216g tank upgrade

[Bucko]

Hey everyone,

After 3 years of maintaining a nice little nano reef i've finally upgraded to something bigger.
Ordered the tank in october with a local tank builder and it arrived in december just before the holidays.



The display tank is 819 litres which is about 216 gallons, with a 25-ish gallon sump.
Display tank dimensions are: 180cm by 65cm high and 70cm wide (70.8 inches x 25.6 inches x 27.5 inches) with 2.1cm (0.83 inch) thick glass.

Equipment:
- Tank builder branded return pump (basically a dcp 8000)
- Bubble magus A9 (very happy with the bubble magus skimmer in my frag tank. This one seems a bit loud though, maybe because it's in the living room. May be replaced)
- 2 x Maxspect xf350 cloud gyres
- Reefled 160s (1 for now 2 more on the way)
- 600W Titanium heater with aqua medic controller
- Kamoer x1 dosing pump

In my nano tank i had some nice results using all for reef so i planned to dose it in this tank as well though will have to evaluate how this goes, not the cheapest solution as i'll be dosing a lot more vs the nano. However I currently mix it myself which makes it more affordable.

With a tank this big I really didn't want to break my back hauling pails around for water changes and especially not for filling, so i've built a new water mixing station to make life a bit easier. Plumbed 2x 200l (52g) barrels together with a dcp-10000 and attached a garden hose (without metal parts and safe tubing) on a coil in order to easily reach the new tank.



In meanwhile I had already started to cure about 20 pounds of live rock for about 2 months, and at the same time added some Bio spheres and blocks that I still had lying around to the sump of the nano to seed the new tank.

For the aquascape I decided to try to build something nice to look at while the rock was still bare but also trying to take future coral growth into account. Ordered about 200 pounds of dry rock, and one box of marco foundation rock and spent a couple days building the aquascape. Used the superglue and sand method which worked really well to build a structure relatively quickly, and then reinforced all the joints with mortar. After this i covered the mortar with superglue and sand to hide the joints. Good times smashing rocks on the garage floor in between holiday dinners etc



Here is the completed aquascape, I built it fairly modular, what you see is comprised of 6 pieces in total so that I can hopefully move them around or remove them fairly easily if the need arises.
Left an open space on the left which is where the aquascape of the nano will be placed in order to keep my first ever reef going in the new tank.



Added some Caribsea arag-alive sand (special grade which hopefully won't blow around everywhere) and then started to fill!
Even with the new mixing station it still took 3 days to make all the RODI water and mix it with Tropic Marin pro reef in order to fill the tank. Again trying to fit everything in between the holiday festivities because i really wanted to get the tank wet and run in the equipment. Was very happy when it was finally full and also quite pleased with how the mixing station and filling tube did their job. Also added the live rock and seeded filter media at this point.



Ran it for 3 weeks with the lights off to break in the equipment and build up some biofilm, with occasional ghost feeding.
And finally yesterday i transferred my nano reef to the new tank! Seeing as i'm not adding any extra fish for now the existing bio filter in the nano reef aquascape should be enough to cope with the current bioload, but did add an ammonia alert and some bottled nitrifying bacteria just to be sure.



Unfortunately moving the rocks from the nano didn't go as smooth as I had hoped, i tried to move everything gently with corals still attached to the rocks but it was quite difficult to actually grip the rock without breaking any coral, especially the red monti cap took a beating (didn't help that it had also started to grow against the glass).
Also had to re-glue a few of the euphyllias which was a real pain to get them glued exactly the way they were before.
The two clowns have settled in nicely and the royal gramma was a bit stressed but started to calm down today and is eating so i'm happy!

Here is the mayhem left over in the nano:



On the plus side I've made a lot of monti frags
Most of these corals will be moved to the frag tank for the time being.

That's about it for now! Fingers crossed the whole tank doesn't get taken over by algea now that the light is on, herbivores will be added accordingly. Will of course update this thread if anything happens or when it starts to fill out!

 

[TX_REEF]

Awesome upgrade!! I, too, am a smashing-rocks-in-the-garage enthusiast

 

[Cthulukelele]

Exciting stuff! Will be following!

 

[Bucko]

Tank has been running for about 4 months now and figured it was time for a little update.
So far nothing major has changed, mainly under the radar things like additional clean up crew.

Noticed some small Aiptasia growing and instead of spending a fortune on Berghia like I used to I figured I'd try my luck with peppermint shrimp.
Ordered 2 peppermint shrimp and received 1 peppermint and 1 Kuekenthali cleaner shrimp. They rarely show themselves but they did the job, so far no more Aiptasia. Really like the pattern on the Kuekenthali. It's quite skittish so hard to get a sharp pic but here's a video. In the video you can also see that I removed the goni from the rockwork since it didn't agree with the flow there. However a small portion was apparently still attached and has started to grow out again!

Also added a second skunk cleaner shrimp in the hopes of it pairing with the one already in the tank and producing eggs which could be a tasty treat for the fish and corals. This week I noticed both of them carrying what looks like a bunch of eggs so it will be snack time soon!



The Trapezia crab that once hitchhiked it's way into my previous tank is still very happy in the purple stylo, always fun to observe it's crabby ways.



Added a couple new corals but not too many since I'm still only running one light and real estate below this light is limited.
A few Goni's were added hope to create a little Goni garden, they're on frag tiles on the substrate for now until they can go to their permanent spot when more lights get added.

In my previous tank I never had any luck with wall hammers but I added one now which seems to be doing great so far. Also added a torch which will be moved later (again when second light gets added) so that it doesn't bother it's frogspawn neighbour. So far they seem to be getting along but since I would like to add more torches they will get their own area.



Also bought a tiny baby plate coral which has grown a bit since I first got it, really like the coloration on this one. The picture doesn't do it justice but it has a nice pink edge. Looking forward to seeing this one get bigger.



Rearranged the monti caps that were also in the previous tank and they have started to grow, hope to get a nice 3 tone Montipora corner here:



And finally I pulled the trigger on a single stratosphere zoanthid polyp that I saw at a LFS. Was hesistant because in my previous tank most of the zoanthids seemed to not do very well but since my lord of the rings polyps were growing in this tank I went for it. No regret so far as it's sprouted 3 new heads so far.
Hope to grow these guys out into a nice big colony, I've only ever seen them as a couple polyps at most so would be great to see!



Fish wise I've slowly started to add a few new inhabitants. Nothing spectacular mainly utility fish such as a starry blenny and a yellow wrasse. Also added a firefish goby and a pink streaked wrasse.
Getting more and more bubble algea now so a rabbitfish will be next on the shopping list.
The starry blenny seems to keep most algea at bay so I'm supplementing it with Nori sheets on a clip.



Really like the pink streaked wrasse it's very quirky and inquisitive if a bit shy at first.

Overall I'm quite pleased with how it's going so far and I hope I can stay on course slow and steady. Some of the uglies have come and gone, as you can see the substrate is far from pristine but for now I'm not overly worried about it.



Here you can see the algea growth on the rockwork which illustrates how far the 1 light reaches.
I had a millepora frag in my frag tank which I added to the rockwork but it's not getting enough light, it's surviving but not really growing much so that will hopefully be a happy coral when light number two gets activated. Same for the green stylo to the left of it.



To finish off here's a picture of the full tank as it is today:



Thanks a lot for reading this far and until the next update!