Rebecca's Simple Garden Reef

[BluewaterBoof]

You've created yourself a beautiful little world of magic there, Rebecca! All that work has paid off!

[showmebutterfly]

Thank you! @Slaphppy7 and @BluewaterBoof

[showmebutterfly]

I think my skimmer has finally broken in - it's making stinky gunk tea. :-)

[Slaphppy7]

it's making stinky gunk tea. :-)

If that's a "good" thing, then congrats....

Just kidding, shows how much I know about SW fishkeeping

[showmebutterfly]

If that's a "good" thing, then congrats....

Just kidding, shows how much I know about SW fishkeeping

It is a good thing. It was bubbling over like crazy for almost a month. Now it's simmered down so much I keep going over to make sure it's still on. lol
Bonus - it's not putting out micro bubbles anymore either.

[showmebutterfly]

It looks like I may be setting up a QT in our basement bedroom. The construction company keeps pushing back the start date on our addition / remodel project and I'm already impatient to add new stuff to the 65 now that it's set up and running well. I talked with my husband about it last night and he's not opposed to the idea. We went over all the possible safe locations - with it being a small house and the scope of the work we're having done, options were limited. He offered to let me set it up in his office, which was very sweet, but we already have so much stuff stored in there that I hated to displace even more of his work space. So, bedroom it is. We'll only need to move a clothes hamper to make room for a tank and I will probably set up the 10 gallon to keep things simple. He doesn't want a permanent tank in the bedroom, but he's ok with the idea of a temporary one to help distract me from my irritation with the construction process. It's basically self-preservation on his part. lol
In other news (well, actually the reason why I'm probably setting up a QT) I hope to be attending my first ever reef club meeting on the 22nd. It's almost 3 hours away, but it's the closest club to me. The only thing giving me pause is that I'll be driving home after dark and wouldn't get home until close to midnight. My old eyes aren't great with nighttime driving these days. What's giving me gumption to go is that I can make a day of it and hit all their reef shops before the meeting. I'm hoping I can get someone to ride with me, but I'm still working on that.

[BluewaterBoof]

Yay on the skimmer! Pretty soon you'll be cleaning out wonderful (sarcasm) skimmate all the time haha If you adjust the wetness you should be able to get that nice "Fish Butter" skimmate

The reef club meeting should be fun to attend. I don't get along with the new "leader" of our local reef group so I have been avoiding the meets lately. We are having another Coral Con this Saturday, which I plan on checking out. Wife offered to by me some coral for my bday so I couldn't really come up with a reason not to go haha

[showmebutterfly]

Oh yeah. I can't wait to clean out the really stinky goo. Since I don't have much of a bio-load right now, I'm hoping to not have much of that fish butter anytime soon.
I'm an introvert around new people, so I'm nervous about jumping into a group where everyone already knows everyone else. I am part of their FB group and most of them seem pretty nice. As long as I can get over myself and not let my hang-ups keep me from participating, I think I'll enjoy the meeting. If nothing else, I'll enjoy going to the reef stores and getting to look around at my leisure.

Yay on the skimmer! Pretty soon you'll be cleaning out wonderful (sarcasm) skimmate all the time haha If you adjust the wetness you should be able to get that nice "Fish Butter" skimmate

The reef club meeting should be fun to attend. I don't get along with the new "leader" of our local reef group so I have been avoiding the meets lately. We are having another Coral Con this Saturday, which I plan on checking out. Wife offered to by me some coral for my bday so I couldn't really come up with a reason not to go haha

[BluewaterBoof]

If that's a "good" thing, then congrats....

Just kidding, shows how much I know about SW fishkeeping

One of these days, bud, you'll need to take that dive into the SW world! I don't know a single person that starts a SW tank and then regrets it. Time and time again their biggest regret was waiting so long to try it! :)

That stinky tea is the gunk that normally packs into your filter floss/media in freshwater filters. A skimmer uses foam instead of floss to trap the organics and particulates. The foam builds up and slowly rises up the throat of the skimmer where it eventually spills over into a collection cup. The nice thing about a skimmer is that the collection cup ensures that the removed waste stays out of the water system. With freshwater filters, all that gunk stays in the water flow until the media is swapped out. Freshwater, unfortunately, does not have the same adhesive qualities of saltwater and does not foam well or collect dissolved organics. This is why you don't really see anyone using protein skimmers in freshwater applications. If they worked in freshwater I believe they would replace conventional skimmers almost entirely due to how effective they are for waste management and ease of cleaning. Imagine if your "filter" maintenance was as simple and dumping one of these down the toilet every once in a while?

skimmate prod.png

[BluewaterBoof]

Oh yeah. I can't wait to clean out the really stinky goo. Since I don't have much of a bio-load right now, I'm hoping to not have much of that fish butter anytime soon.
I'm an introvert around new people, so I'm nervous about jumping into a group where everyone already knows everyone else. I am part of their FB group and most of them seem pretty nice. As long as I can get over myself and not let my hang-ups keep me from participating, I think I'll enjoy the meeting. If nothing else, I'll enjoy going to the reef stores and getting to look around at my leisure.

Your skimmate is pretty wet. You have a lot of room to adjust it down for a drier skimmate that would require less frequent cleaning, if you desire. I've seen lots of folks argue back and forth whether dry is better than wet and vice versa but at the end of the day it really just depends on how often you want to be dumping out the collection cup.

I feel ya on the social scene. I'm the same way. Once I meet a person or group I am fine and get along with everyone, but everything leading up to actually meeting the new person/people tends to fill me with a certain degree of anxiety.

From my experience, the meets are very pleasant as you are with others who share the same level of interest in the hobby as you do, and it's fun to finally meet the people you communicate with on social media.

If it weren't for this Hilter guy who recently took over our local club, I would attend more of our meets. I just don't like the way he is running things. He is an elitist who wants everyone to fall in, rank and file. He even has threatened to kick people from the club that he feels aren't participating enough and was ticked off the other day and created a big drama on FB because we have hundreds of members but he is only getting like 8 views on his Youtube vids. He also tries preventing members from disagreeing with him on anything. It's his way or the highway.


Edit: In my previous post I said skimmers would "replace conventional skimmers almost entirely." I meant to say skimmer would replace conventional filters. Sorry, I had waited too long and it won't let me edit that previous post anymore.