420G Airlift powered AIO Reef Aquarium (Worlds first?)

[i cant think]

Just because you've seen other tanks with X amount of species in it doesnt mean its right or close to optimal.

I have roughly same size tank as OP. How many wrasses do I keep in mine? Please ask me.

12 wrasses, 30 wrasses, 6 wrasses etc........too many for a tank small tank(less than 500g). I keep 1 single wrasse in mine.

I have to admit this made me laugh.

It’s not bad keeping several wrasses, I have first hand experience with mixing them. I only have 2 tanks yet I have 10 wrasses. Wrasses for the most part are incredibly peaceful species yes the larger wrasses such as Halichoeres hortulanus, Cirrhilabrus scottorum ect.
Avoid Pseudocheilinus and you can mix essentially any wrasses you want with eachother.

Again, please please please read up on the wrasses some more, I have several articles on some of the genera and so does a fellow wrasse addict. There is also a thread called the ‘Wrasse Lovers’ which has a lot of information as well.

Here’s a few photos of 4 of my larger wrasses.

 

[Reign1]

Well amazing news! The Juwelled leopard wrasse has made another re appearance and looks reasonably healthy! It also took some frozen food today and the aggression has completely stopped! The male peacock doesn’t seen interested at all anymore. I’m extremely surprised but very happy! Just need to get a bit more weight on it now.

They tend to hide a lot and

I have to admit this made me laugh.

It’s not bad keeping several wrasses, I have first hand experience with mixing them. I only have 2 tanks yet I have 10 wrasses. Wrasses for the most part are incredibly peaceful species yes the larger wrasses such as Halichoeres hortulanus, Cirrhilabrus scottorum ect.
Avoid Pseudocheilinus and you can mix essentially any wrasses you want with eachother.

Again, please please please read up on the wrasses some more, I have several articles on some of the genera and so does a fellow wrasse addict. There is also a thread called the ‘Wrasse Lovers’ which has a lot of information as well.

Here’s a few photos of 4 of my larger wrasses.

Just stop

Agreed .. early on poster said they are experimenting..
I believe feedback is good .. feedback should be direct but kind..
My personal feedback on tank is ..
I believe that your “tube” may be pulling out some gunk due to organics in the water column but marine skimmers are designed to have smallest bubbles possible to optimize contact/surface area w/ water also maximizing dwell time. At this time I think your skimmer is more acting like a bubble wand .. I am still curious about it perhaps increasing diameter or placing a smaller tube inside to act like a baffle will help w/ contact time and also less bubbles into display ?.
$.02
Good luck

 

[14crazychris]

They tend to hide a lot and


Agreed .. early on poster said they are experimenting..
I believe feedback is good .. feedback should be direct but kind..
My personal feedback on tank is ..
I believe that your “tube” may be pulling out some gunk due to organics in the water column but marine skimmers are designed to have smallest bubbles possible to optimize contact/surface area w/ water also maximizing dwell time. At this time I think your skimmer is more acting like a bubble wand .. I am still curious about it perhaps increasing diameter or placing a smaller tube inside to act like a baffle will help w/ contact time and also less bubbles into display ?.
$.02
Good luck

Thank you! Yes i definitely agree! And great observation, I think my “skimmer” works but definitly not near the capacity that a commercial one would. I think over stocking this tank with large fish like tangs and angels would lead to a disaster as the airlift/skimmer wouldnt handle the levels of waste. I definitly think a larger diameter pipe would be better, maybe 2 inch to increase flow. I think the level of air pumping in is sufficient but as you say the bubble size and contact time is what’s lacking. I also think constructing this type of return on a shallower tank may not be very effective. As this tank is 76cm tall I think the height benefits the pull of the airlift but the collection method needs tweaking. Could you elaborate a bit more on smaller tube inside? Do you mean another thin pvc pipe going down the length of the tube?

thanks

 

[14crazychris]

Thought I’d post some update pictures I took the other night of how things are progressing. Will do another water test tonight to see how the levels are doing. I’m definitly impressed by some of the coral growth so far, it’s definitly exceeded expectations.

 

[dannyd_]

Constructive criticism shouldn't feel like an attack. If you feel as though you have a lot knowledge that could benefit someone, share with them to help them, not to tear down what they are doing wrong. What purpose does it serve to act like that. It has no place anywhere, we are all adults here. I'll admit I had my doubts with an AIO tank this large, but it is coming along incredibly and I have a lot of respect for him trying out new things. Keep up the great work and also props to you for handling his "cricitism" in stride.

 

[Reign1]

Thank you! Yes i definitely agree! And great observation, I think my “skimmer” works but definitly not near the capacity that a commercial one would. I think over stocking this tank with large fish like tangs and angels would lead to a disaster as the airlift/skimmer wouldnt handle the levels of waste. I definitly think a larger diameter pipe would be better, maybe 2 inch to increase flow. I think the level of air pumping in is sufficient but as you say the bubble size and contact time is what’s lacking. I also think constructing this type of return on a shallower tank may not be very effective. As this tank is 76cm tall I think the height benefits the pull of the airlift but the collection method needs tweaking. Could you elaborate a bit more on smaller tube inside? Do you mean another thin pvc pipe going down the length of the tube?

thanks

Yes the old school skimmers (dating my age now lol, like rs berlins had triple pass .. so yeah if you increase tube width and inserted smaller diameter tube inside making water pass through both tubes (one internally) should help w/ reducing bubbles

 

[Reign1]

Constructive criticism shouldn't feel like an attack. If you feel as though you have a lot knowledge that could benefit someone, share with them to help them, not to tear down what they are doing wrong. What purpose does it serve to act like that. It has no place anywhere, we are all adults here. I'll admit I had my doubts with an AIO tank this large, but it is coming along incredibly and I have a lot of respect for him trying out new things. Keep up the great work and also props to you for handling his "cricitism" in stride.

Well said ..

 

[14crazychris]

Yes the old school skimmers (dating my age now lol, like rs berlins had triple pass .. so yeah if you increase tube width and inserted smaller diameter tube inside making water pass through both tubes (one internally) should help w/ reducing bubbles

Awesome! Thank you I’ll take a look at those models and have a think, sounds like a good idea. The skimmer is definitely lacking in waste removal so worth having a tinker with it. Thanks

 

[14crazychris]

Small update, the tank is looking it’s best and I’m really pleased with the progress so far. My biggest battle has been nutrients and finally I feel like I’m getting somewhere.

When I started the tank I had high levels of nutrients. Which I assume came from my source water and leached from the 200kg of rock. Po4 was 1ppm and the nitrates were just over 50ppm. Now that i have found a good light for the refugium and I can visibly see the excellent macro growth I’m getting I did some more tests today. Phosphate has dropped to 0.25 (still got a way to go but it’s progress) and nitrates have dropped to 15-20ppm. I reckon over the next four weeks it will constantly be dropping further. Once I can get it to a range I’m happy with I will play with the light cycles on the refugium and the amount of macro algae in there to maintain it.

my mag levels quickly dropped to 1100ppm and I have been slowly buffering them up over the past week. They are now sitting at 1280 and the aim is to keep them around 1300/1350. Calcium is at 450ppm and KH is at 9. Once I have the mag stable and my parameters start to drop I need to see how much all for reef I need to be dosing. I do have a spare auto doser if the reef won’t support manual dosing but this will be the next challenge I will face.

Couldnt resist getting some shots this evening and I’m super happy with the water clarity. The jewelled leopard is eating really well now and no fighting or bickering at all. Harmony has been restored.

thanks

 

[14crazychris]

So had a freind over today to help take some half decent photos of the reef and to keep track of how things are progressing. After taking the lids off the tank and actually seeing how the corals looks from the top down with no flow on, I was very impressed indeed. Clear growth from a number of frags and colony's, as well as the start of coraline algae forming on a few rocks. Its clear there are a few rocks that havnt been touched by the selection of snails I have, so top of the list are definitly a large handful of trochus snails that will be needed next year. Although the rocks are still nice and clean compared to how I expected them. Other than that I'm really happy with how things are progressing. Now the caulerpa has more space in the refugium since removing the chaeto I think i will get some great growth over the next few weeks. Im hoping once it reaches the sides it will start to hopefully grow up the side walls of the filter and really make use of the space. Once i can get the nutrient levels down to where i want them, I plan to add an auto feeder and increase frozen feedings to twice per day. I'm hoping I can get to this next step by February. Thanks

 

[MoshJosh]

Love the idea of air power! Overlooked in freshwater and I rarely see it used in salt, so cool to see you using it!!! Tank is looking good.

 

[14crazychris]

Love the idea of air power! Overlooked in freshwater and I rarely see it used in salt, so cool to see you using it!!! Tank is looking good.

Thank you! I’m really happy with it so far and it’s blown my expectations out the water. Just need to have a play about with the skimmer part to see if I can improve that.

thanks

 

[14crazychris]

So another little update on the tank!

Overall The tank is still doing very well and I thought I’d address the electricity costs in this update as well!

Water quality-

So ive been testing the Nitrate and Phosphate once or twice a week, quite diligently for the past 5 weeks now. These nutrients levels were around 1ppm of phosphate and 60ppm of nitrate in the beginning when the tank was setup for the first 4/5 weeks. I have now managed to get these down and stable, over the past 4 weeks they have stabilized and not got any worse or better, even with my increased feeding regime. Currently phosphate is 0.25ppm and nitrates is 25ppm. I’d ideally like to half this number but for now everything seems happy and I assume as the coral colonies grow and the refugium grows in more should be past the hard bit (touch wood).

Ca and KH have been very stable with next to no dosing however my magnesium is getting drained quickly. Not 100% sure why but the same thing did happen to an old marine tank I had in the past. I’m assuming once it gets into the right level things will balance out and I can start dosing the Tropic Marin all for reef more? I’ve been adding around 5G of AFR powder a week and around 25g of magnesium buffer 3/4 times a week. Mg is around the 1290ppm mark but not within the ideal range that it should be going off Ca and KH levels (KH 8.9 and Ca 450ppm). I’d say 1350-1400ppm would be the ideal level to sit inlune with ca and KH levels?

Coral and live stock-

Overall the corals are doing great, some arnt growing very quickly which was to be expected with the considerable low light on the tank but I’m not chasing growth whatsoever. Some of the soft corals have really done well though and I have multiple pieces that have doubled in size. I’m finding the fish body clocks are slowly adapting to my light schedule and they seem to be staying up later and later on the most part. I’m especially happy to see my Juwelled leopard wrasse coming out more and feeding really well! It’s good to see it getting more involved in the group and having more presence in the tank

Maintenance-

I havnt topped up the tank in over 4 weeks now and I’ve noticed around a 5-8mm evaporation from the water level, however my SG is still holding strong at 1.025 (yes I’ve double checked and calibrated my refractometer). I’m planning to do a small 50L water change (3%) in the next two weeks and give the substrate a good hoover. I’d definitly like to add some sand sifting stars and maybe a sand dollar/ sea mouse once the tank is a more mature.

Electricity costs-

Now I thought it would be interesting to calculate the energy costs on a tank this size. I calculated the hour usage for each device and added all of the wattage up to give me a 24 hour power consumption cost. The heater was difficult to work out as the tank sits between 23-23.5 degrees so doesn’t come on very regularly. The cost of running the tank alone without the heater is £1.08 per day or approximately £32.40 per month. I calculated that if the heater is running full power for 12 hours a day it uses around £2.45 in electricity on top. I’m not sure if there is an easy way to work out the rough cost of the heater usage? I assume in summer it will not even run and in winter the usage will be quite regular. Overall I’m pretty happy with the cost and feel for 1600l of reef tank its a great range.

In the next 3-4 weeks I plan to add another 2-3 wrasse, a boxer shrimp, 2 porcelain crabs, 2 emerald crabs and around 15 trochus snails.

thanks,
chris

 

[14crazychris]

Not sure if links are allowed here but thought this video might help explain the reef tank in a little more detail
FULL TOUR | Dream Reef tank overview

 

[Reign1]

Not sure if links are allowed here but thought this video might help explain the reef tank in a little more detail
FULL TOUR | Dream Reef tank overview

Looking great!!

 

[829282610]

I sit and sleep on the floor….never even crossed my mind to have a giant tank on the floor gave me future plans. Thanks

love your tank, great job! The orange glow is a hat for your urchin

 

[14crazychris]

I sit and sleep on the floor….never even crossed my mind to have a giant tank on the floor gave me future plans. Thanks

love your tank, great job! The orange glow is a hat for your urchin

Haha you're welcome. I definitly love it! Wouldn't change it after experiencing it for 4 months. Haha yes the orange hats are very amusing. Thanks for watching

 

[14crazychris]

Today I did my first harvest on the refugium. Not much but it’s finally time to start pulling some macro algae out every 3/4 weeks I think. The macro had grown far more than I thought, you don’t really get the perspective from the outside view. I’d say I pulled out around half a jug full and thought I’d take some pics whilst I changed the filter floss. Also added a fresh 500g bag of carbon as well as changing the floss. I’ve had a small poly filter in for over two weeks now and it’s really reassuring to see it hasn’t changed colour that much, an ICP will definitely help confirm things though

Tomorrow is shopping day! Really looking forward to seeing what I can get. On the look out for some porcelain crabs, emerald crabs, trochus snails and some wrasse! also looking to get a few additives and supplements like iodine etc. Mag is still dropping but calcium and kH havnt budged so hopefully I can get the mag into the appropriate levels over the next 4 days.

thanks

 

[HomebroodExotics]

Not sure if links are allowed here but thought this video might help explain the reef tank in a little more detail
FULL TOUR | Dream Reef tank overview

Brilliant. This is a perfect example of using science and knowledge to make the aquarium that YOU want and works for you. It's beautiful. I can't believe you aren't even running whites. You could probably crank up the light and grow almost whatever you would like. Keep it up, I love it. You nailed it.

 

[14crazychris]

Brilliant. This is a perfect example of using science and knowledge to make the aquarium that YOU want and works for you. It's beautiful. I can't believe you aren't even running whites. You could probably crank up the light and grow almost whatever you would like. Keep it up, I love it. You nailed it.

Thank you! I think long term, phosphates are going to be my battle but nitrates seem very consistent. Thanks