SuperDave’s 75g FOWLR

SuperDave531

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Hi everyone I’ve been on a reefing hiatus for the past few years after my wife gave birth to our 2 little girls, ages 1 & 2, and my last reef tank, 40B, was 4 years in before it kind of went on auto pilot while I was taking care of two babies one after the next.

Anyhow, somehow between then, now and another house later, I was able to procure a typical 75g tank. We’ve also decided to keep it a FOWLR so we can try more different kinds of fishes and not have to concentrate too much about coral care.

It’s just a bone standard 4’ 75g design from Aqueon, it’s not drilled nor was the stand that it came with able to accommodate a sump of any substantial size. So contrary to popular methods, I wanted to keep everything clean with what I had and decided to run a Fluval FX4 half plumbed with black painted PVC behind the rim transitioning to the included ribbed hose into and out of the can. I picked the FX series can because of the ability to plumb a hose into the auxiliary valve at the bottom of the can for quick, convenient water changes without having to bail or dump anything into the display.

I also have a 300w inline heater along with a 200w secondary stealth heater inside the display for redundancy.

I’m also running an XP Aqua sumpless ATO / reactor and a Tunze comline 9004 DC protein skimmer.
For water movement, I have a generic Jecod CP-25 gyre pump. I haven’t had a chance to pull off my MP-10qd yet from he other house, and it works just fine for me. For lighting, I’m running a single 36” Current USA LOOP LED panel which in the future, if in case I needed more light, I can slap another panel on it and go. I’ve hidden my ATO reservoir in the little basket on top of the file cabinet where my can and electrics are all tucked away into (and currently toddler-proofed).

My fish inhabitants currently include my 7 year old bonded pair of ocellaris clowns, a couple of juvenile Bangaii cardinals, and a little juvenile Tomini for utility (but really because it’s a smaller tang and I've never had a tank big enough in the past to house one ). I dare not put anything critical or easily movable into the cubbbies under the tank with toddlers around. ‍♂️ Also, please excuse my blasphemously fake Amazon coral inserts lol . It was just my desire to add a little color into the tank without putting real corals.

The system has been up for about 2 months now and I’m enjoying the fish keeping again, now along side my growing toddler girls
Anyhow, hope you guys enjoy my chronicles!

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SuperDave531

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Took a photos the other day and had a chance to edit them. Enjoy


This is my juvenile Tomini who actually stopped for a second just long enough to pose for a photo op.
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This is my 7y/o female clown who dwarfs her Tomini tank mate


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Here he is again stealing the autofocus point away from one of my cardinals!

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SuperDave531

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Another update:

My simple quarantine setup in the spare unused bathroom of the house
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This is the 2nd time I’m going to use this QT in the past few months and I’m so glad that I did the first time. I was able to catch a few sickly anthia a day into having them, and bring them back to the LFS.

Unfortunately, I was given 10000% super hassle when I explained why I brought them back. Of course they attempted to shut me up by issuing me a portion of credit for the 3 fish I had brought back. I just handed it to the next person who walked into the door, because I had no intention on ever going back.

Luckily my area is an absolute melting pot for finding LFS’s.
 
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SuperDave531

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Update to whomever is reading

I’ve been going through a little bit of an algae bloom again with some diatoms. Still just just trying to manage my nitrates and phosphates and doing smaller, more frequent things every day; smaller feeds, tuning the skimmer for better skim.
I’ve also added a few more large Mexican turbos and a tiger conch to my cleanup crew. The tiger is such an interesting addition to the crew. In the past few days, he’s probably done 15 -20 laps of the sand bed completely decimating the green algae it’s walked over. Anyone else keep tiger conches?
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