Maroun.c 400 G build thread

[bizzybeas]

Now for some of the lately added fish.

Rubeus wrass. more of an impulse buy but looks nice so far.

Rubrisquamis,
I lost my old rubrisquamis more than a year ago and loved how much character nd color he added to the tank. so added this one. Still has a long way to get final male colors.

also added an exuisite to replace one I had and which I also lost to jumping before adding a screen.

around 3-4 months back I added 4 Pyramid butterflies and they have since then become the highlight of the tank.

Chocolate tank to replace the pair I previously had. those were great at picking algae all day long and looked nicer as they grew larger. might try to add a second one in the future as well.

After loosing my bellus pair in the velvet outbreak and after way to much bad luck with Geniacanthus species for some weird reason I finally got lucky with 2 semifasciatus females. they were initially a trip with a nice male which got a sever eye infection for weeks in Qt and I couldn't cure him till he diesd after being blind for weeks. Not sure if Ill add a third female to get a trio. can't wait for one to turn male.

also added a couple of sunbursts 2 months back one of which dind't make it through quarantine

added a trio of Fridmany but also lost two of them in quarantine willa dd a few more

Just love those butterflies.

 

[bizzybeas]

I just finished reading this thread. What a gorgeous tank with such beautiful colors! I love your fish selection. It was so helpful to follow your journey with all of the joy and heartache combined. Thank you for your transparency as it will help all of us with our ups and downs of this hobby. ( obsession?) either way

 

[Daniel@R2R]

@maroun.c how is your reef these days? Any updates?

 

[maroun.c]

@maroun.c how is your reef these days? Any updates?

Hey Daniel,
Very challenging days in the country last 2 years, yet tank has fared well despite the little care it received. Will update thread for sure soon.

 

[maroun.c]

Time to update the build thread again
Last year was a rollercoaster (well guess to all) but we struggled a bit more on top of the Covid issues with a nasty financial crisis, political tension, a huge explosion and severe power cuts which are up to 20 hours a day for the last few months. we always had electrical supply issues and I relied a community backup generator for the few hours of daily cuts we used to get, yet in the last few months, even the community backup generators struggled due to unavailability of fuel and monetary devaluation, so I had around 10 hours of total black out per day for few weeks.
to add to this many LFS closed and most reefers I know already took of their tanks. So to keep the tank running I had to make a series of changes .
Electricity was a key element, so around end of April I got a Diesel generator to supply around 25 Amps ( we run on 220 V so I believe this is equivalent of 50 amps on 110V) for home and tank use. Generator was wired to power up automatically 1.5 min after power was lost.

during the time I was getting the generator and having it setup I was getting a few hours a day without electricity and also my Main return pump failed and I was using a small back up pump which was providing very minimal flow and the tank did struggle a bit.
Here's how the tank looked at its best in 2021 around April

 

[maroun.c]

I unfortunately couldn't get a larger generator due to space issues and also wanted to keep diesel consumption acceptable as we had a crazy shortage for months so had to make a few changes to reduce electricity draw

I ordered an Abyzz Pump and Received excellent support from Abyzz Company in sizing up the pump I needed based on piping diagrams I sent them and they advised to go with the Abyzz A400. the pump performed beautifully at around 90 percent strength providing the flow I had with the Hayward (around 3000 GPH effective flow from sump to tank one floor above) the advantage was the consumption that dropped from about 4 amps to 1.2.
I kept the hayward installed as a backup but believe in the future will acquire a second Abyzz to keep as backup and take out the Hayward to save the space its taking. was very suprised with the quality of the build of the Abyzz and how silent powerful and energy efficient it is.

Hayward pump acting as backup pump but doubt it will be used anytime soon with the track record of the Abyzz pumps.

I also installed an AC in the basement where I have another display tank and 3-4 fish and frag tanks all connected to the same setup which kept the tanks temperature stable at 2.2 Amps Vs 3 chillers totaling 8 Amps. AC reversed to heating in winter which also is keeping temp stable at 2.5 Amps VS 10 amps of total heaters for setup, coral QT and Fish QTs as well as FW tanks .....I also extended home heating elements to the basement so it gets heated along with home which also saves a lot on electrical draw.

 

[maroun.c]

Then around May -June My Dastaco Ca reactor I have been using for the last 2-3 years and which I had modified the reactors size and added a 3rd vent chamber to maximize howmuch alk and Ca it was pushing was not enough for the tank anymore and I started struggling to keep level high. I supplemented by dosing 2 pat but it was a bit tricky to get the levels right as everytime the levels got stable corals consumed more and caused alk and Ca to dip.
so decided to upgrade to a Dastaco T9 rated for around 2500 G (9000 Litres) which is double my system capacity,I also received great support from the manufacturer and they supported on video call during installation to fix a few mistakes I made during install so again very happy. reactor has been running since Aug and its keeping alk and Ca stable at only 13% load so wills erver me for a long time to come
old reactor

 

[maroun.c]

And this is how tank looks today, growth and coloration is doing great but I had lost a few corals and a few are still showing a bit of STN because of the electricity and flow issues I had as well as the instability caused by maxing out my old reactor and trying to suplement manually for a couple months which caused instability it also took a couple of weeks to get the new Dastaco properly dialled and finally reach stability.
Front

Left

Middle

Right

View from right side

View from left Side

Plans for the coming year are to finalize tidying up the huge mess in the fish room, changing old APEX to the new one I got and still didn't install. then improving the APEX controllability and monitoring for a bit more safety with the current electrical issues we have. then going back at the tank plan would be a major tidy up of the corals with a severe trim to many corals that are growing into each other now. as well as taking a few corals out to have a bit of a tidier layout of the tank. .

 

[maroun.c]

On the fish side I had no important fish additions in 2021 but a very sad update is I lost my Hypo tang which I had since 2007 a few months back. it had been struggling with weight loss and would recover weight after heavy feeding but then would get skinny very quick after. I tried dewarming and feeding a huge variety of food soaked in vitaming and fish would just lay on the sand bed or between the rocks and look dead then swim againm it went on for months till around June when it got to skinny and tired and woke up to find it dead in its sleeping spot.

 

[Zach B]

Beautiful tank Sorry to hear about the fish

 

[maroun.c]

Progression shots of the tank for the last few years.
Jan 2019

Jan 2020

Jan 2021

Jan 2022

 

[VanDalsenReef]

Progression shots of the tank for the last few years.
Jan 2019

Jan 2020

Jan 2021

Jan 2022

Beautiful system sorry for the blue tang loss. That can be hard. Especially when it's a stressful situation

 

[Daniel@R2R]

Absolutely beautiful reef, @maroun.c. I'm amazed by your reef especially in light of the obstacles you've had to endure. Your resilience is an inspiration to us. You are a reefer of extraordinary skill, and we are blessed to have you in our community. Thanks for continuing to share your reef with us, and I wish you a much better year in 2022, my friend.

 

[maroun.c]

Absolutely beautiful reef, @maroun.c. I'm amazed by your reef especially in light of the obstacles you've had to endure. Your resilience is an inspiration to us. You are a reefer of extraordinary skill, and we are blessed to have you in our community. Thanks for continuing to share your reef with us, and I wish you a much better year in 2022, my friend.

Thanks for the kind words, my pleasure be part of this community. Resilence or addiction I'm not really sure
Hoping 2022 will be a better year for all.

 

[Minhaj Qazi]

Covered by Cement:

The tank corner takes Shape:

Painted:

Drop Ceiling installation:

Lighiting aligned to tank:

Serious Build where Structure is Build around Reef. Next Level

 

[maroun.c]

in the last couple years I lost a few fish to old I age I presume so was time to start adding few fish to replenish.

Zebra tang, was a fish I always wanted and finally scored one.

piscilineatus wrass

 

[Zach B]

Sorry for the losses. However, those are some beautiful new additions

 

[WhyMe?]

Wow, I just went down that "rabbit hole" and read through this whole build thread of yours. You've had so many successes then failures. Thank goodness your wife was there on some occasions. You had a major crash in 2019 that really do not know the cause. I'd say from 2021-present your corals have significantly blossomed, grown. WHY do you think the last 2-3 years appears to show the most success with SPS? Seems you added the Dastaco Ca Rx but what else? OR do you believe just matter stability over time led to this? With majority of failures, what UV were you running? STILL same UV? Truly humbling to see you show your failures as many would not. You are resilient when many would have given up, kudos to you.

 

[maroun.c]

Wow, I just went down that "rabbit hole" and read through this whole build thread of yours. You've had so many successes then failures. Thank goodness your wife was there on some occasions. You had a major crash in 2019 that really do not know the cause. I'd say from 2021-present your corals have significantly blossomed, grown. WHY do you think the last 2-3 years appears to show the most success with SPS? Seems you added the Dastaco Ca Rx but what else? OR do you believe just matter stability over time led to this? With majority of failures, what UV were you running? STILL same UV? Truly humbling to see you show your failures as many would not. You are resilient when many would have given up, kudos to you.

Thanks for your kind words. Indeed, I doubt that longer lived tanks (by that I mean 10 years plus old tanks) can run flawlessly that long, dynamics change leading to shifts and drifts and corrections which typically results in unhappy tanks with few losses here and there up to total crashes.
I have had many ups and downs but luckily haven't had a crash so far which I believe is an acceptable result, would I be happy if the tank had run smoother? definitely. Did I logically expect the tank to run smoother? with me being a frequent traveler and having spent 3-4 years based abroad while tank was running, definitely would have been very ambitious to hope for that.
in the end mishaps and ups and downs are a part of the hobby and it is my belief that these need to be shared the same as success for others to chime in and help as well as to help others avoid the same issues.

Great observation on the progress made starting 2019 which was the year many things went right:
most important being based in Dubai from 2016 till tend of 2019 and coming back which had a huge impact on the level of attention I could give to the tank be it simply by being there and being able to observe things and react earlier.
Dastaco addition was definitely a huge plus in 2019 and then in 2021 I upgraded to a much larger Dastaco which added stability to the system.
then we had the 2-3 years of Covid where I traveled way less than before and was able to care for the tank even more.
starting around 2019 I started doing regular ICP and improved a few elements which I believe were the cause of the losses in 2019, that also helped add stability tot he tank when I managed the dosing of some elements like Strontium, Idodine, Manganese and potassium. I don't really chase numbers but just adjust the levels of these as they seem to drop continuously for me, that has led to some improvement.
As for UV I'm still running an 80w Deltec and couple of 36W UVs German brand forgot which one that was but have modified the electrical to fit Philips UV bulbs.

 

[Duzzy]

And some early Scaping attempts.
Needed something that would accentuate the tank deapth and have a 3D effect. Scap had to go higher from Rght to left so that viewing the tank from the RT side one would see an ascending structure with many of the corals still visible.
Not sure if I should still make it a bit higher than this or not. Any suggetsions are welcome.
Front View:

Rt Side view:

Lt side viewed from above

Rt side viewed from above

Top view from backside.

LT Island:
This one definitly will be a bit higher and will get a bit more creative in a couple of bridges

Middle island.
The obliquity and ascending from front to back bridge on this one should show the deaoth of the tank better.

Viewed from the RT side.

And a couple of islands on the RT side:

Cool idea using paper