JDog's 270 gallon in-wall reef tank

[jdogclif]

I had my first fish losses . I quarantined 4 tangs together: a yellow, Kole, powder brown and powder blue. I was hoping that the large tank size would allow happy co-existence. They all made it through QT fine, and did fine in the tank for a couple of months. Then the powder brown and powder blue started fighting, chasing each other endlessly around the tank. My kids thought that they were in love because of all the chasing and circling. But it was not to be. I got home from work the other night and they were both in the corner, both of them scratched and torn, exhausted but still pecking at each other. I pulled out the blue and put him in the QT, but by morning he was a goner, and the brown just disappeared the next night. Crab food I would guess. *sigh* makes me sad because they were both beautiful fish, but I guess I was just tempting fate.

Current fish are the Yellow and Kole tangs, the damsels (the Minions), a clownfish pair, a firefish pair, and a hard-working diamond watchman goby. I think that will be it for a few months, then I will think about adding a few more. I would like a group of dispar or ignitus anthias. We shall see...

 

[jdogclif]

My fish love blackworms, and I am lucky enough to have a LFS that stocks them. I wanted to set up a blackworm keeper so that I didn't have to go buy them every week. I first set up a simple plastic tub with a pump and some filter medium. It worked for a while but eventually if I added more than 4 oz or so, they would start dying off. Finally it occurred to me to go back to my freshwater roots (pun intended) and set up a planted tank for them. I got a 5 gallon tank and hooked up my old Eheim canister filter filled with ceramic media. I put a 1-pebble-thick layer of gravel, and got some water sprite and java moss since they draw their nutrients from the water and don't need soil. I added a spoonful of worms and let it cycle. Now it works great, I can add plenty of worms and I only have to buy more 1 or 2 times per month. They sit in the gravel with their tails (or heads, I'm not sure which end is up) sticking out of the gravel. They get a little bit of food (algae wafer or flake fish food) once a week. To feed the fish, I pull the worms out with a pipette and squirt them into a little strainer, then dump them into the tank. The fish look like they are having a big spaghetti feed the way they slurp them up. Nutritious and delicious.

 

[jdogclif]

I've been using the Triton supplements since I started the tank in October. Four months and it's been going well. I know that is like barely even newborn as far as tanks go, but so far so good. I have not done routine water changes, although I have refilled fresh salt water after stealing some for the quarantine tank a couple of times, and I also drained the refugium once to give it a good scrubbing and refilled it with new salt water. So I guess you could say I have done almost monthly water changes of about 30 gallons each.

I dosed manually for a few weeks while deciding which doser to buy. I don't have a controller (well I use a RKL but just for the heaters), and I didn't feel the need for fancy WiFi or any other bells/whistles. I ended up deciding on the Jebao unit. I know it is scary cheap but after reading all the reviews for all the dosers, I didn't feel like it was that big of a gamble. All of the dosers seemed to have at least some reviews that reported some issues, and I figured if I have to replace this one every year it would still take like 7 years before I matched the cost of a more expensive one! Which I'm sure will feel like less of a smart decision if it fails by staying on until the full 10 L of Triton supplement is in the tank...

After calibrating it per the YouTube instructions, it works great and requires no effort. I check it once every few weeks by catching the flow in a measuring cup when it pumps at its scheduled time. So far it has been accurate!

 

[wowkingjames]

Thanks for the info on how to breed black worms, Paul B talks about feeding them to his fish. I'm sure you read his thread it about his 46 years and 11 month saltwater aquarium here on R2R.

 

[jdogclif]

Also per the Triton instructions, I have a macroalgae refugium set up before the skimmer and return pumps. I don't have near the required 10x turnover going through because I bought my return pumps before deciding on Triton. No idea what the flow is, but I have two Sicce 5.0 which are rated at around 1300 gph each, and I have plenty of plumbing twists and turns plus 6 ft between the sump and the returns at the top of the tank...

For the first couple of months I had a hard time growing anything in the fuge except hair algae. Finally I switched out my cheap Amazon grow lights for a Kessil H380, added a variety of algae, and started scraping the glass every few days, and I put a powerhead in the fuge to keep the algae rotating more. That combination has worked to kill off the hair algae. Of the macroalgae, only the chaeto and Dragon's tongue (I think?) has thrived. Honestly, the dragon's tongue has done the best. I have had to trim it back 3 or 4 times, while I am still waiting for the chaeto to grow big enough to prune.

 

[jdogclif]

I've enjoyed the tank so far; after the initial effort of setting it up, maintenance has been quite easy. I clean the glass in the display tank and refugium every 1-2 days, and I feed the fish blackworms daily and frozen mysis daily, and target feed the coral with Reef Roids weekly. I clean out the skimmer cup and fill up the RO water storage once a week. Honestly that is about it. I don't vacuum the sand; the diamondback goby does that for me. I check all the pumps and float valves weekly, and I have cleaned them all once so far and plan to do that every 4-6 months. All the dry BRS rock is now purple with coraline, and the coral frags have doubled in size. Only two fish have died because they killed each other I know that there will be many challenges probably just around the corner because that's just the way it goes in reefkeeping, but so far so good and quite enjoying it!

 

[jdogclif]

Thanks for the info on how to breed black worms, Paul B talks about feeding them to his fish. I'm sure you read his thread it about his 46 years and 11 month saltwater aquarium here on R2R.

Yes, Paul B is one of my favorite authors; I like to look up his posts not only for reef wisdom but also when I am in the mood for fine literature. I love his writing style!

 

[jdogclif]

I submitted my first Triton water test recently. I probably should have done one earlier, but I waited due to a combination of frugality/cheapness on my part and wanting to wait until Alk was stable and macroalgae was growing nicely. Here are the results:

They are recommending a one-time correction of Boron and Strontium:

Iodine is for sure low. They are recommending a correction and daily dose.

The rest looks pretty good. P04 is nice and low:

 

[jdogclif]

So now, what to do about the results... I have read the different schools of thought on iodine supplementation, with many feeling that it doesn't do much, but I think that I may try it for a month or so and see if I notice any difference. Triton is recommending a corrective dose of 9 mL and then a daily dose of about 1 mL. I've never dosed iodine before, but I am surprised that such a small daily dose would make a difference in 300 gallons of water. Maybe their iodine is super-concentrated. Like I say, I'll dose for a month, see if I notice a difference, and then send in another test and see where the iodine actually is after that.

They are also recommending correcting the boron and strontium, and then they also suggest "fine-tuning" the Molybdenum, vanadium, manganese and zinc. I think I will just do iodine for now and think about the others later. I'd be interested to hear what other Triton users have done and what you feel is important to dose. Maybe I'll query the Triton forum and see what the thoughts are...

Finally, with the phosphate being so low I'm going to try and go without GFO for the month and see if it is necessary.

I'm a little nervous about tweaking stuff since things have been going so nicely, but adding iodine seems harmless enough, and removing the GFO reactor actually gets me closer to my goal of having a low-maintenance tank so I am happy to try that. I'd love to hear any thoughts or advice...

 

[jdogclif]

So I tried going without the GFO and I started to notice a light brown dusting on the sand after a few days. I don't know if there is a correlation between the two, or if my diamond watchman goby is just getting lazy, but I'm firing up the GFO again.

I've been dosing the iodine and haven't noticed any big differences, although it has only been a couple weeks. I was reading about JBNY's tank which is almost exactly the same size as mine and using Triton supplements (although he has massively more amounts of beautiful coral than I do), and noticed the DIY zinc/manganese/iodine mix that he uses and thought I might give that a try, since that is what my Triton test showed I was lacking.

 

[jdogclif]

The tank has been going about 6 months now, still a baby but I thought I would put a couple before and after photos. It is BRS Pukani and Reef Saver dry rock, plus about 20 lbs of Tampa Bay Saltwater live rock. Amazing how well the coraline has covered the dry rock and everything is purple, can't tell what was dry and what was live.

October 2017

March 2017

 

[jdogclif]

Just noticed there are no fish in the March 2018 photos... They are there, must be all hiding. I took it in the evening and they all go to bed pretty early...

 

[CoralWealth]

looks good!

Sorry to hear about the powder blue and brown tang. I have a powder blue and it is definitely my favorite fish in the tank, you should get another

I love the school of blue chromis, I tried it before with 7 and only ended up with 1. I am going to try it again after summer when I have some nice size SPS colonies as I think that helps a lot, as they like to hide in them.

Really like the setup and glad everything is going smoothly.

 

[jdogclif]

looks good!

Sorry to hear about the powder blue and brown tang. I have a powder blue and it is definitely my favorite fish in the tank, you should get another

I love the school of blue chromis, I tried it before with 7 and only ended up with 1. I am going to try it again after summer when I have some nice size SPS colonies as I think that helps a lot, as they like to hide in them.

Really like the setup and glad everything is going smoothly.

Thank you! I’m going to add some fish after spring break. We’re going out of town and it will be the first test to see how the tank does while I’m away for a week... I would like another powder blue but I may be outvoted. After it died the kids said “now you can get a REAL Dory” so maybe a Regal tang in my future...

 

[jdogclif]

Just a little update; things are still going great, I’m really loving the tank and the setup. Quite low maintenance. I just scrap the glass a couple times a week and change out the carbon every other week. The chaeto has finally taken off so I thin that out every week too. I just started dosing iodide, zinc and manganese with a diy mix and vanadium from Triton. I’ll send out another water sample in a month or so to see if there is any difference.

I QTd and added some fish: Banggai pair, melanurus wrasse, blue sided fairy wrasse, carpenters flasher wrasse, and a tiny regal hepatus tang. They are all doing great and eating like pigs.

I switched to a diy frozen food by blending up a bunch of seafood and have stopped target feeding the corals since there is a literal cloud of goodies with the blended food, and I can see the torch and favia tentacles grabbing stuff when I feed the tank. Still going strong with the black worms, the “planted” worm tank is working out great and all the fish go crazy for them.

Some pics and then I’ll update again in a couple months or when the next change occurs, whichever comes first...

 

[jdogclif]

Excuse the blue, it doesn’t really look that blue...

 

[sergio706]

Amazing setup!

 

[revhtree]

Nice tank!

 

[jdogclif]

Things have been going well; no news is good news. I have learned a few things over the last 10 months of this tank's life:

1. I like the Triton method. I bought the 10L supplements during the Christmas sales last year, and I'm just over half way through them. It's been plug and play, set and forget ever since. I've done a few 40 gallon water changes, mostly to clean the hair algae out of the refugium, but since the hair algae has been gone for the last 4 months I haven't changed any water since. Maintenance is so easy, just clean the glass every other day, empty out the skimmer cup once a week, and prune macroalgae. Occasional pump maintenance and stuff as it comes up.

2. Black worms like planted tanks. I have a 5 gallon aquarium with a small canister filter and freshwater plants and it's packed with black worms. I stopped feeding them after a while to see what would happen, and they seem to be fine. Maybe they eat organic material off the moss and plant roots since they like to hang out there if they are not poking there heads (or tails?) into the gravel. I'm pretty sure they multiply in there, because I used almost all of them before going out of town for 2 weeks, and when I got back there were a bunch more!

3. A wrasse will indeed jump through any gap in the lid . I made a three-piece mesh lid, and one day I didn't notice that one part was resting on the return pipe, which left about a 1" gap in the corner of the tank, which was just enough room for my McCosker wrasse to take a final leap of glory.

4. Chromis shoals definitely do dwindle. I'm down to about 1/2 of where I started. I think I counted 9 the other day. I have never seen any aggression, or bodies for that matter. But the numbers don't lie and I'm sure the serpent star fish and hermit crabs hide any evidence...

Anyway, the tank is still young, the coral are small, I'm still building up the stock of fish, and I'm always looking over my shoulder for the first major catastrophe, but so far so good and really enjoying this tank!

 

[jdogclif]

Well I guess the honeymoon is over. Barely a month ago I posted how great everything is doing: minimal fish losses, coral growing nicely, minimal maintenance, but always waiting for the inevitable trial. This week was the trial: All my SPS have slowly started to bleach. First the birdsnest which always grew nicely, followed by the others. The grube gorgonian has retracted its polyps as well. The monti cap seems to be fine, and all the soft coral and LPS are fine with polyp extension.

So what is the cause?

Water chemistry? The last Triton test just got back, and nothing seems too far out of whack. For heavy metals Tin is 4.279ug/l. Calcium is high at 549 mg/l. Could that cause it? Everything else is normal.

Flow? I have not changed the flow for the year that this tank has been set up. I have it set up for one gyre to ramp up to 70% for one minute, then for the second gyre to ramp up to 70% for one minute, back and forth. At night it goes down to 40%.

Lighting? I have not changed the settings on the light. It is a Chinese LED. Everything has grown fine until now, and my eyes have not noticed any change in the light intensity. But maybe that is the problem?

I’m doing Triton supplements which has been rock solid. The dosers are accurate. I’ve toned down solution 2 to help with the calcium. The refugium has been growing macroalgae fine. The skimmer has been pulling out gunk as usual and there is no algae in the display.

*Sigh*. For now I am doing a series of water changes. I hesitate to change or do anything else because I don’t want to be reactionary and mess up more stuff, but obviously something is wrong and it would be nice to figure it out so I have the confidence to rebuild and add more SPS. Or maybe I should stick with softies for now? Any thoughts would be appreciated.