A reef, wrasse and a few angels tank in Uttoxeter

[Subsea]

Shiny new sand bed...

I can easily operate a reef tank without liverock, but I could never operate a reef tank without a shallow sandbed. A mature sandbed will cycle nutrients into live food using complex food webs for complete biofiltration.

 

[Mortie31]

Having spent a lot of time reading and going back through my old notes, I’ve decided I’m going to go back to an algae bed. I needed a new sump anyway after cracking mine nd patching it up. Some I’ve gone for a triton style glass sump that a LFS is building for me, should be ready end of Jan ish.. it will be 52” long 24” wide with a water depth of 9”. The Algae bed section will be about 90L. I will try using the 4 LED wands I have from algae reactors as lighting, not sure how they will work out, but be interesting to see how an algae bed grows when lit from below as well as above..
my fallow period is over and I’ve added a couple of springer damsels to see if I’m all clear..

 

[Subsea]

I am a firm believer in algae filtration. I have been doing Triton Mathod for 35 years and skimmerless.

I am not familiar with Triton refugium. I have always stayed away from Chaetomorphy as an algae filter because nothing eats it. I like ulva because everything eats it. It will outgrow Chaetomorphy 3:1 in bright light. Air tumble culture works best for me because of ulva clogging pump strainers.

After watching BRS TV series on algae as primary filtration, I am a believer in feeding heavy and letting refugium regulate nutrient flux back & forth.


I have two 55G tumble culture macro propagation tanks stacked on top of each other. Top tank uses
Mag 12 to circulate water at bottom from right to left, then air lift on far wall transfers flow from left to right at the top. The bottom tank uses air bubble manifold across 4’ of back wall to create a continuous vertical loop current. Bottom tank requires 50W for circulation compared to 120w.

 

[Mortie31]

A happy day, over 2 months fallow now and today the restocking begins; 3 canary wrasse, 2 silver belly wrasse, an exquisite fairy wrasse and a mated pair of melanaurus wrasse which i was delighted to find in my LFS. Also a little boyfriend for my maroon clown... really worried about this as she’s about 10 now and a grumpy old girl... but I picked a small male so fingers crossed she likes him... a couple of quick picks before they all hit the sand! Think there still on LFS time lol

 

[Mortie31]

This made my day, she likes him!! sorry about the terrible picture, less than 3 hrs he’s met his missus, (she didn’t kill him) and he’s getting used to my Nem... this is a good reminder why we love this hobby and is making me feel a whole lot better again about my tank.. He really is tiny in comparison to her..

 

[Sarah24!]

Hello,

Sorry about all your fish, and somehow I thought I was following your thread but didn’t see any notifications. Very sorry about the losses but glad to see you have new friends in there.

When I used the equations I did it in a lab environment and then when I very first set up my tank. Most of the decent to good sensors do compensate for that, but when I did this it was a thesis project so I had to show my work etc (waste of time for me but see why).

How are the corals doing after all of this and any changes to them? The sand bed looks pretty (and curious is your sump under your tank) how did you get it out of it is? I want to upgrade mine but I have no idea how to get s new one in or my old one out.

 

[Mortie31]

Thanks Sarah, I lost a couple of SPS colonies after my fish died, probably due to an ammonia spike, everything is well settled now and has come through ok, it’s been a testing few months, but good to come out the other side. I’m still waiting for my new sump to be built, I’m fortunate in having so over engineered my frame i have a 100mm x 50mm cross member supporting the front of the tank and 50 x 100 mm supporting the centre span I should be able to remove the door supports and simply swap the sumps over... you can same out the cross members in the pic below.

 

[Mortie31]

Mr and Mrs Melanurus out and about this morning... they seem to be settling in ok

 

[Mortie31]

Spent an hour working out why the power kept tripping off, at least I know the switchboard works properly .. guess what it was?
Another eheim pump with a cable split where it joins the pump!!! This is the 2nd one I’ve had fail in exactly the same way... on the bright side I was at home, the last time a few years ago caused the power to be off for 8 hours... thankfully I have backups for most things.. this hobby always keeps you on your toes..

 

[Mortie31]

Really happy Mrs Grumpy seems to have accepted him, a couple of weeks now, let’s hope the little man has lead in his pencil as she used to lay eggs every few weeks with her last fella... maybe she’s not as nasty as I thought...

 

[Mortie31]

Phyto project is going really well, I’ve actually got to much now, That’s 10L brewing... I’ve also branched out to cultivating rotis as well, Going to try some different strains of phyto next and maybe some pods next.

 

[Mortie31]

I added 2 whitetail bristletooth tangs 2 weeks ago, I’ve never seen aggression like it before with 2 tangs, one got beat up so badly I managed to catch it and it’s currently in a hospital tank recovering, the bully I is still in my main tank and has got a mild outbreak of white spot... I’ve got him feeding again so we’ll see how it goes... all my other fish are so far unaffected...

 

[Mortie31]

Well it’s sump swap over day tomorrow, hopefully I’ve worked out everything correctly as I have to remove 1 support leg and move the other 4 inches.... if it goes wrong and the beam sags to much it could crack the bottom of the tank.... I did a dummy run removing the leg using a bottle jack and got a deflection of less than 0.5mm which is fine, but still gonna be brown adrenaline time until there put back in...800L of water on the lounge floor wouldn’t be pretty...

 

[dragon99]

 

[Mortie31]

Lol excellent

 

[Mortie31]

Wow what a day, 6 hrs swapping the old sump for a new one, I’d forgot how many sensors and wires, pumps, lights, dosing lines and containers I had... house looked like a battlefield at one stage with 25L containers everywhere... tank temp only dropped 4C which was better than expected.. everything went ok and the shiny new triton sump is up and running, still a few jobs left mainly tidying things up, putting the cabinet dorms back on etc...

The stripping out and emptying starts

Sid photo bombing

Nice shiny new sump

 

[Mortie31]

I’ve had one of these LED wands running in my old sump for a month to get the algae growing abit, with seemingly good results, so now I’ve put 2 in my new larger algae section. I have fully sealed them with silicon so they are totally waterproof (in theory). They are drawing 60w so hopefully they should be powerful enough especially with them being so close to the algae. I repurposed these from 2 of the ALR2 algae reactors I bought but could not get to work consistently... I also made made a nitratereactor with the body of one of them (see earlier in thread), so quite pleased with saving myself more money and reusing these.

 

[Mortie31]

A few picks of my new fish
A pair of McCosker flasher wrasse, a pair of diamond tail wrasse, a little scribbled angel, and a Poma angel (who’s damaged an eye)
I think I need to get a proper camera sorted..

 

[Mortie31]

A couple of full tank shots, finally 6 months after my wipeout, things finally starting to get back to normal and look abit more like a reef tank..

 

[Mortie31]

An evening pic of Mr and Mrs Flame Angel (I hope I got the sexing right) and a photobomb from my new Naoko Wrasse