Budget Breeder Build

[Sisterlimonpot]

I am looking into getting the G5 XR15 Pros for my tank..... still not available

Gotta know the right people... wink wink...

Last I heard they're still producing them, just not up to the level that demand requires. Once things get back to normal, we will see them for sale everywhere.

 

[adrianr514]

So after some procrastination I finally got done painting and mountings everything to the control board.

Long story short my buddy built me a control board out of scrap wood. Took the last three day painting and sealing. Used Krylon Colormaxx Satin black acrylic paint. three coats was more than enough then sealed with a polyurethane coat once it dried.

Drilled a couple of holes with a 2" Hole Saw and plugged with 2" Desk grommets I got from Amazon.

To mount the Ecotech drivers I used mounts that were 3D printed by @Sisterlimonpot.

Lastly since I was unplugging and routing everything again I took down the lights and rail so I could snake the cords through the rail. Just another minor annoyance but now that it is done it looks nicer.

 

[adrianr514]

So I haven’t really had anything to add to this the past couple of days. Still waiting on a couple of things to fall in place before I can make the next moves on either of the two tanks.

In the meantime I picked up an IM Nuvo 10 from a local reefer and R2R member @BigPanda.
This couldn’t have come at a better time, I had been wanting to start another freshwater tank as I tore all of mine down and was kind of missing the simplicity behind them.

After picking it up I took a trip to Limited Edition Corals to see what freshwater supplies they had.

I ended up picking up some dragon stone, aquavitro soil and a Kessil A80 Tuna sun.

After a days work of fiddling with the dragon stone I think I finally stopped on something I like.

I ordered some carpeting plants to start a dry start method with.

I’ll post more updates to either three tanks as they come.

 

[keywestreefer]

Hey all you cool Fish and Fry, so this build is actually a couple of weeks in already and I am just now getting around to posting. So after getting rid of my reefer and moving down to an IM 25 Lagoon I was left with the urge of needing a little more room.

Ideally I want something larger than 100 gallons but the apartment complex I am in doesn't allow for tanks larger than 30 gallons without permission. Sadly the largest I was able to convince management to let me have was a 40 Gallon tank. Since I already had a 40B just sitting in storage I decided to put it together.

First off is the equipment.

Tank: Aqueon 40 Breeder
Stand: Imagitarium Brooklynn style stand
Sump: Trigger Systems Sapphire 26
Salt: Tropic Marin Pro @ 35ppt
Lighting: Ecotech Radion XR30 G4 Pro
Overflow: Eshopps Eclipse M
Return Pump: Ecotech Vectra S1
Skimmer: NYOS Quantum 120
Reactor: Dual Aquamaxx FR-SE
Power Head: 3 Ecotech MP10s
Controller: inkbird temp controller
Doser: Kamoer X1
Other: CO2 Scrubber

Desired Parameters:
Ca: 440
Alk: 8.5
Mag: 1450
Nitrate: ≤ 1ppm
Phospahte: .01ppm to .05ppm

For plumbing I went with a 3/4" dual return Teed off to either side of the tank with two @Vivid Creative Aquatics RFG nozzles. To get the plumbing put in place I reached out to my reefing mentor @Sisterlimonpot who came over and pretty much did everything for me while I acted helpful. I am absolutely terrible at this whole measure twice cut once thing so I am glad he helped me out.

Once it was all said and done this is what it looked like.

Next came the fun part, the aquascape! So I knew I wanted to go with an SPS dominant tank so I planned to not go past the half way mark on the tank. With this in mind I decided to go with Dry rock and my choice of rock was Marco Rock.

I went with Marco rock because it offered the most variety with types of rock to allow me to build the scape I wanted. I ordered 60 pounds of rock mixed between flat and cut base rock.

To hold everything together I used E-Marco 400 which is essentially just branded Hydraulic Cement. It was easy to use and dried fast while making a rather strong bond.

Coming into this I knew I didn't want any sand so I made sure to paint the bottom black.

I am currently waiting on my XR15 G5 Blues so until then I am running a single XR30 G4 Pro centered as much as possible.

Lastly here is a picture of my Saltwater mixing/Storage container.

It is a 34Gallon Brute on wheels that I placed a float valve at 25gallons. I have a @Sicceus19 Syncra Silent 5.0 turning the water around. I used two separate ball valves to either recirculate the water for mixing or to pump water out to fill up the tanks after water changes.

Totally stealing your brute setup. I am in an apartment too and awaiting delivery of my 100g.
Awesome setup!

 

[adrianr514]

Totally stealing your brute setup. I am in an apartment too and awaiting delivery of my 100g.
Awesome setup!

No problem! Glad you were able to take something from my build and apply it to your needs.

 

[adrianr514]

Kona Reef Suprise is having a 50% off sale on all their coral so I decided to check them out. Ended up picking up a couple of Montis.

I was also getting tired of messing with clip on filters and dunking my phone in the water so I picked up an Olympus Tough TG-6. So far it’s a pretty decent point and shoot with a good macro option and underwater capabilities. The photos of the Montis and these next few ones were taken with it.

 

[adrianr514]

Brought two new fish home over the weekend.

A Potters Angel

and a Fuzzy Dwarf Lionfish

Also got the 10 planted with Monte Carlo.

Lastly, was helping out at one of my LFS Limited Edition Corals. While there I snagged this pic of one of their main propagation tanks.

Will post more updates in the coming weeks.

 

[adrianr514]

Couple things have happened the past couple of days.

first I received some Pink Fusion and Purple Helix from Arc Reef.

Added both bottles to both the 40 breeder and the Lagoon.

Already had some Coralline growth in the 40 but I wanted to add diversity of different coralline strains into it. That was about a week and a half ago.

Two days ago I started noticing some a change in my corals, my Toxic Green Aussie Slimers polyps were retracted and my PC rainbow RTN’d. A couple of my Montis seem to be following suit as well.

Parameter were all fine. ph ranges from 7.8 to 8.1 through the day. Alk 8.1dKh, Nitrate 2.5ppm, phosphate .09ppm and Ammonia/Nitrate 0.

Without any obvious outliers I began doing major water changes. Thursday I did a large 20 Gallon water change and I did another 20 Gallons today as well.

Also through some Rowaphos in the a canister to try and bring phosphates to around .05ppm and also got some carbon running in another reactor just in case.

I will definitely be monitoring it very closely over the next couple of days. If I have to I’ll pull all the coral out of the 40 and put them in the lagoon just to be safe if nothing changes here soon.

So onto some good news, I put in an order with WWC for a Monti pack and had enough points to get $100 off and threw in a surprise pack as well.

The coral came in today and here’s what came it was.
WWC Lucky Charms Monti

WWC Dragonfruit Monti

Tyree Flower Petal Monti

Jason Fox Special Porites

Jason Fox Fruity Pebbles

WWC Earthbound Echinata

WWC Lightning Favia

WWC Boogie night Blasto

These have been put into the lagoon until things get right in the 40.
Lucky the T5 hybrid with AI Prime 16hd is more than capable of sustaining the SPS.

 

[adrianr514]

A couple of things happening.

First I received my ICP test back showing elevated levels of Aluminum and Tin.

I just cleaned out my Skimmer and sump over the weekend and did not find anything rusting or out of the ordinary.

Here is the sump post clean and reorganized the rock from the middle chamber to the first one.

I also just moved some things around in the display and could not find anything off. All of the magnets that are in the display are sealed. No swelling or rust anywhere.

So I guess my only move here is to remove the Marinepure blocks and see how that does and since I've done about 60 gallons worth of water changes in the last week to figure out why my sis weren't happy I don't think my current levels are still what the API test shows.

I will give it another 2 weeks of regular maintenance before I send off another one.

Next was tackling flow and dead spots within my display that was not allowing the detritus and other organics to go down the overflow.

After lots of thinking decided to remove he large structure on the lest of my tank and to just center the main structure.

I am rather liking the more open and less crowded look and it also opens up a lot of bottoms space for the encrusting montipora I haven as you can see after just one night the display looks a lot cleaner. I still have some small areas around the base of the rock where stuff collects but its not as much as before and the water is visibly cleaner.

Now you may be wondering what I did with that structure?

Well.

So its a tight fit but I like it. The highest point of the structure just breaks the waters surface.

Current plans are to add zoos to the flat part of it, add low light corals under the it and remove that ugly frag rack from the left to open up space.

Lastly I had ordered 16" brackets for the Aquatic life T5 Hybrid. The stock ones causes the back row of T5s to be centered over the rear sump which meant I was losing on a lot of light inside the display.

Install was easy, it was just removing the old one and installing the new ones. They even included extra hardware just in case however I just reused my old hardware.

The only issue was the AI Prime. It's a tight fit. The Hanging bracket wouldn't allow it to be used in the traditional orientation so I had to turn it 90 degrees and push it into place.

Now the end result is that the whole fixture is centered over the display and I am quite happy with it.

Now, time to leave things alone for a bit. I am planning on running to Limited Edition Corals and picking up some Turbostart 900 to make up for the Marinepure blocks I removed in an effort to avoid a mini cycle.

 

[adrianr514]

So after a whole 5 minutes of deep thought and consideration I have decided to take down all of my tanks.