Matt's Elos 120xl

najer · Oct 20, 2018

Mattres said:
Latest little guy into the tank, I've missed having a blenny in the tank since my last bi-color somehow got into the mp40..
They sure add lots of character.

Great pics.

Mattres · Oct 31, 2018

Small update, for the first time in a long time i can say I've had some coral growth!
I'm hesitant to cheer to much but I'm hopeful the tank is finally on a good stable path.
I added three frags about two and a half weeks ago. Once i got them in the tank they actually looked a little rough, like the lfs had an alk spike and had burnt tips.
After a week however they've started to look better and I can see the Stag encrusting the plug more. The Valida gives me anxiety though, its skin appears patchy sometimes!
Baby steps I know but happy they're in the right direction.

Teal Stag

Red Cap

Valida

Janci · Nov 2, 2018

Going the right direction Matt.
It feels good to read this after all your trouble.

saintsreturn · Nov 2, 2018

Beautiful tank and progress! Hopefully the progressive trend continues!

najer · Nov 3, 2018

Very nice.

Mattres · Nov 4, 2018

Janci said:
Going the right direction Matt.
It feels good to read this after all your trouble.

Thanks mate, it's felt like a long journey so its a great feeling for sure.

saintsreturn said:
Beautiful tank and progress! Hopefully the progressive trend continues!

Thank you! Me to, signs are staying positive for now.

najer said:
Very nice.

Thanks mate

Mattres · Nov 4, 2018

I've run the gauntlet with running an MP10 on 12mm glass for a while now and its fallen off 3 or 4 times now mostly from me accidentally knocking it. It was never going to to be on the tank long term but its still a little painful to see the condition its now in from a few falls! haha ;Facepalm

I've been thinking about what i'm going to replace it with, the obvious decision would be another MP40 but I've thought about adding a gyre instead.
I reckon if i placed it vertically on the back glass next to the overflow with the flow running along the back glass it would not only blend in but provide good flow with the MP40 on the same side at the front of the tank.
For people with experience with Gyre's what are your thoughts?

Janci · Nov 4, 2018

Ha, I have a simil;ar MP40 with some holes in it due to gravity. I refused to use the glue clips on the tank glass that hold the cable in place so one day I found it on the floor as well.

I think a gyre would be a good option.
I remember Chris his Elos 160, which had 2 MP40 and a gyre in vertical position on to the back glass next to the overflow as well.
His tank and photography is/was excellent.
So + on the gyre...

This is one of the last picture of Chris. tank:

markstubb · Nov 4, 2018

I have a MP40 on my back glass and 2 gyre's in my 120xl. IMHO, I went with the XF250's and they're pretty overpowering in this tank. When I first set it up, if i had them anything over like a .5s pulse and greater than 40 or 50%, I had a lot of sand movement and LPS get ticked off. Great for SPS though. If I did it again, I'd probably go for the 230's and run them at a higher speed. Would give me a lot more room to run them over a larger range of the pump rather that going from like 20% to 45% like I do now.

I mostly run the MP40 on a constant stream just to break up the gyre's in the middle of the tank. Works well

Mattres · Nov 4, 2018

Haha his tank journal is actually where i got the idea! I remember reading his journal ages ago and putting that idea in the back of my mind.
If i remember correctly he removed it after awhile as it blew his sand around, im planning to remove my sand so wont have that problem.

Mattres · Nov 4, 2018

markstubb said:
I have a MP40 on my back glass and 2 gyre's in my 120xl. IMHO, I went with the XF250's and they're pretty overpowering in this tank. When I first set it up, if i had them anything over like a .5s pulse and greater than 40 or 50%, I had a lot of sand movement and LPS get ticked off. Great for SPS though. If I did it again, I'd probably go for the 230's and run them at a higher speed. Would give me a lot more room to run them over a larger range of the pump rather that going from like 20% to 45% like I do now.

I mostly run the MP40 on a constant stream just to break up the gyre's in the middle of the tank. Works well

Thanks for that info mate, i'm hoping with 1 MP40 and 1 Gyre 250 i should have enough flow. My tanks pretty light on rock structure so there's not much restricting flow.

markstubb · Nov 4, 2018

One 250 with no rocks and no sand should move some water. I sort of offset mine where the one on the return side only partially overlaps the gyre on the opposite side of the tank. Generates a sort of "whirlpool gyre" and works pretty well. If you only plan on hard coral, you should have plenty of flow

Mattres · Nov 26, 2018

Tank is still doing well and hopefully that continues as the missus and I are away on holiday for two weeks.
We’ve been on Fitzroy Island which is a short boat trip off of Cairns for the first 3 days and I’ve been amazed with the amount of marine life only meters off the beach.
Visibility was only about 4-5 meters but it was very shallow so still quite easy to see corals. The diversity of the coral species was much higher than I thought would be there and were quite a few corals I reckon would look amazing under aquarium conditions!

If I find out how to upload videos I’ll try to throw some up at some stage.
We head out the Outer Reef in about a week so stay tuned for more photos!

Shona569 · Nov 27, 2018

Hi Matt,
Lovely tank

I’ve been reading your thread and all your experiences are pretty much identical to ours with Our Elos 120XL.
Makes me feel better about our tank.
Here’s my build thread that I haven’t updated for a while due to issues similar to you. https://www.ultimatereef.net/thread...nd-line-aquarium-aiming-for-sps.786782/page-3

We purchased our Elos 120XL in June 2016, shortly after the Diamond Line was first released costing the tidy sum of £6000. At first the tank looked lovely.... we used ATM colony to seed real reef rock... it took a very long time... and after reading through your thread, interesting points about it Real reef rock being less porous so less colonisation occurs etc...it all becomes clear.
I had another tank so I followed the instructions & added the fish from our previous tank as per the instructions. It didn’t work as well for us, we lost our very large Ritteri anemone and a few fish. We had thick brown slime algae everywhere, just couldn’t get rid of it!
Very frustrating, time consuming and a lot of money spent trying to fix.

It got a lot worse than that! We just couldn’t get rid of it. We also had some Elos Planet Pro lights with lots of features... none of which worked & still don’t. I just didn’t know why the algae wouldn’t go.
I’ve had reed tanks for years and years so had a fair amount of knowledge.
So about 18months later.... the brown slime algae everywhere has finally gone! All I can think is that the tank has matured and reached equilibrium the the nitrogen cycle... our next issue is trying to get the flow right.
As you can see our tank is not against the wall so we can only have powerheadson the end of it.
We have a big problem with our Gyre moving sand around exposing the bottom of the tank. It seems impossible to fix.
I have no corals now as they kept dying.
I’ll keep to fish only until the flow is sorted.
How is your tank now?
Hope you have a lovely holiday.Shona

Mattres · Nov 27, 2018

Shona569 said:
Hi Matt,
Lovely tank
I’ve been reading your thread and all your experiences are pretty much identical to ours with Our Elos 120XL.
Makes me feel better about our tank.
Here’s my build thread that I haven’t updated for a while due to issues similar to you. https://www.ultimatereef.net/thread...nd-line-aquarium-aiming-for-sps.786782/page-3

We purchased our Elos 120XL in June 2016, shortly after the Diamond Line was first released costing the tidy sum of £6000. At first the tank looked lovely.... we used ATM colony to seed real reef rock... it took a very long time... and after reading through your thread, interesting points about it Real reef rock being less porous so less colonisation occurs etc...it all becomes clear.
I had another tank so I followed the instructions & added the fish from our previous tank as per the instructions. It didn’t work as well for us, we lost our very large Ritteri anemone and a few fish. We had thick brown slime algae everywhere, just couldn’t get rid of it!
Very frustrating, time consuming and a lot of money spent trying to fix.

It got a lot worse than that! We just couldn’t get rid of it. We also had some Elos Planet Pro lights with lots of features... none of which worked & still don’t. I just didn’t know why the algae wouldn’t go.
I’ve had reed tanks for years and years so had a fair amount of knowledge.
So about 18months later.... the brown slime algae everywhere has finally gone! All I can think is that the tank has matured and reached equilibrium the the nitrogen cycle... our next issue is trying to get the flow right.
As you can see our tank is not against the wall so we can only have powerheadson the end of it.
We have a big problem with our Gyre moving sand around exposing the bottom of the tank. It seems impossible to fix.
I have no corals now as they kept dying.
I’ll keep to fish only until the flow is sorted.
How is your tank now?
Hope you have a lovely holiday.Shona

Thanks for posting Shona and welcome to R2R! I actually found your thread on Ultimate reef before I received my tank, glad to hear it’s still going and it’s a nice surprise to have you post here!
That’s so interesting that we had similar issues and with a similar timeframe. It seems our Real Reef Rock just needed a lot of time to become stable. Like you I felt extremely frustrated and my years of experience with tanks before seemed useless.
I’ve struggled with powerheads moving the sand around to, I’ve started to slowly remove my sand as I find it too much trouble. I’m hoping coraline covers the bottom well over time.
With your tank being a peninsular setup maybe two gyres setup on the back wall on a lower setting may help the sand stay in place? The two gyres, next to each other and on a lower setting would move more water but at a lower speed.
I currently just have 1 MP40 for Flow and it’s fine for my few frags with my rock work.
I plan to add a Gyre soon but struggling to find them in stock atm!
Keep us updated with your tank and maybe start a journal here on R2R!

My tank is tracking along well at the moment thanks, corals are growing and looking healthy so I’m keen to add some more when I get the chance.

Wrasse-cal · Nov 30, 2018

Did you ever figure out the source of your high Antimony? I just got a ICP test back that showed 48 µg/l!

Mattres · Nov 30, 2018

Wrasse-cal said:
Did you ever figure out the source of your high Antimony? I just got a ICP test back that showed 48 µg/l!

No unfortunately I don’t think I’ll ever know. The only plastic type of materials in my tank are PVC, acrylic, nylon zip ties and HDPE for my saltwater mixing tank so all materials that shouldn’t release Antimony.
The only thing I can think of is the thin protective film that covered the Elos ossomocontroller holder that I left on. It was clear and I never saw it when I installed it.
48µg/l is very high! Are you struggling to keep anything in your tank?
All I can suggest is to eliminate any possible materials that may leach it such as PET plastics and perform lots of water changes.

Wrasse-cal · Nov 30, 2018

Mattres said:
No unfortunately I don’t think I’ll ever know. The only plastic type of materials in my tank are PVC, acrylic, nylon zip ties and HDPE for my saltwater mixing tank so all materials that shouldn’t release Antimony.
The only thing I can think of is the thin protective film that covered the Elos ossomocontroller holder that I left on. It was clear and I never saw it when I installed it.
48µg/l is very high! Are you struggling to keep anything in your tank?
All I can suggest is to eliminate any possible materials that may leach it such as PET plastics and perform lots of water changes.

That's the mystery. I have no PET plastic as far as I am aware.