Flubber's 15G Pipedream

[Flubber]

Hey everyone, figured i'd make a build thread for my first proper reef tank. I've spent countless hours enjoying and learning from other threads, so i guess mine might be usefull as well.
I've had planted freshwater tanks before, and rather than buying all new equipment, i decided to try and re-use as much of my old equipment as possible.

Equipment

• The display tank is my old Dennerle 55L Scaper's tank (14.5G). Besides some minor scratches it's still in good shape. It's not one of those fancy ultra-white glass tanks, but it'll do.
• The sump will be my old Dennerle 30L Cube. Despite my setup being quite small, i really wanted a sump. It's totally unneccesary, not even that much more convenient, but i like tinkering with equipment, or at least i think i do, so a sump there shall be. Not the greatest shape for a sump, but it sort of fits in the old wooden cabinet i already have (thriftstore TV/radio stand originally i think).
• Lighting will be done with a Noo-Psyche K7 mini. Not the best, but i've heard good things about them, and i am trying to keep costs down (so i can splurge on other stuff).
• DIY refugium insert using some plastic containers, an amazon growth light, and hope. probably not needed, but i just can't help growing plants.
• Filtration (but actually a glorified return pump) with an Oase Biomaster 250 filled with some rock rubble, a sponge, and a bunch of Seachem matrix.
• Tunze Osmolator Nano 3152 to keep the tank filled and salinity stable. Also just too lazy to top off manually every day.
• Tunze Doc 9004 skimmer. Wasn't sure wether i wanted one, but it was heavily discounted so in it goes, even if just for some gas exhange.
• Two 75W heaters i had laying around, controlled by a temperature probe. One fitted in the filter, one in the sump.

So globally planning what i wanted and digging up old stuff and buying some new was the easy part done. Sure, an AIO would have been miles easier, but i liked the room for adjustments that an actual sump brought. Now, for the hard part...

Plumbing
A fair word of warning for those that know what they're doing when it comes to DIY, and get squeemish when they see shoddy work: i don't really know what i'm doing. My solution for getting a functioning overflow resembles the aftermath of giving a toddler a glue gun, too much sugar, and a beer or two. The issue is that i'm not brave enough to drill my own tank, can't find anyone nearby that could easily do it, and i don't think drilling a tank with such thin glass (5mm) is wise anyways. That made me cosnider a siphon overflow. The idea scared the hell out of me, but apparently they've been used with succes. I couldn't find any affordable HOB overflows, and shipping one in would have given me a major headache with metric/imperial fitting sizes, so i decided to build my own. This video was very helpfull. I bought some 125mm PVC pipe, and sawed it lenghtwise into (more or less...) 4 equal parts. Easier said than done with just a tiny hacksaw insert because the saw itself didn't fit. Kept going sideways, but with a lot of filing and cursing i managed to get some quarter pipes for in the back corners of the tank. Sawed and filed some teeth into it, liberally applied some allegedly aquarium-safe silicone, and placed them in the tank. Writing it down in a few sentences does not do the frustration justice, especially since i wasn't expecting it to actually work, but i digress.

Next, i made a u-tube, with one end going almost all the way down to the bottom of the overflow. I figured the further i could get the intake of the u-tube from the surface, the less bubbles would make it into the tube. Ignore the "top"written on what's clearly the bottom, please just pretend i'm Australian.

Time to fill the dang thing up and see if the physics actually held up. I was still wildly skeptical.

To my honest surprise, it worked. I easily made a siphon by inserting some air hose into the tubes and sucking the air out. Any water that flowed into the overflow equalized witth the water level in the outer container, and overflowed down the drain pipe. I was pleasantly surprised to find that i could angle the outer end of the drain hose in such a way that the setup was very quite as well. I left this setup to run for a while, seeing if it held up over time, and i found no issues when running it for a few days. It still felt sketchy, but i've tried to build in some safety:

• Each overflow can handle all the flow of the return pump (~600L/h) on it's own, with some headway. If one gets clogged, the other can pick up the slack.
• The intake of the return pump is placed just under the water line. If both overflows are broken, the DT has ~4L of buffer volume, while the return pump will only drain ~1L from the sump before it starts sucking only air. The downside to this is that this mechanism is completely negated by the ATO, but i will only have the ato run for 5 minutes twice a day, when i'm likely to be home. NJot perfect, but at least if the overflows break when i'm not there, the tank won't overflow.
• A socket with a leak alarm will be fitted somewhere at the top of one of the overflows, shutting off power to the return pump if water rises to that level. Tested this already, and while it works, it is a bit sensitive to droplets forming/splashing on it, so i need a better solution for this. currently not implemented, but will be implemented soon.

Overall, quite happy with how it turned out. Water flows as i had hoped, quite silent, and doesn't look nearly as terrible as i had feared. On to more fun things:

Hardscape
I figured making my hardscape with dry rock would be easiest, and try to seed it with some live rock later. I ordered a box of 20kg ARKA MyReef 'small', which is way overkill, but it was quite cheap and i'd rather have enough pieces to choose from. To protect the glass from rocks, i added some eggcrate that will be buried by the sand later. The eggcratet is only 7mm high or so, which might help if i decide to get a goby/shrimp pair later. I tried using Aquaforest Stonefix for scaping, but when mixing according to the instructions it was way too thin, and making it thicker caused it to harden at inoppurtune times. It also didn't look great, and was difficult to work with in my opinion. I quickly abandoned the cement and switched to superglue+baking soda. Very tedious, but eventually managed to get a scape going i was quite happy with.

Quite happy with how it turned out! I've tried to create a little cave that something like a goby/shrimp pair could hide in, a tiny arch, enough space for potential fish to swim, and some space in the front left for a tiny zoa/ric garden if needed. Added about 2.5cm "CaribSea Seaflor Special Grade" sand, after rinsing it a million times, with a little more in the back.

Sump
Added some leftover rock in the sump, figured it wouldn't hurt. Drilled holes in a plastic container and added a small leftover pump so i could make an easy refugium. Could also double as a place to dump carbon/GFO if i'll ever need that, otherwise i'll just chuck it in the main area of the sump. Skimmer and ATO are added later. Pipes aren't visible in this image, but they are flexible-ish so i can "easily" take them out and put them back in, and move them around equipment. Temperature probe also added later.

Filling
The basic setup was done, so i could finally start adding some salt water. I've got a cheap RO filter (Aqua Medic Easy Line 300), which i think is fine for now. Our tap water is pretty dang clean as is, so i'm not too bothered about getting some hyper-deluxe 9-stage turbopressure megablaster RODI unit just yet. I'm using AS Instant Ocean, which seems pretty basic and reliable. Created a 35PPT NaCL reference solution, and found i had to add 42g of salt per litre of water to get it up to 35ppt, which seems to be what others have found as well. Filled the bad boy up, started the filter, and started the cycle! added a Fluval Aquaclear 50 for a day or two to get the water to go clear, think/know the sand wasn't fully rinsed yet. Lights are just so i can see the tank, and are on just for show.

Next steps
I'll update this thread once the cycle is done-ish, my lights have arrived, more equipment is in, and the first poor corals will test the waters (which might be the case already, but i just don't have time to write it up yet). Stay tuned!

 

[lapin]

Wow. Lot of stuff that most people would not even think about. My tank build was actually me building the tank and sump. Working with acrylic and glass can be fun.
Good job

 

[Flubber]

It's been a few weeks, so time for an update!

Changes to the tank:

• Added the Tunze doc 9004 skimmer (50% discounted after an aquarium show)
• Added Tunze 3152 osmolator nano (same 50% discount)
• swapped out the refugium light for an old Dennerle Scaper's light (11W white bulb, no clue how this thing is still functiuonal after like 10 years of abuse and countless moves). The purple one had terrible build quality so sent that back.
• Added in the water-alarm socket. Rather annoying that the audible alarm can't be turned off, only set to "quite" (which it isn't). But hey, it works, and if both my overflows were to fail it correctly switches off the return pump, ATO, and some other stuff. A little expensive, but really nice to have.
• Added wild live rock (allegedly, from indonesia) to the sump, and held it in and scraped it above the display tank for a bit. There was very little water in the shipping bag which made me question the quality, but there were quite some live critters in it so i'll take it.
• Light came in (Noo-Psyche K7 mini 60W). Very frsutrating start due to the app being required to control it and the app not being available in my country. Simple location switch didn't fix it, and i had to make a new iCloud account in a different region to download the app. Not a great start, but it's working now and i am happy with the performance.

Cycling
The cycle has completely finished, and was rather uneventfull.
Dosed pure ammonia at roughly 2ppm initially, and continued adding ammonia in low deses after the first week. Also threw in tiny pieces of old fish food every day, just to get some decomposing bacteria going as well.
The expected algae showed up, but a small CUC made that into a non-issue.
I bought 5 red-banded Trochus snails, one whitish trochus-like snail (not sure what it's called), 2 large Nassarius snails, and one blue-legged (tricolor) hermit. One Trochus was very slow from the beginning, and passed away soon after. Let's hope he shall be remembered and honored as a new home for the hermit one day.

Adding corals
It's still early days for this tank, but i decided to risk adding corals already since it's a small tank and losing some corals wouldn't be the end of the world. Honestly though, i just wanted to get some biodiversity going. I purposefully didn't dip or clean any of the corals. Will that come back to haunt me later? Maybe, but so far i am happy with my decision. I've spotted lots of micro brittlestars already, the rocks have a lot of amphipods crawling through them, sump and refugium are teeming with copepods, it actually looks alive. The sandbed is clean, the rocks are clean, the water is clear, and the corals looks happy so far. I've graudally added tiny frags of:

• Green kenya tree
• Toadstool
• Pulsing Xenia
• Green Star Polyp
• Firework Clove Polyp (metallic orange)
• Purple torch
• Alveopora
• Blue Sympodium
• Turbinaria reniformis
• Zoanthids (orange-rimmed, and some greenish one that came with it)

Curious to see how long it will take before i start regretting the Xenia and GSP, altough i really don't think i will. I love the movement of the Xenia, and the color of the GSP is stunning. When this tank was still a freshwater tank, i had to meticulously trim the grass that covered the bottom every week, and i cannot imagine the Xenia or GSP being more work than that. All the corals are opened and look healthy, with only the sympodium staying retracted. it's not fully closed, but it isn't extended. It'll probably be fine with some more time. I whish i had an actual camera, especially with a good lens or one of those coral-viewing things, as my phone really doesn't do well with the blue light...



Flow and ligtning
Currently, i don't have any powerheads. The ~600LPH i'm getting from the return pump looks decent to me. The corals move quite a bit, but they don't look like they're being blown away. If it really becomes evident i need more flow i'd buy something in a heartbeat, though i wouldn't really know how to tell. Also not really too keen on buying something, as the options for such a small DT seem quite limited. I guess something like the Jebao ELW-3 maybe, but i'm good for now.

Dialing in the lights is more difficult, since i don't have a PAR meter. I currently run a scheme with moslty balanced blue, white and 'UV'. Very broadly, they're on from about 12:00 to 20:00, peaking at 35% or so, but 20% on average i'd say. I'd like to get lots of growth so i might turn it up gradually, but i don't really know how to tell if my corals are getting too much light.

Water quality
Water quality is doing fine, but i am dosing some KNO3 (and only run my refugium lights for 8 hours a day) to get it up to 10ppm.

• Magnesium: 1275mg/L.
• Calcium: 375mg/L. increasing this with CaCl2 (anh.) to 420 over a few days).
• Alkalinity: 7.0. Dropped a bit, likely due to the ammonia dosing during the cycle. Slowly increasing to the target of 8.5 using sodium bicarbonate.
• PO4: very difficult to tell from the salifert test kit, but i think somewhere between 0.05 and 0.1. Running a very small amount of Seachem phosguard so i can get used to dosing low amounts of reef roids while keeping it in check.
• NO3: was <1 for a good while, dosing to get it up to about 10ppm.
• PH: 8.1 or so.

I would like to be able to measure PO4 more accurately than the Salifert kit allows, but the Hannah checkers are too much for me to justify for this tank. The device being €90 is one thing, but the reagents cost €0,80 here, and that's just insane to me. I really like nerding out and tweaking my water, that's half the reason i got into this, but paying the price of a cool tiny frag just to do 6 nitrate and phosphate tests is a no-go. I might try to find out what the reagent kits are made out of exactly and just make my own, can't be that hard to do.

I'm using Instant Ocean (pruple), but i do adjust it before use. Freshly mixed it comes out at an alk of 10.3 and a calcium of 375mg/L, which seems like a strange choice to me. When i make a 20L batch, i use 43 grams of salt per litre, add RODI to bring it down from ~35.5 to 35, add 2.5g of anhydrous calcium chloride(Calcium 375 -> 420), and then add 4.5ml of 10% HCL and aerate for 24 hours to remove the created CO2, bringing the final alkalinity to my desired 8.5. As a last step, i add KNO3 to 10ppm to make the fresh water equal to my DT water, avoiding rapid changes when making larger water changes. I aim for one 10L (roughly 15%) water change per week.

Final addition
My CUC was doing really well keeping the rock and the glass clean, and the Nassarius snails were sifting the sand and keeping it moving a bit. Still, there was quite some algae on the actual sandbed. When i was at the LFS, i saw this Trombus (strawberry conch?) and instantly knew i needed it. I'd read about them, but didn't know they were this cool. I'm aware i might have to feed him since the sand bed is likely not big enough to sustain him with algae. He cleaned the sendbed like no tomorrow, and i really like the way he behaves. Cute little eyes, trunk like an elephant, and hops like a bunny. Easily my favorite part of the tank right now. Never expected i'd get this attached to a snail!

I'm not sure if i'll be adding fish, even though i bought/made a net cover for it already. I'd like to be able to go on 3-week holidays, and am not sure if i'll be able to get fish through that. I'm in it for the corals more, so i'm holding off on that for a bit.

If there are more updates, i'll keep this thread updated!

 

[Flubber]

Finally found a free app that let's me take pictures that at least show some colors halfway accurately, so here are some pictures of the tank. Still much more purple than real life, but it'll have to do for now!

 

[jean19]

Hello,what's the name of thé app?
Thanks .

 

[Flubber]

Hello,what's the name of thé app?
Thanks .

it's Silkypix Aqua. It's good to get the color right, but that's about it. It doesn't interact with the camera controls of the phone, so it won't adjust focus and won't switch to the macro lens.

 

[jean19]

Thanks ,i'll have a look .

 

[Flubber]

An update is long overdue! TL'DR: tank doing fine, pictures below.

The tank has been running for 10 months now, and i can finally say that it is doing really well. The white dry rock (more on this later) has finally completely colored up, my corals are actually growing instead of just surviving, a small clownfish has taken up residence, and i am really happy with the tank in general. So, time for some rambling and some picture (pictures below).

Issues with Alk and phos due to dry rocks
The tank started with lots of very cheap dry "Macro Rock" that i bought off amazon and glued together. I then seeded the tank with a small piece of live rock in the sump, a bottle of bacteria, and a bunch of cheap undipped corals. Great for building the rockwork just the way you like it (limited by my lack of skill in working with my hands, but learning that was half the fun of this tank anyways), but the rock was a royal PITA for the water chemistry. I heard beforehand that the rock could take up some alkalinity and phosphates, but boy did i understimate that! The alk wasn't such an issue; i could just roughly dose AFR for a while (a few weeks at most i think) before it stabilized. Phosphate though, i literally spent months dosing the everliving crap out of a bottle of phosphate, so much that i painstakingly made a serial dilution of the dosing bottle to double check whether there was actually phosphate in it in the stated amount, which it was. Even with barely any coral, i was dosing 0.1ppm or more every day for weeks. A lesson for my next tank: i'd cycle the tank, no animals or corals untill phosphate has stabilised by dosing massive amounts, so we can get the phosphate stable in a week or two instead of half a year. But finally, my phosphate levels are relatively stable.

Water parameters, nutrient export, etc.:

• Salinity: 35 ppt
• pH: 8.3
• alkalinity: 8.5 dKH
• Nitrate: 0-5 ppm (usually closer to zero)
• phosphate: 0-0.03 ppm (usually closer to zero)
• calcium: 475
• magnesium: 1320

My nitrate and phosphate levels are quite low, but i do dose them quite a bit. Every day, spread out over the day, i dose 0.6 ppm ammonia (which converts to about 2.0 ppm of nitrate) and 0.09pppm of phosphate. I don't feed that heavily since i just have a single tiny clown, but i do feed a little more than she can easily eat, since i also want to feed the microfauna so there is something to snack on if i am away on holiday. I also dose 4.5ml of AFR per day. All my dosing is done with the Jebao 3.4 wifi doser, which i am really happy with for the price. I ran a skimmer untill last month since i went on holiday, and i honestly can't find a good reason to actually keep using it. It feels like i am getting better growth without the skimmer, and my water doesn't look any less clear. I don't need to export more nutrients, so let's see how this goes. I do a ~10% water change most weeks, using IO reef crystals. My nutrients are mostly exported by my Xenia and Kenya tree.

Coral health and growth

• Softies: Since the rocks stopped taking up phosphates, the corals finally got their chance to actually grow. My green Kenya tree always growed relatively slowly, but now grows like a weed. I give pieces away to anyone who wants it, or i just throw it out. The same goes for my Xenia (sorry for the agressive biweekly home makeovers Fishy!). My toadstool has steadily grown from it's initial ~3cm diameter to it;s current ~10cm diamter. I will be cutting it back to 5cm agian soon, maybe just glueing some pieces to the back of the rocks or giving it away. I've also got some Anthelia which grows fast, and i think i'll just remove this. It's just a less interesting version of Xenia that is more annoying to trim. Zoa's, i'm having trouble with a little, some of them don't grow nearly as fast as i'd hoped based on some reports, altough there is massive variety between which ones. Most grow relatively slowly, but some more broing ones are noew growing quickly, and i'll need to find a way to trim those. I also have a Ricordea Florida, which seems to maybe grow a little, but i whish it grew faster and multiplied, because i think this might be the prettiest coral i have!
• SPS: I got some Tubinaria reniformis early on, which died back almost completely, but i left it in. Since a month or 2, it has made a massive comeback, and it looks much different now which is super interesting to see (added before and after pics below)! Before it just had green polyps and purple non-polyp tissue, but now that it's growing new 'plate' tissue, the whole coral is completely green, with the same color for the polyps as the connecting tissue. I also bought a tiny frag of birdsnest to test the waters (literally), and it grows like a weed. A small piece of stylophora does fine, but doesn't grow fast at all. Finally, i added a piece of forest fire Montipora digigata which looks great, but due to some shading isn't growing that fast. Overall, really happy that my small tank in my inexperienced hands grows SPS well, altough i guess i just tried the easy ones.
• LPS: This is the area i had the most trouble with. My duncan is finally doing allright. It wasn't ever growing, but doing fine (i don't feed it much, maybe i need to do this more). it has these two main heads, and last week i noticed that one of them suddenly had a ring of 5 smaller heads growing around it, so that's really nice to see. My Euphyllia glabrescens has been there for 10 months without any obvious growth, but does fine. Caulastrea on the other hand, i can't keep alive for the life of me. Every time i added some, they melted in a week untill completely dead. Just bought another small frag, 3rd time's the charm...

Animals:

• Fishy: I added a tiny clownfish in February i think. I was very worried the first few weeks, as he was always hiding, swimming on the bottom, and just would not eat anything. After a looong while he would eat live copepods i bought, so that gave me some hope. Then suddenly, he (she by now?) understood that the pellets were food, and now she's all fine. She moved in to the Xenia and just chills there all day. She also isn't hiding anymore, ever, and always picks a fight with my hand when i'm cleaning the tank. I do cut her house in half every two weeks, so fair enough i guess.
• Snails: Sometimes i buy some Trochus Histrio to clean my glass, but they often end up climbing over the other side, panicking, and dying on the tank stand. I don't really want a lid, so i guess i just won't buy these anymore. I also tried Tectus Conus twice, and they always fall over within a week and end up as food for my two Nassarius snails, which seem like the only ones smart enough to survive...
• Strawberry Conch: I was really attached to NooNoo, my strawberry conch. Cleaned well, looked and acted super cute, and just an A+ tank inhabitant. Unfortunately, he passed away while i was on holiday :(. He was already getting slower and slower, sleeping in the sand much more, so i think he just expired. When i came back from holiday, a large piece of Xenia was growing on his shell, so maybe that contributed to his death by dragging him down, or maybe it was just a nice gift from the universe to honor him.
• Crab: There is a small red/white legged hermit somewhere, who behaves well but doesn't seem to do much. After i move my tank to a new house, i'll get a mithrax crab, since i do have lots of bubble algae.

Issues:

• Dictyota keeps growing and growing, and manual removal is a PITA. Hoping the mithrax likes it, and otherwise will need a different solution.
• Bubble algae is growing too. It's not too much of a problem, but would like to keep it under control better.
• I'm running out of space. Maybe i'll make a new tank and move everything over in a fgew months. I won't go much bigger though, i like the way it looks already!
• I really like this hobby, and want a frag tank, and like 5 species-specific tanks....

All in all, i am super happy with this tank! The DIY siphon overflow into the sump only requires 'resetting' on one of the two pipes every month or two and hasn't flooded my house yet (BIG knock on wood here...). I really enjoy tinkering with the water parameters and looking at my corals. If i ever win the lottery, i'll buy some high-end probes that monitor all the water parameters so i can play with them all day every day.

Thanks for reading this wall of text, here are some progression pictures and some other prictures.

 

[Tahoe61]

I very much enjoyed your thread. Really impressed with your overflows.
Great coral progression shots.

 

[Flubber]

I very much enjoyed your thread. Really impressed with your overflows.
Great coral progression shots.

Thanks a lot, glad you enjoyed it! The overflows were such an eye-opener, i really didn't believe it could work at all when i first read about it. It's still a little scary of course, but there are quite some redundancies built in. I actually also added a smaller tube to each of the overflows, for some more piece of mind. If i upgrade to a new tank i will definitely go for drilling instead of a siphon overflow, but it is fun to experiment (as long as it goes well)!