125 g Mixed Reef Build

[mmodo]

So I have kept freshwater tanks for a while and I have enjoyed it but I have been very interested in doing a reef since before I started freshwater. I guess I wanted the practice of the routine first. My only difficulty was easing my partner into being around fish tanks and getting a tank big enough that would accommodate saltwater (the guy at my LFS said it’s not smart to start at 20 gallons, but at 50+ for stable parameters).

I was chatting with my coworker and he said that he had a tank that’s been sitting around since he bought it and he wants it gone. Using hand measurements, it was somewhere between a 55 gallon and a 90 gallon tank (the footprint doesn’t change too much between a 55, 75, and 90 surprisingly). I was more than willing to take it off his hands and I started my research by pricing out what I would need for each size, what fish I could get, and how to set it up. I wasn’t going to drill holes, so how was I going to get water into a sump? What did I want in a sump? Should I build the stand or buy one? I even went and got a 20 gallon long for a sump on a Petco sale before I had the display tank.

I quickly started to assume it was a 75 gallon tank. The final measurements showed it was a 55 gallon. I was actually kind of bummed because I knew I would probably want to go bigger eventually and I didn’t want to buy all of this equipment to re-buy it in a few years and talk my partner into the upgrade (probably the hardest part).

So I was scrolling on Facebook Marketplace and saw a 125 gallon tank with holes drilled in for the sump with a simple wood stand for $150. It was only 3 hours away. I talked my partner into a road trip and picked it up! To me, if I bought this tank brand new, I would be looking at $900 at least and I wouldn’t have holes drilled for a sump. The gifted 55 gallon tank would have been $190 if I had bought that.

My coworker came by to drop off his tank and he helped us remove the tank from our storage spot so we could start doing water tests on the tanks. The 55 g was brand new but had moved across the country and been stored for a while, so we did it just to make sure. It ended up being perfectly fine.

The big test was the 125 g. The silicon wasn’t dry and didn’t have anything growing underneath the seam so it looked okay to me, but we had to make sure. We brought it outside, put some bulkheads in the drill holes and put some plugs in to keep the water from draining out. We put a little water at the bottom to test the bulkheads and the plugs started to leak but the bulkheads were fine. We pulled the bulkheads and plugs out and dried them off, then put plumbers tape around the plugs and retried the next morning. There were small leaks coming from the plugs (a few drops every 10 or so minutes) but the bulkheads had a seal. We put plastic cups over the bulkheads to catch water so we can see if a seal is leaking. By the end of the day, the bottom of the cups weren’t even full of water from the plugs and the seals were fine. For the actual test, we kept the tank filled with water for the week to see how it would do. It ended up staying for 3 weeks because we were busy building a new stand and doing other projects. So I can say the tank is pretty water tight.

This tank had quite a bit of sticky residue from tape on the top lip and on the outside from a previous storage period, I assume. I spent a morning scraping sticky residue off with isopropyl alcohol and a scraper from the kitchen.

The stand that came with the tank made me nervous, so I went and rebuilt it. It is also too short so the sump would have no space above it for me to do any level of maintenance. The stand was also made of 2x4 wood, which may be fine, but I want more security that it can hold the weight before I put it in my house. It also has no waterproofing on the wood, it’s just half painted.

We went and got 2x6 pieces of wood and we spent the weekend cutting the wood into the appropriate sizes, sanding where things needed to be sanded, and waterproofing every piece of wood before the stand was constructed. I’ve seen a lot of people in videos waterproof after the stand is built and I know I would be the one to have water end up in crevices where there is no waterproofing.

We plan to enclose the stand with plywood and put doors on it to make it look nice and to keep the dogs out of it. It’s been a lower priority because I’d like to have as much room as possible for plumbing the sump.

Since I already bought a 20 gallon long for the original sump, I figured I would turn it into a quarantine tank for fish. I have a 5 gallon tank that is only holding freshwater shrimp so I broke it down for corals and invert quarantine but I am tempted to get a 10 gallon to be more safe on fluctuating parameters.

As much as it is considered overkill for a lot of aquarists, I don’t plan to put anything in the DT that hasn’t been quarantined. To me, it doesn’t hurt to spend the time quarantining them. They’re in my house and I get to watch them, just in a different tank. I’m also not in a rush to add loads of fish and be done as soon as possible. I imagine it will benefit the maturity of the tank too.

I plan to buy my fish from a LFS that does treat the fish but I suspect they use minimal treatments and only do full treatments if they see something to treat. How they answer my questions will determine how intensive my QT protocol will be. I don’t want to damage fish livers by having high amounts of copper if they’ve already gone through the process. For corals and inverts, they will basically be in a fallow tank just to get rid of all life stages of ich before fish are introduced.

So the QT tanks will be set up before the DT and sump. The timing should pan out that I can finish other projects, the plumbing, and the cycling of the main tank just in time for inverts and fish to come out of quarantine. I think it will also help the DT if I have cycled rock that I can just place in.

I bought the sand on sale from BRS, ordered enough rock for all of the tanks, got nitrifying bacteria and ammonia, then cycled everything.

On a trip to a nearby city, I picked up 10 astrea snails to start with and a GSP. Two snails died in the first weekend. One died while on vacation because it flipped itself over. Two got stuck in the intake of the filter while on vacation. I didn’t find them until a month later. So I’m down to 5 after 2 months of quarantine. The GSP never fully reopened after a coral dip and slowly started dying because of it. I started feeding phyto plankton twice a week and it started to come back slowly.

I ordered from ReefCleaners since the shipping costs the same as the gas to go into the city to get snails. I ordered 15 turbo snails, 15 trochus snails, 10 astrea snails, 5 mangroves, and some macroalgae. Every snail was DOA, none of the mangroves were shipped, and the macroalgae was partially melted when the box shipped. Against my better judgement, I put them in the QT tank per the instructions. After two days, the tank had an ammonia spike and a smell. I pulled everything and accidentally killed my small GSP frag by dropping a turbo snail on it. I contacted ReefCleaners about it and they gave a refund, but I’m left with a dirty tank with high ammonia even after 50% water change and out $40 in shipping, so I’ve learned my lesson.

We went into the city to get more snails and some frags to start quarantining for when the big tank is ready. We got 5 more astrea snails and 5 nassarius snails. I was hoping for a cerith or something for sand but they only had nassarius snails and they are huge, at least three inches long. They’re cool to watch come in and out of the sand.

It was Frag Friday at the store so I got more frags than I was planning on. I got a good healthy GSP, a small Pulsing Xenia, and a green clove polyp. They had some cool looking Favias that I was eying, but I didn’t want to test my luck. I was surprised they even had the Pulsing Xenia since most stores refuse to keep it due to how well it reproduces, but I saw it in a display tank, so I got one. They all came out of the coral dip with no issues and didn’t have much debris on the plug that looked suspicious. There might be an aiptasia on the clove polyp but it also looks like a baby clove polyp. I think they were all open and showing colors/pulsing within 30 minutes. I also gave them some phyto to start with so we’ll see how they grow.

I did end up finding an astrea snail and a nassarius snail in the intake pipe of the filter again. I went and found a guard so snails don’t get lost in there again. It wasn’t placed originally because the tank is shallow and the pipe sits on the sand bed, but I’ll have to deal with it. The astrea snail was fine. The nassarius snail was sluggish, but eventually died over a week later.

A lot of time working on this has been waiting for things to ship to me. Due to the dimensions of the tank, I had to get custom overflows to put in. It seems the market to get these is only on ebay. I contacted one seller to get something put in place and it took just over a month to get it listed while this guy was on and off vacation. I bought a sump kit too so I can silicone it all at the same time. So that all arrived and then I had to wait for silicone to arrive. Who knew that it would take 10 days to get a bottle of silicone to arrive, meanwhile 160 pounds of rock arrived in 2 days.

The rock was washed so it would be ready for gluing. I laid it all out on a table to dry out. The table is 6 foot long and 30 inches wide, so technically larger than the footprint of the tank. I did put a few small rocks and some filtration media in the QT tank so I could steal it to put in the DT.

 

[Bigfishy1]

Welcome to reef to reef. Good luck with the tank. Just take your w. Nothing good happens fast in a reef tank.

 

[Gumbies R Us]

Following along!

 

[mmodo]

The clove polyp has been irritated recently and I think it's from an aiptasia growing underneath it. I went to poke it with a needle and some lemon juice and nearly jumped out of my skin from a bristleworm crawling across the coral. I got it off but started watching all of the corals. There's something else swimming around that I can't identify and hiding between the GSP and the clove polyp. It's small enough to be a worm but looks like baby shrimp? There's also indication of the worms that live in sand mucus castles they build themselves. So all of the corals are sitting in an iodine dip at the moment.

 

[mmodo]

We got the corner overflows and the sump siliconed in before we left out of town, which allowed for it to cure without me messing with it.

Since we've come back, we fitted the plumbing, but haven't glued it together. I want to do some other things to the stand before we set it in stone.

I also pulled all of the sawed off/flat rock to see where they can be placed to have a good design. I started gluing some rock together but gluing 2 rocks togethe took up a third of my Glue Masters Thick glue, so this might be a long process of ordering and gluing little by little.

I did tape off the tank to see where points of interest may be. My go-to design seems to be arches but I want more interest at the focal points, so more research is needed. It looks like a 40 lb box got me to roughly 10-11 in of height so I have a lot to play with.

 

[mmodo]

I finished the entire rockscape last week, which used 3 out of the 4 boxes of rock. That should be around 120 pounds. I plan to break up some of the bigger leftover rock to place as little islands on the bottom. Some will also probably end up in the sump. I'll probably take a rock from the invert QT tank and place it in, too, since one of them is getting covered in coralline already.

I was out of town this past week, so I was able to bring home some fish to start quarenting (the closest salt store is 2 hours away). I got another coral, a peppermint shrimp, and a pair of clowns.

The peppermint shrimp has dug himself a burrow to hang out in. I assume he comes out at night. I've seen him catch an amphipod and eat it, which I was not expecting.

I've also noticed a considereable difference in the invert QT tank the past two weeks, which matches with when I saw amphipods and some copepods appear. The algae has drastically decreased. All of the other corals, except for the new one, have had growth in this tank. They do get fed with phyto 1-2 times a week.

The clowns went in their own seperate QT tank. They had a long transition to the new water since I wasnt sure if the store is kept at hyposalanity or not. I was going to freshwater dip them, but I realized I was going to dose them for any parasite anyways, so it wasn't worth the trouble. They went into the tank to settle overnight and I dosed them with prazipro in the morning. I was expecting them to have a drastic reaction to the medicine but they seem chill. They swim together in the same spot above a pvc hideout. It's hard to get them to eat pellets, mainly because these fish are tiny (maybe a hair bigger than 1") and I think they struggle to see them and have them fit in their stomachs. I did feed them some mysis shrimp yesterday, which they happily ate if it passed in front of their faces. The plan is another prazi treatment followed by copper then they'll be ready to go. They'll be hard to see in this big tank.

 

[mmodo]

Well, it's been a while since I had an update.

We spent a good amount of time completing the piping and getting everything set up for the tank. We did have a very small leaking issue at the junction of one of the bulkheads. It wasn't where the rubber met the glass, but where the bulkhead met the piping. The leak wasn't all too large either, just a few drops over a week. We decided to drain the one side that had the issue and glued the pipe into the bulkhead and do some final checks. We filled it up to start cycling while we went out of town for vacation in October.

The clownfish had a successful but long quarantine period. They went through treatment with no issues, showed no signs of illness, and ate with no issues. They stayed in the QT tank while the DT tank was cycling but also because these clownfish are very small and I had a fear that they would get through the slots of the overflow corners and end up in the sump or they would not be able to get food. They were maybe an inch when we got them so they are very easy to find in a 125 gallon six foot tank.

The clownfish have been in the big tank for a few weeks now and they have been doing just fine in the big tank. They stuck together in the corner with the powerhead and spent a week pretending to struggle. Eventually, the male found the opposite side of the tank and they mostly stay to their sections. The male will come over to the other side and hang out or get food. Something I have noticed is that the female has nearly doubled in size but the male has only increased in size marginally. The internet is saying that it's normal but I try to give the male a tad bit more food to give him a fighting chance.

I have added the four quarantined corals on some islands as well. The GSP is more than happy. The clove polyps and zoa seem content. The pulsing xenia does not seem too happy, mainly because I think it is too much flow for it. I'm hoping it limits the growth. Half of the xenia actually split off of the frag plug in the coral QT tank so I have a back up frag soaking up nutrients on the back burner.

We now have two firefish in quarantine. I didn't think how different in personality they would be compared to the clownfish. I know firefish are considered very shy but I have found that they come out and hang around when their lights come on. The clownfish definitely are like little puppies that come up to the glass while the firefish just hang around. The firefish are much cleaner when it comes to feeding time. The clownfish basically have ADHD and get distracted from food while the firefish are hunting for the food until it's gone.

I am waiting for a sufficient build up of algae to move over the nassarius snails and peppermint shrimp over to the big tank. The trochus/astrea snails are being held back in QT because it looks like they have collected some vermatid snails on their shells. I did pick up some bumblebee snails to try and help the issue but it may come down to crushing them with a pair of pliers and monitoring them to make sure there are no more.

We did go to an expo for coral so start the QT process again. My goal was to get something a little more difficult corals to try out. I did pick up a mushroom, a zoa, a duncan, candy cane, and cyphaestra for the next step. They had a deal for seven corals for $100, which seemed well worth it. I did end up getting some sps corals in the mix that make me nervous to try to keep alive but we will see if I rise up to the challenge.

Looking forward for the tank, I'm basically putting a pair of fish in every 2-3 months. I knew I would start with the clownfish and the firefish first, but the next pair is up in the air for me, mainly because I haven't picked specific types of species.

I would like a goby and a blenny but I don't know which type to get. I would like to have a variety of personalities where maybe one is perching, one free swims more, and one is more in the sand. I'm just apprehensive about which ones should I get, should I get more than one blenny/goby or will it be too much, should they be quarantined together? Do I get a royal gramma next? Should I start getting groups of fish such as anthias, chromis, or wrasse?