JBs 120 gallon tank trials

Seminoles76 · May 20, 2019

Hey everyone, finally got a bit of spare time so I decided to give a build thread a go.

I’ve been reefing for about 12 years now. I am currently serving my last year in the Navy as I close in on a 20 year career. I have been fortunate to be able to set up a lot of tanks over the course of my 12 years in reefing, as my career in the Navy dictated a move every 18 to 24 months. I have been unfortunate in that I have never been able to really enjoy a mature reef.

Every tank that I set up was the same typical setup in that I utilized actual live rock, T5 lighting, live sand, and Vortech MPs for flow. Most tanks were SPS only tanks. Every tank I had flourished for its short life until it was time to break it down after 18 months after receiving orders to a new duty station. Pack the family up, move to new location, set up new tank, rinse and repeat every couple years.

So, with retirement from the Navy looming, the ability to set up a reef that could actually become a mature reef was in the near future. With that in mind, and after watching some BRS videos, I decided to make my final tank before retirement a tank trial of my own. I knew after twelve years that actual live rock, T5, Vortechs, and stable parameters would result in a reef that flourished. I wanted to know about these other reefing methods and gain some first hand insight and experience in utilizing them. Maybe they were better than what I had come to know about reefing which was live rock and T5.

After some thought, I settled on a 120 standard that would be started with all dry Pukani rock and would be bare bottom. Instead of T5 lighting, I went with three Hydra 52hds. Instead of MPs for flow, I went with Maxspect Gyre 250s. I also decided to give Triton a go and would do away with those dreaded water changes.

After building a stand and canopy, I was able to get rock and water into the 120 at the end of September 2017. This date would give me approximately 28 months to work with prior to retirement.

As I get the time, I’ll write about how each of the new reefing methods worked out with some of them being ditched and others still at work as the tank sits today.

Thanks so much for stopping by!

Seminoles76 · May 20, 2019

Seminoles76 · May 20, 2019

The sump with ICE Cap K200 skimmer, and the Pukani rock which was actually two huge rocks along with a couple of smaller rocks.

Seminoles76 · May 20, 2019

And in late September, water and rock are in the tank. LED are really cool compared to T5, and man do the Gyres move some serious water. More on both of those later on. This final rock scape would also be modified after a few months of being setup.

Seminoles76 · May 20, 2019

I have to apologize in advance for my picture quality. I’m stuck with the IPhone XS. That and I’ve never been one to take pictures.

Seminoles76 · May 20, 2019

Here is the tank around early February 2018. A couple of small frags were added around that time.

Seminoles76 · May 20, 2019

July 2018. Some more coral added and I’m about to really get into a battle with some red turf type algae that was a beast to get rid of. I also added the aquatic life T5 hybrid around this time with four B+ bulbs which I’ll talk about later when I discuss my switch from T5 to LED.

Seminoles76 · May 20, 2019

And the tank as of March 2019. I’ve given away a couple frag packs and sold a couple as some of the corals were placed too close and started running into each other.

Seminoles76 · May 20, 2019

So there is the tank trials as it was in March of this year. I’ll get and updated pic when I get home from travel. That’s another thing I forgot to mention is that I travel a lot as I assess shipboard engineering plants to ensure they are able to operate at sea. While I am gone, I entrust my reef inhabitants to the wife. She does an outstanding job of feeding but beyond that I am on my own. I try and dial in Alk as best I can before I leave and then adjust dosing via Apex based on what I see PH doing. PH goes up I up the dosage slightly, PH down I lower dosage a bit, etc. The biggest problem I run into on travel most times are my young sons getting into the sump while I’m gone. A penny here.....some big wad of big league chew in the refugium......and a couple of dog chewed green army men in the return chamber. Daddy.....you told me to never put anything in the tank......sooooooo I put it all in this bottom tank under the big tank! Thank goodness my travel is typically no longer than 14 days at a shot.

The things I am going to talk about in my tank trials and how they worked out are the dry rock, LEDs, BB, gyres, and Triton along with a bunch of other changes I made in the last year. And I mean a lot of changes. I learned corals are seriously resilient.

sstanley223 · May 20, 2019

Good read! Looks great too!

Bryson.bobby · May 20, 2019

Looks awesome

Seminoles76 · May 20, 2019

sstanley223 said:
Good read! Looks great too!

Thank you

Bryson.bobby said:
Looks awesome

Thank you

I should have mentioned too that if I would have been smart...which I am not, I would have started this build thread in real time. I am sure I would have gotten a lot of great advice along the way which would have saved me a ton of heartache. So many reefers on this site that are crazy smart and even better at the reefing craft. Wish I would have joined this forum long before I did.

Seminoles76 · May 21, 2019

My first tank with all dry rock and wow was it different than running live rock. The first thing I noticed after the first three to four weeks was that my tank essentially seemed like a freshwater tank with some rocks in it. There was absolutely not a shred of life. My dry rock trials may or may not have been compounded by the fact I had no sand in the tank to help with the nitrogen cycle and providing area for bacteria to thrive. I dosed bacteria from the start to get the tank cycled and then every month or so with the same Biodigest.

My tank hit the seven to eight month mark and I couldn’t get anything to grow. Not a thing. The few frags I had didn’t die right off but they wouldn’t do a thing and didn’t look really happy.

In my live rock set ups I would have SPS start to grow at the four month mark. I never really saw any SPS growth with the dry rock until the 8 to 9 month mark and also had several corals die off along the way.

Even though the start of the tank was significantly harder with dry rock and a lot longer time to stabilize, I would definitely say it’s far better than live rock as you should avoid most of the unwanted critters we don’t feel like dealing with.

What I learned is that instead of just dosing bacteria at the start, I should keep dosing some form of bacteria for the first six to nine months. At about the eight month point after realizing this, I started dosing heavy bacteria and things started to stabilize a little and some growth started. I am convinced had I not started doing bacteria from multiple sources I would have continued to struggle. I also will add sand at the beginning to help stabilize the tank quicker and then slowly pull the sand later down the road.

BRS had a nice setup with dry rock on the 160 they had going. However, they ran that tank with a full Zeo system. I am convinced that tank did so well because of the Zeo. I would love to see them do a dry rock only setup with no bacteria and then compare the results to the 160 at the 18 month mark. My money is that they are nowhere even close with the Zeo tank being far better.

ngoodermuth · May 22, 2019

Very nice, the tank turned out great - trials and all! Following along

Seminoles76 · May 23, 2019

ngoodermuth said:
Very nice, the tank turned out great - trials and all! Following along

Thanks so much good. It turned out alright with all the crazy changes over the past year.

Seminoles76 · May 23, 2019

Flow for this build was started with 2 Maxspect Gyre 250s. They moved a ton of water in the 120 but too me had drawbacks vs the Vortech MPs. The laminar flow they produced was vastly different vs the cone shaped MP flow. I tried all kinds of configurations and in the end I always felt like I had flow on the top and bottom of the tank and in the middle where the two flow patterns crashed together. I also had problems with the 250 controller in that it would randomly change my 24 hour settings. There were several times where I had less than optimal flow because the controller made its own changes. Lastly, too clean the pump itself was a nightmare for me. There is a bunch of parts on the power head and double that when your cleaning two. The biggest problem with cleaning is trying to snap the end cap on which holds the propeller cage in place. Often times it would not seat right and then sometimes it would, but the bearings weren’t seated perfect or something was off and the flow would be altered coming from the pump. Tear it down and repeat which was painful compared to most other Power heads. Hopefully, they fixed some of the stated issues with the 350s that recently came out.

I wound up taking the Gyres out and switched too 2 Neptune Wavs and 2 Jaebo SOW 15s. I’ll probably stick with those four powerheads for the duration of the tank.

After my powerheads trials, I will undoubtedly go back to all MP. Nothing I have tried compares too the flow pattern of the MP and the coral growth patterns. Even if the new tank is 6 to 8 feet long I’ll bite the bullet and buy extra MPs

Cheers

Fudsey · May 26, 2019

Nice tank and good read

Following along

Seminoles76 · Jun 6, 2019

Currently my tank is running two AI Hydra 52HDs. I love the LED but I had a steep learning curve with them vs T5.

I think the biggest learning curve was leaving the LED sliders alone. Every time something looked a little off in the tank I thought it’s probably the wrong spectrum or intensity from the LEDs. I would adjust them etc, etc, vs leaving them alone. With T5 that adjustment variable never presents as they are just plug and play.

My other big lesson learned with them is to hang them higher than 11 inches. My next LED setup will be a minimum of 16 inches AWL to try and avoid hot spots and get a better light spread.

Overall I like the Hydras, I just need to learn more about them before I can say they are equal to T5 ability to grow and color SPS.

I did recently put diffusers on them from 3D reef and I love the LEDs a lot more than before.