40 Breeder Build

[AustinBabler]

Alright I’m going to try this “build thread” thing again. I’m not too website savvy so hopefully this works. Started this hobby a few years ago with a Red Sea reefer 250 and found out quickly I was in way over my head. Cut some corners, had some failures, had a few successes. I learned a lot about the hobby after doing a whole lot of things wrong. Anyways long story short the Reefer 250 is going to be “ripped cleaned” at a later date. The only inhabitants of that tank were a 6 line wrasse, some GSP, and some super upset Florida Ric’s. Petco had a tank sale so I jumped on it and got a 40 breeder with a marineland emperor pro 450 filter. Cleaned 2 smaller rocks from that tank to remove the aiptasia and random macro algae’s off. Then added new life rock, new live sand, one small live rock from a local store. The 40 has since been cycled. Stocking list is as follows: 2x clowns, 1 Yellow Watchman Goby, 1 6 Line Wrasse. Coral: 1 Toadstool leather, 1 “colony” of GSP, 5 frags of GSP, 2 very upset Florida Ric’s and 1 Sinularia Leather frag.
I’m starting this thread to take some of you along with my journey into doing things the right way this time and when this tank gets stabile and things are going well I’ll add the Reefer 250 to the thread. Science was always one of my best subjects back in high school and that’s what I love most about the hobby is the constant learning.

 

[kevgib67]

Looking great, I love the scape!

 

[AustinBabler]

Looking great, I love the scape!

Thanks! I remember when I set my reefer up it was rushed. This time there was a little more thought process. I’m still planning on adding a few more smaller or I’ll break up some life rock base to put fingers coming off the main structure. I remember watching a tour of WWC’s grow out facility and they touched on why they did the scape the way they did to maximize surface area to place coral. Which is also why the filtration is mounted more of a “peninsula” style. Even though it’s up against the wall in the back.

 

[AustinBabler]

took these AI Primes 16HD’s off my Reefer. The lenses were starting to burn so I ordered lenses the other day. They came today so throwing them on quick here tonight. They’re not terrible but they sure aren’t good. I’ve been on the fence about switching to Orphek OR3 strips, but without a PAR meter or having access to one I’m not comfortable with that yet. Plus the only thing I’m really wanting to spend on at the moment is a Tunze ATO or possibly red seas new ATO.

 

[AustinBabler]

Harvest is slowly dragging on in northern Illinois. Had a rain day so decided to add a lawnmower blenny to help with my algae since I’m a bit busy at the moment buuuuuut all he does is dig holes in my sand under my rocks lol. Hopefully once he’s settled in he’ll go to work

 

[BetteMidler]

I'm not seeing any CUC, this would be a good time to get one going. Reefcleaners.org has a pretty good estimate on the quantities & varieties needed based on tanks size. They probably estimate a little too much, but it is a good start.

 

[trvrstnk4837]

You did a great job on your scape man

I’m in the same boat failed with a 125 gallon now I’m doing a 40b, good luck!

 

[AustinBabler]

I'm not seeing any CUC, this would be a good time to get one going. Reefcleaners.org has a pretty good estimate on the quantities & varieties needed based on tanks size. They probably estimate a little too much, but it is a good start.

Yeah I’m not home at the moment reliably enough to have a delivery of live stuff show up. I have like 6 blue leg hermits from my other tank in there. All they want to do is eat GSP though. Really all I need is some sand turning snails. The blenny is making a dent in the algae more than I thought.

 

[Gumbies R Us]

Tank looks good!

 

[AustinBabler]

Super excited for this! Lighting is one thing I can’t ever get right. Used off Amazon for a little over half price. I haven’t found a rentable source for one locally near me (Freeport IL) so if anyone is local to me and wants their tank mapped I could probably help out.

 

[AustinBabler]

Tonight was water change night. I’m only 3 days late this time. Cleaned the power heads. Except the AI Nero. Do him next time. Cleaned the inlet for the Emperor HOB filter. Replaced my floss once again. I do that every 2-3 days. Forgot to take a before picture but the tank got pretty gross this week. I have a hammer coral that’s been kinda ticked off lately. The tentacles are pretty clear and it’s loosing color slowly. My nitrates are consistent 12ppm phos hangs out around .02ppm. Alk gets low during the week. Down to 6.7 dkh from 8 dkh. Calcium I only loose around 50ppm it’s usually falls to 400 which should be ok seeing as the hammer is the only guy in there with a skeleton. PAR reading on the tank right above the hammer is 100 PAR so I don’t believe I’m bleaching him out. I started messing around with amino acids last week and I’m seeing improvement in the hammer. The lower tentacles closer to the base are coloring back up. Only issue with the amino acids is I started a little cyano issue. Doing 10 drops of Brightwell Coral Amino currently. After tonight I’m going to scale back to 5 drops and see if we can’t find a happy medium. I like what the aminos did for color and polyp extension. That little toadstool finally extended polyps. It’s been closed up since I got it.

 

[AustinBabler]

Well I ended up getting tired of looking at it and if it’s going to sit empty I might as well tinker with it?! Here’s the tank that started it all for me. My Red Sea Reefer 250. In pretty bad shape. Heavily neglected after a total fish loss. Embarrassed to show these pictures. It’s been just circulating water for 10 months and it’s super gross. By the time I hit the pillow tonight it should be drained, sand scooped out, sump vacuumed out, equipment pulled into a tote for a vinegar bath and cleaning. Hopefully get the new valve plumbed in after harvest wraps up. I’m kicking around the idea of having a sump made for this thing so if anyone’s got a reefer 250 and aftermarket sump that they use and like let me know. I run a Red Sea roller mat and a RSK skimmer. Both huge pieces so real estate in the sump is major. On the plus side there’s some snails left in here for the upstairs tank.

 

[AustinBabler]

Well the uglies have hit me hard. My red cyano bloom has turned green it doesn’t come back red anymore. No clue what that means. I was making decent headway on it sucking it all out on water changes but I take probably 1/2-1 lbs of sand every time I suck it out. Nitrates still hang out around 12ppm and the phos is undectible. But judging by the amount of Ulva that’s exploded out of literally nowhere there’s plenty of phosphate in the water column somewhere. Wish I knew how it got in all my frags were clean when added and the snails got scrubbed before I threw them in. I robbed all the CUC out of my Reefer 250 when I cleaned it out. 5 astrea snails, 3 trochus snails, 4 nassarius snails, 7 blue leg hermits. Cyano issue has been going on for about a month now. Would adding beneficial bacteria help out compete the cyano?
I’ve added a bunch of coral in the last month and a half all doing well even with the cyano outbreak and the macro algae explosion which also tells me phos isn’t at 0.0. Little more time and I’ll get through it.

 

[AustinBabler]

The 2 biggest stars in the tank….my Australophyllia Wilsoni’s the first one pictured has been in for 2-1/2-3 weeks now and doing well. The second one just came in Dec 1st. I keep the tank at 78 degrees. They’re super cool coral and not a whole lot of positive information out there so keeping them feels like a crusade into the unknown.

 

[AustinBabler]

About to do my weekly water change and I got thinking that this week has been the first week where I won’t have to syphon any algae or cyano off the sandbed! Still working on the sea lettuce and bubble algae little by little. Might try Pitho crabs for the bubble algae? Had bad luck with emerald crabs…I hate crabs in general all they do is eat snails and pick my Zoa’s and Micromussa Lords . Added a small Salfin tang for help on the bubble algae but he wasn’t interested. I’m looking at tanks over 100 gallons. There’s been a bunch of coral additions. I’ll have to add pictures of them all here soon.

 

[AustinBabler]

Excuse the dirty glass…water change night tonight or tomorrow. Got pummeled with snow so I’ve been plowing. Got around to milling down the lip on the Aquamaxx Bullet 2 skimmer! And in typical me fashion I didn’t sneak photos of the lip I milled off. If you look behind the piece that the foam pad sits on there’s 2 lips on the back side that interfere with the rim on aqueon tanks. This way I can play around with putting it in different spots until I find a suitable place. Other than having to mill down those lips the building was pretty straight forward. I love the skimmer so far this first 5 minutes. It’s very quiet! Which is a plus for me since this tank is in our bedroom for the time being. Quality of the skimmer I would say is top notch. Not an eyesore or anything. We’ll see how the break in process goes. Definitely glad I didn’t get the bigger model. I highly contemplated about it since my bio load is heavy on the fish side but it wouldn’t have fit behind the tank.

 

[Katrina71]

Looks like you have survived the sandbed uglies!

 

[AustinBabler]

Yeah that was a battle in a half. Now I’m battling the bubble algae and the sea lettuce haha! I started carbon dosing with Tropic Marin Elimi NP and NP Bacto Balance. I’m going to try to lower the nutrients and just supplement feed the coral for awhile and see if it’ll die off. In theory it should but it’ll take time.

 

[AustinBabler]

Apparently I have a breeding population of stomatella snails. I noticed early on probably 2 months ago I had a large pair that hitchhiked in on a coral. A week ago I noticed some medium sized ones telling me that the original 2 have mated at least once before in the tank. Now I have about 60 little pin head stoma’s running around my glass! Now if only I could get my Astrea, Trochus, and Nassarius snails to reproduce…the Astrea and Nassarius used to lay eggs on the glass in my old system but the eggs never did anything. I run my main lights from 6:30 am to 9:30-10pm (I’d have to look at my schedule. And I run the moonlight on lunar cycle for 2 hours a night. I know that seems like a lot of light but it works better for me because some parts of the year I’m gone a lot and this gives me plenty of time to feed the fish before I leave the house and usually I can get home just in time to feed at night before lights out. Also have a theory that maybe total PAR isn’t the only factor in coral growth and maybe you can get away with less PAR but longer duration of light. Just a hunch.

 

[AustinBabler]

This hobby sucks sometimes…..my first Wilsoni I ever bought. Had it for 4 months. Had doubts it would last long term since it was obviously fragged off a colony and Wilsoni don’t do well with fragging from what I’ve read. Left the tank for a week and a half came home to the ATO not working so the tank was low on water thus making the salinity creep up. This one and a Favia are going to be the only casualties. The Favia is whatever, but loosing this one’s hurting my pride. Reef dip from Seachem for 20 minutes to maybe save it.