First (saltwater) aquarium build

[mikst]

Bought another frag today (encrusting montepora). When I was dipping it, an obvious copepods came off. I rinsed him in a bath of tank water then moved him to my tank.
I saw no planeria or anything obviously undesirable. I've gotten brittle stars from frags from this store before but no luck this time.
I need help identifying these little guys. They're like dark black and they move around like earthworms (they get short and fat, then thin and long). They don't move in inch worm fashion which I think is how a parasite does but I can't remember the name (leech?).
These things do not swim, they move on surfaces. I blasted them off the frag and after I moved the frag into a tank water bath rinse and into the tank, I sucked up these little guys and put them in the tank water bath to observe.

Thanks for your help!

Oh I also got a couple red leg and blue leg hermit crabs. They're so cute! They're my first purchased marine livestock.

I taught my kid how to read the refractometer and she became obsessed, asking to test the water from each livestock bag, the tank, the coral bag, the bucket of saltwater I mixed. Hah.

 

[mikst]

Can I get help identifying this thing too? It looks very much like a giant pond snail, but it was in my tank. It just cruises around. Looking very snail like with a shell and soft bits.

 

[mikst]

I finally decided to sand my little 10 gallon. It's supposed to be my QT, but it doesn't look like my 29 gallon is happening anytime soon. I may need to run some electrical and install an outlet for it. That's all fine and dandy and will happen in due time.

So anyway, I decided to sand the ten. I carefully removed the rocks that had corals and put them in a separate container. I siphoned off all the water into two buckets, took the rock work out and looked for my various hermit crabs. I put them all in the container with coral and water.

This part will be a little controversial, but I siphoned out all the detritus and sand sitting at the bottom of the glass and saved it to mix in with the new sand to innoculate it a bit. I put down my two diy base rocks (big dry rock cut in half) and poured 11 pounds of crushed coral sand. Then I rearranged all my rocks in a pleasing to me fashion.

I kept all the chaeto that was growing on the rocks, I love algae. I kept the marineland penguin 200 filter that is stuffed with filter foam. I kept the airstone that sits in the filter aerating water. The filter foam takes out all the microbubbles and the bacteria is growing on the foam like crazy.

Soemthing new is I noticed previously there was little circulation so I grabbed a circ pump from my bin in the garage and tucked it in the back corner, underneath the lip of the filter outlet. It points up and diagonally across the outlet so it ripples the surface basically right in the center of the tank water surface. It's a 480gph pump. It was a sandstorm as I expected. I stuffed a net pot from a plant over the outlet to disrupt flow and stuck window screen over the inlets of the circ pump. You can see it in the top left corner of the pictures. It's less flow now than I'd like, but I like sandstorms less. I can now see the tendrils of the palys all waving randomly and the algae sways throughout, so it seems sufficient.

Unfortunately, all the rock work is covered in sand. I blasted it off with an eye dropper after the video.
I decided my cheapo full spectrum light from Amazon was insufficient, so I broke out the Kessel a80 that was sitting in the garage. It's super blue! Having a hard time deciding how blue I want it. But if I have it cranked full blue and put the full spectrum light on the tank it's pretty pleasing. I can see the corals flourescing and it's not all a weird blue hue.

Anyway, here are some pics. I'm pretty pleased. I tried to post a short video to show the swaying and circulation but I guess that's a no go.

 

[mikst]

My, how time flies. Life happened and I neglected the tank for a while unfortunately. My corals survived, my hermit crabs survived, and the algae went nuts. That probably saved the tank soaking up the nutrients.

I decided to restart the tank with a sump instead of the hob. I had a spare ten gallon, so I drilled it for a couple bulkheads. I grabbed some aluminum bar stock and formed a wrench to help give the bulk heads that last bit of snug past finger tight.



I cut some glass to make an overflow box.




I like to hide filter components in my tanks, so I cut some rubble rock to have smooth surfaces and carefully siliconed them onto the overflow box in a pleasing to me fashion. Ultimately, I want gsp or some zoas growing on it to further disguise/hide. I also reinforced the glass on the side so I could comfortably suction attach a circulation pump as you can see in this picture.



I usually use tint to black out the back of the tank or some black paint. But my dad lives in Hawaii and sends me underwater pics a lot, I keep seeing the gradient of light to dark blue as you go deeper and I find that pleasing.

After attaching, and water testing, the overflow box, I painted the back exterior of the tank with acrylic paint. I started with light tones and mixed and brushed on darker and darker blue gradient in thin layers. It did not come out as I envisioned, I realized the gradient effect in nature is not linear even to the eye, it approaches something more like a parabolic path thru tone. I'll try more of a curve to the tone change on the next tank. However it did come out pleasing to me. It also helps build some shadow space I want to develop visually as well. I like shading and dabble in painting, this is just another form of art to me.

 

[mikst]

Time to rock it... I drained the original tank into a bucket with an airstone and heater and put the livestock and corals (they're mostly glued to rubble rock, not the primary rock) in there. I removed all rock work and carefully scrubbed off the rampant algae. I placed the rock I cut flat for base rocks, moved the sand into the new tank, arranged the big rocks the way I wanted. I know typically people keep the rock work off the glass, particularly in the back, but I wanted to play around with that since it's similar to what I do with fw tank rock and wood work to build into the depth of the tank and create a visual depth effect as well. I moved rocks around several times after this.



Time to set up the sump... A few years ago, I cut glass and built a 3 gallon sump for a fw project. I ran it with a two chamber, one level sump setup for a couple years on a small cichlid tank. For this setup, I wanted to have one chamber with a steady level to keep the heater always submerged as well as to pile rubble rock and k1 media that would always be submerged to create a cryptic zone. I played around with the baffle placement on some wet tests. I thought it would be nice to have a slope back toward the crypt to both keep particulates more trapped in that area and gentle the fall of the water into the filter foam/refugium area; however, I quickly learned that is a terrible idea. The super gentle flow meant poor aeration and a protein scum surface (I ran the tests with old tank water to have it be the most realistic).



Out came the baffle after some serious scraping. Turns out I cut the baffle rather tight to fit, ended up having to use fishing line to cut thru the silicone. Reaffixed it and tested the flow. Sooo much better, I get turbulent flow and circulation thru out the fuge area. I am grateful it's still quiet in that area. I got this algae from a friend who said it was chaeto, but when I showed my fave lfs they said it's not chaeto, but couldn't identify specifically what strain it is. Some kind of seaweed. At any rate, it grows nicely under the cheapie blue white light I have stuffed in there on a 12 hour night timer. Who wants to help me identify the algae?



You can see in the above Pic the return pump chamber as well. The water flows from the crypt, over the tile baffle (to block light from the crypt), into the fuge, then down through the coarse filter foam and under into a 1/2 gap that's loosely filled with some ceramic media. I don't expect the ceramic media to enhance filtration, it's just there as a spacer so I don't accidentally push the foam to the bottom and impede flow. The gap underneath is key to ensuring even flow thru of the foam. The water then goes under the last baffle into the return pump chamber. In hindsight, I wish I had made the return chamber larger, but it was set up like this from the fw tank and not easy to cut the baffle out without breaking it. In the Pic below, you can see where I tried to do a dual return setup (a 210gph and an 80gph pump); however, it provided insufficient circulation in the tank itself. The flow thru the sump was great, almost bordering too swift. Sucks I wasn't able to implement the dual returns as I really liked the clean look and I spent a ton of time on hard line plumbing it with cpvc. Oh well.


OK, so that's the entire sump, I ended up not liking the straight down primary drain as it gurgled way too much and there was no room for a ball valve, so I redid it. I grabbed some pvc, heated it, and bent it with a mandrel and attached a ball valve. Now the slope into the sump is gentle and I have room to restrict the flow just enough to keep the bulkhead for the primary barely submerged. The emergency drain is the same diameter (1/2 pvc) as the primary. Both were tested and can handle individually more than even the dual return could put out. The pill bottles with airline needle valves are my temporary dosing containers :D I'll show it better in a diff Pic, but I made a two part lid. In the gaps around the piping and lid, I cut some coarse filter foam to catch splash and evaporation and let it dribble back into the tank. It should mitigate salt creep a bit as well as prevent quite so much evaporation, while still allowing for air exchange.



Speaking of air exchange... Aeration is super important, but I don't have room for a skimmer, nor desire to run one, and I dislike air pump sounds, so I decided to use some Venturii principles. I like making in line venturi on return pumps or lines for fw tanks to provide aeration, but I don't want a ton of bubbles in this tank. Instead, I drilled a series of 1mm holes in the ball valve just after the restriction of the ball itself. The holes are angled at a ~45 degree angle inward toward the direction of flow of that makes sense. This draws in air and injects it into the water flow path, creating a ton of bubbles in the sump. It worked out very well, without all the splashing sound of water crashing down a drain line. I don't have a picture of that stuff, but here's a Pic of the crypt area. I have a media bag stuffed with k1 media at the bottom of the crypt. Its great media for bacteria colonization and is commonly used in moving bed bio reactors (mbbr) in aquaculture farms. It should provide a great place in a low flow environment for filter feeders and sponges to colonize. I topped it with a bunch of live rock rubble from the tank. I sprinkled a judicious amount of silica sand in there as well to hopefully help with sponge growth. No problems with diatoms thus far with it.



I guess I forgot to mention, the sump is houses directly behind the tank. There is no room under the tank as that's where my qt it.

Here's a Pic of the sump all buttoned up. I cut a two part tile lid. The finger hole in between the two pieces has an acrylic cap that recesses into it to locate it.



I don't have any good pictures of the return line setup as I changed it so many times. Basically, it's clear vinyl tubing that connects to a nylon barb, that is threaded into a cpvc fitting. The cpvc goes over the rim into a T so I have two return jet duck bills. One high, aimed at the surface, one low aimed at the front glass at a down angle to create movement on the sand bed. I have a circulation pump in the tank on the far left, but I'm still experimenting with placement. It's a 480gph circulation pump, which is ludicrous in a 10 gallon tank, so I opened it and put in a thin sheet of coarse filter foam like 1/8 in thick). It reduces flow in and disrupts flow out quite nicely.

At any rate, here is my ten gallon reef. I have named this tank Sandia Pagoda. We have 10 or so tanks in our house, so they must be named. Sandia because this is my proving ground tank before I finish my 45 gallon build. Pagoda inspired by the pagoda cup corals I bought, which made me think, hmm pagoda reminds me of Buddhist templates /pagodas and peace. This tank gives me some serious peace and happiness.



While it's been fun, and I'm still tinkering, the journey has met with sadness. My blue neon goby perished somewhere along the way in the transition from old tank to bucket to new tank. I really loved that little fish. I waited for months to get one as my lfs doesn't usually carry them. I also seem to have lost a couple hermit crabs which sucks, I really like them also. My nassarius snail and a ton of brittle stars and bristle worms made it, so that's good.


The brittle stars quickly colonized the rock on the overflow box. I love watching their little arms wave about when I feed the tank.



I got a pair of black ice snowflake clowns from my lfs and they made it thru quarantine. I'm still sketch on naming them until I've had them a solid month. They're both active and have very vibrant colors. That's my wife's candy cane coral. It's been doing quite well.



Here are some coral highlights...

 

[kevgib67]

Time to rock it... I drained the original tank into a bucket with an airstone and heater and put the livestock and corals (they're mostly glued to rubble rock, not the primary rock) in there. I removed all rock work and carefully scrubbed off the rampant algae. I placed the rock I cut flat for base rocks, moved the sand into the new tank, arranged the big rocks the way I wanted. I know typically people keep the rock work off the glass, particularly in the back, but I wanted to play around with that since it's similar to what I do with fw tank rock and wood work to build into the depth of the tank and create a visual depth effect as well. I moved rocks around several times after this.



Time to set up the sump... A few years ago, I cut glass and built a 3 gallon sump for a fw project. I ran it with a two chamber, one level sump setup for a couple years on a small cichlid tank. For this setup, I wanted to have one chamber with a steady level to keep the heater always submerged as well as to pile rubble rock and k1 media that would always be submerged to create a cryptic zone. I played around with the baffle placement on some wet tests. I thought it would be nice to have a slope back toward the crypt to both keep particulates more trapped in that area and gentle the fall of the water into the filter foam/refugium area; however, I quickly learned that is a terrible idea. The super gentle flow meant poor aeration and a protein scum surface (I ran the tests with old tank water to have it be the most realistic).



Out came the baffle after some serious scraping. Turns out I cut the baffle rather tight to fit, ended up having to use fishing line to cut thru the silicone. Reaffixed it and tested the flow. Sooo much better, I get turbulent flow and circulation thru out the fuge area. I am grateful it's still quiet in that area. I got this algae from a friend who said it was chaeto, but when I showed my fave lfs they said it's not chaeto, but couldn't identify specifically what strain it is. Some kind of seaweed. At any rate, it grows nicely under the cheapie blue white light I have stuffed in there on a 12 hour night timer. Who wants to help me identify the algae?



You can see in the above Pic the return pump chamber as well. The water flows from the crypt, over the tile baffle (to block light from the crypt), into the fuge, then down through the coarse filter foam and under into a 1/2 gap that's loosely filled with some ceramic media. I don't expect the ceramic media to enhance filtration, it's just there as a spacer so I don't accidentally push the foam to the bottom and impede flow. The gap underneath is key to ensuring even flow thru of the foam. The water then goes under the last baffle into the return pump chamber. In hindsight, I wish I had made the return chamber larger, but it was set up like this from the fw tank and not easy to cut the baffle out without breaking it. In the Pic below, you can see where I tried to do a dual return setup (a 210gph and an 80gph pump); however, it provided insufficient circulation in the tank itself. The flow thru the sump was great, almost bordering too swift. Sucks I wasn't able to implement the dual returns as I really liked the clean look and I spent a ton of time on hard line plumbing it with cpvc. Oh well.


OK, so that's the entire sump, I ended up not liking the straight down primary drain as it gurgled way too much and there was no room for a ball valve, so I redid it. I grabbed some pvc, heated it, and bent it with a mandrel and attached a ball valve. Now the slope into the sump is gentle and I have room to restrict the flow just enough to keep the bulkhead for the primary barely submerged. The emergency drain is the same diameter (1/2 pvc) as the primary. Both wede tested and can handle individually more than even the dual return could put out. The pill bottles with airline needle valves are my temporary dosing containers :D I'll show it better in a diff Pic, but I made a two part lid. In the gaps around the piping and lid, I cut some coarse filter foam to catch splash and evaporation and let it dribble back into the tank. It should mitigate salt creep a bit as well as prevent quite so much evaporation, while still allowing for air exchange.



Speaking of air exchange... Aeration is super important, but I don't have room for a skimmer, nor desire to run one, and I dislike air pump sounds, so I decided to use some Venturii principles. I like making in line venturi on return pumps or lines for fw tanks to provide aeration, but I don't want a ton of bubbles in this tank. Instead, I drilled a series of 1mm holes in the ball valve just after the restriction of the ball itself. The holes are angled at a ~45 degree angle inward toward the direction of flow of that makes sense. This draws in air and injects it into the water flow path, creating a ton of bubbles in the sump. It worked out very well, without all the splashing sound of water crashing down a drain line. I don't have a picture of that stuff, but here's a Pic of the crypt area. I have a media bag stuffed with k1 media at the bottom of the crypt. Its great media for bacteria colonization and is commonly used in moving bed bio reactors (mbbr) in aquaculture farms. It should provide a great place in a low flow environment for filter feeders and sponges to colonize. I topped it with a bunch of live rock rubble from the tank. I sprinkled a judicious amount of silica sand in there as well to hopefully help with sponge growth. No problems with diatoms thus far with it.



I guess I forgot to mention, the sump is houses directly behind the tank. There is no room under the tank as that's where my qt it.

Here's a Pic of the sump all buttoned up. I cut a two part tile lid. The finger hole in between the two pieces has an acrylic cap that recesses into it to locate it.



I don't have any good pictures of the return line setup as I changed it so many times. Basically, it's clear vinyl tubing that connects to a nylon barb, that is threaded into a cpvc fitting. The cpvc goes over the rim into a T so I have two return jet duck bills. One high, aimed at the surface, one low aimed at the front glass at a down angle to create movement on the sand bed. I have a circulation pump in the tank on the far left, but I'm still experimenting with placement. It's a 480gph circulation pump, which is ludicrous in a 10 gallon tank, so I opened it and put in a thin sheet of coarse filter foam like 1/8 in thick). It reduces flow in and disrupts flow out quite nicely.

At any rate, here is my ten gallon reef. I have named this tank Sandia Pagoda. We have 10 or so tanks in our house, so they must be named. Sandia because this is my proving ground tank before I finish my 45 gallon build. Pagoda inspired by the pagoda cup corals I bought, which made me think, hmm pagoda reminds me of Buddhist templates /pagodas and peace. This tank gives me some serious peace and happiness.



While it's been fun, and I'm still tinkering, the journey has met with sadness. My blue neon goby perished somewhere along the way in the transition from old tank to bucket to new tank. I really loved that little fish. I waited for months to get one as my lfs doesn't usually carry them. I also seem to have lost a couple hermit crabs which sucks, I really like them also. My nassarius snail and a ton of brittle stars and bristle worms made it, so that's good.


The brittle stars quickly colonized the rock on the overflow box. I love watching their little arms wave about when I feed the tank.



I got a pair of black ice snowflake clowns from my lfs and they made it thru quarantine. I'm still sketch on naming them until I've had them a solid month. They're both active and have very vibrant colors. That's my wife's candy cane coral. It's been doing quite well.



Here are some coral highlights...

You are certainly taking this seriously, well done. I’m exhausted just reading this.

 

[mikst]

You are certainly taking this seriously, well done. I’m exhausted just reading this.

Haha. Yes, I can be verbose, sorry. I do take it seriously, I enjoy the design and build process. I make many sketches and like experimenting with designs. :D

 

[kevgib67]

Haha. Yes, I can be verbose, sorry. I do take it seriously, I enjoy the design and build process. I make many sketches and like experimenting with designs. :D

It shows!