itgoeson’s newbie Cobalt C-Vue 45G AIO build

[itgoeson]

This is my first saltwater aquarium and I’ve really enjoyed the journey so far! The stocking goals are:
- Pair of h. erectus seahorses
- Pair of ocellaris clowns
- A goby / pistol shrimp pair
- Some softies as hitching posts (e.g., photosynthetic gorgonians, Corky sea fingers, Devils Hand)
- Some hardy, seahorse-safe corals that look cool (zoas, a small rock of pulsing Xenia)
- Possibly some macro algae but not sure if they will be too messy for the display?

Equipment plans:
- Cobalt C-vue 45G AIO with stand and lid
- AI Prime Sol light
- Stock return pumps
- Aquatop 200 watt heater
- InkBird ITC-308S temp controller (has heater and cooler outlets)
- Reef Breeders ATO
- Cobalt Rescue Air Pump in case of power outage
- TBD protein skimmer

Feb 15
GFCI outlet is installed so I pick up the tank at my LFS. Sadly, it does not come close to fitting in my Honda Civic. I’m very lucky to live really close to a pretty amazing LFS, and the owner’s husband offered to load it in his truck and deliver it! Problem 1 solved.

Feb 16
Cabinet assembled with the “help” of my two-year-old whose new favorite word is “screwdriser.”

Cabinet put in place and leveled with some felt feet, put the tank on top and still level! I did not think to add a leveling mat - is that a problem?

Added 43 pounds of rock (8 pounds dry in the form of completely flat on the bottom base pieces and the rest “cooked” by the LFS, some pieces more aged than others):

I want to leave enough space for hitching posts, so I broke up some and put the pieces in the back of the AIO “sump.” That in itself was an experience... started with a small hammer, then tried a regular hammer, then an axe... finally succeeded by putting it in a trash bag and swinging it over my head onto the driveway. The scape came out ok I think!

Added 40 pounds of CaribSea Fiji Pink live sand and filled it up!

Our house has well water, and we added an RO unit in August for drinking water. I added a valve and a DI resin canister for fish water. However, on the advice of this forum I also got a TDS meter. The water from the tap measures around 150. Drinking water tap (RO only) measures 140. That system is supposed to take the TDS down by 90 percent! With the DI it’s down to about 70. I ordered new RO canisters and results were similar, so I gave up for now and ended up buying water from the LFS. If anyone has any ideas, I’m all ears. One suggestion I’ve heard is that the well water may not have enough pressure? Could that be it? I may try a booster pump, but they aren’t cheap, so without some confidence that that will work, buying water seems ok for now.

Got the pumps and the heater/controller fired up. Seahorses have to be under 74F so planning to add a fan to the InkBird to cool this summer if needed. Pretty cloudy and there are some bits of newspaper from trying to keep the live rock wet. The filter socks will have some work to do.

 

[Alexreefer]

Will love to see how this progresses! As for the ro/di, what brand do you have and what is your water pressure?

 

[itgoeson]

Will love to see how this progresses! As for the ro/di, what brand do you have and what is your water pressure?

The RO system is a 6 stage from 123filter.com (it also has a small storage tank). I will have to see if I can figure out what the pressure is tomorrow. The unit is in the basement, and there is enough pressure to get it up one floor to the kitchen where it dispenses from a faucet like the one shown here. It takes about 20 seconds to fill an 8oz glass. Does that help at all re:understanding the pressure?

(The tubing from the DI is only a couple of feet long so I’ll be filling my buckets in the basement.)

 

[Alexreefer]

The RO system is a 6 stage from 123filter.com (it also has a small storage tank). I will have to see if I can figure out what the pressure is tomorrow. The unit is in the basement, and there is enough pressure to get it up one floor to the kitchen where it dispenses from a faucet like the one shown here. It takes about 20 seconds to fill an 8oz glass. Does that help at all re:understanding the pressure?

20 seconds for 8 oz seems a little slow. I think your pressure might be a little to low. Figure out the water pressure then we will figure out if we need a booster pump or not.

 

[good.reef]

If it were me, I would go with less rock for a seahorse tank.

 

[itgoeson]

If it were me, I would go with less rock for a seahorse tank.

Is there a rule of thumb for seahorses? I was trying to get close to 1 pound per gallon in the whole system but there isn’t a ton of room in the back. It looks like a decent amount of open space but I’m not sure how much to aim for!

 

[good.reef]

I would do a flatter structure or more of a centralized mound. The two main problems I see being that they need as much vertical swimming space as possible and by having those multiple rocks stacked and leaning against the back it's going to cause detritus traps. Since the flow needs to be lower for the horses and since they are slow deliberate eaters having an area like that will cause uneaten food to accumulate in an area you won't be able to get to. Seahorses need really clean water as they are susceptible to parasites especially in water above 74 degrees. You could also do a tower like structure in the middle using epoxy to create it so there is flow all around and vertical space everywhere except a thin place in the middle, I'd definitely pull the rock away from the edges regardless of structure shape. Im just giving you my thoughts based on my knowledge, I'm by no means an expert.

 

[itgoeson]

I would do a flatter structure or more of a centralized mound. The two main problems I see being that they need as much vertical swimming space as possible and by having those multiple rocks stacked and leaning against the back it's going to cause detritus traps. Since the flow needs to be lower for the horses and since they are slow deliberate eaters having an area like that will cause uneaten food to accumulate in an area you won't be able to get to. Seahorses need really clean water as they are susceptible to parasites especially in water above 74 degrees. You could also do a tower like structure in the middle using epoxy to create it so there is flow all around and vertical space everywhere except a thin place in the middle, I'd definitely pull the rock away from the edges regardless of structure shape. Im just giving you my thoughts based on my knowledge, I'm by no means an expert.

Thank you! There is actually quite a lot of space around all of the sides - nothing is touching the sides. Here is a shot from the side when the water started to clear.

 

[good.reef]

Thank you! There is actually quite a lot of space around all of the sides - nothing is touching the sides. Here is a shot from the side when the water started to clear.

Ahhh... The first picture looked deceptive looks much better at this angle.

 

[itgoeson]

Well, am pretty terrible at updating this! So much has changed since the original post. Here are some updates.

February 21, 2020

Ammonia and nitrites 0, nitrate 5.
Added two bottles of Fritz turbo start just in case.
First fish! Normal ocellaris clown.
Also found a hitchhiker on the live rock... a tiny feather duster.

February 25, 2020

Ammonia and nitrites 0, nitrates still at 5.

Added second fish, a Darwin ocellaris clown. One clown is in one corner and the other is as far away as he could possibly be in the opposite corner... hoping it’s a matter of time and not that I should have introduced them together!

Tried to get my Reef Breeders ATO set up, which seemed so trivial! I know it uses an optical sensor and requires clear glass between the pieces, so I popped it on the side of the display and tested it out by putting the little pump in a bowl and filling it with tank water. But it seemed like no matter how much water I took from the display, the water level remained the same. I finally realized that the sump section of an AIO drains before the display tank - I guess the return pumps have a higher flow rate than the overflow? The whole sump portion of this AIO is covered with a black plastic film, so I can’t set it up without cutting a hole in the film...

February 26, 2020

Copepod explosion! Must have been in the live rock? Tiny specks swimming around everywhere, mostly on the sand and rock.

Cut a diamond shape in the back with an xacto knife for the AT. Not so easy with the tank against the wall, but I’m awfully glad I left as much space as I did between the tank and the wall. working perfectly now.

Clowns are now inseparable.

March 1, 2020

Added a clean up crew. 3 trochus snails, 3 nassarius snails, and 6 hermits (2 blue legged, 2 scarlets, 2 red legged).

It was around this time that I was reading a ton about coral and started to feel that there is a whole lot of interesting stuff out there that might even be more interesting than seahorses. Seahorses have so many unique requirements and really don’t live in reefs. But I just couldn’t picture my first saltwater tank without some of these really cool corals. Seahorses also require frequent feedings of frozen food... I had planned to feed 3x/day, but that would be tough to maintain when traveling for work, vacation, etc. I started to think of doing a reef tank without seahorses, and it felt like a weight had lifted... so I let the seahorse dream die for now.

 

[itgoeson]

March 7, 2020

Today I went to the Frag Farmer’s Market in CT. An entire wing of a high school is taken over by vendors and amateur hobbyists selling fish and frags and equipment and food and stuff I had never known exists. Reef tank Disneyland!

I met a few people I recognized from podcasts and products, like Rod of Rod’s Food. And saw a bunch of coral that I had only seen in pictures. The scale of some things was really surprising - bubble coral is like 10 times bigger than I expected. I wish that vendors would label frags or tank sections somehow ... I recognized a few things and asked about some others but there was so much there, I’m not even sure what all I saw. I also wish you could switch the lights from blues to whites to see things under both.

I know it’s a little early to add coral, and patience is the key to success, and all that... but... came home with a little zoa frag, some pulsing xenia, and a trio of rock flower anemones that are soooo cool!

That very first night, one of the hermits got stuck to an anemone. After an hour of trying to let it resolve by itself, I tried to gently peel the hermit off. The hermit was fine, but the anemone closed up and became rather unhappy. Two days later, it turned into a pile of goo.

The others are doing ok though.

 

[itgoeson]

March 13, 2020

More fish! A yellow watchman goby and a pair of coral beauty dwarf angels, all captive bred. The coral beauties are stunning and so fun to watch. They fly through tiny spaces between rocks like little fighter jets.

Drip acclimating:

Goby looking serious:

Parameters still looking ok - nitrates are a little higher, maybe around 15, hard to tell exactly with the Salifert color matching. Almost time for the first water change.

Off topic - somehow a spring peeper got into the house... found it in the living room not far from the tank. Incredible how loud these are for their size!

RFAs are doing great and are fun to feed! I’ve been giving them each a Mysis shrimp every few days, but I may be overfeeding them as one has pooped in dramatic fashion:

March 21, 2020

Nitrates around 25 so did the first 10% water change. Also added some corals - a toadstool leather, red mushrooms, and a ricordea Florida. My family calls the ric “Broccoli.”

 

[itgoeson]

March 29, 2020

Added some LPS today and got a Red Sea kit for calcium, magnesium, and alkalinity. Shopping for coral in the age of coronavirus has been interesting. The LFS sent me photos from some of their frag tanks, and I circled some things I was interested in for more information, like this:

Then picked it up curbside - they brought it straight to the car window. I’m lucky to have several good LFSs within driving distance!

They had a buy-three-get-one deal so I got a candy cane, a blasto, an acan, and a blue ricordea florida.

Baselined the parameters at 400ppm calcium, 8.0 dkH alkalinity, and 1300 magnesium. All good I think.

April 5, 2020

Added a bicolor hammer. Seeing some coralline algae on some of the older rocks! And also on the crabs’ shells. I’ve had some diatoms that seem to have disappeared now and some kind of green algae on the rocks that the CUC is doing a good job keeping in check.

Calcium was down to 375ppm so I added some Seachem Calcification.

April 6, 2020

Water pretty cloudy. Not sure if I added too much calcium and it’s precipitating? All of the corals are looking deflated. One of the RFAs has nearly doubled in size over the last couple of weeks and looks a little deflated - wonder if he maybe spawned? Full moon tomorrow and I read that they can do that near a full moon? Added a bag of Chemipure Elite to one of the filter socks to try to clear whatever it is (probably a good idea to have that anyhow with the leather in there). Water cleared by the end of the day.

April 19, 2020

This brings us up to date! I’ve added another hammer, a tank-raised ricordea yuma, and a scoly. Everything is looking good except for the Xenia, which has never looked great and seems to get worse slowly. All the mushrooms and the RFAs have grown a lot. Water has been crystal clear. Now I’m going to sit back and try to keep everything alive!

One of the RFAs seems to have budded off a baby, maybe?

Getting into a good rhythm of Saturday 10% water change + testing. Everything but calcium is nearly the same each week... nitrates 5-10ppm, pH 8.3, salinity 1.023, alkalinity 8.4 dkH, magnesium 1300. Calcium has been down to 375 and I’ve added some Calcification to try to keep it around 400. I do struggle a bit with the Red Sea test kit...sometimes I can’t get the air bubble small enough to fill the syringe to exactly 1mL, and I’m not sure if I should call it when the color starts to change or when it changes completely?

 

[itgoeson]

Time for an update!

After searching high and low for a tiger pistol shrimp in a few hour radius and being on LFS waitlists for a couple of months, I finally bit the bullet and ordered one from Live Aquaria when I got a notification that they were in stock. The UPS gods smiled upon me and delivery was totally smooth. SO COOL, I could watch this shrimp excavate with his little goby sidekick all day long.

Fish are doing great. Current stocking (all captive bred):
- Pair of coral beauties
- Pair of ocellaris clowns
- Two yellow watchman gobies (one has paired with the pistol shrimp, the other is a lone wolf - so much for a pair of gobies)

Some of my corals are doing great but unfortunately I’ve lost several others and a few don’t look great. I had polyp bailout from my wall hammer (that looked absolutely fantastic for its first few weeks - then one polyp at a time bailed... now it’s down to one). My bicolor branching hammer is hanging in there but tissue has receded a bit from the base... still not sure if it’s happy or not (the tentacles are well extended and puffy and it likes to eat some little meaty bits of food, but I still worry about the flesh on the skeleton base). I lost an acan and a candy cane that stopped extending and had little holes form with skeleton popping through. My Duncan hasn’t extended since the first few days in the tank.

I’ve seen the coral beauties picking at corals (including the hammers) and I think they are the culprits. I’ve put the Duncan under a protective cage (plastic bottle with lots of holes punched out) to see if it comes back when they’re not picking at it.

They leave the rock flower anemones alone, so rather than remove the fish I’m going to try to stock with stuff they won’t terrorize. So I added several more RFAs and a green BTA. The BTA is probably my favorite thing in the tank now... it is just so cool. It moved once on the third day (to a good location where I can see it!) and has stayed put ever since. I panicked this morning when I at first couldn’t find it and then realized it had shriveled up into a tiny clump of popped balloons. But I guess it was just expelling waste, and by afternoon it was back to its normal bubbly glory.

I’ve got a good amount of purple coralline on the rocks and back. I still get some diatoms now and then but knock on wood haven’t had major algae issues.

I want to add a mandarin at some point so I’ve stated culturing phyto and pods. Pods are going great but I keep crashing the phyto. That is a saga.

Lastly, babies are starting to pop up! Just this week I’ve found a few baby trochus snails, my yuma budded off a little baby that so far is just a mouth, and my favorite blasto has 3 new heads!

Baby trochus:

Baby yuma:

Blasto heads:

 

[Sltloser]

Everything is coming along nicely! Adding pods/sandbed fauna is important for long term health in the aquarium, I'm glad to see you starting that out early. If you want to order amphipods (I highly recommend doing so) I would check out https://www.aquaculturenurseryfarms.com/ . They also have quite a bit of other things you can check out!

Phyto cultures can be temperamental, keep researching and slowly tweaking things until you get it right!

Keep an eye on the coral beauties unfortunately they are about 50/50 for eating corals. If you need to I would try to trade stuff they're eating (if you find they're actually eating it) for corals they won't try to munch on.

 

[Hemmdog]

Looks good. I would recommend raising salinity to 1.025. Also keep track of your phosphate. Your coral issues sound like nutrient deprivation. Possibly the angels too, they aren’t fully reef safe.

 

[itgoeson]

Adding pods/sandbed fauna is important for long term health in the aquarium, I'm glad to see you starting that out early. If you want to order amphipods (I highly recommend doing so) I would check out https://www.aquaculturenurseryfarms.com/ .

Thank you! Just placed an order! Will they become self-sustaining in the display tank or do I need to culture them separately (if I don’t want to keep buying them)? Can I culture them together with my tisbe pods or will they eat them?

If you need to I would try to trade stuff they're eating (if you find they're actually eating it) for corals they won't try to munch on.

That’s a good idea. I’d like to bring the Duncan back a bit and then trade... I’m not sure that anyone would want it now in the poor condition it’s in, and I kind of want to see it at least start to bounce back while protected from the angels for confidence that the angels are the problem. I do fear I have some other unidentified problem affecting my LPS, so hoping this small experiment will help to diagnose it.

 

[itgoeson]

Looks good. I would recommend raising salinity to 1.025. Also keep track of your phosphate. Your coral issues sound like nutrient deprivation. Possibly the angels too, they aren’t fully reef safe.

Good suggestion - since that update I’ve brought the salinity to 1.024, maybe now is the time to go to 1.025.

I hope it is phosphates and not the angels (since I love them and don’t want to rehome them). I ended up removing the GFO shortly after I tried it and am now using Matrix carbon. Phosphates have been rising over the past month, from 0.01 when I first got a test kit for it (Hanna) April 25 up to 0.14 June 5 (I have been adding live phyto every day so think the rise is due to that). I reduced the amount of phyto to keep that from rising much more. However last weekend it showed 0.00 - which I’m assuming was user error - will be retesting tomorrow.

 

[Sltloser]

Thank you! Just placed an order! Will they become self-sustaining in the display tank or do I need to culture them separately (if I don’t want to keep buying them)? Can I culture them together with my tisbe pods or will they eat them?


That’s a good idea. I’d like to bring the Duncan back a bit and then trade... I’m not sure that anyone would want it now in the poor condition it’s in, and I kind of want to see it at least start to bounce back while protected from the angels for confidence that the angels are the problem. I do fear I have some other unidentified problem affecting my LPS, so hoping this small experiment will help to diagnose it.

The amphipods will become self sustaining, I would recommend feeding your coral food the same night they go in and for the next few nights after. Also be sure the lights are off when they go in, if not they'll be easy food for your CB angels.

Do you have a fuge in the filter section of the tank? If so I would put about 1/3 of them into the section with macro algae.

Yeah just keep an eye out and see what happens. It could be flatworms, but without evidence of them I don't think there is a high likelihood of that.

 

[itgoeson]

Do you have a fuge in the filter section of the tank? If so I would put about 1/3 of them into the section with macro algae.

No - I’ve thought about it though and may try it in the future.

Yeah just keep an eye out and see what happens. It could be flatworms, but without evidence of them I don't think there is a high likelihood of that.

Will definitely keep an eye out. I haven’t seen any flatworms and I’ve dipped everything in CoralRx before adding it, but of course that could be it and would in some ways be better to deal with than avoiding all the many corals my angels seem to snack on!