Funlad3's 45 Gallon 3' x 2' x 1' Acropora Lagoon

[Funlad3]

So this is what I got done yesterday:

I put an eggcrate divider in the QT (with a Naso-sized hole) to stop the male boxfish from nipping at the female. Both are way more calm today and were more interested in food than yesterday. I'm going to run out to the store tomorrow to get some PE mysis, which I expect they'll finally eat:

I resized the canopy lid and drilled five holes for fans to keep the light cool:

I rewired and mounted the potentiometers so I can independently dim the LED channels:

And I mounted the canopy! It hangs high enough that you don't see the LEDs or T5s when looking at the tank and low enough that it doesn't bleed direct light across the whole room. Here's a phone pic:

And a filtered phone pic:

I have my color spectrum and schedule set with the blue channel on at 100% for 12 hours, the whites on at the lowest possible power (10-20%?) for 8 hours, and the T5s on for 4 hours. With all three channels on, PAR peaks at 550 at the top of the tallest rock and about 320 on the sand bed. With the Blue and White LEDs, I get about 500 PAR at the top of the rocks and 300 at the sandbed. With just the Blue LEDs, I get about 320 PAR at the top of the rocks and 220 at the sandbed. I think I'll have to turn the Blue channel down a little so that I don't totally fry new additions, but I'm pretty close to the light intensity that I want.

I'm going to keep an eye on nutrient levels for the next few days, but with the double dose of Turbo Start that I added, the tank should pretty much be good to go for test corals. We'll see how long I'm able to hold off from adding something to test the tank out.

 

[Funlad3]

The female boxfish is officially eating. Now I just need to get the male to follow suit.

 

[Funlad3]

I have a few acro colonies sitting in a different tank until I'm confident that this one is ready, but I couldn't wait any longer and had to add some test pieces of coral to the lagoon.

Here's a rainbow acan that I couldn't resist. It puffed up right away and looks as happy as can be:

And here's a chunk of a Spath that I have. It should end up blue/green/purple, but the coralites are throwing off some weird orange under all blues. If this chunk does well, I'll move over the big colony. You can tell that it's a recent import by the size of the polyps. Once I start adding coral foods and it settles in, they should get big and colorful:

I adjusted my lights so that with my three channels on, I range from 150 PAR on the sandbed to 250 PAR midway through the rocks. This tank is obviously still super new and has very low nutrients, so the last thing I want to do is burn things up. Once I fill it in more, I'll turn the lights up to 250 PAR at the sand and 350+ at the rocks.

 

[Funlad3]

I was very unhappy with the pictures I took last night, so I waited until all of my lights were out to try again. I shot these top down above the water with my old Canon T3i and used standard Blue LEDs in a pointer to spotlight the corals. I still need to play around with my custom white balance to dial back some of the orange-shifting on the fluorescence, but this is pretty close to what the corals look like under blues with the orange Aquashella filter glasses.

Here's my spath frag. Under daylights, it looks like it wants to turn purple, blue, and green, but the fluorescence it kicks off is orange/pink/red. I really like this piece:

Here's the rainbow acan again. Under direct LED spotlighting, this thing is absolutely unreal:

And here's my weird green one. It's definitely gonna morph on me, but the corallites should stabilize at yellow/orange on a *bright* green base. The red polyps don't hurt either:

 

[Funlad3]

Tonight I glued down the test SPS frags and took some daylight shots. Everything's doing well so far, so I might move some new frags over tomorrow or Monday. I've *almost* got a working white balance for pictures, but for now, enjoy some slightly overexposed pictures.

Spath under daylight:

Weird Table:

Rainbow Acan looking lovely:

 

[Jacked Reefer]

Awesome tank! Loving the dimensions. I actually was gonna do a tank this exact same size but things fell through. Guess I’m gonna have to live through your thread now!

 

[Funlad3]

Awesome tank! Loving the dimensions. I actually was gonna do a tank this exact same size but things fell through. Guess I’m gonna have to live through your thread now!

I'm super happy with how the dimensions turned out, but I'm definitely going to run out of room if I leave space for frags to grow. I have some colonies in a different tank until this one gets settled in, and if I were to move them all into the lagoon, I'd be pretty low on space right away. I guess I'll just have to practice some self control and only move frags in!

 

[Kfactor]

Follow I love lagoon tanks

 

[Funlad3]

I just grabbed some corals from a local, and they're way larger than I was expecting! They came out clean from my Bayer dip, and they started putting out polyps within literal seconds of hitting the tank. Once they settle in more, I might cut smaller chunks off of each and move the remaining colony downstairs into my 125 Gallon tank to save space in the lagoon.

WWC Grafted Cap (you can see how my white balance is still slightly shifted towards red and away from green; I'm still tinkering) :

ORA Birds of Paradise:

 

[Funlad3]

I just got done gluing in eight new frags from some of my colonies that I've been collecting for the past few weeks. I'll take some pictures of them tomorrow once they've had some time to settle in from banging around in the bucket while I dipped and rinsed them.

Here's what they looked like right before the dip went in:

 

[Funlad3]

So today while I was out picking up another colony for my holding tank, I had the opportunity to make a stupid purchase. I love making stupid purchases, so I added these two fish to the quarantine tank with the pair of boxfish and the naso tang:

Pair of juvenile Scribbled Angels:

The larger angel is still a little stressed and chased mysis around but didn't eat:

The smaller angel is happy as can be and ate everything that floated by:

I have some brine shrimp hatching overnight, and they should definitely be enough to entice the larger Scribbled to eat. I'm hoping the male boxfish finally eats something too; it's going on two weeks without eating. Either way, I'm planning on adding a half dose of copper to the QT tomorrow and to bring it up to full strength on Friday so that I can start my three week countdown to moving everyone into the lagoon!

 

[Funlad3]

And as promised, here are some pictures of the acros I added last night. Some are happier than others right now, but I already managed to pull great polyp extension on everything after I cut and glued it last night. Now everything can recover, settle in, and color up and grow.

I'm very excited to see what this one does; the main colony bleached out in shipping, but there are some weird pink/orange highlights that should pull through:

This piece is similar, but it's a slightly different species. I want to say it's a Clathrata, but I'm not sure. If this piece does what similar ones have for me in the past, it might get gold between the branches:

I got this piece as a green/grey mess because I liked the growth form, and it might totally surprise me. After about a week, it's already pulling green with blue on the corallites and red tips with red polyps, so it'll be fun to watch settle in:

This piece is smaller than the other ones and got more banged up when I was mixing the dip around in the bucket. I'm hoping it turns purple and red:

I cut one of the shaded leaves of the Grafted Cap to save on space. I'm curious to see how long it'll take for the faded part to get its color back:

This ugly thing is actually a piece of branching Strawberry Shortcake. I've been trying to find a piece of SSC that branches (instead of tables) for years, so I'm thrilled to finally have one. It might take a little longer than some of the other pieces to color up, but it'll be worth the wait:

This might just be one of my favorite acros ever. It came in as a densely tabling colony with a green base, red branches, and blue tips. It lost a ton of color in transit, but the PE has been good and I think it's over the worst of its stress. Time to sit back and wait:

I ordered this one as a blue table with green polyps, and it is definitely… not that anymore. If the colony didn't perfectly
match its photo from before I ordered it, I would have thought that I got the wrong piece. The red is already picking up a metallic fluorescence while the base goes back to a more neutral white/blue, so this one definitely still has some more changing to do:

And finally, I have this guy. It might go neon green with gold/yellow corallites, or it might do something totally different. Time will tell:

I've already got some more corals in the pipeline, but it's finally about time for me to start tracking down other pieces. I can't wait to start collecting/trading with everyone!

 

[Funlad3]

Just in case it was unclear, I've been known to make impulse buys. I got a small Moorish Idol at a local shop today, and I swear it's the last fish that's going in this QT for this batch. For those keeping track, that's a pair of boxfish, a pair of angels, a naso and an idol all in one 20 long. I foresee many water changes in my future...

I'm still waiting on the larger scribbled angel and the male boxfish to eat. I've had the boxfish for two weeks now and haven't seen it eat once. Meanwhile, the female is actively eating whatever I put in the tank, including the airline hose that I used to drip acclimate the idol. The copper is up to full concentration right now, and if anything, the boxfish and larger angel were more interested in food today than I've seen them. I'm hoping that they have/had an underlying parasitic infection that the copper is knocking back and helping to restore their appetite, but time will tell. I'll probably start adding Prazi to everyone's food next week.

Bagged up:

A very packed QT:

 

[Funlad3]

Today I finally got some projects done that I've been waiting on parts for.

I needed to modify my old Precision Marine calcium reactor to fit under my stand. The base plate was too wide with the pump and reactor body sitting side my side, so I had to modify and rebuild it. Here's the reactor when I dragged it out of the basement:

Here it is cleaned and taken apart:

Then I chopped it in half with my table saw:

I had to order some 1/2" and 3/8" PVC fittings to get everything hooked into the Eheim pump, so I went ahead and bought a furniture grade Side Tee fitting so that I could save on space and run my incoming water and CO2 lines right next to each other. The fitting isn't technically pressure rated, but it'll hold up just fine:

Here's the whole reactor put back together and neatly fitting under the side of the stand:

I also needed to do some light modification on my skimmer lid so that I could get the CO2 scrubber plumbed in. I drilled a 5/8" hole and tapped it for 1/2" MIP so that I could thread on an outlet for the scrubber to draw air from. I also drilled a 5/16" hole for a float switch that I'm going to wire up later to shut the skimmer down before it overflows and floods the CO2 scrubber, which would crash the tank. I also melted some vinyl tubing to make a cap for one of the silencer inlets; the CO2 scrubber basically acts as a second silencer, plus the whole thing operates as a closed loop, keeping the air draw silent:

Here's the CO2 scrubber on the front end of my sump. There's still plenty of room to access everything that I need:

These equipment additions/modifications should help me keep my alk stable and my pH high. I like to run high nutrients, high light, and high alk, but the tank is still way too new/clean for me to be able to safely do that. Now I have to wait for the fish to clear QT. I'm sure there will be more coral additions in the mean time.

 

[Funlad3]

Yesterday, I installed some arcade buttons and wired them up to an Apex Break Out Box from @jayjigga . If I press the red button, my skimmer and all of my pumps turn off for ten minutes. If I press the black button, the delay ends and everything turns back on right away. I tested my programming to take some pictures of some of the corals:

This one is new. It's a pink spath with blue tips and green polyps on the growth tips:

And here are some other pictures from around the tank. The frags are all looking healthier with more PE and thicker tissue, but the tank is still too clean for them to want to grow or color up much:

(Ignore the acros on the tile; I picked up some new pieces and totally burned them up with over-concentrated Bayer. I'm going to give them a week or two to recover before sharing any pictures.)

Acans are still holding great color!

I'm going to start throwing in more food and might turn on the calcium reactor to see if I can force any growth and mineral consumption from the corals. Everything is happy, I just need to get them to start growing!

 

[Funlad3]

I finally got around to building my ATO bracket yesterday. For the low low cost of some scrap acrylic and about an hour, it turned out pretty well. It's slides over the last baffle in my sump so that the floats sit in the return section. I might move the low-water bracket down a little to cut down on power cycling, but the programming through the Apex Break Out Box definitely works. Onto the next project.

The bracket:

Installed:

 

[Funlad3]

I ordered some filters online for my old Canon to see if I could get some of the colors closer to what they look like in person, so I figured I would share a few of the wild acros now that they're starting to color up and do weird things. I still have more work to do to get the color perfect, but here's what I got:

 

[Funlad3]

Updates! The first round of fish are in the lagoon. I lost the larger Scribbled Angel and Moorish Idol in quarantine after they both refused to eat. The male boxfish is still in quarantine and is *finally* showing interest in food, so I hope to get him eating soon. For now, these are the three fish that made it in:

Naso Tang:

Female Boxfish:

Scribbled Angel:

For the past few weeks, the acro colonies in my holding tank/living room display have been burning/melting even though my water and lighting checks out, so I wanted to build a frag tank to put on the same system as the lagoon so that I could baby them back to health.

A bucket of very angry acros:

For the tank, I cut down a 20 gallon long to 24", made another custom overflow box, and put on two 1/2" returns. Simple, cheap, relatively easy, and I think it looks great. I just have one AI Prime on it for now, but I should hopefully have a second one by the end of the week. I'm running a Maxspect Gyre 250 on 10% for flow. Here's a tank of angry acros (plus some larger colonies I wanted out of the lagoon and some LPS I removed before the angelfish got any ideas):

More angry acros:

Here's a tile of acros from @rcunning8 that I picked up a few weeks ago! I left them in the dip for way too long and they lost some color, but they're finally ready to be glued into the lagoon:

Here's the happiest colony of the rescued bunch for now. I'm very happy that I saved it, as the frag I glued in the lagoon a month ago is starting to look *nice*:

The lagoon frag of the above colony:

For now, I'm tracking down more fish for the lagoon to help keep my nitrates up. I've been dosing 5ppm per week, and the tank has consistently depleted them to 0ppm within seven days. With 30+ frags and now about a dozen colonies, I had to turn on the CO2 on the calcium reactor, so hopefully growth picks up accordingly.

 

[Funlad3]

I broke out a different lens tonight to try to get some better pictures of the fish. Next time I'll clean the glass and break out my external flash and take some *really* good pictures, but these will do for now:

Juvenile Scribbled Angelfish:

Female Spotted Boxfish:

Naso Tang:

 

[Funlad3]

Looks like the pink spath that I added a few weeks ago has decided that it'd rather be orange. Darn (?)