1K Reef.... Miracles custom 1000 gallon aquarium 120”x60”x30”

[907_Reefer]

Caught up, loving this tank, following along. Awesome setup my friend

Reefing was much easier for me with real premium live rock from Fiji with all the pest and die off. T’5 and Metal halides, my cycle was less than 60 days. Ahhh the good old days..

You aren't kidding.. I had a setup with real Fiji live rock under T5s only, back in 2012-ish. Good old rocks of past. ~14 months old here, with a noobie at the helm:

Pardon the photo bomb. Loving the chromis / anthia schools, small fish in big tanks are underrated

Carry on..

 

[748S911]

I added about 100lbs of established LR to my sump and truthfully i think my tank was acro ready in 6 months. I say that because my SPS did well for the first few months and then everything starting going south. I discovered that I overdid the garlic in my food to deal with ich, and whatever was not digested was falling to the bottom and rockwork (white specks on waste), It took me a month to find out what was going on but the 10 garlic cloves mixed me maybe 6lbs home made frozen causing major issues. After that I decided having an achilles and powder blue, feeding them 8 times per day (heavy and fresh seafood) is the only way to deal with fish parasites. Once they are stressed and their immune system is compromised its a rap, so i told myself saving the fish was first and I should be able to deal with nutrients later with water changes - however, this wont work in larger systems! It will work for dealing with Phosphates, which is easily stripped, but NO3 takes a long time when its get out of hand like mine.

Since you started with the fake rock you will for sure have a better experience dealing with lower nutrients but you will have challenges with lack of bio-diversity. You will need to source at least a little bit of clean LR thats filled with sponges. People say it can take 1-2 years without adding seed LR but thats only if your adding big chucks of LPS base. Someone like me who is re-fragging only living tissues could never get bio-diversity by adding small frags alone.

The crappy part is I have been trying to cut back on my feeding and in almost 18 months my achilles has not had any spots until today, so I am kind of in a battle where I can not reduce feeding by much. I am considering getting rid of my Orange shoulder tang, which grew to 9" in 1 year. I have 2 large urchins and they are great, they poop a lot, the 10 turbos I got when they where 1.5"-2" and now some of them are close to 4". these inverts waste unlike the fishes does not end up in the overflow, it is dense and ends up in the patches at the bottom or the rockwork so that is probably leading to the nutrient issues. I want to get rid of some but worried I will not be able to replace them if I expand my systems or a few perish so trying my best to deal with Nitrates before having to get rid of these animals, which to me are irreplaceable. I may set up a separate tank for the snails but don't think they will survive long and I am not trying to feed them a sheet of nori per day.

Sounds like a good plan to add some seeded LR to my system, I looking to add 40lbs or so, hopefully I can get some LR from a local shop in the future and I need about an 80 lbs of sand to cover bottom evenly.

Tuff spot your in, getting rid of the larger tang will help and then maybe aggression and ich issues go away. Then you can feed maybe 3x daily to drop N03. (If you do get rid of the orange shoulder I have room for it.)

Don’t know much about snails, but they sound like they are huge.

How do you like the air exchange system? we have similar weather, and I’ve heard mixed reviews about it because of our hot and humid summers.

I dose/topoff with kalkwasser to reach 8.3 ph daily 8.2-8.3 avg.

 

[Ashish Patel]

Sounds like a good plan to add some seeded LR to my system, I looking to add 40lbs or so, hopefully I can get some LR from a local shop in the future and I need about an 80 lbs of sand to cover bottom evenly.

Tuff spot your in, getting rid of the larger tang will help and then maybe aggression and ich issues go away. Then you can feed maybe 3x daily to drop N03. (If you do get rid of the orange shoulder I have room for it.)

Don’t know much about snails, but they sound like they are huge.

How do you like the air exchange system? we have similar weather, and I’ve heard mixed reviews about it because of our hot and humid summers.

I dose/topoff with kalkwasser to reach 8.3 ph daily 8.2-8.3 avg.

The air exchanger keeps the basement air quality very good, almost feels like your breathing outside clean air. However, I messed up on installing it too close to the dryer exhaust (6feet away) so can only run it during the night time for 8 hours. I also messed up by installing it right below where my wife sits in the living room so she is constantly telling me to turn it off. I think women are really annoying about sounds and smells bc I can barely hear it. It boosts my PH by .10 points daily. When I ran it 24/7 the boost was double. I am thinking about eventually just installing my air exchanger to the first floor house forced air system. I think having fresh air inside the house will boost PH in my system but also be better for our air quality. I also felt my humidity was easier to maintain vs the previous year so highly recommend. Right now my PH does not drop below 8.0 but highest i get is 8.19. I know it will rise as I dose more Kalk but right now dosing 10000ml of Kalk/day.

 

[748S911]

I just pre ordered 2 Meridians from Reefbreeders gonna give them a try. The main selling point is that I can daisy chain them together and use only one power source. Right now im using 30 outlets to run my lights. Plus im saving money going this route.

 

[748S911]

Current updates 4/28/24

Removed all Kessil and all led bars only 2 Reefbrite XHO's are running the show for now. (cut lighting back to battle hair algae issues) it's working really well almost all gone. I also added 10 turbo snails to my system, they are helping a lot. I lost my sea hare probably because it ran out of food to eat, also lost another anemone due to moving around looking for stronger lighting and got sucked up by power head...bummer.

I'm waiting on my new Meridians from Reefbreeders by the time I get my new lights delivered I should be hair algae free and ready to restock/reseed the reef with lots of coral.

 

[1000rrstunna]

make sure you give a review on the meridian i am just setting up my tank and they are intriguing

 

[748S911]

make sure you give a review on the meridian i am just setting up my tank and they are intriguing

Definitely will do, I can’t wait to get them over my tank.

I have a feeling they are gonna be awesome.

 

[748S911]

Sea hare still alive!

 

[748S911]

Reef Restocking update 05/07/2024

Got rid of all nuisance algea in tank, no more green turf! (5 million years later)

Still waiting for my Meridians (10 million years later).

Stocking up on fish now, here is a list of what I have currently and what's in the pipeline and future adds.


Current fish stock list:

Emperor Angel
Queen Angel
Flame Angel
Singapore Angel

Two Spot Tang
Tomini Tang
Convict Tang
Powder Blue Tang
Powder Brown Tang
Desjardin Tang
Atlantic Blue Tang

Diamond Goby
Blue/yellow Damsels x3
Green Chromis x16
Long Hawknose
Six-line wrasse
Cinamon Clown

Bimac Anthia
Fairy Anthia
Ignitus Anthia x2


Fish on Order:

Quoyi Parrot
Sohal Tang
Achillies Tang
Gem Tang
Hippo Tang
Evansi Anthia

Future fish:

Magnificent Fox Face
Aussie Dussemeri Tang
Mix of Clownfish
Green Chromis


Then I'm done with fish and will be ready to stock up with coral after my Meridians come in.

 

[748S911]

Fish order on hold, my powder blue and brown have white spot after chasing each other. Now my other fish are scratching not good.

I went to tractor supply and bought a Rubbermaid 300 gal stock tank (bulkhead leaks)

hospital tank on hold now, gotta order new bulkhead. I have a schedule 80 bulk head now, where can I find schedule 80 pipe and valves? It’s almost easier to order regular tank bulkhead on Amazon and wait the two days for shipping.

I’m crossing my fingers I don’t lose any fish.

 

[Jimbo327]

What a beautiful setup. 1000 gal is crazy awesome.

I have no idea how you are catching fishes in a 1000 gal. LOL.

 

[punchy7080]

Sealed the bulkhead on my stock tank with silicone and it’s been good for over two years

 

[748S911]

What a beautiful setup. 1000 gal is crazy awesome.

I have no idea how you are catching fishes in a 1000 gal. LOL.

Thanks lots of hard work to put this together.

That makes two of us, not sure about how that's going to happen.

 

[748S911]

Sealed the bulkhead on my stock tank with silicone and it’s been good for over two years

I was going to do that yesterday but decided to just replace the whole thing and not worry about it later. I will also use silicone to seal everything together after everything is replaced.

 

[Reef-Engineer]

I love your build.

Id try live foods like blackworms and lots of them to strengthen fish and immune systems. Also can use calcium reactor rubble (reborn) to fill in the spots on your sand bed that get blown out, and still look pretty natural.

Keep it up, do you ever show the tank off? I am in DC/Manassas area frequently and would definitely make a drive to check this thing out!

 

[748S911]

Thanks reef in progress.

I’ll see if I can get my hands on some live black worms, thanks for the recommendations.

I have 3 extra bags of sand and 40lbs of dry Caribsea life rock shapes, gonna try and make some caves and swim throughs for fish to use. Hopefully the added depth will help with sand blown over. Holding off until I figure out how to get all the fish out and treat them.

Haven’t shown tank, not show ready but when it is I’ll let you know.

 

[lubeck]

Not sure how big your nets are but if you have two large nets you should be able to catch them. Using custom fit egg crate to corner them in a smaller section of the tank helps.

 

[mfraembs]

I will have to check with builder and see if they can make it bigger.

Problem is its behind hvac unit and water heater. Having that wall broke down and combining both rooms to make fish room bigger sounds good, but don’t want the hvac unit sucking up salt and humidity and all the smells associated to fish room going throughout the house and every room.

hopefully they can give me 5 more feet for walk in closet. Hook up hrv or something like that to vent the fish room.

I’m a home builder myself and if you are under construction it would be a pain I’m the butt and expensive to relocate the mechanicals. Sounds like you’re pretty close to wrapping up the build so I wouldn’t even consider that. I would suggest to install a broad zb80 exhaust fan in the fish room to help control the humidity. I put one in my fish room and so happy I did. Even if your past Sheetrock getting one installed wouldn’t be very difficult.

You could also steal a bit of space under your stairs for extra storage, it’s on the short side of the stairs but every bit of additional space helps! Would be a good spot for a large top off tank for RODI.

Also depending on the elect panel location I would add 2-3 dedicated circuits. I only installed 1 in my fish room and really wish I had more.

I got my sump from synergy reef and absolutely love it!

CL-72 Filter Sock Sump – Synergy Reef Systems

synergyreef.com

 

[mfraembs]

I’m a home builder myself and if you are under construction it would be a pain I’m the butt and expensive to relocate the mechanicals. Sounds like you’re pretty close to wrapping up the build so I wouldn’t even consider that. I would suggest to install a broad zb80 exhaust fan in the fish room to help control the humidity. I put one in my fish room and so happy I did. Even if your past Sheetrock getting one installed wouldn’t be very difficult.

You could also steal a bit of space under your stairs for extra storage, it’s on the short side of the stairs but every bit of additional space helps! Would be a good spot for a large top off tank for RODI.

Also depending on the elect panel location I would add 2-3 dedicated circuits. I only installed 1 in my fish room and really wish I had more.

I got my sump from synergy reef and absolutely love it!

CL-72 Filter Sock Sump – Synergy Reef Systems

synergyreef.com

Just realized I was reading your post from 2021! .

 

[748S911]

I slowed down my return speed for the uv to be a little more effective. I also added a bunch of carbon/foam filter pads to help with free swimming ich. Increased feeding to fatten everyone up hopefully that works to help maintain ich break out. My cleaner wrasse and shrimp are working double shifts too. Im carefully watching everyone at the moment.

Thinking about doing quick 3-300 gallon water changes with dechlorinated tap water from hose to do almost 100% water change in less than 48 hrs maybe this will help the fish with fresh saltwater and siphon sand. I dont have any coral to worry about at the moment so not worried about issues in water quality for growing coral. Then resume 100 gallon rodi water changes per week for 10 weeks to flush out the dechlorinated tap water. What do you all think? Best option I can think of right now.