Don's 125 Gallon result of freshwater boredom.

[ducky12432]

Hey all,

I look at these forums all the time but I have never actually registered and participated... Until now.

It was suggested by a friend of mine that I should start a build thread to show off my tank to others and to track the progression as it matures.

My current setup is a 125 tall (60x18x26) with dual overflows and a 35g sump thats been running for about 9 months or so.

The majority of the rock was moved when i combined everything from 2 55s into the single tank for "less maintenance" Its as good of excuse as any and I justified the 125 by saying I already had everything for it i was just "consolidating"

I found the tank on craigslist listed as something to the point of "150g tank for sale get it out of here" it was listed for 175 for the tank, stand, top canopy, sump tank, and return pump. didnt have any pictures or anything but I figured id give it a shot it was only a 45 in drive and a nice day anyway.

I get there and take a few measurements and conclude its not a 150.. was a bit disappointed but it was still in nice condition so I ask the guy since its not 150g would he take less.

Ended up giving him $125 for everything and i got the sense he would have taken less but I started at $125 thinking I would get a counter, and he said yea sure I just want it gone.

Sorry for the long and winding story but there was a point to it I promise. I get it home fairly sure it probably leaks or something otherwise it would have never gone for that cheap and fully prepared to re seal the entire tank.

The only thing I ended up having to fix/replace were the bulkheads and that was just because I didn't like the ones that were on it.

Sooo anyway on to the present day state of the tank.

I have been trying to find the right balance of water changes and believe i may have found the correct frequency and amount.

I an currently working at keeping hair algae at bay. I didn't have any issue at all until i put a frag in then suddenly it was all over the place. I have stepped up the water changes a bit and it seems to be receding with a bit of help from me attacking it with a toothbrush and suction hose.

I use a Reef Angel for monitoring/controlling temp, wavemaker, feeding, and Lighting.

My current Tank project is a LED build that will replace my T5's and allow me to further control my lighting cycle. If there is interest I can elaborate on that more in the future.

After I complete the LED build I will be adding on a small frag tank so that I can remove my frag racks from the display.

Here are a couple of pics to start.

 

[boehm742]

Great work !

 

[TarHeelReefer22]

Nice start!

 

[mcarroll]

Great start! And nice pics too!

Since you are growing stony corals, you should be testing for alkalinity on at least a weekly basis if you aren't already...at least until you are comfortable that you are doing the job with your water change/dosing routine. You should be able to use your test results to know how much water to change. Use a well-fortified salt like Reef Crystals.

Re-test after your water change to see how much of a boost your numbers got....change more next time if it's not back to normal. This will work for a little while which your corals establish themselves. (You may/may not be past this point.) Once you've up to changing about 20% of your water per week you'll want to start dosing two part or kalkwasser to make up more of the alkalinity difference and maybe reduce your water changes back to about 10% per week.

...all the time basing the combined water change and dosing effort on your alkalinity test results.

Eventually as your corals mature into colonies, it will be worth testing for calcium and magnesium as well...since you don't have a lot of corals for the tank size you may not quite be here yet even though some of your corals have clearly "grown in" already...if you're "doing it right" you will rarely/never have to make separate adjustments to these parameters. Your two part or kalk+magnesium dosing strategy should cover it.

Hope this helps! Thanks for sharing!

-Matt

 

[ducky12432]

Putting these up just for a comparison:

First pic was taken on 12/8/13

Second was taken on 12/18/13

Third was taken on 1/17/14

A bit of a jump to 5/7/14

and finally its current state on 5/25/14

Yes this is one of my more favorite pieces to take a picture of cause i can see a noticeable difference over time.

In the past few months it has really taken off and the growth is really neat to observe.

 

[ducky12432]

And just as i hit submit i found the [ic of the frag as i put it in the tank on 6/10/12

there has been a huge change since then.

This is before i had the current lighting and it really didn't do very well for a long time. this was also back in 2 previous tanks.

i thought it was a gonner for the longest time but it pulled through and is where it is today.

 

[ducky12432]

Hey thanks for the tips.

I have been trying to get the water change routine down for this tank and think I may have found what works best. I know I over feed but I just love watching the fish eat...

I already use reef crystals and do about a 25% change every week and a half at the moment I was doing a 25% change every week and that seemed like too much so I started to cut back. That was around the time that I put the frag in so I associated it with that frag.

It could be the water change strategy as well but idk that frag was the first place I noticed any on it as well.

I have not been testing for Alkalinity but I will pick up a test kit for it ( i only have the basics like ph ammonia, nitrate, nitrite, phosphates, and calcium)

an interesting thing I guess I have never thought of was testing after a change as well... I'll try that next time and see what I get for results

Again thanks for the tips, I have been doing this for a couple years but I love trying new stuff and techniques. I have found that for me this entire thing is not really about having the best looking tank out there it learning how to have the best looking tank out there and the variety of ways to get there.

 

[danangelo]

Looks good..

 

[revhtree]

Looking great and welcome to R2R!!

 

[mcarroll]

Hey thanks for the tips.
[...]

All good!

I think once you start watching alkalinity it will feel like someone turned the lights on.

No more guessing if you are changing enough water, etc. Plus happy corals.

-Matt

 

[SeahorseKeeper]

Looking good!!

 

[ducky12432]

New power control board is almost complete.

Things are just plugged in for the next couple days wile I get rid of the disorganized rats nes that results from not taking the time earlier and putting everything on a board when I started the tank.

Next time I setup a tank like this I will not only not have the sump under the tank but also have a power and controller closet or something similar.

Here is the whole board as well as the LEDs I am building. I guess the board was the result of doing the LED build as there were going to be more wires as well as more stuff in general so I wanted something that would allow me to organize it all better...

This is the result:

Also some Terminal blocks for the LEDs.

The left are the dimming lines to the Dimming power supplies and dimming controller expansion on the Reef Angel.
the right side is the Power/Ground for each channel of LEDs.

There are 4 total channels 2 each of 14X CREE XT-E Royal Blue and 14x XP-G2 Cool White.

I think in the future I may add 2 more channels for either the proposed addon Frag Tank or Sump lighting or both... If I don't use dimmable power supplies I can add a bunch more if I wanted. As it is there are 2 more channels on the controller itself and 2 more on the dimming module. 1 of them will be used for the Jebao wp40 so I can get rid of that controller and just control it with the Reef Angel.

 

[ducky12432]

Here are some frags I picked up a couple weeks ago at a local frag swap:

They were just placed on the eggcrate after acclimation so i could take a few pictures and give a bit of scale to them. I was rather pleased with my purchases as a whole. probably overpaid for a couple things but I was one of the first to get there so i got to have my pick.

big montipora 20
duncans 10
candycane ~20ish
Chalice 10
Favia 15
Red/yellow brain 25
2 smaller montiporas 10 each
acro 5
birdsnest 5
yellow polyps 5
pallys 10
Branching hammer 25 (not in any of the pics Ill throw one up later) bought it with 5 heads at least nickel sized and a couple more around eraser head sized. in the past couple weeks there have been a couple more that have started to form as well that are pretty small.

 

[revhtree]

Nice!