BubbleMyTip's 90 gallon sps dominant tank build

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bubblemytip

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Progress. Tank is inside now. I will leak test it this weekend. :)

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And the sump looks awesome. I still need to clean the barcodes off the pvc with some acetone.

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dbl

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Progress. Tank is inside now. I will leak test it this weekend. :)

10b6e2cb89dbec2a9e0e818ff3e232a8.jpg


And the sump looks awesome. I still need to clean the barcodes off the pvc with some acetone.

3a0670e48684ec19ad25f1bd14911f00.jpg

That looks terrific...very clean looking.
 
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The spare pump I ordered for the skimmer arrived. It is awesome. Silent. I have installed it and the skimmer is breaking in.

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The tank is almost ready for the transfer. Salinity is matching. Using prodibio and fauna marin bacto balls to help things along.

It is going to be stressful moving this tightly packed tank to the larger one but it is going to be awesome in the long term... hopefully nothing dies or breaks too much.

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We are upgraded!! No breakages and corals all seem happy after an initial sliming. Fish can’t believe their luck. All happy, no aggression and eating well.

Skimmer is still breaking in and overfoaming, but it’s such a beast that even though it’s draining into the sump, the gunk is building up inside the cup anyway.

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We are upgraded!! No breakages and corals all seem happy after an initial sliming. Fish can’t believe their luck. All happy, no aggression and eating well.

Skimmer is still breaking in and overfoaming, but it’s such a beast that even though it’s draining into the sump, the gunk is building up inside the cup anyway.

3631418da527786e597b2cb08b4bb4d0.jpg


63a5ad8107037e4996f1e1ac86948c16.jpg


ba816b13ca3f5647d700ee6721203a55.jpg


8829d3f658b4286158c657a13c2dd0b7.jpg


fb366e028e2dd46859da281736788451.jpg


d1def42e0ef6784053b90825a44195b7.jpg

Nice! Everything looks happy.
 
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Thanks guys. [emoji16] I’m pretty happy with the end result.

Still waiting on the Artfully Acrylic screen top to arrive. Using plastic mesh and clamps at the moment.

I may pick up some frags in the next few weeks from some established zeovit/aquaforest tanks in my city. :)
 
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Currently fighting some dinoflagellates in the tank. The old rock from my nano is mostly fine. The new rock and sand is looking pretty disgusting.

I guess the blank canvas of the new rock and sand has allowed the dinos to thrive. I am starting to get some algae growth on the rocks now, though, so hopefully this phase is short-lived, and once the dinos have competition, they will recede into the background again.

I am currently dosing nitrate and phosphate to maintain NO3 at about 10ppm and Phosphate at around 0.1ppm, and I am running an Eheim Reeflex UV800 with 400-600lph (about 1.5x tank volume) to maximise the UV contact time. Corals seem unfazed by it all and I am still seeing growth on the sps. I am also running a CO2 scrubber on the skimmer and using kalk as my ATO.

The dinos do not appear to be toxic, which is a relief. The snails and hermit have been unaffected so far. The foxface has been ingesting plenty as it grazes the rocks and does not seem to be affected at all - no change in behaviour. So while ugly, I am not too concerned at this stage. Out of an abundance of caution, I am replacing my activated carbon more frequently.

I'll post some microscope photos and video of the dinos later.

To assist with the clean-up (but mostly to make me feel less hopeless/something to wave off my impatience while I wait for the biology to stablise), I have modded Sicce 1.5 pump to my UV sterilizer by attaching a venturi of sorts. To this, I have connected some 4/6mm air tubing and a 4/5mm acrylic tube. I am using this to vacuum up the worst of the dinos and force them directly through the UV sterilizer. When I am not using it, I can just hang the tube in the sump, out of the way.
 
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The dinos have receded. Corals are looking good. Snails and fish are all OK. The only casualty (if you can call it that) is my anemone - it split into three, but is now perking up. I am finally getting some coralline algae growth on the back glass and on the overflow, so the biology appears to be stabilising. I have a little bit of cyano on the sand now, but it is very easy to remove and I do not see it as being a major problem for now.

I found the following worked for beating the Ostreopsis sp. dinos I had:
  • maintaining NO3 at >20ppm and PO4 at ~0.1ppm
  • adding a UV sterilizer
  • reducing the photoperiod by 2 hours on my lighting (I did not do a total blackout because I wanted algae to compete with the dinos)
  • dosing Vibrant
  • mechanically removing as many dinos as possible by:
    • using 100-micron filter socks in the sump (while the dinos could slip through, as collective snot, they did not);
    • using a power filter in the tank with fine wadding, stirring up the dinos with the rest of the tank's flow OFF
    • siphoning the dinos directly into a fine Chemex coffee filter as often as I could.
The major dino bloom seems to have lasted 2-3 weeks in total. Fingers crossed that the tank has now found some balance.
 
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Well, the screen top from Artfully Acrylic has been delivered to my office today! Ordered it back in May... The freight forwarder lost the parcel for about a month and then it was held up by customs in my country (took them 2 weeks to issue an invoice...)

Will post pics once it is mounted. Hopefully it all fits!
 

A worm with high fashion and practical utility: Have you ever kept feather dusters in your reef aquarium?

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