Michael’s 140g kind of shallow sps build. Reefing in Sweden

[Viking_Reefing]

Well, after my post-Christmas struggles everything seems to have started to bounce back and is looking fairly decent.
With one exemption, my bright pink millie:

It hasn’t improved one bit and is continuing to slowly go down hill. I’m thinking of perhaps breaking of the dead parts and placing it in an area with more flow and less light to see if that does something.

On a brighter side my small strawberry shortcake is starting to encrust nicely

This unnamed acro is starting to take of

And the Pac-Man is growing well

FTS

I’ll be going to Thailand for 16 days in a couple of weeks, here’s hoping that everything makes it through alright!

 

[Viking_Reefing]

Well, I’m back from my Thailand trip,
Everything seems to have been going well until the very last day when my tanksitter forgot to turn of the ato pump when refilling the reservoir.
The pump almost immediately turned on and pumped a crap-ton of kalkwasser precipitate slurry in to the tank.
I don’t know how potent that was but safe to say that it did probably raise my KH/PH fair bit.
Apparently the visibility was about 10cm after it happened.

I hadn’t sleepy for about 36h when we got home late last night and didn’t have any RO handy so couldn’t make any water changes.
I’m currently making a bunch of RO and will be doing a small..ish wc when I get back from work and after that just let it stabilize on it’s own. I don’t want to make any more sudden changes to the water chemistry.

My hot pink milli that I had been struggling with for a while RTNed and I can se some STN on the tips on a couple of enchinatas.

And I was going to go coral shopping tomorrow [emoji58]

 

[sikorskys]

Stand

What material is that?

 

[Viking_Reefing]

What material is that?

It’s MDF. Easy to work with but make sure to wear a mask when cutting or polishing it since the dust isn’t all that good for you.

 

[Viking_Reefing]

Well, I ended up going to the LFS anyway to pick up a tunze algae magnet.
One thing lead to another and I bought myself a copper banded butterfly. They had a really healthy specimen in stock and I loved the one I had like 10 years ago in my old tank.
It was pecking at live black worms at the LFS but started eating mysis today, just one day after bringing it home. So far so good!

 

[Viking_Reefing]

The CBB is doing great. Starting to compete for food and has eliminated the few aptasia that I had in the tank.
It has a few specs of whit spot but I’m not to worried about that since it’s eating well and the purple tang has stopped messing with it.

The strange part is that it doesn’t go for stuff that typically gets them feeding like live black worms or clams on the half shell but instead prefers mysis.

In other news I just purchased a reefer 350 that I will have delivered this weekend. I will transfer everything over from my current tank.
It looks like it’s missing the ato reservoir so I’m going to have to figure out another way to do a refugium, perhaps I’ll put som baffles in the sump or something.

I have a tendency to rush things sometimes when it comes to setting up a new tank but this time I’m aiming for being slow and deliberate, thinking everything through so I don’t end up with headaches down the line.

 

[Viking_Reefing]

This will most likely be the last picture of my current tank.
Can’t wait to get started on the new one!
But first I have to tear down some wallpaper and repaint the room it’s going in, a bargaining chip I used on my wife...in truth I conceded in painting the bedroom as well [emoji28]

 

[Viking_Reefing]

Well, the first pice of livestock has graced the new tank.

It seems to be missing the standard ATO reservoir that comes standard. I was going to use the right part of the cabinet for strictly controllers and electrical components but it would be fairly sweet to keep that glass reservoir there and avoid having the reservoir outside of the tank.

Stuff that needs doing (any input is appreciated):

- cut a hole in the back of the cabinet and install a computer fan to decrease humidity inside the stand.
- cut a hole to run wires through the two compartment.
- our in place some kind of wire management system.
- split the skinner compartment in two with a pice of acrylic to make room for a refugium.
- silicone a pice of acrylic on the sump side so that the water has to pass through the fuge before making it to the return pump.
- Level the stand. The floor is apparently uneven which makes the stand wobbly. Shims perhaps?

I haven’t decided on:
- Removing the black film from the back of the tank. Do you guys think it would look better or worse if the gray wall was showing?
- Redo the plumbing or go with the standard setup.

I have a headache [emoji1]

 

[NY_Caveman]

LOL, great image. Let us hope he stays out when it gets wet!

 

[Viking_Reefing]

LOL, great image. Let us hope he stays out when it gets wet!

Yeah, I certainly hope so! Not sure if my skimmer can handle that sort of bio-load

 

[Viking_Reefing]

The reefer is hopefully getting wet this weekend! Unfortunately I’ve found a couple of issues that I didn’t see when I bought the tank (I’m blaming it on that I was painting when it got delivered to my house and I was high on the fumes):

- The nut on the main down pipe is missing. Can’t seem to find any spares here in Sweden so I’m hoping that it will hold if I’m liberal with the Teflon tape.

- the threading on the emergency down pipe is a bit cracked. I guess it was over tightened at one point. There are still some threads left so I’m hoping that it will hold.

Not overly worried about this since there’s no pressure in either pipe...but time will tell!

On a happier note: the CBB is eating masstick(and still wolfing down mysis)! Sorry about the cloudy water. I normally feed masstick after my weekly WC.

 

[Viking_Reefing]

Got a bunch gear for the new tank delivered yesterday! All in all it weighed about 23kg and when I saw that my immediate thought was “what the heck did I just order”. Looked at the product list and there weren’t any surprise lighting fixtures or anything [emoji1]

Going to be setting up a coral box WiFi dosed to dose ATI Essentials. This will be my first go with a dosing pump so should be interesting. I’ve always either done kalkwasser or a calcium reactor.

I also ordered 1kg of maxspect bio spheres for some extra surface for bacteria to populate.

Since I’m very happy with my current diy led/T5 hybrid I ordered two of these (54w) and hopefully I’ll have time to build a canopy over the weekend. Still not sure on the design but shouldn’t be to much of a problem.

Not 100% on just one reflector for two bulbs but if it turns out to be crap I’ll just tear it out and replace it.

Can’t freaking wait to get this thing wet!

 

[Hemmdog]

I like your style man! Keep it up!

 

[Viking_Reefing]

I like your style man! Keep it up!

Thanks buddy!

 

[Viking_Reefing]

Got some work done last night (the wife just loves the sound of power tools at eleven in the evening [emoji1]) and siliconed in the divider and comb for the fuge. Came out fairy well I think.

I was going to close of the overflow in the skimmer section completely and force all of the water to pass through the fuge but I got worried about noise issues with that much water passing through a small section of overflow.

 

[Viking_Reefing]

Right, spent all evening trying to make this thing not to leak from where the darn pipes passed through the glass.
Tried everything: new o-rings, both light and firm hand tightening of the pipes, Teflon tape on the threads. Finally my temper got the better of me and I just siliconed the heck out of it.
In retrospect it was probably a bad idea if I want to change something out later on but with any luck it will at least stop leaking.

I’ve never had a leak on any tank when using standard plumbing and pvc cement but this thing nearly drove me mad [emoji28]
It didn’t help that I have a knee injury from Muay Thai fighting that hurts like heck if I’m on my knees for to long haha

If it’s still leaking tomorrow I’ll give serious consideration to ripping out the overflow and plumbing it with what I know.

Fingers crossed!

 

[Viking_Reefing]

Well, everything seems to be holding water. I’ll let it sit like this and if everything looks good tomorrow I’ll transfer everything [emoji16]

Picked up two 2x54w T5 fixtures, if I’ll have the time I’ll build a housing for them and my maxspect fixture as well

 

[Viking_Reefing]

We’re good to go!

Good thing that I’m transferring things to the new tank today, last night this happened...

 

[Viking_Reefing]

After 14h of work the move is finally complete!
Apparently I had agreed to a brunch a month ago (not ideal!) and tables were booked so all in all start to finish it took about 16h.

I still need to mount the lights and a bunch of other stuff but this is as far as I’ll go today.
I have a bunch of Marco rock that I was going to make a pillar out of but I’m not sure about that any more. I kind of like the look of two islands.

Oh yeah, I was going to install my uv and replace the lamp but the darn replacement tube was cracked when I opened it :/

 

[Viking_Reefing]

And the transfer is complete! A weekend well spent[emoji28]

Some progression shots:

Surprisingly there were no mayor hiccups along the way, it just took a long freaking time.

The fish seem to have taken the move in stride. The black capped basslet and fire fish have been hiding non-stop but did come out to eat.
Apart from a few acros the coral seem happy as well with decent PE.

A couple of fairly urgent things that needs doing is assembling the jump guard and building a new lighting fixture with 54w T5s since my current one doesn’t reach more than 60% of the tank properly....and get some cable management going, it’s a mess.