120 liter temperate tank

d.fast

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This is an old tank that I have kept for several years. I has had several crashes and changed a lot during that time. But it is a nice aquarium that might be fun to document. So I'll start this thread. This tank will probably be taken down in a few months. But I will probably store it somewhere since insulated tanks are not really a thing and it might be good to have for future projects...

The tank was started to house animals from our west coast, I saw another aquarist over there that posted a lot of tempting pictures. I was also intrigued about our own fauna because by now I had kept tropical reef fish for a few years and realized that I knew more about the animals on the other side of the planet than the animals two hours to the west. So this would be a learning experience beyond that the fish looked neat.

120 tank.JPG

I got this tank, a 120 liter tank. I didn't have a lot of funds and only one power circuit in the room i keep the tank in so I was on a budget on both cost and power consumption. And you never hit right on the first try so I was modest :)

Insulated.JPG

To keep the temps stable and the chiller from working as little as possible the tank was insulated. I used Styrofoam for all sides except the front glass pane.

Glass pane.JPG

The viewing pane had to be insulated too though. The room has many tanks in it and condensation was a huge problem, you could not watch the tank without it and the stand took a lot of damage from the dripping. I used aluminium profiles and silicone to attach a second viewing pane to the tank and sealing it. Since then I have worked a lot with getting the moisture in the room down and today condensation is less of a problem, but a naked glass pane would still be a huge temperature leak.

It would have been perfect to use 1 inch acrylic for the tank instead. But that was such a high cost over here that just the tank would have been more expensive than the entire budget I have used to running the tank for the last eight years... So an acrylic tank is still a dream...

Chiller.JPG

I bought a Resun Mini-200 chiller for the tank, it is fairly quiet and powerful enough for this tank, especially after it was insulated. I ordered this one new, but these days I make sure to snatch up chillers when I see them available when adds come up. Chillers are not that common around here because few people need them with the temps outside being fairly low during the year.

LEDs.JPG

I wanted to keep algea and kelp in the tank so I built an LED fixture for the tank with 630 nm, 660 nm and 20,000K white LEDs. Total power was about 60W. I still have this fixture and it grew most species well, would be interesting to check PAR.

LED fixture.JPG

I would probably change to PSU though. I wired the fixture as three parallel series. So if one string died then the other two would be driven harder. This was fine since I was applying lower amps then the maximum the LEDs could handle, even with just to stings. But if two strings died the last one would be fried. Today there are solutions for this problem, or rather simpler solutions. On the plus side it has been easy to repair the fixture and replace LEDs when they burned out.

First steps.JPG

This is probably the earliest pic I have of the tank running. In the start I used Tunze streamers for circulation, I put the magnets on the outside in the styrofoam. This worked ok, there was a lot of flow since the tank is small. But when I kept the strong lights on the kelp and algae grew like crazy. A backside of this was that the streamers became clogged in algae in one week, tops. I was a lof of maintenance use them. They also did add heat to the tank still, not a lot but once the fan in the chiller died and it did not chill the water anymore. The tank is so well insulated that the temps rose to 26 degrees celcius from just the streamers. Now that I use Air the tank will last for almost two days before the temps become dangerous, and it rises very slowly so the animals are not shocked.

You can also see a backside to the double glass. It is almost impossible to tank tank shots from a distance. You get a lot of reflections.
 
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d.fast

d.fast

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Here are a few animals I have kept, wit varying success.

Small goby.JPG

Here is a small sand goby(Pomatoschistus minutus). These are great fish, they are very small, about 2 inches(5cm) at most so they are great for small tanks. The size was always a problem for me though, they mostly became food. I will try to make a tank for these one day though. Will also have to find a good place to catch them aswell. They are not that common where I usually look.

Big goby.jpg

Here is a bigger goby! The black goby grows to at least three times the size of the sand goby. They are very hardy though and easy to keep. Has big mouths so small fish will disappear. This one I had for more than two years, was a great fish. Will revisit these as well. These are fairly common to catch from the bottom near harbors.

Starfish.JPG

This is a common starfish(Asterias rubens). They are very common, you can just pick them on the rocks. They grow very large and prefer to eat mussels. But they can be caught fairly small and eat many other foods. So they are easy to keep, they can also have very vibrant colors. Most fish don't bother them either. Good inhabitants.

Group photo.JPG

Here is a small group photo of the most common fish in the waters. It's the goldsinny wrasse(Ctenolabrus rupestris). I have a mixed relationship with these but they are a favorite. They are hardy, eat almost any food, super common and easy to catch... They are also mean and nasty :) They are mostly brown, but can be red sometimes, and also have a green tint. They don't bury at night, none of the wrasses on our coast does. They are superb hunters of shrimp so they can not be kept together, which is a great shame. But they are so energetic and thrive in most tanks so they are probably the best aquarium fish from our coast.

Simpa.jpg

This is another great fish, the shorthorn sculpin(Myoxocephalus scorpius) these grow large in the end but was very enjoyable. It mostly sits around and looks at things. It rarely swims about which makes it require a smaller tank than most similarly sized fish. They often have nice colors as well, so pretty fish. But boy do they have big mouths. They can swallow fishes that would seem impossible to fit. After I introduced this fish then number of inhabitants in they tank dwindled from 14 to three. The other two remaining fish were to quick and learned what he might do to them. So a tough fish to find mates to. But otherwise great, easy to feed. A small struggle to convert to frozen food but after that he ate every thing. Similar to a Lionfish in that regard. Similar mouth as well...

knoll o tott.jpg

Here is another pic of him along with an arm from another starfish, they are Marthasterias glacialis, did not find a popular name for them in english. They are not as colourful and grow much larger than the common starfish. But they are much easier to keep. More or less bulletproof. Or I had a good one. Very interesting look with its spiky appearance.

Spider crab.jpg

This is another great aquarium species! The great spider crab(Hyas araneus) is a much better aquarium animal than one might believe. They are fairly slow and have small claws, this is key because it means that they can not catch and kill fish or mussels. It mostly scavenges scraps and lives a nice peaceful life. This picture is from my kelp period when I used a lot of light on the tank. So he turned all woolly.

1 Krabba.JPG

Here he is more naked. As I said before they can co-exist with almost anything and don't have any desire to escape the tank. But you can only keep one. They do fine with each other until one of them molts. Then when the other one is soft the "friend" attacks... A shame, perhaps if you have a larger tank you could keep several.

Evil crab.jpg

Here is another crab... This is common edible crab(Cancer pagurus). This I will not recommend. When I introduced this crab the tank entered a dark period. He was quite small when I added him, I thought he would be a bit clumsy but harmles. I was very wrong. He was very cute the first months, almost a year. But then he changed. He murdered the spider crab in cold blood. And then he had a taste for the killing so he continued. He sneaked up on the other animals one by one and ripped them apart! Starfish, fish, mussel, oyster, urchin, airline hose to the skimmer, airstone. None could escape his wrath! He decided what could live in the tank, and he choose no-one. Except a goldsinny wrasse, probably because he could not catch him.

Ömsad krabba.jpg

The tank more or less crashed when he ripped the head of the sculpin, so after that I could no longer sustain the kelp with the nutrients from the food i added to feed the fish... Because I no longer had anything to feed. So a while after that I remade the tank into a deep-water tank with less light. It did make the tank easier to maintain so not all was bad. The pic above is one of the last molting he did. I say last because this crab actually died a few weeks ago, no idea why. He just suddenly died. I was not sad because I no longer had to worry what I was going to do with him when I upgraded the tank. Problem solved. Very easy to keep otherwise, but beware because he also flips large rocks. Very strong.

red algae alt.jpg

Here is an interesting thing that happened. About a year ago the tank suddenly was red. Very red. Some sort of algae bloom occurred. This lasted for seven months I believe. I had no idea what to do, it just did not end. I had a crash and changed 90% of the water, no difference. I introduced mussels to filter the water, but the crab crushed them. So I just waited and eventually I just let it be. To see if it would go away.

Red soup.jpg

Here is a bucket from a water change, it looks like a soda, very short visibility. It did disappear eventually. Do not remember what I did, but away it went. Not too sad about it.

Cracked pane.jpg

Here is another interesting thing. After a few years a little condensation appeared between the glass panels, gradually becoming worse. I solved this a few times during the winter. I put an airpump outside when it was freezing, because then the air is very dry. So I pump the air in between the panes replacing the air inside. This helps, but after a few years it only helped for a short while. A few months. The last time I tested this I left during the evening and came back next day. When I came down the outer glass was cracked right across. I had forgotten to put a valve on the outlet from the insulating glass. There was still a hole from last time I did this and I thought it would be enough. But it was not and the pressure became so much that the window cracked. Weird, but it did motivate me to finally cut away the glass and replace and reseal the thing.
 
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d.fast

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FTS 2017 green.jpg

Here's a shot of the tank two years ago, this was when it was at it's best as a hair algae tank :) It had such lush and vivid hair algae, tons of green colors. Had to be pruned often. Not much kelp, I had given up on them at this moment. They can be kept successfully. My friend has done it and a Norwegian inspiration has also done it. But I was quite content with this, it look nice and was easy to keep. The animals thrived as well, lots of hiding places. The only drawback was that the Tunze streamers got stuck with algae quickly and had to be cleaned often. So I installed airstones instead, also removed the skimmer by this point. Saw little need for it.

The airstones required no maintenance and provided a very consistent flow. Strong but at the same time gentle. The algae also proved very difficult for my pump feeding the chiller. It frequently caught algae in the impeller stopping the pump, that was not very fun to work on. Lots of foul words... In my future tank I will have a sump and put the chiller on the return pump. These days when I run the tank with little light I use a skimmer again, it's not that it is needed but without it skimmate accumulates on the surface from the airstone bubbles. The skimmer prevents that.

Shore crab.JPG

This is an interesting animal, that is hard to keep for a peculiar reason. It is a common shore crab(Carcinus maenas). It is very violent and kills everything it can. It is super quick and can dart around, eats everything it can get hold of. It buries in sand with only its eyes peeking out, looking fantastic. I can also tolerate high temps and live comfortably in a tropical tank, it is a highly invasive species in other parts of the world. All these things make it hard to find friends for it, but does not make it hard to keep. But it is also an escape artist. Within the first 24 hours you can count on it flying out of the tank and into the next room, have found these very far from the tank many times. You have to keep it in a tank with a strong lid. Otherwise a nice candidate for a species tank with zero maintenance. Can have very nice colors and patterns as well.

Monterad.JPG

A little more tech! My old fixture died once before and I did not have the energy to fix it. So I tested making a new one from cheap local parts. It uses 9w LED fixture the size of 24w T5 fixtures. These are easy to link. They are available in 3200K and 4000K variants. I used two 3200K and three 4000K. This is the fixture I used when I took the tank shot above with all the algae so it grew those well. Will test this one with my PAR meter when I get a chance. Now I use it as a temporary light when taking photos in tanks, it helps a lot and most cameras like the color temp.

Ramen.jpg

After the front glass cracked I have repaired the tank, gave it a strong clean while doing that. The old glass was simply mounted to an aluminium frame that I made with black silicone. It was a cheap solution and looked decent. But it was hard to install and I had to clean a lot then putting it up. This time I put a new glass in more crudely. Then I covered my work with plastic trim. It worked out pretty good. Did this a practice before fixing my upcoming tanks.

monterad.jpg

Here is a picture of when I mounted the glass. Was easier then I imagined.

Täcklister.jpg

This is the trim I made. The corners where cut well but I made them too short. Was hard to measure. But will take the experience with me. Managed to hide the imperfections fairly well in the end. Mounted these with double sided tape.

Fixat hörn.jpg

Here you can see one of the corners where I patched. Annoying but you don't notice it that well in person. The room is quite dark and the frame is white and bright.

Algsten.jpg

Here is a nice rock. Well the rock is not that special but it has these nice red algae that grow(very slowly) and it also has a bit of coralline. Not sure if it has grown at all, tends to grow very slow in coldwater tanks. Not sure why, it grows fairly fast i nature from what it seems. That is one of the more interesting parts of keeping these tanks. You are on your own a lot more when there are no books to consult and research on the internet is very limited. A new frontier in a way... But the majority of husbandry can be transferred from reef tanks.

Snultra.jpg

Here is a picture of the only fish I have that remembers the terror of the evil crab. He witnessed the holocaust he brought and oppressed the tank with for more than a year... But he survived. He is probably traumatized by the experience because he now is the meanest animal in the tank...

Tejste.jpg

Here is a sneaky picture of my current rock gunnel(Pholis gunnellus). It's a very nice eel like fish. I has a small mouth and is friendly, rarely bothers other fish or animals. Likes sitting and checking it's surroundings. They unfortunately are very prone to jumping out of the tank. My tank is covered fairly well but I have lost these before. Will have to cover it even more. But there are always small openings where hoses and cables enter the tank. Will have to work on minimizing that as well.
 

A worm with high fashion and practical utility: Have you ever kept feather dusters in your reef aquarium?

  • I currently have feather dusters in my tank.

    Votes: 69 37.5%
  • Not currently, but I have had feather dusters in my tank in the past.

    Votes: 62 33.7%
  • I have not had feather dusters, but I hope to in the future.

    Votes: 25 13.6%
  • I have no plans to have feather dusters in my tank.

    Votes: 28 15.2%
  • Other.

    Votes: 0 0.0%
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