The Sapphire skimmer is a pretty solid skimmer, primarily because of the high end laser cut construction. It is specifically engineered to fit into the center rear chamber of the JBJ 28g HQI tank, keeping the aquarium true to its AIO (All In One) roots. The provided pump is a small sicce pump with a custom mesh modified impeller wheel.
There are several above average elements of this skimmer, and there are also some areas it leaves lacking. First off, let’s start with the good stuff (that’s why you’re reading this right?).
Construction is awesome
Pump is SUPER quiet
The collection cup fits without any modification to the hood (and is VERY easily removable)
Price is good for what you get
Customer service WAS great (company went out of business)
The cons are a short list, but significant none the less.
The unit tends to not pull as much quality skimmate as I would like to see (either that or my cube just doesn’t have any protein buildup [not-likely]). I typically empty a quarter inch or so of light brown/yellow skimmate once a week max.
The control is fine tuned by a thumb screw on the side that slides a small gate up and down the side of the skimmer to adjust the flow. The problem with the thumb screw is that you can only open it up so much before the screw hits the collection cup. This leads to a very wet skimmate, and more of it than you would like.
Company went out of business, so no more support or easy to get parts
Overall, I’m giving this skimmer a 7/10 rating. For the price, it’s pretty good. No modifications, easy to install, and quiet. But, if you’re in the market for a higher quality skim – you should look to a higher end device.
Next episode I’ll be looking at some possible replacement units, including my personal vote – the Deltec MCE300 HOB (Hang On Back). Until then, here is decent video of how the NC28 fits and works in the back of your nano – enjoy!
Nothing too fancy, but the iPhone 4 allows you to shoot full HD video and upload to YouTube all without leaving your phone. Finding it’s INFINITELY easier to do short vids and growth shots.
I’ve been on a Twitter frenzy lately, mostly becuase (as the concept might dictate) micro-blogging is quicker and easier than full blown blogging (follow us @coraltopia). However, there have been several updates in the past weeks so I thought I would take a chance to reflect and share with any people who are silly enough to still be reading …
As you may have heard, I just picked up my new iPhone 4.0. This thing is pretty much amazing, and I can’t wait to start taking more pics and vids to get get posted on the site. I’ve been doing some cleaning in the past couple weeks, including adding some extra sponges for some mechanical filtration and taking the old school razor blade to the glass (which I do every couple months regardless). I’m going to try to post an update weekly for a bit and see how it goes … Hoping to have some more active growth shots as well as some more video as I start to add more pieces to the collection. This weekend I’m hoping to grab a little hammer coral from a guy down in Redondo Beach, look for pics next episode!
The tank has been looking pretty dang good lately, so time for another round of growth shots. My raspberry prostrata is finally branching off, and I’ve got a handful of plugs of purple joker palys ready to hit the market.
Still looking to add a cleaner shrimp (the last one died some time ago) as well as a nice piece of hammer coral, in the hopes my clowns will host it. Kyle is in LA this weekend, we’ll see what he has to say about things …
Terrible snap shot cannon, but the tank is FINALLY starting to come back around. Lost quite a few frags and some of them are slowly recovering. Here’s hoping the next round of shots shows some notable improvement!
Growth Shots After a 2 month swing of instability, the tank starts to come back around.
If you’ve been following Clinton’s 28g (mostly via the Twitter feed) then you’ll know that I’ve been struggling with some stability lately. I finally got the fans upgraded and the CA/MG issues on the mend. Everything was starting to stabilize nicely. On Sunday my wife and I went for a relaxing Sunday drive up to Kernville to catch an afternoon on the River. When I got back, the salinity had completely crashed down to 1.022 from 1.026.
I’ve always run a pure RODI top off sump under my tank, and never had problems. I guess on this particular day something inspired the water to evaporate at an unusually high rate – causing the top off to push extra fresh water into the tank and in turn cause the salinity to crash. Several pieces were on the verge of having to be thrown away (including my best piece of Palmer’s Blue Milli)
I quickly set up a station of 5 gallon buckets and began mixing more salt water. Pulling a gallon out of the tank, mixing with higher concentration solution in the bucket, then topping off the tank – checking the SG and repeating. After a couple hours of this exercise, I got the salinity back up to 1.025 and called it a night. The levels appeared stable over night, and this morning I did another water change leaving the salinity safely at 1.026. I’ve detached the top off for the day, and will see how much evaporates throughout the day today.
Moving forward, I guess I’m going to have to add a little salt to my top off solution. As it turns out I’m usually low on CA and MG anyway, so making a batch of reef crystals salt water with a slightly diluted salinity (1.020?) might help keep it more stable. This whole process has been very frustrating to say the least, and now I’m even considering upgrading my control to allow a Specific Gravity probe to help keep this in check. For now, daily manual checks will have to do.
Thought I would post some pics of my fan upgrade over the weekend. I noticed my fans weren’t cutting the mustard when I noticed the heatsink clicking the lights off after a little over 7hours. At first, I thought it might have been my controller doing the turnoff (I have quite a few ‘catch’ lines in there to prevent the heat from going overboard). However, the lights would *always* come back after about 3 minutes.
I bought the kit from http://www.nanotuners.com and followed the directional YouTube video listed on their site. The video was *pretty* good, but I did have to figure out a couple little details by myself. I also replaced ALL of the screws that hold the splash guard in place. Most of them were rusted badly, but some had actually broken off during previous bulb replacements and I had a suspicion that maybe (just maybe) some moisture was sneaking under the guard and effecting the bulb. Entire project took a little over an hour (but I took my sweet time and watched the Olympics while I worked)
Unfortunately for the 180G tank, I have completely ignored it for the past 5 months and the colors have gone way south…Water change this weekend and some TLC will hopefully bring them back to full brilliance.
Other issue is that I added a pair of GSM clowns – they look great, but created a massive sand storm which covered all of my monti’s on the ground, this killed 1/2 of the setosa and a number of other corals…not cool! They have been removed to the sump.
The rose anenome is also at least 3x bigger that a few months ago, it has definately stung a few corals…Hopefully it will stay put on that rock, otherwise its out!
Finally, I added 25 glass carinals (apogon lepticanthus), I have about 18 remaining at this point, they look amazing, but I can also guess that the massive bioload addition has not been good for the tank. Lesson to me – change water more than once every 4 months! Lets see what a nice 45 gallon change will do!
Since the tank has been ignored and water quality pretty poor, the aiptasia in the tank have also just taken off. I ordered 30 berghia with some other locals and put 15 into the tank. I kept 2 as a breeding pair in the sump and am just now getting the first set of sub-adults from that pair to sell back to the community. I will also be supplementing my tank with some more berghia to attack the problem. Ill likely put an additional 10 berghia in the tank (all together in the same spot, so they lay eggs!). I hope that by christmas the tank is looking great again.
Meant to post this update earlier, but better late than never right?! First off congrats to Kyle (everyone that knows him knows why) and also a huge thanks for swinging me some more frags!! Everything made the acclimation except the CA Tort (which was a teeny tiny frag).
Picked up some great new frags over the weekend, and replaced a lost fish. Got a couple new varieties of digitata to go with the orange that Kyle set me up with a couple months back. Also added a great frag of Blue Polyp Acro and 2 frags of Green Chewbacca milli (one of which died almost immediately after the transplant).
Hoping to have some tank shots to go with these, these are actual pics of the mother colonies – great stuff!
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