110 Gallon Santa Fe Reef

[stpnrazr]

Hello All,

I have been working on a new reef tank for a little over a year. At this point I feel like it has settled down and I can add a few more corals and watch everything grow for a while.

I have been keeping fish for over 50 years, and reef tanks for about 25, so I think I have made about 90% of all possible mistakes. There's always room for more. This tank is just to make me feel happy. No big challenges, just some softies, leathers and easy SPS.

When we moved here two years ago, we brought the custom stand from my old 90 gallon, so the footprint was limited to 12X48". I decided on a 112 gallon tall (really a 110,) from Planet Aquariums, with a three hole overflow.

I built a sump from a 29 gallon tank, and plumbed the overflow to have something like a Bean Animal drain.

Most of the equipment is from my old tank. The lights are ReefBreeder V2 48", the skimmer is my old SWC workhorse, and the the return is an Eheim 1262. I had planned to buy a Ca reactor rather than DIY, but then I saw the prices , so I built my own again. Will discuss that more later.

All of that is controlled by a Neptune Classic.

It took some time to build and assemble everything, then test it with freshwater, but it all worked.

Coming up:
*Equipment list
*Substrate
*Livestock

 

[Rocks reef]

Looks like it will be nice build! Keep us posted on how it goes.

Also, Welcome to R2R!

 

[stpnrazr]

Thanks for the welcome!

So, as mentioned above, most of the equipment came from the old tank in Maryland.

Apex Classic Controller
Reef Breeders Photon V2 light.
Tunze Fuge light
3X Tunze Nano 6040 for circulation
Saltwater Connection (now defunct) skimmer
16 gallon ATO tank (gravity fed to float valve)

I bought a new BRS 300W titanium heater.

I also made a new DIY Ca reactor to replace the previous one. All one needs is a big tube for the medium, and a way to empty and fill it, tubing for recirculation, a port for CO2, ports for entry and exit of tank water, and a port for a pH probe.

That is easy enough to build out of 4" clear PVC and a few fittings.

Then it just needs to be hooked up with some vinyl tubing, JG fittings, and a circulating pump. Then, of course, testing for leaks.

This is what things look like when the stuff is in the sump.

I have also included float switches in the ATO reservoir and return section of the sump, in case things run dry, and leak detectors on the floor under the tank and in the cabinet next to the Ca reactor, just in case.

Next step, substrate, or "are you really going to ship those rocks and sand all the way across the country?"

 

[stpnrazr]

I brought something like 80 lbs of now dead rock, and about 100 lbs of fine aragonite sand from the old tank. I wanted a good, old-fashioned deep sand bed so that the jawfish would have plenty of depth for digging. I added all of this to the tank, then mixed and added the ASW (Instant Ocean), and let it run.

To this, I added 25 lbs of aquacultured branch rock from Tampa Bay Saltwater. I have always loved their rock and the life that travels with it.

I had ordered the rock to arrive when I had a few weeks to add it and deal with the inevitable algae blooms and whatever else might have happened, but one of their people got injured so the shipment was delayed. It arrived about a week before I left for a three-week trip to Mexico, so my wife was stuck watching the hitchhiker emerge and the hair algae bloom.

I forgot to take pictures during most of the setup process, mostly because I was too busy actually setting up. Imagine a tank full of rock, sand and water being taken over by Derbesia.

When I got back, it was a bit of a mess, but I could pull out a lot of algae manually, and added small cleanup crew:
*Doliatus rabbitfish (well, maybe virgatus)
*Purple decorator urchin
*6 captive bred Trochus snails
*6 Mexican Turbos
*10 supposed white hermits, really a mix
*6 Nassarius snails.

Almost all of them did very well. Over the past year, the Trochus have become huge, and I am thinking I may need to rehome a few.

There were also quite a few hitchhiking grazer on the TBS rock, including:
*~12 keyhole limpets
*Rock-boring urchin
*Orange fleshy limpet.
*~12 porcelain crabs (not grazers, really, but excellent scavengers)

Within a month or so, the algae was under control, and I had started to add some corals and more fish. This is a photo from just under a year ago.

The next post will describe the corals and fish so far.