Beware the Shallows! An 80g Reef Reboot

[jedimasterben]

Hello all. I suffered massive casualties in my tank over the last few months - nearly all corals, all clams, almost all fish, so I took all the rock out, gave it an acid bath, cycled it, drained the tank until it had only 30g or so in it, just enough to cover what corals had survived, and then refilled the tank and sump with new water, about 70g added (so 100g total system volume). Added rock back in, did a bit of scaping, and here is what I came up with. It still has a LONG way to go, but it's going well so far.

Initial tank pictures, equipment, and livestock list:



Latest pics of system:

Equipment

Display tank:

• Deep Blue 80g Rimless Edge
• 48" x 24" x 16"

Sump:

• 40g breeder, custom 1/4" glass baffles
• 36" x 18" x 16"

Total system volume, minus rock and sand, is right about 100 gallons

Filtration:

• SCA-303 protein skimmer
• 10" x 8" horizontal algae scrubber (lit by custom LED array, 28x 660nm, 6x 455nm)

Flow:

• Two Tunze 6095 at 24v (100%)

Lighting:

• Custom 'evil cluster'
• 4x Bridgelux BXRA 950B 4000K neutral white
• 12x Luxeon M 450nm royal blue
• 12x Rebel 470nm blue
• 6x Rebel 490nm cyan
• 28x LEDGroupBuy 430nm hyper violet
• 2x 18" MakersLED heatsinks
• Meanwell LDD-H drivers on custom PCB
• Typhon controller

Livestock

Fish

• 3x Chromis (Chromis viridis)
• Leopard wrasse female (Macropharyngodon meleagris)
• Powder brown tang (Acanthurus japonicus)
• Red scooter dragonet (Synchiropus stellatus)
• Yellow watchman goby (Cryptocentrus cinctus)

Inverts

• Brittle Sea Star (Ophiocoma sp.)
• Candy striped pistol shrimp (Alpheus randalli)
• Dwarf cerith snails (Cerithium lutosum)
• Florida cerith snails (Cerithium altratum)
• Lettuce sea slugs (Elysia crispata)
• 5x Maxi-mini anemone (Stichodactyla tapetum)
• Mexican turbo snails (Turbo fluctuosa)
• Nassarius snails (Nassarius sp.)
• Nerite snails (Nerita sp.)
• Serpent stars (Ophiolepsis superba)

Corals

SPS

• Montipora (Montipora sp.)
• Pocillopora (Pocillopora sp.)

LPS

• Alveopora (Alveopora sp.)
• Blastomussa (Blastomussa merletti)
• Branching hammer (Euphyllia parancora)
• Bubble (Plerogyra sinuosa)
• Chalice (Echinophyllia aspera)
• Duncan (Duncanopsammia axifuga)
• Galaxea (Galaxea sp.)
• Goniopora (Goniopora sp.)
• Pearl bubble (Physogyra lichtensteini)
• Short tentacle plate (Fungia sp.)
• Sympodium (Sympodium sp.)
• Wall frogspawn (Euphyllia divisa)
• Wall hammer (Euphyllia ancora)

Soft coral

• Palythoa (Palythoa sp.)
• Zoanthids (Zoanthus sp.)

Corallimorphs

• Mushroom (Actinodiscus sp.)
• Ricordea (Ricordea florida)

Octocorals

• Purple brush gorgonian (Muriceopsis flavida)

Macroalgae

• Cactus caulerpa (Caulerpa cupressoides)
• Codium (Codium sp.)
• Grape caulerpa (Caulerpa racemosa)
• Halimeda (Halimeda sp.)
• Pencil cap (Penicillus capitatus)
• Star grass (Halophila engelmannii)

 

[trickedout900]

Good job on not throwing in the towel and giving up. Do you know what caused the original crash? Looks like you have a good start on the new round.

 

[jedimasterben]

I have a few theories, but no way to really prove any of them. All i do know is after I went from a 'dirty' system with only an algae scrubber, purigen, and carbon to a 'cleaner' system with a skimmer, carbon, and purigen, my SPS stopped growing and poop just hit the fan. At the same time, I added a few anthias that popped their bag while it was floating in the sump and the LFS water mixed with mine, so I'm not sure if that had anything to do with it, either.


Either way, some stuff is opening that I've never seen open before, some stuff has had no change, and some stuff actually looks worse. I've been dosing sodium ascorbate to see if that could help out any, but that will take at least a week or four to really see any changes, which may just be due to time.

The algae scrubber was started up yesterday evening, and as of this morning when I turned its light off, it had a brown dusting of diatoms, so the scrubber is off to a bangin' start! Can't wait to start being able to just dump food in without having to worry about nutrient levels.

 

[revhtree]

Glad to see you stayed with it!

 

[jedimasterben]

Thanks rev!

 

[trickedout900]

Well thanks for sharing. Its always nice to learn from the mishaps and such of others. I feel like this is one hobby where you can never have enough knowledge. Its also great to hear that things are opening up and coming back to life for you.

 

[Rhino]

How do you like the rimless 80? I have been looking at one for a while now but have not seen one in person so I am hesitant to pull the trigger.


Ryan

 

[SeahorseKeeper]

Glad your sticking with it! Looking forward to seeing the tank come back together!

 

[reefed419]

Goodluck Ben, Is the Evil cluster on steroids fired up yet? How are the corals responding to all the violet light?

 

[Zoacoral]

Im thinking of switching to tunze 6095's. If I remember, you had vortechs on this tank before? Im just wondering how you like the tunze on this tank? I have a similiar tank, but mine is made by planet aquariums and isnt rimless, and its 17 1/2" tall.

 

[jedimasterben]

Well thanks for sharing. Its always nice to learn from the mishaps and such of others. I feel like this is one hobby where you can never have enough knowledge. Its also great to hear that things are opening up and coming back to life for you.

I know! Stuff is even more open now. My big goniopora has been expanding back to almost its normal size (about 8" across). I can still see where the tissue has died off at the bottom, but it has stopped receding. I do not know if it will recover that part, however, from where it is sitting on the sand, does anyone know what to expect there?

I did have my third and final duncan coral complete its tissue recession yesterday. It started with just one head losing tissue, turning to brown jelly, and every other day the coral has received an iodine dip (40 drops per gallon concentration of Lugol's solution), but tissue recession continued unphased, just like the other two duncans.

All three of them had 25-30 heads, one being an ORA coral. All were given to me for free (around 10 heads each when I got them), but still hated losing them

How do you like the rimless 80? I have been looking at one for a while now but have not seen one in person so I am hesitant to pull the trigger.


Ryan

I like it. I always keeping thinking that if I got another tank, it would be around 60" x 36" x 20" or so, but I started liking the 16" height again, and when I do upgrade, I'll probably keep it to 16" and do what my original plan was for this tank when I got it - a reef bommie with a single bit of rockwork in the center.

Glad your sticking with it! Looking forward to seeing the tank come back together!

Thanks!

Goodluck Ben, Is the Evil cluster on steroids fired up yet? How are the corals responding to all the violet light?

Not yet - had a lot of setbacks, and the last few weeks have been really rough, work kicked up for the summer, both of my best friends lost very close family members, my home A/C died and had to get that fixed, and a few other things. Last night I reattached the plastic lenses on the violets and blues, as the one-part epoxy I used just would not dry, and I used silicone this time, so it'll take a couple of days to fully cure, but after that they won't come off unless I really want them to

Also trying to figure out how to hang it. I'll post an update soon on the evil cluster's thread about it.

Im thinking of switching to tunze 6095's. If I remember, you had vortechs on this tank before? Im just wondering how you like the tunze on this tank? I have a similiar tank, but mine is made by planet aquariums and isnt rimless, and its 17 1/2" tall.

Only thing I really miss about the MP10s is that their cords are outside the tank. And I guess that their controller is built-in. I just bought the 7096 controller on Sunday, so it should be here soon. They're super powerful, plenty enough for the tank by themselves if placed correctly, but running at 24v (100%) in a 16", even with larger grained sand like I have, it still creates a bit of a dune up under one of the Tunzes. I imagine that once I get the controller, I can run them on 24v again (have the 20v chips in right now) and it shouldn't create any from there since they will ramp up and down and such.



In tank news, last night my mesh filter sock clogged up and overflowed, and I'm not all that sure how, but the sump lost about 15g of water to the floor. Luckily, I have a hole drilled in the floor behind the tank where a wire runs to a speaker that is above the tank, and it seems all the water flowed right down through there and under my house, saving the floor inside, but it's questionable what the subfloor looks like now. After my last flooding incident, my dad and I took up part of the floor, and while the plywood under it was wet, it dried out normally and was alright from there, so I'm not crazy worried about it. I'll get out my dehumidifier and place it next to the tank and see what all it can pull out.

 

[shovelrider]

Lets see the sump! I like your layout.

 

[jedimasterben]

Sorry for the delay, everyone! Here is a video of the sump:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nvMggRWHsnQ


But, it's going away soon, I bought a 29g and a 10g, the 29 will be the sump and the 10g will be for kalk'd topoff.

I removed some of the massive clump of caulerpa, and moved it to the back of the tank and giving some to a friend. I put a couple of rocks into the DT from the sump because with the massive thing of rock that I put together, taking forever, but I made it too tall and it's just not working out that well. If the tank were several inches taller, it would be perfect and awesome, but as it is, it's just not what I want, so I think its gonna come out :/

So much for minimalistic lol



OH! And my neon goby WAS CLEANING MY HAND THE WHOLE TIME IT WAS IN THE TANK! It was SO COOL!

 

[Rhino]

Great looking tank. I want one so bad I can't stand it. Hands down my favorite tank on the market so much real estate for corals.

 

[jedimasterben]

Now I just need to get the rocks in and scaped correctly so that that statement is true LOL

 

[jedimasterben]

Video of my neon goby cleaning my hand: Neon goby 'cleaning' my hand - YouTube

 

[revhtree]

HAHA cool!

 

[jedimasterben]

So I hit the clam lottery on LA. They forgot a '1' in the price tag.

 

[hung]

Awesome, did you pick up anything else or just the clam?

 

[jedimasterben]

Just the clam. I thought the free shipping cutoff was $175, but it is $225, so I just got it. If I would have sold some of my extra LEDs, then I probably would have gotten a maxima clam and maybe something else to fill that, but I figured I'll just pay the shipping.