Dual 40g aio tanks

[Ron Reefman]

I've been around for a long time now, in the hobby for 20+ years. For the last 5+ years I've been steadily downsizing the saltwater footprint inside my house. At one point I had well over 600g of saltwater spread over 3 DT's, a frag tank and 2 sump/refugiums. For the last year I've been doing two 40g aio tanks. First was a 40g breeder for some local (I live in SW Florida and snorkel the Keys frequently) stock that I have collected. Then I built a 40g cube as an aio tank for just coral, anemones and CUC... no fish.

I now consider myself a 'Minimalist Reefer' as the only hardware I use (currently) are good quality led fixtures, filter socks, a wavemaker, a small amount of filter media, an ATO and a return pump. No skimmer, no refugium, no dosing pumps, and certainly no Apex!

This is what the 40g cube looks like today at not quite a year old. It's mostly sps and lps corals with a few zoas and 6 anemones, some CUC and a coral banded shrimp and a couple serpent stars.

The other tank isn't very pretty. It's all stuff I've caught in the wild and made up of mostly green zoas, some not very colorful RFA's, 2 sea cucumbers, 2 rock boring urchins, 2 rescue clownfish and my pride and joy, a 3" mantis shrimp. I have found the mantis to be very difficult to collect. Usually I'll pick up a rock and they will dart across the sand to the next rock with rocket speed. But this one hung onto the rock when I lifted it up, then it let go. As it drifted down I put my collection cup (a customize peanut butter jar) under it and it became mine! Next time I feed, I'll try for a photo.

 

[fishguy242]

Hi Ron ,tagging along the new build here...

 

[Ron Reefman]

I went to the frag swap at Lakeland, Florida last weekend. I bought 5 coral frags and a BTA. I put them all in my 'local' tank for now and everybody seems fine... except the BTA ended up getting out of it's PVC end cap overnight and is currently out of sight. I'll probably go looking for it sometime this week if it doesn't reappear on it's own.

I'm considering pulling some rocks out of the 'local' tank that are covered in green zoas or encrusting gorgonians (both from the keys). At some point I may go to Miami and hit a couple of LFS that I know keep lots of VERY colorful RFAs. Prices seem to have come down as PV Reefs was selling absolutely gorgeous RFAs at the frag swap for $40/ea. I just wasn't ready to buy. But now I'm thinking the 'local' tank doesn't have to be all local stuff collected by me personally. LOL! And VIP Reef is just a few miles down the road from PV Reefs and that's who I think started the colorful RFA introduction into the hobby. I could see myself spending $200-$300 for 5 to 8 RFAs and making them fill one end of my local tank.

 

[Ron Reefman]

I've started pulling rocks (slowly) from my local tank. Some have nothing on them or just a few green zoas or some encrusting gorgonian corals. I'm just cleaning them.

I had a small rock that was covered with a more red/orange zoa (I really don't pay any attention to names). The zoa were starting to spread out onto the sand. So I took all the 'loose' zoas off and created 13 frags and most of them look OK after just one day.

I then cut the end of the rock off (no zoas) and now it stands up in the sand and the zoas can grow around to the back that used to be in the sand.

I think I'm going to go to Craigslist and offer some corals up for very cheap or free (red zoa frags and some bigger rocks covered in green zoas and some with encrusting gorgonians).

 

[Ron Reefman]

OK, I've now given away all the green zoas and encrusting gorgonian corals I wanted to move on. Two local guys with fairly new tanks got some great rocks wit lots of coral on them... for free!

I'm just finishing up the cleaning (coral removal) of a few rocks I kept. It turns out zoas can really stick to reef rocks very well then they have had years to grow there!

I have 4 RFAs in the local tank already (all collected in the Keys by me). Soon I will move the 3 RFAs, 2 RBAs & 2 maxi-mini anemones from the all coral tank to the local tank. I expect the new version of the local tank to be a 50/50 set up. Rock and local stuff on one side and a field of anemones on the other side. At some point in the not too distant future I'll probably buy some more RFAs to fill up the 'anemone field'.

 

[Ron Reefman]

It's March 18th 2024 and one of the very old Reefbreeders Photon led fixtures over my 40g breeder tank just melted down. No harm to the tank or the critters.

But seeing as how I've been trying to downsize, rather than paying for a new fixture, I'm going to merge my two 40g tanks into the 40g breeder (bigger footprint than the 40g cube).

The 40g breeder gets torn down and the inhabitants are already happy in there 10g holding tank. The 40g breeder gets a total clean up along with all the other hardware. Once the sand is washed, I'll start putting it back together. The bigger (and newer) Reefbreeder Photon that is currently over the cube will move to the breeder tank.

Once it's ready, I'll start moving critters from the 40g cube, over to the 40g breeder. I'll mix in some of the old critters that have been spending time in the 10G holding tank.

If all goes well, I'll just have one tank. But if it gets too crowded, I can put the 2nd old Photon from the breeder tank on the cube. It's not a perfect solution, but it should be enough. But the goal is to get down to one tank!

 

[Ron Reefman]

I've made a fundamental change in direction for my 2 tanks. I was going to make the local tank half local livestock and the other half RFAs (with a few bubble tips and maxi-mini anemones as well).

But I've decided to delay the purchase of new RFAs and instead, combine my 2 tanks into one.

I've moved all the livestock out of the 40g breeder aio to a 10g holding tank. The 40g tank and aio insert have been thoroughly cleaned. I expect new sand to be delivered today and it will be mixed with the sand from the tank that I washed. I want a deeper sand bed so the anemone end cap homes will end up completely buried in the sand.

After the sand is in I'll start doing some rockscape and adding some saltwater. After things stabilize, I'll slowly start moving livestock from the holding tank and the 40g cube (all coral)tank; to the 40g breeder.

I have a pair of mated clownfish that I'd like to give away if anybody would come to get them. I want the new tank to be mostly sps & lps corals along with a lot of anemones and CUC. The CUC will include some serpent stars, sea cucumbers, rock boring urchins, a coral banded shrimp, some local little clams, a emerald crab and lots of snails collected from the Florida Keys. I will eventually add my mantis shrimp. But I want the tank pretty well finished before it goes in.

When I was removing stuff from the 40g breeder the mantis took offense and harpooned it tip of my pointing finger. It crated a nasty little hole and has taken several weeks to heal. It was quite painful for the first week. The pain slowly faded and the flesh on the end of my finger all got hard and eventually peeled off. It's about 90% back to normal now, but I know better than to tick off the mantis shrimp again!

I'll start taking some photos today and share the progress as things come together.

 

[Ron Reefman]

It's been about 10 days since I cleaned the 40g breeder and the aio insert. I siliconed the insert in place as I had some critters get behind the insert in the old set up. I washed the old sand and got more new sand and put it in the tank along with new water and a bunch of dry rocks I intend to use as a base for the rocks covered with coral from the 40g cube tank.

My ammonia went up to1.0ppm and even with a bottle of Fritz and a bottle of Microbe starter additives, it took 8 days to get ammonia down to zero.

I don't have a nitrite test kit, but my nitrates are up to 25ppm. So, I'm going to do a 20g water change and keep testing for ammonia (which should stay at zero) and nitrates (which may still go up as nitrite gets converted to nitrate.

After the water change and the allowing for the water to clear from the stirred up sand, I'll move a local anemone of to the new tank to see how it does.