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So my RKL arrived on Tuesday and I’m quite pleased with it.

Aside from the weirdness with the temperature comparisons I wrote about yesterday, the RKL is generally holding the reef tank within .1°F of the setpoint. I noticed that it was running the 25 watt heater what seemed like an excessive amount just trying to maintain the setpoint so I swapped that out for a 50 watt. The RKL with a 50 watt heater is doing a much better job at holding the temperature. I like that I can set alarms for if the temperature increases past a setpoint, I even have it set to turn the light off if it reaches that alarm point.

The other functions are basically just timers, having the display light come on, having the refugium light come on, and then there’s the standby function that’ll turn off the heater, Koralia Nano, and the AC70 filter for either feeding or water changes.

I’m leaning heavily toward getting one for both my 75 gallon and my 10 gallon shrimp tank. The shrimp tank is pretty simple, but having temperature control would still be quite nice.

The convenience of programming while holding the computer is worth the entry price, it would be great to not having to sit down with a flash light and try to program the timers underneath the 75 gallon.

The thing that turns me off a bit, as mentioned earlier, about getting one for the 75 gallon is that I need basically only five controllable outlets. I could certainly fill up two of the PC4 strips, but half the devices are on the same timers now, so just splitting the outlet is a lot less expensive. Unfortunately it’s that fifth outlet that makes the system more than just a set of glorified timers, since it’d be used for the heater. The previous four would be used to control the lights, autodosers, and CO2 distribution. The manual bypass feature is a bit of a pain to use as compared to flipping the switch to do maintenance on the filters.

I think I’ll get two more RKL level 1 kits, basically just keep the second controller for eventual use on the shrimp tank, and use the second’s power strip for the 75 gallon. Since, due to the summer sale pricing, the power strip is only $10 less than both the controller and power strip.

I’m going to think about it a bit more, see how the RKL works out for the reef, but I definitely think this is something that falls into the “must have” category when priced at $100.

I started my reef tank on the small end simply because I wasn’t really sure if I’d be successful, and of course that is still yet to be seen. I’d personally rather start out on the difficult side of things, requires one to pay much more attention and therefore learn much more. Also, the cost of catastrophic error is much less in a five gallon tank than one significantly larger.

In any case I’ve been thinking of an upgrade path that would utilize the most equipment while still being a significant improvement.

I was initially turned off by the ADA tank offerings when considering which to go with, but I had only really looked at the 5.5 gallon, known as the Mini M, but its dimensions weren’t very compatible with my light choice. I didn’t even look at the larger tanks, unfortunately. I realized the other night though that the 45P is 18″ long, perfect for the light fixture that I have on the 5.5 gallon.

The water volume almost doubles, the tank is 1.5″ taller, 2″ longer, and 2.5″ wider.

Now, I did have a concern as to whether that light would have enough oomph on a bigger tank, but the reality is that with only being 1.5″ taller all I need to do is just add a bit more sand and the difference is significantly reduced. The length increase is no problem at all, nor should the width. I think there’d still be plenty of spread, and even then it’d be basically like giving a sand border around the rock and coral anyway. The important point being that the light intensity really should change all that much from whatever it is on the 5.5 gallon.

I was thinking of doing a very small HOB overflow to have a sump and refugium out of sight, probably using a 10 gallon, so total water volume would be about 15 gallons probably.

I think it would be amazing with one of the new Vortech MP10 pumps.

It’s something that’ll keep kicking around in my mind for a good while. I want it to be a well deserved upgrade in the future, not a “oh, I changed my mind” type thing done in a month or two.

I’m really itching to get a coral, but I still have this hair algae situation going on. It’s getting better, the Astrea snails seem to be doing a good job, but two (not counting the spiky one) seem a little outnumbered. I think another one may be in order. If the crab wasn’t so shy it might be more helpful, the little hermits seem pretty close to useless. I guess they’re just completely dwarfed by the problem.

Right now there’s a vendor that has a fairly nice deal going on for the weekend, but I still don’t really feel all that ready to add coral. I guess I’m just afraid of spending so much money ($50) as all of my purchases thus far have been quite small, the Emerald crab being the most expensive at $8.

My parameters, though I don’t test fanatically, have been stable. Temperature doesn’t swing too wildly, but the RKL will help more with that I hope, but as it stands it’s about two or so degrees.

It doesn’t seem like I’ve had the tank running for that long, I guess because I haven’t, but I did have the rock curing for several weeks. I think that counts, so almost two months since I got the rock.

So we’ll see, I’m leaning toward the conservative approach and allowing the algae bloom to finish up, get the rock arranged how I like it, and then finally add a coral or two.

Treasures of the Sea, the store I bought my live rock from, had some Spiny Star Astreas, so I just had to get one! I picked up a normal Astrea and a couple Cortez Ceriths too.

Thanks to the summer special at Digital Aquatics I was able to justify purchasing a Reef Keeper Lite tank computer for the reef tank! :D Finally, I’ll have compact timers and desperately needed temperature control.

Part of me wanted to get one for the 75g too, but the extra features are not really necessary. Depending on how long the special lasts I might still get another, but the current timer setup so far is working well and in order to take advantage of features like temperature control while still using the timers I’d need to purchase another outlet strip. Who knows, maybe I’ll like it so much that I’ll give in to the temptation.

The other day I added to my clean up crew a female Emerald crab with blunted claws and an Astrea snail.

The Astrea snail, although painfully slow and apparently lazy, is actually doing a spectacular job cleaning up the algae. You’ll see that pristine bit of liverock next to the snail in the photo, the snail had been sitting on that spot all day. I think I’ll need a couple more though.

The Emerald crab, though initially active, has become fairly reclusive and scoots back under a chunk of rock when I move closer to get a better look. She does grab big chunks of the hair algae though whenever she does leave her little burrow.