Keenan's IM170 EXT

[jp_75]

Very nice! I have a frag of Blue Ghost too. Hope it will become a colony at some point

 

[Keenan]

I get asked about my parameters and these are the only three I regularly test along with Salinity.

Phosphate is pretty high right now due to it bottoming out a few times the past couple tests (my tank goes through A LOT of phosphates) and so I just kept adding neophos daily without testing each day (oops ) and it climbed a bit high. I usually like it around .1 for what it’s worth. It’ll come back down to that in a few days so I’m not too worried. Aside from that things are looking good

 

[Keenan]

Took this measurement yesterday evening, a little over 24 hours after the previous tests. I wasn’t lying when I said my tank consumes PO4 like crazy

 

[Daniel@R2R]

A few updated macro/colony shots of some of my sticks


BC Backdraft


BC Blue Ghost


BC Hawaii


WWC Heartbreaker


BC Bonfire



BC Bliss (First pic under blues, second under whites)


Fishfoo Creepers at Dusk


Fishfoo Sunny Clouds

These photos are absolutely outstanding!! Love it!!

 

[Keenan]

These photos are absolutely outstanding!! Love it!!

Thanks Daniel!

 

[Keenan]

A couple of pieces from my most recent Battlebox. Was glad to see some oranges and yellows in this one.

BC Gilded Lily


BC Super Rainbow


BC Cream City Pinky


BC Three Oranges. This one's been on my wishlist for a very long time!


Update of my green'd out TSA Bill Murray finally starting to get some color back!

 

[Keenan]

Night time walk by phone pic

 

[Manny’s Reef]

Great looking build. Everything looks so professionally done.

 

[Daniel@R2R]

Night time walk by phone pic

So nice!!

 

[Keenan]

Figured I'd post one last FTS before I move in a month and upgrade to a larger tank. This tank has been very good to me, and taught me a lot about the hobby/coral husbandry. I can only hope to have the same success in the new tank. The transfer of everything is currently in the "planning" phase, and I'm optimistic it will go relatively smooth. Fingers crossed!

https://flic.kr/p/2n7nEN5

 

[Keenan]

I also realized I forgot to post an update here that I posted on my local forums. Here it is below from December.

Current fish list:

2 Male Flame Wrasse
1 Male Pintail Wrasse
1 Female Rhomboid Wrasse
1 Male Blue Star Leopard Wrasse
2 Watanabei Angelfish (Pair)
1 Black Tang (King of the tank)
1 Tomini Tang
1 Borbonius Anthias

I think that's it, so currently ten. The Pyramid I sold locally. The first sunkist anthias died from double popeye from wedging itself between some rocks one day and it never healed, and shortly after that the other two weren't the same and followed suit. This was after having all three for a year+. Maybe something started bullying them, idk. I've sold two other flame wrasse, and had a clownfish go carpet surfing. So now we are where we are and I haven't adding anything in over a year in fear that I'd disrupt the current pecking order. Plus the angels and tang are getting big and account for a lot of bio-load.

I can't stop looking at this piece every time I walk past the tank. It's the unreleased BC Super Rainbow and it keeps coloring up more and more each month.


Here's a backup JF Homewrecker colony I have that was getting such insane coloration I ended up moving the main colony over to the same spot.


Oh, and this little frag has been growing well, most importantly <3 almost 4 months now



Other than that the only pics I've taken have been updated colony/macro shots that I'm sure people have already seen in my most recent fs thread but I'll post some of them here as well.

WWC Heartbreaker


BC Bohemia


Fishfoo Cigarettes After Sex


BC Aquatic Man

 

[RSnodgrass]

You're going to miss this tank no matter how good the next one is. It's a beauty.

 

[Keenan]

Alright finally getting around to the first update since the move.

Update 01/23/2022

The move happened in April of last year to the new house. It was only an 11 minute drive between the old and new houses, so that wasn't too bad. I had the tank professionally moved, and then I moved everything else myself over a 24 hour (straight) period. It was chaos but I was able to get the new tank on life support (heater, return pump, etc) within that time.

I kept everything the same, aside from the tank, sump, and 80% new sand. Even with basically putting my entire old reef in a new glass box, and doing my best to limit stress during the move, I still lost A LOT of sps, and continued to slowly lose them over a 6+ month period.

This is only a portion of what was lost, but unfortunately is the only pic I documented


I've finally stopped the dying (I think), and things are starting to color back up/grow. What I found funny was that some sticks that were growing like weeds either stopped growing, lost color, or died. Yet I have other frags that I've had for years that hadn't grown an inch, but the minute they were put into this new tank they started sprouting new tips and growing. This hobby is a weird one that's for sure.

Here is the new setup. My dslr battery was shot so you all will have to settle for phone pics


Innovative Marine IM170 EXT Euro Braced Aquarium
Geo Reef SU36R-PRO-AFR Sump
Nyos 160 Skimmer
ATI Powermodule (8 T5 bulb, 3 led pucks)
Red Sea Varios 8 Return Pump
4x Ecotech MP40's
1x Red Sea Octo Pulse 4
x2 Finnex 500Watt Heaters controlled by an Inkbird Controller
Clarisea AFR
AquaUV In-Line Sterilizer
GHL Profilux
GHL KHD
2x 4-Head GHL Doser 2.1

Current Livestock
Hawaiian Black Longnose Tang
2x Watannabei Angels
Male Blue Star Leopard Wrasse
Male Pintail Wrasse
Tomini Tang

My male rhomboid and flame wrasses died unexpectedly a month or so ago, only 2 days apart, which is odd because I hadn't had a fish death in a long time. Not exactly sure what happened with them but sucks nonetheless. I definitely am low on livestock.

Here is the rest of the setup

Sump/ATO: Since I had the room, I wanted to move the sump out from under the tank. It got too annoying trying to clean and get to things under there in my previous build, and I'm very happy I plumbed it this way. The plumbing could definitely be more level and look better, but I was in a bit of a rush at the time and can always redo it if it bugs me enough.


Equipment Cabinet: Powerhead controllers are all stored under the tank. Everything else is stored in here to help hide all of the wires and modules. Serves its purpose and I like that it's taller and can be used as a nice work counter as well.


View of Everything


Water Change Station: Same as the old one. Two 60gal storage tanks plumbed off of a large pond return pump. Fresh RO water goes directly into the right tank and then goes into the left where it's mixed with salt and eventually goes out to the tank. Nothing fancy.


I really wanted a utility sink in the basement like the old house. The good news was, the plumber was able to make that happen. The bad news was that this was the only spot he could fit it :p Better than nothing.



And that's basically the short and sweet of it. I've just been trying to stabilize the new system as much as possible and help it catch its stride once more. I miss the success of my old tank, but do enjoy new challenges with this one (aside from the coral deaths). I've also been pretty busy/lazy and haven't given much time to the tanks/hobby, which has slowed progress further. Trying to get better at that part.

Current Issues: At the moment I have the tiniest leak in the main drain line, off of a union. Should be an easy fix but I haven't quite gotten around to it yet. The white stuff is salt that has basically closed it up, it's that small of a leak. However it does need to be addressed soon.


The more urgent issue, which I thankfully discovered shortly after it started by the looks of it, is a leak coming out of a crack in the bulhead (possibly?) that again is very small, but more persistent. Of course on of my mp40's was directly under it as well, which I'm trying to see if I can repair. I've tried to super glue the leak as a quick fix until new parts come, but it's been an ongoing battle. So weird that it's a crack that randomly formed in the bulkhead itself though and not just a result of improper glueing.



Will try to take some cool macro shots soon now that the dslr is out of storage and charged up :)

 

[Keenan]

Took a couple photos with the camera finally. Colors aren't quite there yet, but ultimately I'm just happy things are alive and growing. Colors will come later.

BC Insanity Teni: Very similar to the JF Homewrecker, but more pastel. Very very cool coral that for some reason never grew in the old tank but has had insane growth since the move.


BC Wild Karrde: One of the corals that hasn't done much, but it still looks somewhat happy which is a plus. Excited to see it start to color up.


BC Cricket Spine: Another coral that didn't grow at all for almost two years, and then once I moved tanks it started to take off. SPS are weird.


BC Super Rainbow: Definitely has lost some color, but is growing!

 

[Jacked Reefer]

Wow! Great thread! Great photography! And great system. Sucks that you lost a lot of corals with the transfer, but it looks like your growing plenty more!

 

[Keenan]

Wow! Great thread! Great photography! And great system. Sucks that you lost a lot of corals with the transfer, but it looks like your growing plenty more!

Thanks, It's coming together slowly but surely!

 

[Keenan]

Forgot to post my local forum build thread updates here for the past couple, so here is an update dump.


Kalk Reactor has been great. Alk climbed a bit but I'm ok with it, and will naturally go down in time. Ph is now between 8.2-8.4 (up from 7.0-8.1).

I also spent a lot of time and effort both scrapping off sps encrustment from the rocks and cleaning as much bubble algae manually as possible. It took about 10 hours total spread out over a few days. I basically did 1 of 3 large rock structures each night. Below pic is a very small portion of the aftermath. Some nights it was much messier than this o_O


Cleaning the rocks created a lot of bare white spots, and some algae is moving into those spots but I'm not too worries about it. Coraline will cover it back up eventually.

The saltwater mixing station hadn't been cleaned in a long time, so I also cleaned that. Here's what it looked like before. Could be worse, but still pretty gross.

Also cleaned the pump for the first time in 3+ years, however it was surprisingly clean. I guess mixing ro through it along with clean saltwater doesn't beat up a pump too much.


Other than that, just trying to keep things as stable as possible. I have a couple fish in qt, but would rather not say what as my qt luck has never been great (and seems to continue with this batch). Personally, keeping sps alive is much easier for me than fish

 

[Keenan]

Onto the corals. Received a battlebox and unfortunately had a few casualties due to shipping (cold water). The ones that have survived are almost completely washed out of color, aside from a few. Adam always makes it right though so not too worried.

Here is one that has bounced back quickly however, and might be the most insane frag I've ever had. Yellow and orange polyps with purple and green body. I'm trying everything in my power not to make this guy mad! Also tried some new changes with dslr that resulted in completely out of focus photos, which is a bummer.


Here's a BC Lasermelon which didn't totally lose its color and seems mostly happy



WWC Banana Boom before she gets chopped up for the first time. This coral has almost died on me a handful of times in the past 5 years, but somehow always finds a way to pull through. Very tough to photograph.


And I will leave you with a teaser for what's to come for the expo pre sales ;) Will mainly be trying to sell stuff that's been sitting on my frag racks for way too long, but decided to make a few frags as well.

BC Insanity Teni under blues

 

[Keenan]

Well, that escalated quickly... Decided to plumb in a frag tank tied into the main display system. Finally, no more frag racks in the display!

Since it's tied into the main display, the equipment list is short:
Fiji Cube 32EXT
ATI Straton
Red Sea ReefWave 45 (WAY too much flow, even at 20%. Really impressed with it though so will probably use it in main display)

Some pics of the plumbing. Blue is Frag tank Purple is main display. Had to get creative to make it work with the sump not being super large.


The usual chaos pic as this was happening



While I was plumbing, I decided to switch out my UV bulb after 2+ years of forgetting to. Below is a picture of the bulb tube... Think it was doing anything?


Also decided to use the media reactor for more biological media. I use carbon sparingly so it was a waste to use it in there and only have it in use every now and then. I used maxspect bio balls and seachem pond matrix to fill in the gaps.

 

[Skynyrd Fish]

Tank looks great. How do you like the IM170 ext? I am considering the same tank.