Build thread - converting 75 gallons fresh to salty

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Good news, the mag is finally holding. Last 2-3 times I tested it was at 1360, just like I wanted. I dose 5 ml AFR per day and I found a way to not forget, which helps keeping the tank stable.

Most corals are happy. Frogspawn is not at its best, but I think it needs to be off the sandbed. I’ll take care of that when I come back from my parents.

Here are my parameters :

Calcium : 440 ppm
Magnesium : 1360 ppm
Alkalinity : 9,7 dkh
Salinity : 1,026 (it will get a little lower naturally, with time. I forget to turn the ATO back on (again:
Phosphates : 0,06
Nitrates : 18,5 ppm
PH : 8,0 - 8,1
 
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I received my new Eheim feeder and the feeding ring I decided to try with it, so food wouldn’t go in all directions, get lost and increase nitrates while I was away.

I also received my holiday cup and will set up a 25 gallons bin for the ATO instead of my usual 5 gallons one.

I had bought a camera also and tested it again today. It’s working perfectly ! So now I can go away anytime I want without worrying. This is even better than a pet sitter. A lot better.

I’m so happy with my Fluval feeding ring ! I wasn’t expecting much but it’s like a whole new world opened up to me. It’s very discreet and the fish took to it almost right away. For the first time, I fed pellets without having more than half of it flying on the sandbed and everywhere.

I had stopped feeding pellets and flakes because of that; my nitrates rose too much. With the ring, not a single pellet got lost ! They all went into fish bellies. I love how they float for a few seconds in the ring, then slowly descend in the water column 4-5 at a time. Fish have time to see them go down and get to them. I truly don’t know how I’ve been keeping fish for 45 years without it…

Now I’ll be able to feed a more varied diet without being afraid of nitrates and phosphates. I’ll test to make sure it’s okay but in any case, it’s still a very good thing to hand handy.

Best 7$ I ever spent !
 
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I tested my holiday setup for a week and everything was just fine.

A few days ago I decided to glue some corals as they were on the sand bed and constantly pushed around by the snails, or maybe hermit crabs. I was tired of having to rescue them as they lay face flat on the sand.

I hate gluing corals with a passion. And cutting frag plugs. I have so much problems cutting the frag plugs and something bad always happens. With gluing, I end up gluing my fingers to the frag most while putting pressure to make it stick on the rock. Or I put too much and end up covering the coral itself. I’ve killed one that way.

This time I managed to kill my gonio by making the frag plug fly in the air while I was cutting it with a dremel (not the greatest but better than my tree cutters). It landed on its face after flying 3-4 feet in the air. It has been retracted and covered in white slime since.

I glued my frog spawn semi-vertically on a rock and the next morning it had fallen on my alveopora. The alveopora was hurt from it and is healing, but not very happy.

This is almost making me stop buying corals. Such a pain. It’s not like I haven’t done researched or watched videos. I have. I’m just not very good at it. :-(
 

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Maybe you should try using reef putty instead of glue , it does look kinda bad initially but the coral will over grow it / algae / coraline
 
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I tried using putty on one of my acans. My least favorite one, in case I messed up. It wasn’t doing well where it was. It doesn’t look too sturdy so I don’t know if it will hold.

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Almost 50% of the tank is « owned » by the Allen damsel. She will flash on the sand constantly and it’s getting all over the corals, so I can’t use that space.

Either the fish is going (good luck catching it), or I will remove most of the sand in the front on that side only. But If she decides to go and mess with the other side where the corals are to get to more sand, that will be a much bigger problem. So I’m torn on that one, more thinking to do.
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I finally got a torch and I’m very happy. If I can get the space on the right, I’ll make a Euphyllia garden with the frog spawn, the hammer and the torch. I’m also supposed to get 2 gold hammers soon.

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I got some Gorilla super glue gel (green cap) and wow, what a difference it made ! For the first time, not one drop of glue got on the coral, barely any on my fingers and I really felt the strong bond on the rock, after wiggling it a bit. The trick is to wait a little bit until it gets stronger and then hold it in place.

This will help me not hate glueing corals as much. Maybe even like it…

Now I only have to find a smart and easy way to cut the frag plugs…
 

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I am going to do the same thing. I was planning on a " Soft Scape " which means very little rock, and small fish. Search for it it is on you tube, was made by Aquariums by Design " I like the idea because then you don't need over the top filtration. I am planning to keep using my Fluval canister, plus a skimmer. The amount of rock you have now is perfect to me
 
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I am going to do the same thing. I was planning on a " Soft Scape " which means very little rock, and small fish. Search for it it is on you tube, was made by Aquariums by Design " I like the idea because then you don't need over the top filtration. I am planning to keep using my Fluval canister, plus a skimmer. The amount of rock you have now is perfect to me

There is more than it looks, probably 60 lbs, maybe more. Sometimes I wish I had even less. Maybe my next build.

I love my Fluval 407 canister but I’m happy I didn’t use it in this build, as I change my filter floss every 5 days and it would be a pain to open the Fluval so often.
 
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Hey just wanted to ask how the two AI 16 do on your tank? I have the same tank and i can’t decide on lights.
Doing really well. I have about 30 corals, all LPS and softies. Torch, hammers, frogspawn, acans, alveopora, goniopora (before I killed it by dropping it on the floor), candy canes and others. I haven’t lost 1 single coral except those 2 or 3 I killed myself by mistake.

I just bought 2 more, they’re on special in Canada. So now my lighting setup will be complete with 4 x AI Prime HD and I can start adding a few SPS. The goal is to have a mixed tank.
 

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Doing really well. I have about 30 corals, all LPS and softies. Torch, hammers, frogspawn, acans, alveopora, goniopora (before I killed it by dropping it on the floor), candy canes and others. I haven’t lost 1 single coral except those 2 or 3 I killed myself by mistake.

I just bought 2 more, they’re on special in Canada. So now my lighting setup will be complete with 4 x AI Prime HD and I can start adding a few SPS. The goal is to have a mixed tank.
Post a pic once you got it all setup. I really want a clean setup and this sounds sweet.

What arm are you using to mount? And how do they fit on the rim?

I was considering the Maxspect Jumps
 
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Post a pic once you got it all setup. I really want a clean setup and this sounds sweet.

What arm are you using to mount? And how do they fit on the rim?

I was considering the Maxspect Jumps
Okay I will. I’m supposed to get them tomorrow. :)

I’m using the rigid mounts. My rim is 1.25 inch and they fight tight on it. I don’t want anything hanging from the ceiling and that reduces the choices a lot.
 
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So I got my 2 AI Prime 16 HD today and spent the afternoon and part of the evening trying to screw one light onto its arm. I had trouble the first time too but not as bad. I think. The second one took less than 10 minutes. Experience helped.

Anyways, I put them both together as a separate tank, this way they have have their own separate schedule. I copied the schedule from the other two but brought it down to 11% instead of 90%. Then I can increase it slowly every week or so.

They’re not perfectly symmetrical because of the equipment sticking out, but I find it still looks good. I can’t wait to see how it’s going to look tomorrow. Lights were out by the time I was done so didn’t see it.

Pictures coming tomorrow.
 
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@doubleshot00 here they are; all 4 AI Primes. I was going to fix the lid on the left side but my dremel broke and I had to send it for repair. It will have to wait a little more.

Please note the glass wasn't cleaned before the pictures. Si if there is a little blur, it’s not from the lights.

I changed my mind and did 60% old lights and 50% new. This looked a little brighter to my eye, but not too much. We’ll see how the corals do. I like it so far, everything looks brighter.

1A04AFB6-E3D4-4B9F-9095-10F3BA47B8FB.jpeg


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7B223801-58F9-4B3B-8CA0-743849EAA55D.jpeg
 
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I’m still using the lights at 55%. I believe it’s enough for what I have now. The spread is just better.

The tank is now 7 1/2 months old. My parameters are pretty stable :

Salinity : 1.025-1.026
PH : 8.0
Alk : 9.0-9.5
Mag : 1320-1340
Cal : 430-435
P04 : 0,04
N03 : 10.6

Nitrates are still going down every week. I would like them to stay where they are now. I was waiting for them to be lower to feed more reef roids so I might start doing that.

I’ve gotten rid of the kenya tree; it was throwing babies everywhere on the rocks near by and becoming invasive.

I’ve killed the gonio and thrown away a GSP frag that constantly had aiptasia. I think I’m left with 24 corals.

They’re all doing okay but none are really growing new heads except the duncans. I sometimes wonder why they’re not thriving more. Maybe it’s because the tank is still maturing.

Next step, sometime this summer I hope, is to rent a par meter and make a map of pars at my current settings and other settings so I know what I need to do when I start adding SPS.
 
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Dinos have come back. I talk about it in another thread.


Corals aren’t happy. They haven’t been in a while. Nothing is really growing and most are smaller than what they were. I suppose it’s a side effect of trying different things to get rid of dinos, including having very little light.

Anyways, it’s just not very interesting right now. I am postponing buying new corals until the ones I have at least go back to being somewhat like they used to be.

I hope I don’t spent next year trying to get rid of dinos, as I know some people do.

In freshwater I had diatoms covering everything for 8 months, and it was very frustrating. But at least I knew it was temporary. I let them be and they eventually went away.

This seems like it can go on and on and on, without there being a specific treatment that is guaranteed to work. It takes a lot of faith to want to keep going despite that.
 

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Dino’s can really test one’s patience , I thought about giving up almost daily lol it felt like I was just creating death in a glass box, but I got through it and haven’t seen them since. You’ll get through it to
 
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So far dinos seem to be in check after my treatment. I won’t expand on it since I have a specific thread about it.

I have to admit I have been a fool. I took a risk, forgot about it and paid dearly for it. But hey, that’s what learning is all about. When I bought my first cal-alk-mag test kit, there was liquid missing in the magnesium bottle. I got another kit for free and figured it must have been a manufacturing default and kept using the first one and kept the replacement for when I ran out.

Well, it turns out it was a faulty kit and I have been testing magnesium, and probably alkalinity, wrong since the beginning. Only calcium seems to be right, and I never had any problems with that parameter.

Magnesium was always depleted. I bought Brightwell powder magnesium, then EVB magnesium when I ran out. I was dosing good amounts but never reached stability. Meanwhile, alkalinity kept rising for no reason. I figured the growing coralline algae was using all the magnesium up and the addition of it made the alkalinity rise as well.

I thought about using the other test kit many times, but since the test was showing a reasonable rise in magnesium every time I tested after adding it, I figured it must have been okay. I tested today and magnesium is 1680 (not 1240 as tested previously) and alkalinity is 8.4 (not 9.8 as tested previously).

Anyways, now I have to unlearn all I know about alk and mag from my tank, because it’s all bogus. I lost a few frags over it, and probably some inverts. Good news is now I can really fix it, achieve stability and start buying corals again. And maybe an anemone.
 
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