I’m going to try to update about the aquariums a little more often, but things have been sort of in a holding pattern in that regard. All I’ve been doing lately, aside from water changes, is making sure the surface of the 75g isn’t completely covered with floating plants. Just that task is a bit of a burden lately, heh. I’ll probably find some motiviation in a week or two to do some clean out. I haven’t really wanted to because of it being so warm, I’d much rather sell the plants than throw them away. I’d also really rather the plants arrive healthy and not a green/black slime in a ziplock bag.

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Apparently the RKL temperature probe has failed, only three and a half days after being put into operation.

I also took another trip down to Mr. Coral in Frederick and got myself six coral frags for $50, woot! I’ve been lackadaisical again about posting, but I had also gone down there last weekend to pick up two frags. I’ll need to photograph them and get that posted.

Last weekend I did a serious overhaul of the 75g aquarium, substantially thinning out the right side that desperately needed work.

Oh, day before yesterday my Garmin 260w GPS arrived, got it for $119 shipped from Amazon. Now it’s much less stressful while trying to find places and getting lost during “construction season” has hopefully been minimized.

I really do need to get in there and clean things up, but it’s sort of one of those things where I don’t know where to start. It’s like a cluttered room that only becomes more cluttered. The only realistic option I think I have is to just tear everything out, but the amount of effort required for that is beyond the level I’m willing to give.

Oh, I may have to also add Glosso to the list of killed plants, not that I care much about that anymore, but the little bit I was keeping around has also vanished.

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.

On the thought of losses, I killed one of my two Erios apparently. I’ve been very lackadaisical, as usual, about keeping the surface clear of floating plants. Apparently the Erio didn’t take very kindly to being shaded. I have the one left, it has some dead spiky bits also, but otherwise appears to be in decent health.

I desperately need to clear out the right side of the tank, it’s gone past the jungle point.

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.