Ginu's 75gallon journey

[Ginu]

Hi everyone,
After reading many build threads I finally decided to create my own thread which I can update on regular basis and hopefully learn some more lessons(hopefully good) along the way and also keep a log of what I'm doing.

My history with aquariums started about 15 years ago with a 10g fresh water tank which was upgraded to a 20g tank which is still running today, however the fish are boring and fw lacks color so after many months of reading I decided to start small, so I started a 10g mushroom tank with very minimal and basic equipment (nano skimmer, heater and hang-on back filtration system).

My 20gallon fresh water tank

10 Gallon SW tank
I have to say this system worked wonder considering the craptatstic light which was not meant for SW aquariums, however mushrooms don't have much of a light requirement.

In this tank I had 2 blue greem chromis, a sunrise goby and a tiger pistol shrimp along with the various cleanup crew... boring huh?

Then I ventured and purchased a AIO 34 gallon Cube from EuroAquaUSA. this tank had a filtration chamber on the back, 2*300 gph pumps circling the water and was using a 150W MH/6 night LED's and a chiller 1/13Hp(cant remember the name at the moment).
Now this tank was awesome due to the low dispersion glass and the 150W MH which in my opinion was a little overkill for a tank this size, but it looked awesome.
I've actually never gotten into SPS in this tank and I kinda regret it as have a feeling anything would grow under the MH.
With this tank I was able to venture and get more of a variety of fish so I added two clowns, a GBTA for the clowns, cleaner shrimp, cleaner wrasse, rescue foxface(did not make it) and my livestock from the 10 gallon tank.

Now this tank was fun and learned a lot... some good some bad.
For example its nice to have a chiller which keeps the water very stable with very minimal temperature spikes, but its just awful for the living-room in terms of the heat it disperses, the QAF(wife approval factor) was again me on this, not to mention all the time I spent dealing with normal tank issues and routine maintenance was also against me.
Problem I had with this tank was the fact that the rear chamber was getting crammed with equipment as I started to add GRO reactor, ato, oversize skimmer etc... so obviously an upgrade was warranted.

About a year later I purchased a 75gallon (who doesn't want a tang) + 15gallon sump along with some much desired equipment:
- Bubble Magus Curve 7 skimmer (started out with a Tunze)
- two Ecotech Radions Gen 1 upgraded with the TIR lens
- two Ecotech Vortechs MP 10wES
- one Ecotech battery backup for the Vortechs
- TLF media reactor (currently running BRS GFO)
- Tunze Osmolator
- Tunze Kalk reactor
- upgraded my 50gph RO/DI to 75gph
- two 1.1ml/mil BRS dosing pumps running two part Alk and two part Calcium (Mg is dosed by hand every week)
- custom made two partition tank (15g refugium and 5g autotopoff chambers)
- Neptune Apex Lite Aquacontroller running the following modules: (Have the Reefkeep lite aquacontroller as well)
1. WXM module - controls my Vortechs and soon Radions with the next firmware update
promised Oct-Nov
2. ALD module and probe
3. Temperature probe
4. Ph probe
5. 8 socket individually controlled power-bar

Livestock:
1. Kole Tang
2. Fairy Wrasse
3. Cleaning common wrasse
4. two black clownfish
5. one lyretail anthias
7. starry blenny
8. sunrise goby + tiger pistol shrimp
9. tiger pistol shrimp in my refugium (have to get him a new friend since I cooked his previous goby - temp malfuncion on my heater)
10. cleaner shirmp
11. fire shrimp
12. feather worm
13. fighting conch
14. different hermits
15. tons of snails

Coral
1. Kenya tree - started with a small frag and now my tank is overrun by the stuff and I keep giving it away for free or a small trade and it doesn't seem like I'm getting anywhere
2. Green slimer
3. neon green birdsnest colony
5. random birdsnest
6. two GBTA (found one in my sump the other day)
7. watermelon zoas
8. fire and ice zoas
9. sunny d's zoas
10. neon green polyps
11. neon yellow polyps
12. bird of paradise
13. multicolor pocci (since I've raised my Alk and MG this turned more of a neon color)
14. random zoas (not sure of their name but about 5-6 different types)
15. green fuzzy mushroom
16. green/gold sinularia
17. a ton of rocks covered in mushrooms from my 10gallon mushroom tank
18. blue tenius - frag
19. Aussie dendro (might be a sun-coral though)
20. random monticap (i seem to be having a hard-time keeping these and not sure why as it is a beginner easy coral)
21. walnut zoas
22. white octospown
23. galaxia coral
24. Aussie acan
25. blue octospown
26. lime in the sky - frag
27. blue stag - frag
28. Humilis - frag
29. Chocolate chip zoa
30. Encrusting sunset monti
31. leather coral
32. various sponges
33. GBTA * 3

and probably others I'm missing out.

 

[Tahoe61]

Very cool transition and progression. You're final tank is very nice. I had to laugh at the "craptatstic light", I had that same light and those same mushrooms. It amuses me when hobbyist insist you need T5 HO for soft corals and mushrooms.

 

[Ginu]

About two weeks I had a tank crash caused by faulty GFO which killed most of my sps .... very sad day to come home after a few days of work and look at what seemed to be a half dead tank....

I did the switch from RowaPhos to BRS GFO and used less then the recommended amount, however it was either bad GFO or who knows what happened. Took the TWL reactor offline and next day the corals looked way better, havent put the GFO reactor back online and its been about two weeks now (tank is in recovery)

Lost 95% of the SPS and some LPS.. the only survivals are zoas, green slimer, 1/4 of my neon green birds nest, neon pocci, acan and all softies so I'll be posting some shots from before the crash.

 

[427HISS]

Very nice indeed. Pardon me, but what is a GFO ? Sorry to hear the loss !

 

[Ginu]

Very nice indeed. Pardon me, but what is a GFO ? Sorry to hear the loss !

GFO stands for Granular Ferric Oxide (if I'm not mistaken is a form of rust) which works to exhaust the phosphates by binding the silicates and phosphates.
Spoke with BRS and they said its possible the flow was too high in the reactor and it was grinding, however I really don't think the flow was the culprit here... they reimbursed 60$ worth of GFO but I lost 300$+ of sps...

 

[Small triggers]

Granulated ferric oxide...
Helps keep nitrates down...

 

[427HISS]

Never heard of it. Thanks for the lesson.

"reimbursed 60$ worth of GFO but I lost 300$+ of sps"
Well, that was nice.

 

[revhtree]

Great job! Keep us updated.

 

[Ginu]

Well its been a while and thought I should throw a little update.

After the GFO tank-crash I did a 40 gallon water change and added a few new critters to the mix... a Halloween urchin (slightly smaller than a tennis-ball), a tuxedo urchin (smaller than a golf-ball), two emerald crabs and a foxface which didn't make it to the display tank.
I feel the urchin is the most underrated cleanup crew there is... not sure why so few reefers keep these guys in their tanks... I have been fighting GHA, green and red turf algae, some kind of a wiry macro algae which I should have discarded right away(but didn't as a reefer said macro algae is good)....

Anyhow the Halloween urchin sits on my window and never seen him on the rocks.... he just cleans the sides of the tank like no other.... he also got on my overflow which was covered from top to bottom by this extremely tough, rough and short turf algae... this thing was a b!tch to clean and it grew back within days... my overflow is now clean.... it looks like there was never any algae there I will try to take a pic of the top where the urchin did not reach as he would have been out of the water (I will somehow have to clean this manually)
Only annoyance with this creature is the fact that it likes to carry frags around on his back... every few days I have to visit him with a wooden skewer and make him release my frags from my frag rack... if the frags are on a plastic plug then he has no problem carrying it arround, however if its on a small rock or coral plugs, he tends to drop them very fast.

The tuxedo urchin hangs out on the rocks, never seen him on the sides of the tank, and he is a small cleaning machine as well... cleaned all my rocks from turf, GHAand other nuisance algaes... my rocks are visible now and quite purple (could not be any happier).
I don't think a urchin can out-compete the coraline algae in a tank and I plan to give them some seaweed to chew on once every week or two, just to make sure they are properly fed.

The other main breakthrough was a surprise... as I have been battling with this cyano for the past 9-12 months.... and yesterday it was all gone out of the blue... not sure what caused this but I did change the parameters a bit, I've decided to raise the MG/CA/ALK levels from 1300/430/8 to 1450/450/11.
It is also a possibility that since my algae has been pretty much eradicated by the urchins, there is not much die-off which used to feed the cyano so it just died on its own as I haven't run any GFO/Carbon since the crash. I've also donated 95% of my Kenya trees to the LFS along with a 30Gallon water change, so time will tell if this will stay this way.

I've also decided to change my 10year old acrylic sump and side refugium to a Trigger Systems Ruby 36 sump so that should be coming within the next few weeks and I will replumb the tank with a herbie to eliminate noise and increase flow through the sump (I think the middle compartment will grow cheato). I do have a pretty big dilema and hope some reefers can help. The tank is a standard 4" 75G tank on a Aquaeon 4" stand which happens to have a center brace and I dont believe the sump will fit through without taking the brace off... how sturdy do you guys think that stand is? can it take the weight of the 75g tank+ rock? I was thinking in draining as much water as I possibly can (30+ gallons) and remove the center brace as it doesn't seem like it really does much, its basically just hammered from the inside with a few staples, definitively not a point of solidity but what do you guys think?
Has anyone taken the centre wood off from a 75g tank?

 

[powers2001]

I don't understand, are you taking the center brace out of the tank or stand? DONT take it out of the tank, it's there for a reason.

 

[Ginu]

I don't understand, are you taking the center brace out of the tank or stand? DONT take it out of the tank, it's there for a reason.

Out of the stand not tank... Basically I want to replace my previous 7 year old sump 10G sump with a Trigger Systems 36 which is much longer and wider, so the brace is in the way...

Tank is fine the way it is, I would not replace it.

 

[powers2001]

I would say okay to take stand center brace out. A lot of stands don't have center braces. You might be able to put the brace back in once you get the new sump in.

 

[Ginu]

I started dosing MB7 last Wednesday with the recommended starting dose and will probably try a little vodka to eventually achieve a low nutrient system within another week.

Things I've noticed since MB7 was dosed:
1. Cyano is dying very slowly (I thought at once point my Cyano was gone but that was just a illusion as the Radions were ramping down)
2. Skimmer is a little more active and corals look great.


Bought a Trigger Systems ruby 36 sump off a fellow reefer and a Vertex Omega 150 from BRS. Can't wait to get them both setup along with new plumbing which is also ordered from BRS, system should be a lot quieter than before using the Herbie method.

 

[Ginu]

I would say okay to take stand center brace out. A lot of stands don't have center braces. You might be able to put the brace back in once you get the new sump in.

Well I took the center brace out and slid in a Trigger Systems Ruby 36 sump and havent bothered to put the brace back in... its takes soo much space away and makes the access much harder. Its been about a month and havent had any issues.

Changed the skimmer from a BM Curve 7 to a Vertex Omega 150 since I had the extra space. Have had the Vertex in the sump for about 4 weeks now and its producing decent skimmate, but for some reason I think it can do better just having a tough time getting the right setup.

Changed my two MP10's to two MP40's and updated my Apex Controller to Fusion which now controls the Radions and my Pumps. Could not be happier although two MP40's is overkill for a 75... they are running 10-20% max

With all that being said, it looks like I'll be upgrading the 75 to a 120 custom three side starphire(4"x2"x2") with one piece eurobrace and internal middle overflow with two drains and two returns (will be doing a herbie on this as well) ; and the tank comes with a custom made stand as well. Sorry for the bad pics, that's all I got from the previous owner.