Kyle's Reef

[Kyl]

Wednesday, humpday? Nah, how about sumpday.


built_sump1 by Kyl, on Flickr

Looks great and appears to be done exactly how I wanted it. Standard 4" fleece socks fit and RedSea mesh socks / media cup fit fit too.


socks by Kyl, on Flickr


sump_socks2 by Kyl, on Flickr

It's all been vinegar bathed and going to give it a day to dry and I'll wipe it down with some wet cloths again tomorrow. Debating just plumbing it in tomorrow or putting it in place and mixing some water in the sump while the tank runs in AIO mode for a day, all it needs is a heater running with the power heads. Will pick up a polyfilter just to clean out any residual build funk left, shouldn't be any issues. Zenreef stuff shipped yesterday as well, so this weekend should see the frag tank finally "done" as I'll call it.

 

[Bleigh]

FTS_September_2018 by Kyl, on Flickr

Welcome to my 60 gallon shallow reef tank build. This tank is the result of a migration from my two year journey into the hobby with a nano tank. All of my pictures are stored on Flickr and linked in the tank headers below, so there's a bit of visual history with the ups and downs over time if you're so interested.

Hopefully someone can learn from some of the mistakes I've made along the way!

Features:

Display Tank: 60g Custom - 48" x 18" x 16"

Spoiler: Equipment

Stand: Custom 1-1/2" steel powder coated
Sump: Custom 44" x 18" x 16"
Lighting: 48" Aquatic Life T5 Hybrid fixture - 3x ATI Blue+, 1x ATI True Actinic, 3x Kessil A160WE
Heater: Finnex Titanium 300W
ATO: Tunze Osmolator 3155
Skimmer: Icecap K2-160
Return: Jebao DCP 8000
Reactor: BRS 5" Mini Reactor (.8 ROX Carbon), w/ Cobalt MJ-600
Powerheads: 2x Maxspect XF230 Gyre, 2x Jebao SW-4
Export: Refugium w/ Kessil H380
Controller: GHL ProfiLux 4
Rock: Marco dry, Seachem Matrix in sump
Substrate: CaribSea Fiji Pink

Frag Tank: 30g Custom - 30" x 22" x 10"

Spoiler: Equipment

Sump: Custom 31" x 22" x 13"
Lighting: 24" Aquatic Life T5 Hybrid fixture - 3x ATI Blue+, 1x ATI True Actinic, Kessil AP700
Heater: 2x Eheim Jager 150w
ATO: Tunze Osmolator 3155
Skimmer: Icecap K2-50
Return: Jebao DCS 4000
Reactor: IM Minimax Desktop (50ml .8 ROX Carbon)
Powerheads: 2x Jebao SW-4, 1x Ecotech MP10QDW
Export: Refugium w/ Kessil H150 Magenta
Controller: GHL ProfiLux 4e
Rock: Seachem Matrix in sump

Water Parameters:

Spoiler

2019-04-20 20:35 Alkalinity 8.5
2019-04-20 20:47 Calcium 420
2019-04-20 19:58 Magnesium 1330
2019-04-20 21:08 Nitrate 1
2019-04-20 20:11 Phosphate 0.035

Livestock and Corals:

Fish:

Spoiler

DT:
2x Ocellaris Clownfish - Amphiprion ocellaris
1x Gold Assessor Basslet - Assessor flavissimus
1x Midas Blenny - Ecsenius midas
1x Exquisite Fairy Wrasse - Cirrhilabrus Exquisitus (Male)
1x Pintail Fairy Wrasse - Cirrhilabrus Isoceles (Male)
1x Blue Star Leopard Wrasse - Macropharyngodon bipartitus (Male)
2x Greenbanded Goby - Tigrigobius multifasciatus
1x Springer's Damsel - Chrysiptera springeri
1x Red Head Goby - Elacatinus puncticulatus

QT:
2x Wheeler's Prawn Goby - Amblyeleotris wheeleri
1x Helfrichi Firefish - Nemateleotris helfrichi
1x Tail Spot Blenny - Ecsenius stigmatura

Inverts:

Spoiler

DT:
3x Red Bubble-tip Anemone
2x Crocea Clam
1x Blood Red Fire Shrimp
1x Cleaner Shrimp
3x Emerald Crab
1x Sexy Shrimp
1x White Spot Anemone Shrimp
1x Pompom Crab
4x Scarlet Hermit crab
2x Blue-Legged Hermit Crab
1x Orange-Lipped Conch
2x Fighting Conch
~20 mixed Nassarius, Trochus and Cerith snails

QT:
6x Rockflower Anemones
1x Feather Duster
1x Candycane Pistol Shrimp
1x Orange-Lipped Conch

SPS:

Spoiler

DT:
Pink Lemonade Acropora
Marshall Islands Sapphire Acropora
RR Rainbow Loom Acropora
Green Slimer Acropora
Red Diablo Acropora
Four Seasons Acropora
Green Birdsnest
Red Setosa Montipora
Rainbow Encrusting Montipora
Purple Pocillopora
Red Plating Montipora
Idaho Grape Plating Montipora

QT:
Light Pink Millepora
Cali Tortuosa Acropora
Wasabi Tortuosa Acropora
Teal Turaki Acropora
Green Hulk Acropora
Purple Bonsai Acropora
Red Dragon Acropora
Purple Valida Acropora
Mystic Sunset Encrusting Montipora
Red Planet Acropora
Ice-Fire Prostrata
Pink Millepora
Sunset Millepora
Superman Encrusting Montipora
No-name pink w/ yellow coralite and fuzzy polyps
Denim on Denim Millepora
Pinky Dinky Millepora
Lucid Dream Millepora
No-name Millepora
Stair Way To Heaven Tenuis

LPS:

Spoiler

DT:
Mutant Branching Hammer
Kryptonite Candy Cane
Pink/Purple Duncan
Green Fungia Plate
Blue-tipped Red Goniopora
Purple Torch
Green Frogspawn
Teal Candy Cane
Blue-Green Micromussa
Red-Orange Micromussa

QT:
Red Trachyphyllia
Teal Rainbow Trachyphyllia

Softies:

Spoiler

DT:
Yellow Fiji leather
Tyree Green Polyp Toadstool
Purple Photosynthetic Gorgonian
Blue Discosoma Mushroom
Green Star Polyps
Tan Pulsing Xenia
Assorted Zoanthids
Blue-Green Yuma Ricordea

QT:
Ironman Mushroom

Those spoiler tags are nice. Makes the post look really clean. How do you do that?

 

[Kyl]

Or [spoil er="Name"] stuff [/spoil er] works too, without the space. Thanks

 

[Kyl]

So the frag tank is almost completely changed over from Apex, the new sump is installed, existing plumbing all fit like a charm. Probably the easiest I could have made things, it was literally un-do four unions, remove old sump, put in new sump, re-attach four unions. Missing from the shot is the RO storage tank which will be put back on the shelf when the final parts of my sump and wiring show up tomorrow.


frag_v1.99 by Kyl, on Flickr

Frag tank v1.99 now has a working water volume of approximately ~55 gallons, ~25 in the tank itself, ~30 in the sump. It took 15 cups of salt to hit 1.026sg in the sump (1 cup per 2 gallons gives me that on the dot) as I ran it stand-alone for a couple days so as to not shock things. The dKH of the instant ocean bucket I'm on right now is mixing high (10.7 dKH fresh), and the frag tank has been hovering at about 8 dKH. Used some muriatic acid to drop the sump to about 8.6 dKH, it also dropped the PH by almost 1.4 and took a good day to offgas that CO2 and get back up to around 8.1 ph. Yesterday I plumbed the return from dumping into the socks to the tank return lines, and poof, we were done.

What's left is installing the zenreef dosing line & heater holder, frag rack for the tank and a small mushroom box so I can get that critter keeper out of there. Wiring completion with some cable raceway, mounting the few controllers left below the ProfiLux cabinet and functionally, that's it.

DT will be the next work focus, it needs some love and for the system swap to take place. Felt really good to see everything come together this past weekend.

 

[specwar]

Amazing how the *pod population becomes visible once fish are gone. They've been out roughly 5 weeks now, and there are copepods and isopods all over the glass. My pinkstreaked wrasse is going to have a field day on these pods when he's back in the tank!


pods by Kyl, on Flickr

Stocking wise, I've been searching for Greenbanded gobies for over a year and our local market in Vancouver Canada has basically one vendor, whom can't source them. Unfortunately there is no national source like liveaquaria to fall back on, but I do know there is a fish/coral store with an online presence a couple of provinces over. It's been exceedingly difficult to get any communication going with them, something I've never come across this in the hobby so far. I'm in envy of what a lot of the US reefing scene has available to them, least of which the online livestock and coral vendors.

Anyway, now that I'm on holidays for a bit it's time to press the issue and try and get a pair of those gobies. After that, stocking should be complete for this tank in it's current incarnation.

Can you go over to Seattle and bring back a fish (Greenbanded Goby)? I don't know Canadian wildlife rules at the border.

 

[Kyl]

You probably can provided the proper invoice and print outs of the species. At the time I posted that though I didn't have a passport or enhanced DL as I hadn't been to the states in almost a decade. Since then I acquired four of them, two are left in the DT currently. If they pop up stateside with sea&reef we have a retail guy locally that will bring them in. I want more of them, debating setting up a Nuvo 25 EXT if I find more (like ~8 or so) of them again, make a true nano tank with nano fish again like when i started. Some guys just don't belong in the DT with rambunctious wrasse, etc.

 

[specwar]

You probably can provided the proper invoice and print outs of the species. At the time I posted that though I didn't have a passport or enhanced DL as I hadn't been to the states in almost a decade. Since then I acquired four of them, two are left in the DT currently. If they pop up stateside with sea&reef we have a retail guy locally that will bring them in. I want more of them, debating setting up a Nuvo 25 EXT if I find more (like ~8 or so) of them again, make a true nano tank with nano fish again like when i started. Some guys just don't belong in the DT with rambunctious wrasse, etc.

I have a yellow tail Damsel that is the same way. Maybe he needs to into my Frag tank but then catching him is another story.... Glad you got a solution and your fish!!!

 

[Kyl]

So as usual my luck streak continues..

The rest of the Zenreef order didn't get shipped to our local distributor, and the John Guest fitting supplier that I called on Friday to make sure they had stock,when I got there Saturday was closed for the holiday weekend.. which they neglected to let me know on Friday. I did get a picture of my frag tank rack though, can't wait to get it on the glass and start to get rid of the egg crate down the middle. It's basically their nano size rack but stretched out, room to hold two larger frag discs side by side. Debating if an ancillary reefbrite clone strip would help that rack out or not, will have to see how things go.


frag_tank_rack by Kyl, on Flickr

Saturday had some time spent continuing to dial in the KH Director, it's now reading consistantly .3 dKH lower than the Hanna checker, which is reading about .3 dKH higher against the 7.5 dKH reference standard, so that's as close as it's going to get to bang on. Testing 6x a day so far, alk is hovering around 8.0, Hanna is testing within that .3 higher variance, but I'm going to continue to monitor things for another week or so with daily Hanna checking just to keep that reference going. I do have to say I'm impressed after the bit of set-up difficulty, and the ability to customize your install is very welcome.


kh_director_results by Kyl, on Flickr

Today was spent starting the setup of the ProfiLux P4 on the display tank and some initial equipment migration. Well that went rather well and there isn't a whole lot left on the 2016 Apex.


apex_remaining by Kyl, on Flickr

Tomorrow is a holiday so I can safely say by the evening everything on the DT will have been swapped over and I can then focus on gussing her up and finally updating the.. rather old FTS. The AWC will be dealt with next weekend but should be rather un-eventful. I do need to make a shelf for the units to sit on, and run two cat5 lengths since I want each system controlling it's own AWC, just in case.

Busy times, but we're in a new month and the fall weather will be coming along. I need to start posting some of the Neptune gear for sale, but I'm debating just keeping the 2016, putting it on my parents tank that my old classic is on, and then let my father use the classic and the PM1 on his freshwater arowana and chiclid tanks. Resale on the classic is really low locally and it seems like a waste to firesale it off. All the DOS's though, AFS, EB8's, LSM, VDM, WXM & DDR are going to be sold when the peak time in the hobby hits nearer November.

 

[Kyl]

Wiring up the display tank control cabinet with the P4 and I'm really not happy with the lack of space, or proper space for power bricks and such. I actually haven't really paid much attention to them in the past, but when I pulled out where the bricks are stuffed, multiple of them were borderline hot hot, not something good long term. This room has a desk, both tanks, my qt tanks, the mini fridge along with my 3d printer in it, and in general isn't very well optimized space wise.


dt_layout_current by Kyl, on Flickr

So this is what I'm thinking:

dt_layout_finished by Kyl, on Flickr

Benefits to this upgrade:

• 9" segregated rear area in the cabinet (false wall) for power bricks and wiring versus the current cabinet
• Ability to have an exhaust pulling from the floor and out the rear left through the power brick area
• Room for the dosing vessel as well as the ATO resivoir
• Room for future P4 additions side by side
• More storage space for fish stuff
• Utilize space above the fridge for the 3d printer
• A ~40" space to work on, fragging etc.

The best part is none of this is really custom work at all, it's just Ikea base kitchen cabinets. The only really downsides are it will jet out from the DT just under 2", but my desk to the right of that is jetted out another 6" past that anyway. Feels like another step of the.. expanding plan.. coming together.

Speaking of the display tank..

 

[Katrina71]

Great video!

 

[Kyl]

Four weeks from the bottle, should start to see some exponential culture growth in another month or so. Hard to keep focus on these guys, forgive the 6 or so seconds in the middle, didn't feel like chopping it all up.

Thanks to Chad @Reef Nutrition, very helpful to those wanting to DIY a culture of their own.

 

[Reef Nutrition]

Four weeks from the bottle, should start to see some exponential culture growth in another month or so. Hard to keep focus on these guys, forgive the 6 or so seconds in the middle, didn't feel like chopping it all up.

Thanks to Chad @Reef Nutrition, very helpful to those wanting to DIY a culture of their own.

You have some nice little rotifers in there with them. They tend to do well in a co-culture. Thanks for the video! I can't get enough of seeing their nauplii under the scope.

Best,
Chad

 

[Kyl]

Thanks Chad. Do you guys feed the tiggers rottifers? I haven't put anything in that vessel other than the tigger pod bottle and 5-10 drops of phyto feast every day and a bit.

 

[Reef Nutrition]

Thanks Chad. Do you guys feed the tiggers rottifers? I haven't put anything in that vessel other than the tigger pod bottle and 5-10 drops of phyto feast every day and a bit.

We do not feed them rotifers. Not sure how they got in your culture. They shouldn't be a problem, though. You can use a 300 micron screen to rinse the pods and get rid of them if they become an issue. You can also put the Tigger-Pods in freshwater for 10 minutes to eradicate the rotifers.

Chad

 

[Kyl]

The water is also brand new salt from my automatic change tanks, so it's never seen or been touched by an existing system. I only intend on feeding these guys to my tanks once the culture explodes so if it won't impact the tiggers I don't really care if the rotifers are in there. Trying to watch the video and figure out which are the rotifers, any specific time stamp?

 

[Reef Nutrition]

The water is also brand new salt from my automatic change tanks, so it's never seen or been touched by an existing system. I only intend on feeding these guys to my tanks once the culture explodes so if it won't impact the tiggers I don't really care if the rotifers are in there. Trying to watch the video and figure out which are the rotifers, any specific time stamp?

Mystery! They are all over in the culture right from the beginning.

 

[Kyl]

Oh haha, I thought those were the baby tigger pods. Thanks!

 

[Reef Nutrition]

Oh haha, I thought those were the baby tigger pods. Thanks!

This is a nauplius.

 

[Kyl]

Those are my favourite ones, the way they sort of buzz around a bit. Looks like something out of a sci-fi movie.

 

[Kyl]

New cabinet and counter top are about half way done, false wall idea is going to work great, already have the exhaust fan installed and should have it all done this weekend. Revised the design a bit after seeing drawers as an option, and going to just leave the counter top over the fridge floating on a reinforced mount.

dt_layout_finished_v2 by Kyl, on Flickr

Simplicity is best in the end.

Zenreef stuff almost here finally, another in my long line of 'if it can go wrong, it will go wrong for you' situations that I must have done something horrible in another life to have happen so regularly now haha.

More positive news, the KHD has been a great addition already and has let me catch one equipment snafu.

kh_director_success by Kyl, on Flickr
My AWC has been offline for a few days (red period) before I finally put two and two together, that my dKH was slowly dropping to the mid 7's because of it. Well the USB cable in my 2016 Apex head, which is still driving the AWC DOS wasn't fully plugged in for about five days, which meant my AWC both were offline. So that ~2.5L a day reduction in fresh ~10 dKH salt water was enough to not keep up with demand, and cause alk to slowly drop. Not something that would wreck the tank, but something I could have possibly caused havoc with.

Other than that, things are growing, the clowns continue to spawn and things are remaining relatively calm.