135G SPS Cube - Designing for long term stability.

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Wiskey

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following along. Hoping to pick up some tips and tricks for SPS, I can't ever keep them.
Welcome to the fun!!!

The best SPS advice I have is to be as boring as possible.
-Set a regular schedule for testing, water changes, maintenance, pump cleaning, and stick to it.
-Keep Parameters (including P04 and NO3) stable - They don't have to be perfect, but they can't move around.
-Keep hands out of the tank.
-Wait at a month after making a change to observe the result.
-Don't make more than 1 change in a month, and never change the tank to make one coral happy.

You know the old saying - SPS - Stability Promotes Success.

While we are on the parameter conversation I should mention mine.
  • Alk - 7.5 tested 4x per day. I will make a dosing change if it is trending up or trending down but only if it keeps climbing for multiple days.
  • CA - 430 tested 2x per day. I let this one float a bit, anything from 400 to 450 is fine I just try and keep it still where it lands.
  • MAG - 1272 tested 2x per day. I also let this one float anything from 1200 to 1400 is fine in my book I just want it to not move very much.
  • Phosphate 0.06 to 0.12 tested weekly. This is higher than some, ULNS has not worked for me, I had coral bleaching issues and slow growth. I find this to be a nice window to be in.

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So,.. right now I'm working on plumbing my sump into the room behind, but I am VERY picky about noise. If I can't hear my (dead silent) celling fan (on low) louder than the tank when I'm standing right next to the tank then there is a problem in my mind. After being married (and now not married) I'm afraid I've become way to triggered by any noise from the tank.

I almost wish there were more traffic noise here.

Here's the problem. The only way to make a drain as quiet as I require is a bean animal drain, which has to achieve a full syphon. Now I need to plumb 6 feet over to my sump. I've never done this before, and I'm not finding others that really have either. The only advice I've really had which is useful was to not use any 90 Deg fittings. Unfortunately due to the path I need to go, right now I have 5, 90 deg fittings.

It's making me really want to leave the sump under the tank, but the tank room with a frag tank will be so cool! Plus being on one system is good for everything.

It's a $300 experiment, that includes cutting at least 12 pretty big holes out of my drywall, but if I don't at least try I know I'll always wonder how awesome this could have been. But I'm having trouble finding the motivation to take this risk if you know what I mean.

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I made a little progress this weekend. I have leveling feet in the sump base now, and I put a hanger on the back for the Fuge Light. That's a 150W Fuge light that belts out a ton of par! It gives me lots of flexibility to hang it higher or lower.

I'm also fed up with cleaning coraline out of my skimmer so I attached some black Acrylic onto the baffles with a couple dabs of silicone,.. this will help a great deal.

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It has been a really big weekend!!! I cut over to the sump in the back room this weekend, and I've been working on leaks today. Here's where we are at:
IMG_6643.JPG


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I have lots of wire management to do, and the Trident and Dosing vessels will go on shelves I'll put under the Frag Tank when I build that stand, but now things are so much easier to get to and work on.

Also, I only have one return so far, that's because I apparently forgot to order a flow sensor for the second one. It's on the way now.

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I drilled my Frag tank yesterday! I'm hoping to build a 2x4 stand for it this weekend and maybe even get it running. Parts for my second return are coming in today and tomorrow so hopefully I can get that finished out too.

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I have another big step done! The second return is up and running. I was actually able to overwhelm my drain using both pumps at 350+ GPH so I turned the Jaebo back to 300 and all is well.

Now I'm running 350 GPH through the Iwaki, and 280 through the Jaebo.
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I took another step! The Frag tank stand is done. This is not how I would recommend building a stand, but for this case with the sump to the side it works great. I needed to overlap the return pumps and such which is why I made it offset.


IMG_6730.JPG


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AND!!!!
The frag tank is up and running. I put some leathers in there and a couple mushroom frags for now. Although this is connected to my main system the return is only something like 200 GPH so this tank needs to cycle as well. That rock is dry rock and it will cycle fast, but I don't move enough water in and out of the system to just be ready to go right off.

I will be getting a frag rack of some kind soon, and I have to address an issue with microbubbles being pulled all the way through the sump due to the much higher flow that I'm running now.
IMG_6764.JPG


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I have a new FTS!!! I'm excited that the corals are starting to get big enough that you can see some of them in a full tank shot.

IMG_4222.jpg


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I had to remove some leathers that were in really bad spots, in the process I knocked down the Anacropora on the top right of the first photo. It didn't need as much light and flow as it was getting so I decided to move that down and shuffle the candy cane to a better spot for it. Here's the tank a couple hours after the great coral shuffle:

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Hello all!

I have a camera mounted above my cabinetry pointed at this tank. The purpose of this is to capture images that will be stitched together into a timelapse video to show years of growth in seconds. I've done this a couple times before with my 75 and I had people asking to hear more about the tank.

With this new system I decided to do a tank tour video first so I can link from the growth video to it so that people can see more about the system. This is that tank tour video. I will link the growth video when it's done:



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My tank is still not well. I've lost about 8 frags or so, most of them had never really taken off. Everyone seems to agree that keeping NO3 levels above 0 is important, so I'm continuing to dose NO3, but I've made a few other changes to try and get things back on the rails. I have lowered light levels and I'm continuing to watch all the parameters very closely to make sure something else doesn't swing. I have done a couple of water changes, just keeping my fingers crossed at this point.

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Some corals are still doing fine!
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Here is an FTS:
IMG_4445.jpg


Whiskey
 

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I'm sorry you're dealing with that. Hopefully you get it figured out soon.
 
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I'm sorry you're dealing with that. Hopefully you get it figured out soon.
Thank you Daniel! I hope so too. With the changes I'm starting to see my Alk usage going back up a little bit in the last couple days, so I take that as a positive sign.

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This tank was struggling for the last two months, and after finding a couple minor things (bad calibration solution which made me think 31ppt salt was 35 was the biggest), I honestly think that a renewed focus on stability was the biggest factor in turning things around.

In the last couple weeks my system really seems to recovering fast. Coral growth has taken off again, corals are encrusting, I'm getting growth tips back, and the rate of consumption of Alk and CA has gone through the roof. Prior to the tank starting to struggle it used 80 ML of Alk per day to stay at 8 DKH, then it went down to 40 while the corals were dying and doing badly. Now I'm up to 120 ML per day! And growth is faster than ever before, I'm also seeing better pylop extension so I take all these things as awesome signs.

Now for some updated pictures:
IMG_0419 by Wiskey2727, on Flickr

IMG_0444 by Wiskey2727, on Flickr

IMG_0445 by Wiskey2727, on Flickr

IMG_0455 by Wiskey2727, on Flickr

IMG_0461 by Wiskey2727, on Flickr

IMG_0469 by Wiskey2727, on Flickr

IMG_0500 by Wiskey2727, on Flickr

Whiskey
 

Daniel@R2R

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This tank was struggling for the last two months, and after finding a couple minor things (bad calibration solution which made me think 31ppt salt was 35 was the biggest), I honestly think that a renewed focus on stability was the biggest factor in turning things around.

In the last couple weeks my system really seems to recovering fast. Coral growth has taken off again, corals are encrusting, I'm getting growth tips back, and the rate of consumption of Alk and CA has gone through the roof. Prior to the tank starting to struggle it used 80 ML of Alk per day to stay at 8 DKH, then it went down to 40 while the corals were dying and doing badly. Now I'm up to 120 ML per day! And growth is faster than ever before, I'm also seeing better pylop extension so I take all these things as awesome signs.

Now for some updated pictures:
IMG_0419 by Wiskey2727, on Flickr

IMG_0444 by Wiskey2727, on Flickr

IMG_0445 by Wiskey2727, on Flickr

IMG_0455 by Wiskey2727, on Flickr

IMG_0461 by Wiskey2727, on Flickr

IMG_0469 by Wiskey2727, on Flickr

IMG_0500 by Wiskey2727, on Flickr

Whiskey
Looking awesome!
 

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