Originally planned a lagoon 25, now a 20 long aio frag tank

[btmedic04]

I recently received 15 sps frags from a local hobbyist and very quickly ran out of room in my 40B. My sand bed is completely covered in frags and quite frankly, I'm tired of righting frags that are knocked over by my hermits and conch every day, so that was the perfect excuse to start a frag tank. I currently have a 40B, 20 long and nuvo 10 and after much debate on draining, drilling and plumbing my 20 long or getting an AIO, I settled on the Innovative Marine Lagoon 25. I think that will be plenty of room for my needs as of now, plus its just an awesome tank.

Plan: Set up the lagoon 25 as a bare bottom and cycle it. Once complete, I will tear down my 20 long and move over my supporting equipment to the lagoon 25. Current livestock in my 20 long are a few snails and hermits, a six line wrasse, 2x picasso clownfish, green clown goby. The snails and six line will go in the lagoon 25, the green clown goby will go into my nuvo 10, hermits will go to the 40. I am unsure what I want to do with my picasso clowns. Do I put them in the lagoon 25 at risk of running into nutrient problems, or do I rehome them? I cant put them in the 40B since I already have another pair in there.

New Equipment:
Lagoon 25 with APS stand
Innovative Marine Reef Rack 102
12x marinepure 2x2 cubes in rear chambers
2x Intank floss holders

20 Long equipment being moved:
Tunze 9001DC (will modify for rear center chamber)
2x Jebao SOW-4
2x AI Prime HD with gooseneck mounts (Gen 2 running BRS AB+)
xpaqua duetto sumpless (with sumpless portion removed)
Cobalt Neotherm 75w
Coralbox WF-01 dosing Tropic Marin All for Reef

Livestock:
Six line Wrasse
Trochus, Astrea, Cerith, Dwarf Cerith, Nerite snails
2x Picasso clowns? (help me decide, I'm leaning towards no)

I'm hoping the 12 marinepure cubes will be enough biofilter to keep the display clear of any rock. In a perfect world, the only things that would be in the display are the frags, rack and livestock so I can run high flow and keep detritus suspended for removal by the filtration but I feel that I may have to put a small rock from the 20 long in there for the six line. Thoughts on that?

Goal:
To grow frags and maintain low nutrients. Who knows, I might even be able to make enough money on the side to buy salt or to take the lady out to dinner from time to time to keep the peace

 

[btmedic04]

So I originally planned this as an innovative marine lagoon 25, but I hmmm'd and hawed over purchasing the lagoon 25 for so long that they went on back order at innovative marines website. With that said, I changed gears and went with a fijicube AIO insert for the 20 long.

I had originally planned to use the magnets and brackets, but found the nylon screws to be too short to use the brackets. Necessity is the mother of all invention, so I ended up super gluing the bottom 4 corners and back 2 upper corners to the tank it has held everything in place just fine. My return pump is a sicce 0.5 and it is working well.

I left a couple pieces of rock from when this tank was set up as a bb reef for my six line and moved all marinepure cubes into the aio insert along with the heater and ato. The tunze 9001DC is still in the display as it was just barely too large to fit in the rear compartment and I could tolerate the look of it in the display more than the look of marinepure cubes. I left the green star polyps, pink star polyps, a small zoa colony and a favia colony in this system for now. Im going to give the tank some time to settle down before moving frags from my display tank to grow out here, but so far im happy with how everything turned out

 

[btmedic04]

Pic for posterity

 

[Neuratox]

Its been about 2 months. How did everything cycle? I'm getting ready to do an AIO frag tank as well. How has your overall experience been?

 

[btmedic04]

Its been about 2 months. How did everything cycle? I'm getting ready to do an AIO frag tank as well. How has your overall experience been?

The cycle went pretty quickly since I reused my marinepure and some rock, but shortly after I had an awful bacteria bloom. I ended up adding a 1 inch sand bed to solve that since bare bottom tanks are notorious for bacterial blooms in the first year. With the sand bed being so shallow, its very easy to clean.

The next issue I faced were dinos. I did a 3 day black out and dosed phosphates and bacteria. Once I uncovered the tank, I cut the intensity of my lighting in half. I haven't gotten back to full intensity but I'm almost there and the dinos are gone.

With that said, algae is starting to crop up so I boosted the clean up crew. I added trochus, cerith, dwarf cerith, astrea and nassarius snails. Ive even seen some bristle worms in there. They're doing a pretty good job at knocking it back and I reckon things will be cleaned up soon.

After this, I was able to start moving over some zoas and threw in a piece of pink pocillopora and some anacropora. They're looking real happy with good polyp extension.

Lastly, my six line thought the entire tank was his. He kept chasing the clown fish so he was put in time out before being moved to my 40b. The clown fish I have in there regularly try to jump out of the water to bite me, so I don't think he'll be picking on anyone any time soon!

Overall I'm happy with it and will start moving my frags from my 40b to it in the next few weeks. I'll have to adjust my tropic marin all for reef dosing in both tanks, but that won't be a big deal. Other than that, I say go for it! Its a real nice peace of mind to know that you have back ups of your corals if your main system ever crashes.

I just finished a water change so everything's a bit angry, but here are a few pics

 

[Neuratox]

Its looking good! Thanks for the input. I too was thinking bare bottom and 6 line wrasse. Hearing your experiences will make me spend some more time thinking those choices over.
+1 to backup coral! I'm going to feel so much better having two separate systems in case something awful happens.

 

[btmedic04]

Its looking good! Thanks for the input. I too was thinking bare bottom and 6 line wrasse. Hearing your experiences will make me spend some more time thinking those choices over.
+1 to backup coral! I'm going to feel so much better having two separate systems in case something awful happens.

Thanks! If you want a peaceful wrasse for bug control in this size tank, take a look at a pink streak or one of the pygmy wrasses. They're super peaceful but very shy. I have a pink streak in my nuvo 10 and she is awesome. Doesn't bother the yasha goby, pistol shrimp or peppermint shrimp at all

 

[BaysEndReef]

Looks great! Is the Fiji Cube AIO kit still working out with the glue fix? Any issues with that? I may go this route with a 20gLong I have sitting around.

Will be following!
-Anthony

 

[btmedic04]

Looks great! Is the Fiji Cube AIO kit still working out with the glue fix? Any issues with that? I may go this route with a 20gLong I have sitting around.

Will be following!
-Anthony

Thanks! The insert is working out perfectly with the superglue. The only problem i foresee is it will be a bit tricky if I ever need to remove it from this tank. I definitely recommend it and highly recommend fijicubes media basket