225g CDA SPS dream build

[AaronFReef]

I researched more and found it’s a bad idea to use my tap water for the reason that it’s already full of minerals which will mess up my ability to mix up my intended Brightwell Neomarine to its advertised specs. If my tap was 5 dKh and I mixed in 8 dKh worth of salt, it would likely precipitate some portion which I don’t want so I used my new booster pump Aquatec 6840 to pump the tank through the RO. It’s very very slow this way as the pressure is low but it’s saving a ton on anion resin as it’s already degassed from my high co2 well and producing at an unusually low TDS into the DI. When the tank is empty I will start filling it again with the purified water. Hope to have salt this weekend at the latest.

Also I started ordering parts for my canopy light mounting system. I’m stealing an idea from @hllb who had this great thread with parts list on how to hang radions inside a canopy. I’ll list links for my parts too if it works out. I may modify the list a bit and are lock washers and nuts to secure the screw against the Radion for extra protection. I plan to hang the radions in two alternating and overlapping rows to get the cones of light to overlap really well in both side to side and front to back directions. It may allow me to squeeze more radions in easily if I find I need more juice to up the PAR later.

I still have to figure out how to hang the reef brites but I’m not too concerned with that yet. May just be some wood screws.

 

[AaronFReef]

We are off to the races! The tank is full of RODI after running it all day Thursday and Friday off the booster pump running the old aerated tsp water and then all day Sunday off the tap which used up 3 canisters of anion resin!!! Time to build that CO2 degasser for my RO and to recharge my anion resin and reuse it.

i poured a whole $80 bucket of salt in and I’m at 1.019 this morning time to switch to Instant Ocean lol. Nah hopefully I’m not making this much water often. I use Brightwell Neomarine. It matches my parameters pretty well.

 

[AaronFReef]

I have had the tank fully running and at proper salinity since Father’s Day (6/19/22) with lights off and added the clownfish shortly thereafter with lots of media from my current display to prevent a cycle. About a week later I added the Two Spot bristletooth tang as well. All my fish have been run through a prophylactic quarantine treatment of Copper Power and then prazipro plus a course of General cure and Focus treated food. Last night after about another week, my purple and yellow tangs plus my Midas Blenny finished their course of prophylactic and so I put them in as well. At first I put them in a critter keeper weighted to the bottom of the tank but it felt silly with how few fish were in the tank so I released them so they wouldn’t be stressed in the box with no pipes to hide in which was my mistake to forget to add to it. I did this in the evening and they were able to find the bristletooth and quickly tried to join his crew but he was nervous and swatted at them for about five minutes before he chilled out and joined the crew. Now they all hang out together. I’m loving it!

The tank will continue to sit for the rest of the month and age so that I can transfer everything over and start the lights up. The canopy is still a work in progress figuring out how to mount 72” reef brites in a 72.5” canopy. It’s too tight to attach the brackets and then screw the reef brites into them since they screw from the ends. I will try rotating the bracket to attach using the other side of it to the reef brite to give more of a stand-off and allow me to screw it to the canopy that way. The light blend of a daylight reef brite to Xr15 blues to a actinic reef brite is actually great and gives a cool “fading into the depths” effect. They blend well from this 14” height.

I’ve posted this in my construction thread but I got the mixing station tanks plumbed up and are in use now as well. I have to attach the electrical panel and RODI to the wall still and move the ATO in there as well as make my kalkwasser dosing bucket.

 

[Operator Wrasse]

I have had the tank fully running and at proper salinity since Father’s Day (6/19/22) with lights off and added the clownfish shortly thereafter with lots of media from my current display to prevent a cycle. About a week later I added the Two Spot bristletooth tang as well. All my fish have been run through a prophylactic quarantine treatment of Copper Power and then prazipro plus a course of General cure and Focus treated food. Last night after about another week, my purple and yellow tangs plus my Midas Blenny finished their course of prophylactic and so I put them in as well. At first I put them in a critter keeper weighted to the bottom of the tank but it felt silly with how few fish were in the tank so I released them so they wouldn’t be stressed in the box with no pipes to hide in which was my mistake to forget to add to it. I did this in the evening and they were able to find the bristletooth and quickly tried to join his crew but he was nervous and swatted at them for about five minutes before he chilled out and joined the crew. Now they all hang out together. I’m loving it!

The tank will continue to sit for the rest of the month and age so that I can transfer everything over and start the lights up. The canopy is still a work in progress figuring out how to mount 72” reef brites in a 72.5” canopy. It’s too tight to attach the brackets and then screw the reef brites into them since they screw from the ends. I will try rotating the bracket to attach using the other side of it to the reef brite to give more of a stand-off and allow me to screw it to the canopy that way. The light blend of a daylight reef brite to Xr15 blues to a actinic reef brite is actually great and gives a cool “fading into the depths” effect. They blend well from this 14” height.

I’ve posted this in my construction thread but I got the mixing station tanks plumbed up and are in use now as well. I have to attach the electrical panel and RODI to the wall still and move the ATO in there as well as make my kalkwasser dosing bucket.

Great build! I might be doing something similar late next year. When you get the reefbrites mounted, I would love to see what you come up with. I'll be doing a floating Canopy with A360x and either 72" or 60" actinics.

 

[AaronFReef]

I still haven’t gotten the reef brites mounted as I was gone for a couple weeks with a tank sitter keeping my many many systems going for me… four quarantines, the 25g lagoon and this one.

Things are looking great and the fish are fat and healthy. It’s been about 6 weeks so I started the radions up for 5 hours a day. I’ll probably move the avatar chalice over after I get the alk and calcium in range. They were low befpre I left. I’ll try and get the doser set up this weekend too if I can.

Quarantine is going still too with a pintail wrasse who has been fattening up for the last three weeks and just started prazipro today with copper to follow in two weeks. I picked up a trio of pyramid butterflies which are beautiful. Can’t wait to see them in the tank.

 

[Janci]

Glad too see things are going well.
Good to have you back.

 

[AaronFReef]

Things are really progressing. Algae is beginning to grow and I had to scrape the glass for the first time. I’ve been maintaining around 0.10 PO4 and 8-10 NO3 through dosing by hand a couple times and heavy feeding. I even had to run GFO when PO4 hit 0.3 at one point. I’ve moved about three margarita snails I raised from eggs and one massive turbo snail from my coral QT and 24g coral tank.

meanwhile I’ve moved over a number of corals. About two weeks ago I moved in my green sinularia, my avatar chalice colony (about 12” diameter), and my gorgonian. They did well and my alk was stable at 8 so I decided the system could start to test some acros. After a week or so of that I just moved in some sizable colonies that were seeing die off in my 24g lagoon from warfare or shading including my RRC Goldenrod anacropora, bubblegum digitata and an ailing TSA Bill Murray colony that I hope will mostly resolve. Then today I moved over my Red Dragon colony which broke into 30 pieces when I clipped the base off and some of the branches were intertwined with a large tenuis colony. No biggy on that. It will melt back together.

I also got my doser going and moved my ATO outside. I realized the ATO takes up so much room in the shed I will need an oddball container for my kalk dosing I had planned. I can’t quite fit my brute trash can so I will probably order a Norwesco vertical storage container that is narrow and use a continuous dosing pump to dose it in.

The mixing station has been great and making water changes so much easier but I haven’t even done one on this display yet. I really should but I’ve been using so much water for my fish quarantines I’ve been neglecting using it for this. Bought some instant ocean to start mixing in the brute cans for my fish QT today so I can reserve the Brightwell salt for the coral tanks.

Fish QT has been a mixed bag. The current residents are three pyramid butterfly fish and one Pintail wrasse. The wrasse has been doing great and is done with prazi pro. The pyramids on the other hand have been a sad matter. I originally bought three of which one died from bacterial infection rotting it’s mouth away in 12 hours and then another fish following a week later even with nitrafurazone being used. The last of those three is missing his mouth now but otherwise seems to be striving to live… if I can just keep it eating I think I may be able to save it. I bought two more yesterday to try and replace the lost two and put them straight into nitrafurazone to try and head off any bacterial issues. Wish them luck. They sure are sensitive.

on my recent trip to LA I visited Unique corals and their nearby farm and Golden State Corals and purchased UC strawberry shortcake (from their original 2008 mother), an as of yet unnamed Pink Floyd look alike as they called it, and from GSC I got Orange setosa and an unnamed orange aceo with a fine polyp structure.

 

[AaronFReef]

 

[AaronFReef]

 

[AaronFReef]

Before cleaning glass:

After cleaning:

Rocks are getting dirty ! Lots of corals moved in now.

Here’s a video tour of it at about two months.

 

[AaronFReef]

Looks like we got Dino’s again. Checked all the parameters this morning since Saturday has come around and found my teeny bit of GFO I added to reduce from 0.3 ppm PO4 has nearly bottomed out my PO4. Reading 4 ppb (0.01 ppm). I added like three TBSP. Crazy. I was trying so hard to avoid this by dosing PO4 and NO3 early on and feeding crazy heavy. Hopefully when I remove the GFO and dose PO4 again I can beat them like it did last time but it took a year I guess bringing over all my old rocks was not enough! Been moving over rocks from the sump and some with coral. Hopefully the stable ecosystem on those rocks will out compete these.

 

[AaronFReef]

My Dino’s have mostly given way already to normal diatoms and film algaes and best as I can tell. They’re coating every surface so quickly I am having to dose nitrates and phosphate constantly to keep it where I want (>0.05 PO4 and ideally around 10 ppm NO3. I’ve been moving lots of snails in to help and they’re doing a good job on the bottom but have yet to venture to the rocks. I’ll get some more soon and start them in quarantine for thirty days.

Meanwhile fish quarantine has been going well with all fish in their last 30 day copper regiment.

The tank has been growing in coral inhabitants one or two at a time every couple days now for about a month and it looks great. Lots of polyp extension and things are adjusting. I’m slowly ramping up the lights to 7 hours of full power radions at the moment and 9 hours of total light. The reef brites are not yet on. One is mounted and the other is waiting on a strong friend to help me take the canopy down to mount the rear one. Neither get used outside of a quick fish feeding period of 15 mins a day (they’re controllable by Alexa as they’re on my apex and the radions are not… ahem ecotech)
Right now all the coral are laying randomly and not placed anywhere as I want to choose color placement when I’ve moved everything over and can mix colors well.

 

[Janci]

My Dino’s have mostly given way already to normal diatoms and film algaes and best as I can tell. They’re coating every surface so quickly I am having to dose nitrates and phosphate constantly to keep it where I want (>0.05 PO4 and ideally around 10 ppm NO3. I’ve been moving lots of snails in to help and they’re doing a good job on the bottom but have yet to venture to the rocks. I’ll get some more soon and start them in quarantine for thirty days.

Meanwhile fish quarantine has been going well with all fish in their last 30 day copper regiment.

The tank has been growing in coral inhabitants one or two at a time every couple days now for about a month and it looks great. Lots of polyp extension and things are adjusting. I’m slowly ramping up the lights to 7 hours of full power radions at the moment and 9 hours of total light. The reef brites are not yet on. One is mounted and the other is waiting on a strong friend to help me take the canopy down to mount the rear one. Neither get used outside of a quick fish feeding period of 15 mins a day (they’re controllable by Alexa as they’re on my apex and the radions are not… ahem ecotech)
Right now all the coral are laying randomly and not placed anywhere as I want to choose color placement when I’ve moved everything over and can mix colors well.

Looking great.
You are taking things slowly. I like that.

 

[AaronFReef]

Things are going pretty well and I have begun affixing coral to the rocks. First I wrote the name and dominant color of all my corals plus the one I know I plan to obtain (Cherry Bomb) on sticky notes and sorted them by color.

Then my wife and I spent a couple hours placing them on the glass in front of where we planned to place them.

Then we attempted to start gluing some down last night. Frags are easy. The colonies is a whole other story. I can’t imagine I can affix some of these large colonies to the rock work and will probably break them up and glue huge frags in groupings so that they can grow together and perhaps also a side benefit will be they will look more natural.

Do you all have any tips on how to affix large corals to branching rock? Glue alone isn’t cutting it under water. I have Tunze epoxy but it doesn’t harden fast or hard enough for this use in past experience.

Nutrients keeps bottoming out so I turned off the skimmer today and am hoping my pH doesn’t tank too hard and hurt my coral with the heat wave we are having since all the windows are closed. I dosed a massive amount of NO3 and PO4 this morning (50+ mL of PO4 and 200+ of NO3) so hopefully we don’t get dinos coming back as they had seemed defeated mostly.

 

[Betex]

Things are going pretty well and I have begun affixing coral to the rocks. First I wrote the name and dominant color of all my corals plus the one I know I plan to obtain (Cherry Bomb) on sticky notes and sorted them by color.

Then my wife and I spent a couple hours placing them on the glass in front of where we planned to place them.

Then we attempted to start gluing some down last night. Frags are easy. The colonies is a whole other story. I can’t imagine I can affix some of these large colonies to the rock work and will probably break them up and glue huge frags in groupings so that they can grow together and perhaps also a side benefit will be they will look more natural.

Do you all have any tips on how to affix large corals to branching rock? Glue alone isn’t cutting it under water. I have Tunze epoxy but it doesn’t harden fast or hard enough for this use in past experience.

Nutrients keeps bottoming out so I turned off the skimmer today and am hoping my pH doesn’t tank too hard and hurt my coral with the heat wave we are having since all the windows are closed. I dosed a massive amount of NO3 and PO4 this morning (50+ mL of PO4 and 200+ of NO3) so hopefully we don’t get dinos coming back as they had seemed defeated mostly.

To get my large colonies down and angled right I used:



I made a sandwich with super glue on coral Epoxy and superglue on other end. Before placing it right in tank I would mix the epoxy and let it start hardening for a few min that way when in tank I would just hold it in place for superglue to stick and it was good to go.

 

[BranchingHammer]

Awesome build!!!

 

[AaronFReef]

To get my large colonies down and angled right I used:



I made a sandwich with super glue on coral Epoxy and superglue on other end. Before placing it right in tank I would mix the epoxy and let it start hardening for a few min that way when in tank I would just hold it in place for superglue to stick and it was good to go.

Thanks @Betex. I think I’ll give that a go.

 

[AaronFReef]

Awesome build!!!

Thanks! Glad to have you along. Hopefully it’ll turn out well with the effort it’s requiring right now

 

[Betex]

Yeah man it was a long journey for sure. As in an earlier post I purchased the exact tank as you except internal overflow around the same time too.

Just last 2 weeks I finished my transfers and completed it.

 

[Smoke-Town]

Things are going pretty well and I have begun affixing coral to the rocks. First I wrote the name and dominant color of all my corals plus the one I know I plan to obtain (Cherry Bomb) on sticky notes and sorted them by color.

Then my wife and I spent a couple hours placing them on the glass in front of where we planned to place them.

Then we attempted to start gluing some down last night. Frags are easy. The colonies is a whole other story. I can’t imagine I can affix some of these large colonies to the rock work and will probably break them up and glue huge frags in groupings so that they can grow together and perhaps also a side benefit will be they will look more natural.

Do you all have any tips on how to affix large corals to branching rock? Glue alone isn’t cutting it under water. I have Tunze epoxy but it doesn’t harden fast or hard enough for this use in past experience.

Nutrients keeps bottoming out so I turned off the skimmer today and am hoping my pH doesn’t tank too hard and hurt my coral with the heat wave we are having since all the windows are closed. I dosed a massive amount of NO3 and PO4 this morning (50+ mL of PO4 and 200+ of NO3) so hopefully we don’t get dinos coming back as they had seemed defeated mostly.

Amazing build so far man. I like that you added the bar top sticking out. I built my stand with something similar... never understood why all the manufactured tank stands out there don't have a table edge options for drinks and maintenance and everything else.

Love the aquascape too. As far as attaching some of those colonies to the tonga branches... rubber bands or zip ties work well.

Glad the dinos receded. Def keep an eye on that po4. Looks like you've got neophos on hand. I keep a bottle just in case I ever see them return as I read zeros sometimes.

That yellow branching milli or whatever it is in that first post pic looks amazing.