My first saltwater tank - mixed reef AIO in a 40 Breeder

[showmebutterfly]

Cycle continues:
Sal 1.024
pH 8.2
dKH 7.5
Ammonia 0.6
Nitrite 0.2

Turns out there's a round and purple shell that opens and closes when you shine light at it in there, and those worms are doing fine too. It doesn't look very clam-like. I put about 3ml of phyto in there just so the little guys wouldn't starve completely during the cycle. Mistake? Probably. It won't be fatal.

Right now on the tank we have:

1x Jebao RW4 - on full, constant power it's created a nice gyre around the tank with a bit of surface agitation. Won't have to replace this so quickly, which I'm happy about.
2x Kessil A160we lights - hard to keep these switched off. It looks so good in the room with the waves reflecting!
1x Eheim 125W heater - wasn't thrilled with this as the thermostat seems to have no effect on what it does. It comes on whenever it wants to without any relation to the temperature in the tank, far as I can tell. I'll probably pull it and use it for saltwater storage or put it on a controller as a backup
1x Hygger 200W titanium heater on a controller

And I'll be adding a Tunze 9004 skimmer (the surface is filthy already) and an Osmolator ATO.

Meanwhile I'm helping a friend out with his Steely Dan tribute show next week, so have been hard at work learning a bunch of complicated songs. The tank I am sure has benefited from the lack of attention (beyond keeping the level topped up.)

FTS:

You can see the surface crud easily. It's (I think) a combination of dust from the rock when I topped off recently and oily organic gunk from my hands when I was working with the rock.

There's some grassy-looking algae growing on my live rock chunk. We'll see what's up with that - might need to toothbrush it if it gets bad. Don't want to hurt my captive worms though.

And that shadow on the structure on the right is annoying me. I think I might flip that entire thing upside down, then I'd have a nice table for corals and still have my cool overhang.

I like the coral table idea, but that shadowed area might be a good spot for corals that aren't as light loving? But if you're like me, and it's bugging you, it's gotta get changed. lol
I think the scape looks good and I'm glad the cycling period is chugging right along for you.

 

[TheWB]

Too early to say (unstocked, cycling still) but based on what I'm seeing so far I'm almost certainly going to add an internal skimmer.

Following along. I’m interested to see how the no mechanical filtration method goes. I’ve wanted to try it in a 20 long I’ve got laying around but I don’t have a place to put it. Someday though.

 

[shorediver]

I like the coral table idea, but that shadowed area might be a good spot for corals that aren't as light loving? But if you're like me, and it's bugging you, it's gotta get changed. lol
I think the scape looks good and I'm glad the cycling period is chugging right along for you.

Well I tried flipping it right after I wrote that. Yeah no. Did not work. Looked awful, now the carpet is wet and the tank is all cloudy again. Not five minutes after praising myself for leaving the thing alone...

Going to think about stocking now instead.

 

[William Robinson]

Spectacular William! Love it. What is the name of the coral on the right - the big pale blue one?

It's just a big leather coral. Loves those AI prime HD's Got both used for $120 to keep the build cheap as possible.

 

[Tuffyyyyy]

Looks excellent!

 

[showmebutterfly]

Well I tried flipping it right after I wrote that. Yeah no. Did not work. Looked awful, now the carpet is wet and the tank is all cloudy again. Not five minutes after praising myself for leaving the thing alone...

Going to think about stocking now instead.

That shadow bothering you less now? I'm sorry for laughing, but I've been there so many times. I have a love / hate relationship with aquascaping that involves a lot of sighing and quite a bit of swearing. lol

 

[shorediver]

Hahaha yes yes it is bothering me less! The stack shifted (of course) when I moved it. So it doesn't even look as good as it did before! Ah well.

It's just a big leather coral. Loves those AI prime HD's Got both used for $120 to keep the build cheap as possible.

That does look really lovely and if it's not too light hungry will solve my right hand side rock problem nicely. Leather coral is top of my coral stock list now; they seem like a reasonably good choice early in a tank's life I think?

My build is similar ballpark to yours, though I ended up with new lights which pushed the cost up significantly. I was trawling for used lights for a while but couldn't find the right set. Lot of third hand stuff... makes me a bit nervous.

 

[William Robinson]

Hahaha yes yes it is bothering me less! The stack shifted (of course) when I moved it. So it doesn't even look as good as it did before! Ah well.



That does look really lovely and if it's not too light hungry will solve my right hand side rock problem nicely. Leather coral is top of my coral stock list now; they seem like a reasonably good choice early in a tank's life I think?

My build is similar ballpark to yours, though I ended up with new lights which pushed the cost up significantly. I was trawling for used lights for a while but couldn't find the right set. Lot of third hand stuff... makes me a bit nervous.

I'll say the leathers are pretty resilient so it's not a bad choice once the tank is ready. They are also very irritable so it's hard to kill but grumpy. The big one in that picture is also big and happy. Then I've got one in another tank that only opens up a few minutes each day...

 

[shorediver]

Quick update here. Things are stabilizing nicely:

• pH very steady at 8.2.
• dKH around 7-7.5 - maybe a bit low but perhaps because my salinity is only 1.024 (if I add more dissolved salt this should go up).
• Had a big nitrite spike - was stuck on 1+ for best part of a week.
• Nitrate was high too, over 30, but I guess perhaps because the test was over-reading due to all the nitrite.
• I added a 30gal bottle of Bio Spira and overnight nitrites came down to 0.1 and nitrate steady at 5.

I think I was cycled anyway, but I don't think the bottle can have hurt.

I've been toothbrushing off the green hair algae from the live rock piece, per @brandon429's suggestions, because it is growing pretty fast. I'm on a (perhaps badly timed) week long business trip to Switzerland so when I get back I will add a small CUC so I have something to look at besides little tiny sessile worms and a couple of purple shells that open up every now and again. To be honest though I am rather fond of them - they pivot around searching for food, quite cute really. My kids like them. Every 10d or so I dump in 3ml of bottled phyto so they have something to eat. I am sure most of it turns to ammonia.

It's been interesting to see how the evaporation rate differs with weather. It's been a weird winter in the north east; in the last week a polar air mass has come down and humidity and temperature have plummeted and I am putting in as much as 2 gallons of RODI a day. Prior to that, at 50% humidity, it was about a quarter of that. (I monitor humidity closely to avoid damaging my guitars.)

 

[brandon429]

Hey add peroxide to the scraping event, it will grow back far less algae. (external rock cleaning, not dosed to water)

 

[shorediver]

Hey add peroxide to the scraping event, it will grow back far less algae. (external rock cleaning, not dosed to water)

Oh good idea, thanks. Will that cause any harm to those sessile worms and other attached inverts? It's really quite an alive bit of rock, even a sponge on there survived shipping.

 

[brandon429]

Agreed be targeted with it, not for delicates but it can be wielded accurately on target with eye dropper

its best reef cheat I have ever been shown above all, the key to veer away from what the crowd does is don’t apply it to the target, apply it to the clean former anchor spot. Oblit first, rinse with saltwater. Cleaning step is with peroxide on drops on site...now leftover cells are the target, not the full mass as most would treat. Your willingness to access the rocks is rare gold, hit it with different dentistry as you guide

in my opinion we would switch from brush algae off/pestle it into pic/metal angle tip/steak knife dental mode, it’s more precise, helps avoid gum line (coral flesh) when dentists use targets rasping for accreted plaques. The tip of the knife minidigs the algae off anchor / rinse till a target spot is clear. You’re working sooner vs later, so not much work yet.


* be altering your params or cuc or whatever to make less regrowth, never let the system take over until then, that’s new cycling 2020 there are no permitted uglies phase to wreck our investments.

notice now certain places on live rock like coralline spots won’t grow algae


the trick in algae control isn’t detail param testing and reaction, it’s purposefully keeping real estate open so that you foster rejecting organisms like coralline. When it’s all coralline you’ll never treat again, my last treatment for rock algae was approximately 2010. Successful reefing is therefore a mix of realty and dentistry. When a rock is covered in 100% favia mouths cannot grow any form of algae given normal water care. Exclusion theory is sick new algae theory / frees us from testing, makes us responsible for a section of garden though, by hand if required.

 

[shorediver]

Yep! As you say, it's easy now. Once I am pulling my 10lb dry rock chunks out to garden them it'll be a real test of my appetite for the work.

But I am thinking, if I add (and do not allow to starve) a CUC at this stage - before algae infestation, it will be kept under control automatically as they harvest every tiny new outgrowth.

 

[brandon429]

They sure might, they’ll have typical tank scraps to live on till they find something sprouting they like

 

[shorediver]

Alright, it's time for some life! Had some light diatom dusting so though it was time for inverts.

• Two trochus snails (super active)
• A blue-legged hermit (active, fast)
• A halloween hermit (red legs, grumpy, slow)
• Two nassarius snails (ran off and hid in the tank, no idea where they are now)

And most excitingly:

• A green mushroom frag
• A green leather frag (a sinularia?)
• A nice gorgonian (a rusty gorgonian, I think).

Why am I not sure what the corals actually are? The LFS doesn't label anything. I do a bit of gardening and I'm used to nurseries having exact names for everything they stock. Going to buy some softies was a real eye-opener for me: online, or in person, there's seemingly no use of scientific or even agreed names. Anyone know why this is?

Anyway, I could add fish, but I'm home for a long time now so that can wait. I'll wait for at least a 76 day fallow period and see how I get on with this lot.

Pictures to follow soon.

 

[shorediver]

Here are my corals - if anyone knows exactly what they are then please reply!

This is the one I think might be a sinularia? A finger leather of some sort. Shrinks a lot when the lights go out.

This is a mushroom of some sort. Also green.

Wondering what to feed them...

 

[shorediver]

And the gorgonian:

 

[Ja890425]

Following this thread for sure, I’m a local diver and as much as I was involved in fresh water fish keeping, reef keeping was always far out there... until I dove some Caribbean reefs, and, “Needed” a piece at home. I’m slowly changing over all my tanks to salt and have a 30 AIO and 13 AIO at home, learning curve isn’t as bad as I thought, it’s “Fresh Water PLUS”... keep up the good work and try and enjoy the 8’ vis in LI sound while we have it for the next few weeks!

 

[shadesatsetbreak]

This weekend has me up and running and the cycle starting!

First up, aquascaping. I washed and dried the dry rock, fortunately without major damage to the kitchen or my marriage. Then I set about making a scape I like. The final result is below, but I ended up using the four big bits that I got and drilling two of them together. That was fun drilling if a bit messy. I used a section cut from a heavy duty plastic coat hanger as a rod to join the pieces, see it a bit below the center here. This creates a nice floating mushroom shape, which I'll show in a bit:

On the other side, I always enjoy a nice swim-through on a dive so I thought I'd make one for my fish:

So that went in the tank on Saturday. Then came rinsing the sand:

This was a horrible job and it took hours in 40 degree weather. It never really stopped running milky white so I eventually gave up, filled another bucket with RO/DI and transferred the sand by hand. Dumped that water, rinsed out again with RO/DI, then bought it to the tank.

Despite my thinking the rinsing had gone badly, I was able to put the sand in the full tank without any storms or white-out. I used this appropriately themed cup:

And see the little silver thing next to it? A piece of my hose nozzle fell off in the sand. I spotted it while I was putting the sand in the tank. Good job I found it as that'd have leached metals for ages. The sand had lots of little shells in it, was nice.

Now the tank is hardly crystal clear, but not nearly as bad as I was expecting. I put the powerhead on and flow seems decent without the sand blowing up everywhere. I'm going to get, maybe, an MP10 to replace the broken RW4 but for now I don't need to worry. The jebao is doing just fine for cycling.

The live rock piece I got is looking pretty sad and monochrome now. There's some coraline, but I haven't seen any worm buddies for a while and all that nice color from my photo in the last post has gone, replaced with nasty looking fur. So I guess it didn't like the transfer. Well, more stuff will grow.

I ordered and received a pair of Kessil A160WE lights, without the controller. These went on and they make a lovely pattern on my walls and ceiling. Yeah I know I don't need them for cycling but it's nice to be able to see what I'm doing in the tank. And yes, I know that should be nothing for the time being! Even so. Now it looks like a reef tank and then fun is only just beginning.

And there's the scape. Swimthrough on the left, that bit of seed rock in the center looking sad, and my floating mushroom thing on the right. Another shot of that:

There's not much mid-tank horizontal surface on the right hand side. Some deeper stuff that's slightly shadowed by the top boulder, and the rest is pretty vertical. So I may have some coral placement problems on the right hand side later on, but we'll see what happens.

Lastly I made up a batch of salt water to top off the tank. That went great until I poured it in. I'd used a scraper to mix in the bucket and accidentally scratched the plastic. Some little shavings went into the tank - I realized I've managed, like an idiot, to pollute my own mini ocean with microplastics! I got most of them out with a fish net fortunately.

There's already a bit of ammonia (0.4) probably from dead stuff on that live rock, salinity is 1.024, and pH is 8.0.

Now for some patience.

Hey OP,
Phish sucks!
Following

 

[shorediver]

Alright so a busy 2-3 weeks here. Since I posted last, I've added a small CUC from ReefCleaners. Many small nassarius snails, lots of little hermits, some nerites, ceriths, and tiny dwarf ceriths. These guys must've come from the ocean because the tank is crawling with all sorts of cool hitchhikers now.

So far I have seen:

• Loads of copepods on the glass, which became food for...
• Lots of little hydroid jellies, which are being eaten by the ceriths at night
• Two Aiptasia anemones, which were bothering my corals until I zapped them with lemon juice. One grew back and he'll be dying later today
• A small number of small (3mm) white crawling bugs on the rocks that look a little like woodlice. They move really fast and seem to hide in holes in the rocks
• Bizarre spiky "twigs" which I posted about in HH ID, so far inconclusively

I put in a Tunze 9004DC skimmer, which ran incredibly wet for 3 weeks. Now it is better after a clean, and I am running it only at night.

My live rock has growing patches of what I think is coraline algae - I'm very happy about that. It doesn't brush off, so I don't think it's cyanobacteria.

GHA killed off quickly by the CUC without me having to intervene too much. The back wall has some longer bits which I'm slowly removing. As it grew, nitrates went to zero.

Salinity is stable at 1.025 (occasionally 6). pH stable at 8.2. Zero ammonia, nitrite, nitrate. I am occasionally dropping in a flake or a squirt of marine snow just to keep the filter feeders and nassarius snails happy.

Will be waiting until July to add fish, but the tank has really come alive.