72 gallon bow front mixed reef

Sboling · Feb 27, 2021

I’ve been feeding for quite a number of years, probably 8 total, although there was a break when I moved away for law school and didn’t want to move my 125. When I came back about 2 years ago, Wow! Big changes in tech and many new ways of thinking and doing things. So many approaches! Lots of fun to be had for sure.

At any rate, I have a 72 gallon bow front that’s drilled with durso style overflow that filters through a trigger crys30s, which is about 21 gallons. I’ll get to the filtration later.

The stocking for this mixed reef tank is a little of everything, because I love it all! So as for coral, I have:

a huge hammer or maybe octospawn that is growing like crazy
Frogspawn I rescued from near death growing well
Zoas- orange, brown, orange eyes (on the way from Gonzos)
Candy cane producing heads like wildfire
Blue shrooms
Leather coral
Red Lobo
Toadstool
Red monti cap
Red monti digi
Purple digi
Purple stag
Purple vase coral yellow polyps
Rainbow acan
Forest fire digi
Green slimer

This were growing well, so lately I’ve been adding some acros and other tougher sps:

pc rainbow
Red planet
The thing
Cc poison envy (on the way from Gonzos)
Burning banana (on the way from Gonzos)
Green pocci
Purple stylo

I intend to keep adding acros, and I would like to get some scolds, cyphastrea, blastos going also.

I’ll separate the equipment and post tanks shots here.

Jekyl · Feb 27, 2021

Very nice

Sboling · Feb 27, 2021

For filtration, I have a curve 5 skimmer in the first chamber, no filter socks. The whole sump has live rock in all of the chambers. The middle chamber has a BRS mini reactor with rox carbon running 24/7. I have a sponge and filter floss for mechanical filtration in the trap. I have a DC current USA 1040 return ruining an AA uv inline on the return.

Sboling · Feb 27, 2021

Pics of sump area

Sboling · Feb 27, 2021

For dosing, I recently moved to using a doser, Bubble Magus tm-11 I think, three channels. I am dosing esv b-ionic 2 part.
I feed Reef Frenzy and I add some mysis and some algae for my tang. I feed reef roids about once a week and reef ab+ with added phyto 2 times per week.

My fish stock is a powder brown tang, two occelaris clowns, a royal gramma, two pajama cardinals, and a watchman goby. I have a pretty nice Bubble Tip Anemone growing.

I have two peppermint shrimp, and plenty of inverts for cleaning.

Sboling · Feb 27, 2021

My tank is apex controlled. I have the usual probes with salinity and orp as well. I have the ald with two leak detectors. For ato, I bought a pump and some float switches and ran them to the apex breakout box.
I got a cabinet from Lowe’s to mount the various modules in. It’s not super clean wiring but that’s why it’s in the cabinet.

Sboling · Feb 27, 2021

Tops. So bow front screen tops are not easy to find, and if you get them made, it’s pretty expensive. So I got some egg crate, and cut the middle out for a frame. Then I glued netting from BRS on them and it works great.