My Tank Build Thread

[BigTimeIssues]

Early August I found a 60 gallon cube aquarium. It was unknown brand, had a metal frame stand and minimal equipment. This was my ticket back into the hobby after 8 years off!

I lost alot of my pictures when my found bricked a few months back.. I will post what I have and some history too.

The tank came with jabeo dct 6000 pump, seaside aquatics cs180 skimmer(knock off of bubble magus hero 180), one jabeo gyre(120), pre-made pvs sump that holds about 18 gallons when full, and a Kessil 360 blue Led light.






After getting the tank i got 40lbs dry rock from petco, had about 20 lbs from my last tank, and I bought 20 lbs live rock from my LFS. The live rock was covered in algae so I was gonna have to let it stay in the dark to kill it.

I was in full ordering happy stuff mode from the internet buying other supplies. Got 1 bag of live sand from my LFS and 1 bag of ocean direct live sand from BRS. I had already ordered RO/DI filters for my old filter unit. Got some cheap garbage cans and a rain barrel for water storage. And started to build the skin for the steel aquarium stand.

These are pics of the scape and the tank when first setup. I would turn on the light just for the pics.. it set in the dark, with card board over the entire tank sides and top.. i didn't get pics of the card board.







To Be CoNtInUeD

 

[nuxx]

Looking great so far!

 

[BigTimeIssues]

PaRt TwO

So after getting a start with all my new orders in, I proceded to fill the tank and set the S.G. to 1.024. I done the Dr. Tims Aquatics fishless cycle, but also had some actual live rock from my LFS. I count Sept. 17th as my official first day running this tank, altho i believe the rocks was wet before this day. But on this day the water was turning and the tank was cycling.

I cant really say that it has been a bumpy ride. The cycle done as it should. The ammonia went up, nitrite up, ammonia down, nitrite down, dosed ammonia and ammonia went up, nitrite up, then ammonia down etc etc etc.. once i reached the point where i could dose 2ppm ammonia and 24 hours later I had 0 ammonia, It was time for fish.

Bad picture, I know!! But on October the 10th I added these two storm clowns. After 2 days one of em jumped out. I ordered a net top kit and built it, but I lost those pictures.

Replaced the storm that jumped out with this wyoming white!

The wyoming white sleeping!

Also added some Cheato to the refugium because my nitrates and phosphates was high. Another thing I have been doing but didnt have pictures is I have added different types of copepods about once a month. Also got my first coral on the same day as the wyoming white.

Sympodium!

To end this part i will stop with these last pics of my first tang for this system. I wanted to quarantine the tang because of the likelyhood of ich. The clowns came from a shop that I trusted, they kept the captive bred clowns on their own together and I had been watching them for a month in the shop. But the tang i wanted to get into a QT at my house. It ended up being a horrible idea. I learned that I am not a vet. I have no idea if these guys are sick or not unless they have spots or die! I kept him in QT for 15 days. Never saw a sign of ich or anything else so he went into my display. I understand it isnt the best way, but i learned.

To Be CoNtInUeD

 

[Gumbies R Us]

Tank is looking really good so far!!

 

[BigTimeIssues]

Only 2 pics on this update.. but I want to post about my journey with nitrates and phosphates.

When I started the tank I didn't want my nutrients to get out of control. Early on (about 3 weeks) I was testing phosphorus and nitrates. And from the first test I found they was elevated. The first measurements taken was .3 phosphates and 60 nitrates. My first thought was 'omg this is a problem!' I guess I'm getting older because I don't make changes without just letting things ride for a while. And this is what I did, however in the mean time I spent time researching.

In my research I found some things that seem to defy common forum advice. I watched at least 50 tank showcases on YouTube. Alot of those was done by Jake Adams from reef builders. It seemed that there was more than 1 or 2 successful reef keepers that didn't really care about phosphates. Their are some amazing sps tanks out there that have 1 or more ppm phosphates. And many more that are in the .2 to .8 range.

Although I knew the higher phosphates wasn't gonna be an issue, after I started getting some coral and kept them in the higher phosphates, some would brown.

That is supposed to be a green monti cap!

I started with a plan to lower the phosphates, since I didn't like how my corals was looking and growing. That picture is after my phosphates got over .7. My tester maxed out there.

I started off with some gfo. And added some cheato to my refugium.. The gfo was definitely an expensive sledge hammer for phosphates. Immediately they was lowered to around .3. After this I started aqua forest branded carbon dosing products. The name of the products is Pro Bio S and -NP Pro. The levels, after the gfo was exhausted and while using the carbon dosing, was starting to climb. It would go up 11 or so PPB phosphorus per day. But I let it do its thing. Just let it climb naturally hoping the carbon dosing would resolve the issue. It did not.. after the level reached .5 phosphates again I added a 1/3 recommended amount of gfo and ran it VERY slow.. this got the phosphates coming down and eventually got it down to .2 phosphates after some time.

Along the way I have been doing alot of water changes. This is how I kept the nitrates coming down as they are unaffected by my other methods.

Another change came when my anthias just got so aggressive I gave them to a friend. So my bioload went down by 4 fish in a day. This really done the trick.

My phosphates was holding around .2 to .3 and I was happy there.. the gfo exhausted, the refugium took off, and the carbon dosing was doing its things(maybe?)

Then on jan 1 I was setting up my co2 scrubber to use recirculating air from the skimmer.. and this day was the first day in 6 weeks that my skimmer over flowed. Water rushed thru the co2 scrubber media and into the tank. And in a desperate move to get the oh down(it went to 9) I changed 95 percent of the water in my system. EVERYTHING SURVIVED! I was SOOOO lucky! One of the side effects of changing all this water was the phosphates came down to .08 ppm. Nitrates was below 10. Even still everything looked amazing.. so much more color and growth.

Now today the phosphates are going down by the day. I've lessened the carbon dosing, discontinued gfo, and feed coral food 2 or 3 times a week. The phosphates last I checked was .03.. but here is one good thing about the lower levels...

Look how green that monti cap is! (I know there is mostly blue lights in this pic, but believe me.. its vibrant green again.)

I bet no one read this far.. but if you did.. thank you. Let me know what you think.

This process started in September and this is up to date at Jan 17th. So I didn't intend on making fast changes.. that is what happened on 2 instances.. but slow and steady is my goal.