Armetas Reef Total 850 liter (Europe)

revhtree · Nov 20, 2015

What a beautiful reef!!

SPSREEFS · Nov 21, 2015

Armetas,
Looks awesome so far! Beautiful build too! I would get some algae eaters in there, such as blennies, snails, etc. to help with the algae. This tank is new and you are going to go through some algae phases. Are the leds pucks inside of one large unit? I have never heard of that brand?

armetas · Nov 21, 2015

SPSREEFS said:
Armetas,
Looks awesome so far! Beautiful build too! I would get some algae eaters in there, such as blennies, snails, etc. to help with the algae. This tank is new and you are going to go through some algae phases. Are the leds pucks inside of one large unit? I have never heard of that brand?

There are no algae in the tank

I had algae only 2-3 weeks. Also I have ~60-70 snails in the tank and a lot of surgeons

LED's are form china manufacturer (CREE and Bridgelux LED's), it is easy to use, upgrade and it has all the features that are needed to get sunrise and sundown

maroun.c · Nov 21, 2015

Very nice setup, thanks for sharing.

armetas · Nov 22, 2015

Recently there were some changes in the lightning: red and green led's were changed to purple and actinic. Plus whole lightning was made wider and for me the effect is stunning - hope that I will have to take decent pictures to show the changes. And for now just fish photos:

Dnoob · Nov 22, 2015

Nice looking reef. That reef ceramics makes me think, that why I didin't bought that.

armetas · Nov 22, 2015

It is hard to find really high quality ceramics. But in this case I found one and I'm happy with it

now it looks like reef rock

armetas · Nov 27, 2015

Tried to get the list of all corals that I have (still some are unknown, but the list is here):

SPS:

Acropora sp. nana (tricolor)
Acropora sp. Echinata
Acropora sp. Batunai green (blue tips)
Acropora sp. Millepora (pink)
Acropora sp. x 16 (not known species)
Acropora sp. Granulosa
Acropora sp. Bali Tricolor
Acropora sp. Yongei green (Green slimer)
Acropora sp. Red planet
Policipora sp. tricolor
Policipora sp. green
Seriotopora Calendrum sp. pink
Seriotopora Calendrum sp. tricolor
Seriotopora Calendrum sp. green
Seriotopora Hystrix sp. tricolor
Stylophora sp. blue/pink
Stylophora sp. green
Stylophora sp. pink
Cactus red + green
Hydnophora sp. (green)

LPS:

Platygyra sp. (colored)
Platygyra sp. (Australia)
Platygyra sp. (mettalic)
Turbinaria peltata (cup form green)
Cycloseris sp. (green)
Cycloseris sp. (orange)
Lobophyllia sp. (green)
Lobophyllia sp. rainbow
Lobophyllia sp. red (mettalic)
Lobophyllia rainbow reverse
Montipora superman Bali (Green polyp)
Montipora superman Bali (red polyp)
Montipora hard cup green
Montipora capricornis (laminar red)
Montipora capricornis (green polyp mettalic)
Montipora sp. red
Mycedium sp. green polyp
Goniopora sp. (blue/purple polyp)
Alveopora sp. (green)
Montastrea sp. (colored)
Trachyphyllia spp. green Australie
Catalaphyllia jardinei
Symphyllia sp. green (metalic)
Acanthastrea red
Acanthastrea red/blue
Acanthastrea red/green
Acanthastrea Tiger Red
Euphyllia Ancora green (mettalic)
Euphylia glabrascens green
Euphyllia divisa
Euphyllia sp. x 5
Favia sp. green
Favites warcoral
Duncanopsammia Axifuga
Duncanopsammia Axifuga green
Blastomussa wellsi red

Other:

Sabellastarte magnifica
Gorgonia ventalina
Tridacna maxima Yellow/Gold
Tridacna Derasa
Greenstar polyps
Gorgonia sp. red/yellow
Gorgonia sp. yellow/brown
Zoanthus sp. x 20
Mushrooms: Green mettalic, Red mettalic, Pink

armetas · Dec 23, 2015

Some new updates:

Few fishes added:

Chelmon rostratus
Cirrhilabrus solorensis
Cirrhilabrus lubbocki

armetas · Feb 7, 2016

It's been a while since last post.
There are some good news as some bad news.
First of all some parameters went really bad and I've lost some coral colonies.

Mg - 1125
PO4 - 0,45
NO3 - >50

For the control of these parameters Magnesium liquid was added into the tank for 3 weeks (now magnesium is 1365)

For PO4 and NO3 using few methods at once:

Increased light in refugium
Started vodka dosing
Added Rowaphos and Seachem Purigen

Now it is stabilizing, but still it will be a good lesson for me to check the tank more.

On the bright side - all the fishes that I wanted are already in the tank. Some recent additions are:

Centropyge Bispinosa
Genicanthus Lamarck

From technical point of view there are some changes also:

Added 1 row of T5's for my LED lightning (Giesemann Aquablue Plus 39w + 24w) - it gives additional Red and Green colors which were missing. Fish looks now really amazing.
Jebao RW's got new controllers: Aqualink S1

Recent photo-shoot of reef life:

edosan · Feb 8, 2016

Great pics and reef, congrats!

armetas · Mar 4, 2016

So new production arrived

waiting for the switch to Aquaforest

Joshky · Mar 4, 2016

Great looking reef, thanks so much for taking the time to share with us!

revhtree · Mar 4, 2016

Can't wait to see the results! Any new tank photos?

armetas · Mar 30, 2016

Had some issues with this tank. I will try to provide more information and maybe even new photo-shoot will be held

ScottMyers123 · Mar 30, 2016

Amazing tank, I hope one day mine will look 1/10th as good as yours.

Colin Chaplin · Mar 30, 2016

Hi, Very interested in the build, thank you for sharing .

armetas · Mar 30, 2016

So about the problems that I've had in last 2 months:

Till 2016-01-04 PO4 I had 0,11-0,20 (without GFO, without carbon, just refugium).
Starting from 2016-01-07 I had problems with high phosphates (0,35), even though stock remained the same. GFO not helped...
So I've changed 20 % of water, but still PO4 went up till 0.48.
I've started dosing Vodka as carbon source to lower PO4. After two weeks of using vodka - nothing has changed, but after the third week phosphates started to get lower a bit. On the bad side acropora tips were burned due to alkalinity (9.3 dkh). So it was lowered and burning stopped.
As phosphates were high I've changed 30 % of the wated again on 2016-02-15, phosphates went down to 0.25, but corals started to get brown and I've lost few LPS and 4 acropora colonies.
Some of the corals were transported to another tank in order to save them.
After that I've found that my skimmer isn't working, and after getting it to the peaces I've found that impeller is fallen off the rotor. This is custom part that was glued by ATI on Jebao pump.

After I glued this part back to rotor skimmer started to work as crazy and in a week time I got PO4 ~0.2, after another week it was only ~0.1. And now it is 0.03.
But still I have Nitrates that I'm dealing right now.

Corals are getting back to the form that it was earlier. I've cut carbon (vodka) dosing and now I'm using Aquaforest Pro Bio S and NP Pro to deal with PO4 and NO3, plus refugium lightning was changed from 50W LED to 4x24w of T5's (6500 K).

So the bad skimmer impeller costed me a bucket of corals and additional brain cells...

Now situation is getting better (besides some STN on few Acroporas, which I believe is due to vodka dosing).

armetas · Jun 19, 2016

It was a while since the last post. After skimmer issues I had to control phosphates and nitrates and stabilize the system. It took almost 2 months to do that and PO4 - 0,07-0,09, NO3 - 3-5. Also I've added 10 liters of Sera Siporax (25 mm) in order to keep system stable and don't have up and downs in nutrients. I've had massive RTN and STN on Acropora species and now it is under control (minimized to maximum). I've achieved that with stability and with help of KZ Flatworms stop (this thing really helps ailing corals to survive).

All the things are going better and today I've took some photos. So hoping everything will go better and better going further.

By the way tank is fully on Aquaforest products (all micro elements + Pro Bio S + ReefSalt + Amino Mix, Vitality, Build, Energy.