First time 40 Breeder

[FF419]

Hi everyone, I'm new to the hobby and to the forums. I just started cycling my 40 breeder. I'm a hobbyist woodworker so I built my stand. Hoping to document how this goes on here and perhaps get some pointers along the way. Here's my progress so far...

Equipment:

40 Breeder, 20 Long sump
70lbs of dry live rock
40lbs Caribsea dry aragonite
Hydra 52
1050 Hydor powerhead
Eshopps Eclipse S Overflow
2016 Neptune Apex
Finnex HPG 200w heater
Reef Octopus Classic 110 internal skimmer
Jebao DCP-8000 return pump
BRS 4-stage RODI



I started with two 10ft board of poplar.





Most of the pieces to final dimensions and legs laminated together. Quite a bit of work to get to this stage.





Legs mortised and stretchers tenoned, doing some dry fitting. You can see the tanks being leak tested in back.





Sides






Into the house finally!

And finally after weeks of work building everything I got it filled and starting to cycle!

Here is a close up of the light mount I made.

 

[NY_Caveman]

Very nice! Beautiful stand. Welcome to R2R!

 

[Fudsey]

Welcome to R2R ! ! !

Nice job on the stand ! !

#welcometor2r

 

[Gareth elliott]

Great looking setup!!

 

[Retro Reefer]

Very nice.. I’m also starting a new 40 breeder but my stand is pretty stark compared to yours, welcome to R2R!

 

[hdsoftail1065]

Welcome to R2R! It's looking really nice, really like the scape!

 

[Crabs McJones]

Welcome to R2R and the 40B club

 

[SPR1968]

Hi there and welcome to R2R!

That’s a great stand you’ve built there and nice tank and thanks for all the pictures we LOVE pictures on here!

 

[FF419]

Thanks everyone! Here is my water making/change setup I designed...


My tank is above a finished room in the basement, but I was able to snake a piece of 1/2 inch pex through the wall from my return manifold. In the basement the end of the pex has a dripless quick connect fitting from BRS which I'm able to click either a drain tube that I run to the utility sink or a pump to fill the display tank with fresh saltwater I mix in the basement.




To fill the tank I bought a 1/4hp sump pump to pump the water upstairs. The way I designed the manifold I can receive water to left side to fill the sump while still using the return pump to fill the tank. I have the sump pump in the basement on a remote outlet so I can turn it on when ready and off when the tank is full without running around all crazy. Here is a GIF I made while doing the initial fill.

And here is my RODI station in the basement. Fresh RODI water up top (with a float valve shutoff) that I can dump into the can below for mixing salt water for changes.


Someone had suggested that I replace my brass spigots with PVC ones to prevent any leeching, which is probably a good idea.

 

[FF419]

I got my first two fish into quarantine on Sunday! The QT tank is a 10 gallon with a quietflow 20 HOB filter that I seeded with some bio spira and 2ppm ammonia-chloride let sit for 5 days until it was at 0ppm ammonia. It also has an ammonia alert badge, 100w finnex heater, an air stone, some PVC fittings and a 425 gph powerhead which I think was creating too much flow, so I turned that off and will just kick it on when I do weekly water changes.

And this was as good of a close up that the little guys would let me get!

So far they've be uninterested in food so I've been trying to give them some space to hopefully decrease their stress a bit. They have done some exploring but mostly tend to stick near that pvc tee.

 

[FF419]

As for acclimating the fish to QT, I tried to follow @Brew12 quarantine guide as best as possible!

 

[Ferrell]

Awesome set up you have there and some really great cabinetry. Welcome!!

 

[Nate77]

Your stand looks amazing

 

[FF419]

Thanks! I just realized I don't have any really good shots of the finished stand. So here it is...

 

[FF419]

I was able to get the fish eating yesterday. They seem to like chasing the brine shrimp if I turn the power head on. Once they hit the ground the fish have no interest in it.

This morning I did a freshwater dip. I believe I saw a couple small flukes, so tomorrow I will start a prozipro treatment.

 

[FF419]

Fish are doing great in QT, just started 2nd round of prozipro last night. Trying my best to be patient!

In the meantime I've made an ATO container that fit the extra space I had under my cabinet. It's 4x16x23 and holds just over 5 gallons!

Salinity parameters have stabilized quite well since getting the ATO working.

Also made a screen top for the tank. I think it fits in quite well and doesn't look tacky. Don't want to lose any livestock to jumpers.

 

[NY_Caveman]

Fish are doing great in QT, just started 2nd round of prozipro last night. Trying my best to be patient!

In the meantime I've made an ATO container that fit the extra space I had under my cabinet. It's 4x16x23 and holds just over 5 gallons!

Salinity parameters have stabilized quite well since getting the ATO working.

Also made a screen top for the tank. I think it fits in quite well and doesn't look tacky. Don't want to lose any livestock to jumpers.

Nice reservoir! Tank is looking great.

 

[FF419]

I picked up two bubble tip anemones from a local forum member 10 days ago. According to everything I could find on r2r the main concern was ich/velvet free swimmers, so as long as they were in a fishless tank for 16 days that shouldn't be a concern. The clowns were about to be started on copper so I figured it would be the perfect time. Well, that same day I notice white stringy poop from one of them SO I began a 10 day treatment with metroplex binded to their food with prime. Today is the last day and all seems well. Clowns are still doing great and their poop is now a normal brown. Copper will be started next and I should have them into the display tank in a few weeks! Can't wait.

As for the anemones... They are doing great. Right after I got them into the display they puffed back up. There was minimal movement day one and two.

Day 3 they started moving around a bit and the next morning I woke up to find the darker one stuck in my powerhead. Fortunately the netting I put around it did it's job and he was easily rescued.

Here he is today, still doing good!

 

[FF419]

On another note, I'm trying really hard to fight the urge to get a clean up crew into the display without putting them through QT. If I could do it over I would have started them in QT right when I started the DT cycling. But now I'm a minimum of 3 months out from getting them through a cycle and into the display. Is it worth the minimal risk to get them into the tank and keep any potential algae problems under control? @Humblefish @melypr1985 @Brew12?

Is it easy enough to keep a handle on the problem with stable parameters, water changes and manual cleaning? I'd hate to go through all the effort to QT the fish only to have something come in on a snail. But at the same time I don't want to be battling an algae problem later on either! It seems like the tomonts on their shell risk is already fairly low, especially with a good manual scrubbing in rodi prior to putting them in. I just don't know, ha.

 

[Brew12]

On another note, I'm trying really hard to fight the urge to get a clean up crew into the display without putting them through QT. If I could do it over I would have started them in QT right when I started the DT cycling. But now I'm a minimum of 3 months out from getting them through a cycle and into the display. Is it worth the minimal risk to get them into the tank and keep any potential algae problems under control? @Humblefish @melypr1985 @Brew12?

Is it easy enough to keep a handle on the problem with stable parameters, water changes and manual cleaning? I'd hate to go through all the effort to QT the fish only to have something come in on a snail. But at the same time I don't want to be battling an algae problem later on either! It seems like the tomonts on their shell risk is already fairly low, especially with a good manual scrubbing in rodi prior to putting them in. I just don't know, ha.

Any time you add something without QT you introduce risk. It would be nice if there was a treatment method for snails to minimize that time.

Personally, I would never add an invert purchased at a LFS without using QT. I have added inverts which I ordered from Reefcleaners without QT. When collected from the ocean, they go into a fishless holding system. So while there is risk, I feel that it is minimal.