Mr. Purple Yellow Pants' WB 85.3 Lagoon

bubbgee · Sep 8, 2024

Bought my second(ish) tank off a member here at Reef2Reef. It was a great deal for me as it saves me a bunch of cash buying stuff brand new and having a sump and most of everything set up for me.

I like waterbox for the most part. Honestly, I was so tempted to get the Nyos G2 300 for the better shape and fit in the area but the extras from the teardown was too tempting. My tear down tank was the WB 20 cube which was great but not so good with the kind of livestock I wanted to keep (yes, it feels like pokemon at this point for me).

Here's the spec:
- Waterbox 85.3 Frag tank
- NYOS 120 Skimmer (connected to BRS media having CO2 scrubber)
- NYOS Torq 2.0 G2 Reactor (using GFO -- scared of getting bryopsis)
- Ecotech Vectra S2 Return Pump
- Tunze 5017 ATO System
- Eheim Heater
- Neptune Apex, Trident, Trident NP
- RedSea ReefMat 500 (did I mention I am scared of nuisance algae?)
- Hygger Gyre (to be upgraded later, it's leftover from the teardown)
- 2 AI Nero 3s (working fine so far, I don't even need to take it to more than 35%)
- Instead of filter socks, I am using a filter cup with Nyos zeovit to control nitrates (working amazingly so far)
- Added 16 bio blocks from the old tank
- Hygger Autofeeder with camera.. (doesnt quite work just yet)
The best part of the tank for this build is the light. I decided to go with Orphek Natura iCon this time around. I prefer mostly softies and plan to just a handful of SPS at the top so I think one light would be sufficient. Plus with my par meter, I tested with 400-500 at the top 4 inches of the tank and 90s at the corners which is fine for chalices, acans, zoas and mushrooms I have.

I have never had a tank this large, so my biggest challenge was getting 90 gallons of water stored and ready. It took about a week to make, used Brightwell NeoMarine salt (would have gone with a better brand but I wanted this build in a week and those take 2 weeks to ship). I didnt want a long wait to cycle rocks and the tank, so I went with the Life Rock shapes from CaribSea and OceanDirect sand which are supposedly live. Also got a few rocks off of NotAFeesh for arches-- Hunter gave me a real nice and blindly perfect fit for the tank to connect the rocks with. I still wanted to play it safe, while making that much water and cycled the rocks in a bucket and added Microbacter7 and an airstone.

Once I got it in place and the rocks setup, it got wet quick..

My 20 gal cube was suffering from dinos and bryopsis which triggered me to upgrade. I lost a few torches already with the state so I decided to move the livestock real quick once the tank cleared up.

The tank was very wide so I was able to add different sections for mushroom, zoas, torches, hammers, chalices and acans. The effect is that I have a different view of each side and I have a completely different experience viewing that part of the tank!

Now for the light, I like it a lot. It took away a lot of the guesswork on the spectrum. Helios schedule works for me and I just adjusted some levels to make it close to AB+ with a 3 hour full spectrum with the rest being blue the rest of the day. I might want to add a couple of Orphek OR3 (blue plus and UV) for the front of the tank eventually but I am happy where the par settings are at. I highly recommend the Natura if you're in the market for lights.

Anyway, Mr. Purple Yellow Pants is pretty stoked about his new tank. You can follow his adventures at: https://www.instagram.com/mrpurple_yellowpants/

Gumbies R Us · Sep 9, 2024

Great looking tank! You have a wide variety of coral in there!

bubbgee · Sep 9, 2024

Thanks! I like the variety I can stock in the tank. The downside is that it is still tiny for the fishes I would have liked to stock in the tank. I just have to stick with blennies and wrasses. Maybe a few anthias too.

bubbgee · Sep 15, 2024

I don't think it's a clown goby. It's more of a judgy kind of goby. Always gives me side eyes when I am working on the tank...

bubbgee · Sep 15, 2024

Also got new corals this week.. the highlights are the ones below.

bubbgee · Sep 18, 2024

Finished my anemone alley at the back of the tank. Added 4 chicago and 3 colorado sunbursts.

The giant one was from a friend. Not sure what clownfish would pair nicely with the color (snow storm or ice storm, panda?)

Sdoutreefer · Nov 27, 2024

Gosh, I love the dimensions of that tank. Your aquascape is super cool too.

Good looking system!!

Sdoutreefer · Nov 27, 2024

bubbgee said:
I don't think it's a clown goby. It's more of a judgy kind of goby. Always gives me side eyes when I am working on the tank...

Do you like the clown goby?? Are they jumpers?

bubbgee · Nov 27, 2024

Sdoutreefer said:
Do you like the clown goby?? Are they jumpers?

Not jumpers but if you are acro heavy (or SPS heavy) they will harass your corals (nip and nest on them) to the point of killing some.

bubbgee · Nov 27, 2024

Sdoutreefer said:
Gosh, I love the dimensions of that tank. Your aquascape is super cool too.

Good looking system!!

Thanks! I can't have a peninsula but having an aquascape I can mount items in 3d (well partially since you can't see much of the back) allows me to have more items. And it is a frag tank, so I am adding a ton of frags too.

bubbgee · Dec 8, 2024

Been struggling with pH. All of my tanks have had this issue since moving here back in 2008. I never really looked into it until now.

But thanks to Rishma and his post:

Massive Air!! My Experience with Outdoor Aeration, pH boost, & Stability

Over the years, I’ve tried various methods to maintain a stable, elevated pH in my reef tank, with mixed results. Recently I’ve been able to keep my pH above 8.1 at night by aerating with outdoor air (not through the skimmer), which was a big win. This week, I achieved another major improvement...

www.reef2reef.com

With the post, I was able to setup a way to increase my pH. Basically I got the following parts:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09RZMFL35?ref=ppx_yo2ov_dt_b_fed_asin_title&th=1&psc=1

BRS CO2 Scrubber and media
Large airstone I have lying around

I replaced the BRS CO2 scrubber input and output with 1/4 OD quick connects and then used the rigid lines to connect from the airpump to the scrubber to the airstone. Initially I was skeptical of any improvement but I am happily surprised that my lowest pH is now 7.8 instead of the 7.5 I was struggling when I started the tank. It peaked today at 8.15 and with the noticeable consumption of Alk and Cal, I am able to push more Alk and Cal.

The downside of this design is that there is no way to recirculate the air back as you can with a protein skimmer. This means that the media could be depleted faster. Especially that I am pushing a lot of air through the scrubber.

I did order the Avast Kalk Stirrer as an alternative in the long run (since CO2 scrubbing media will be expensive. and continue to set this up as an emergency pH fix via programming. This will also help with the Alk consumption as I can reduce the Alk part of the 3 part I am using.

I am focused on the stability as I wanted to make sure I don't lose expensive frags with the pH instability (lost two homewrecker frags, an RRC Angry birds frag and a maricultured colony). I have an upcoming order from Thirsty's Reef to replace what I lost.

One of my Nero3 also broke and I already purchased the Jecod DMP-20 (instead of the 40) after seeing a demo from FishOfHex who sold me into this upgrade. It worked, running it at 60% random improved circulation and flow as my torches and anemones have enjoyed it.

bubbgee · Dec 16, 2024

The airstone experiment proves to be cost prohibitive as it takes about a week (or less) to completely exhaust the media. My plan is to just use this solution to either reduce pH using room air if I accidentally overdose kalk. CO2 scrubbers only give .05 boost which isn't dramatic.

Installed the Avast Kalk Stirrer K1 over the weekend and placed it in the ATO (partially submerged). I also added a Kamoer X1 pro T for dosing ATO water into it. Initial setup is 1.5 cups of kalk (using Seachem). I accidentally dosed too much kalk to push pH to 8.5 and alk at 9.2 (which helps that I started at 7.5 dkH). Inhabitants do not appear stressed and no precipitation so I think I am good. Just need to figure out how much I should continually dose to maintain. The Kamoer does not appear to log dosing like I have with Neptune DoS.

The plan right now is to use Kalk to handle pH and keep it above 8.1 (with alk and cal to provide a baseline). The three part will be handling Alk and Cal and Mag when I establish a new range.

I am seeing amazing growth for montiporas and some growth on my acros. Colors are still a bit different than textbook photos online for some of the collector species but that may just need time to acclimate and grow into. Having Orphek is a great light for growing, but the verdict is still out for coloration. It's a great light if you want the metal halide look. Unfortunately, most growers have the Radions which is probably better for coloration. Then again, time will tell.

Notable addition of SPS frags:
JF Homewrecker, Walt Disney, Vivid Confetti, POTO Cofefe, Vivid Insanity (from Thirsty)
Oregon tort, ASD rainbow Mille, RMF Candyland, RMF Psychoberry, CA Tort, PC Rainbow, CC Needle in the haystack, cb maleficent (from wsoldier)
Speciosa sps (from NotAFeesh)
Walt Disney (from BSA Corals)
Willy Wonka, Bleeding Tree, Dragon Rider, Deep Blue Hoeksemai, POTO Optimus Prime and POTO Showstopper (From POTO/ReefNBid)
Ultraviolet and MattV TimeMachine (from alecsreef)
WWC Allstar, ACI Holiday Rave, Fox Flame (from Coral Gators)
Several wild acros (Coral Garage FB page)

bubbgee · Thursday at 2:39 PM

Three month update. Switched from chasing pH to keeping alk stable. No one really provides any information when I look up online outside of "maintain alk". So I had to play around with this for awhile.

Using the Kamoer, I set up a planned dose schedule instead of continuous since I don't see any pH boost with the continuous mode at 1.7ml per min. I know my tank takes up around 2400 ml of evaporation. So I went ahead and created 24 entries of 100 ml dosing at the top of the hour. Surprisingly, the tank became receptive of that change, the pH rises to 8.3 at peak and low at 7.8 pH in the middle of the night. To keep Alk within my range, I setup DoS controlled dosing with Sodium Hydroxide recipe and dose 10ml daily when it sees a drop in Alk to maintain 8.6 Alk. Calcium is still dropping so I will manually dose that to maintain it around 450. Mag is 1400 so I don't worry about it so much to keep my euphyllia happy. Alk consumption is currently around 1.5 dKH.

I added a pair of T5 bulbs to supplement the lighting using ATI Blue+. This is also a huge improvement for coral growth. I setup my Natura to just pump out blue lights and zeroed out the white and orange channels (CH1 and CH2) and I'll just utilize the Blue+ spectrum to compensate. I know the par is around 600 closest to the water and the frags are getting between 250-350 par currently. The bottom of the tank is around 150 to 250 or so par.

I also added a recirculating CO2 scrubber and took my air pump for use with my phyto jars instead. I don't see any particular help from the scrubber but I wanted to make sure I don't add any unnecessary CO2 into the tank at least that will depress my pH.

On a weekly basis starting February, I started dosing AquaForest Life Source when I found a post about this resolving dino issues. It did solve my issues with dinos and GHA and bryopsis as it seemed to accelerate my tank's maturity and I am seeing a lot of coralline growth where there was GHA colonies growing. This is a huge win. Credit to this post: https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/af-life-source.873768/page-6

So to the next part of the journey, SPS coloration and polyp extension. Feeding phyto does help. Doses that did not work for me so far: Acropower, PolypLab Polyp Booster. Current Dosing regimen is KZ AcroGlow, Flatworm Stop, Coral Vitalizer and Coral Booster. Only effect I've seen is my exponential growth with Zoas from Vitalizer and Booster. Coloration of frags are due to the updated spectrum for the most part as frags changed colors after I have moved them around.

Sdoutreefer · Thursday at 11:17 PM

Do you have a picture of what your light fixture setup looks like now since adding T5s? I’m on the fence about adding T5s to my XR30 G4.

bubbgee · Friday at 2:27 PM

Sdoutreefer said:
Do you have a picture of what your light fixture setup looks like now since adding T5s? I’m on the fence about adding T5s to my XR30 G4.

I bought a dimmable T5 retrofit from LET. FishofHex had a great video on it and I decided to go for it except I messed up the dimmable connections and I couldnt pull out a jammed wire on the dimmer side so I just used it as a regular T5 (on for 8 hours).

I can't complain about growth of the SPS. Coloration and PE is my focus currently.