Our 210 Rimless Build Thread

[GlassMunky]

A couple of freak thunderstorms that felt like mini hurricanes rolled through our area Wednesday night and knocked out power for the whole neighborhood when a tree in our neighbors yard fell and took down the electric line along with his fence. A bunch of other houses had trees fall on their roofs as well so considering that a small blessing that we didn’t get any tree damage.

But, since the whole area ended up with over a million people without power, we haven’t been a top priority area so have been without power now for almost 40 hours now.
The first night we woke up every hour and manually moved the water around in the tanks to try and keep them oxygenated. That was fun.;Yawn
Then first thing in the morning I managed to grab a 1000W inverter for my car battery
As well as this Craftsman Inverted Generator

https://www.lowes.com/pd/CRAFTSMAN-2200-Watt-Inverter-Gasoline-Portable-Generator/1001091590

The generator is a bit smaller powered than I would have liked, but necessity brings priority. But between the Generator and Car Inverter we’ve managed to get all the tanks in the house flowing again As well as powering the fridge.
I’ve seen almost every fish swimming about, but since there’s no lights, they are pretty skiddish, but happy to know they all made it.

In between all the madness, and waiting, I managed to send off our first Triton ICP sample yesterday. The @AquaBiomics kit also came in yesterday so I’ll be taking that sample and sending it in in the next couple days.
I feel it’ll be interesting to get the results and see how the tank is doing now, and then watch the changes over the next year with monthly sampling of both.

 

[GlassMunky]

Got power back last night and couldn’t be happier about it. Lol it was nice to get a night of sleep without having to wake up multiple times to fill a gas tank or do something else tank related.
Everything in all tanks made it without any issues either (other than the corals that were already having issues) so that’s the best we could have asked for.

I realized that I never updated this a few weeks ago after we had a friend of ours take down his 40g tank since he’s moving and bring us all his livestock. We have the awesome people at TSM doing the QT of the fish for us, and we have all his corals and his prized GIANT Derasa clam in our 75G Coral QT tank. He’s had the clam for over 7 years, and got it from another local reefer who had it for a few years as well, so it’s pretty old, we’re guessing around 10-12 years? It’s HUGE though, and crazy to think he kept it along with all the other corals in a small 40G tank with no dosing at all, only water changes.

Anyway here’s pics of the Coral QT with everything he brought us and the monster clam.

 

[Deezill]

Got power back last night and couldn’t be happier about it. Lol it was nice to get a night of sleep without having to wake up multiple times to fill a gas tank or do something else tank related.
Everything in all tanks made it without any issues either (other than the corals that were already having issues) so that’s the best we could have asked for.

I realized that I never updated this a few weeks ago after we had a friend of ours take down his 40g tank since he’s moving and bring us all his livestock. We have the awesome people at TSM doing the QT of the fish for us, and we have all his corals and his prized GIANT Derasa clam in our 75G Coral QT tank. He’s had the clam for over 7 years, and got it from another local reefer who had it for a few years as well, so it’s pretty old, we’re guessing around 10-12 years? It’s HUGE though, and crazy to think he kept it along with all the other corals in a small 40G tank with no dosing at all, only water changes.

Anyway here’s pics of the Coral QT with everything he brought us and the monster clam.

Please tell me where did the clam come from that thing is huge.

 

[GlassMunky]

We also received our order from GARF and Indo Pacific Sea Farms yesterday. We got a 5lb bag of the GARF GRUNGE and a 5lb bag of the GRUNGE PRO from them and then from IPSF we got wonder mud and live sand, spaghetti works, mini starfish, amphipods, bunch of snails and hermits and some super cool yellow graciliara Macroalgae.
To keep with our QT of everything, we put all that stuff into our 32g biocube, which is our oldest established tank already (no fish just some random corals)and will leave it there for 76 days for QT at which point we will takea bunch of the sand/mud back out of there and put it into the 210 sand bed, and some into the fuge, to help populate that tank with more biodiversity of bacteria and micro fauna.

 

[GlassMunky]

Please tell me where did the clam come from that thing is huge.

I don’t know if it was an aquaculture or mariculture originally but it’s been in aquariums of people I know (only 2 previous owners) for at least 9-10 years

 

[GlassMunky]

Another speed bump...... ;Stop
Went to install the new Tunze pump that i got (linked above) and even though i got the magnet extension that advertises being able to handle 3/4" glass, the pump knocks off immediately when it ramps up in speed, so its gotta get returned, and now we're back to the drawing board on what pump to get for the back.....

might just saw screw it and get another MP40 for the ease of adding into the existing system and i know they work on my glass.....
Just wish i could direct the flow a bit rather than straight ahead to help with behind the rockwork (why i tried the tunze)

 

[Retro Reefer]

That clam is sweet! I have a five year old Derasa in my 40 and wondering how long before it out grows the tank..

I went through your whole build thread and you have done a fantastic job on everything! I will give you my thoughts on your current coral problems..

IMO unless your tank was started with REAL ocean collected rock your most likely never going to have success with sps at 6 months in, you need to wait upwards of a year or more, or until coralline is really growing well before proceeding.

As far as your LPS goes, if the PAR values you posted a few pages back are correct IMO they are getting to much light. Shoot for 100-150 Par on the sand, your LPS will thank you

If it where my tank I would be putting as much real ocean aquacultured live rock into it as possible asap..

Premium Aquacultured Live Rock - Overnight to your Door

Aquacultured live rock is one of our specialties. You will get one of the best live rock available in the industry. Forget about painted rock with no life.

www.kpaquatics.com

 

[GlassMunky]

That clam is sweet! I have a five year old Derasa in my 40 and wondering how long before it out grows the tank..

I went through your whole build thread and you have done a fantastic job on everything! I will give you my thoughts on your current coral problems..

IMO unless your tank was started with REAL ocean collected rock your most likely never going to have success with sps at 6 months in, you need to wait upwards of a year or more, or until coralline is really growing well before proceeding.

As far as your LPS goes, if the PAR values you posted a few pages back are correct IMO they are getting to much light. Shoot for 100-150 Par on the sand, your LPS will thank you

If it where my tank I would be putting as much real ocean aquacultured live rock into it as possible asap..

Premium Aquacultured Live Rock - Overnight to your Door

Aquacultured live rock is one of our specialties. You will get one of the best live rock available in the industry. Forget about painted rock with no life.

www.kpaquatics.com

Yea we’ve come to the same conclusion that starting a tank sterile isn’t the best thing to do. I’m still not sure EXACTLY where it went wrong as my last SPS tank was also started with dry rock, and it thrived.


but yea at this point we’re just waiting till the IPSF and GARF clear their QT so we can add that live stuff to the big tank without fear of introducing fish diseases since nothing goes into the tank without QT

 

[Retro Reefer]

Yea we’ve come to the same conclusion that starting a tank sterile isn’t the best thing to do. I’m still not sure EXACTLY where it went wrong as my last SPS tank was also started with dry rock, and it thrived.


but yea at this point we’re just waiting till the IPSF and GARF clear their QT so we can add that live stuff to the big tank without fear of introducing fish diseases since nothing goes into the tank without QT

I have also seen a few successful very young sps tanks but it's one in a million, all the stars have to be alined and no black cats have crossed your path.. lol.

I will never set up another tank without real live rock, all my tanks from the 80's & 90's had real live rock, a couple more recent tanks set up between 2013-2015 I used man made rock and it just wasn't the same, tanks did/doing ok but not at all thriving.. My latest tank (see my build thread) I'm back to real live rock and the tank is thriving along with insane growth that I never had with dry or man made rock.

 

[GlassMunky]

That clam is sweet! I have a five year old Derasa in my 40 and wondering how long before it out grows the tank..

I went through your whole build thread and you have done a fantastic job on everything! I will give you my thoughts on your current coral problems..

IMO unless your tank was started with REAL ocean collected rock your most likely never going to have success with sps at 6 months in, you need to wait upwards of a year or more, or until coralline is really growing well before proceeding.

As far as your LPS goes, if the PAR values you posted a few pages back are correct IMO they are getting to much light. Shoot for 100-150 Par on the sand, your LPS will thank you

If it where my tank I would be putting as much real ocean aquacultured live rock into it as possible asap..

Premium Aquacultured Live Rock - Overnight to your Door

Aquacultured live rock is one of our specialties. You will get one of the best live rock available in the industry. Forget about painted rock with no life.

www.kpaquatics.com

M

I have also seen a few successful very young sps tanks but it's one in a million, all the stars have to be alined and no black cats have crossed your path.. lol.

I will never set up another tank without real live rock, all my tanks from the 80's & 90's had real live rock, a couple more recent tanks set up between 2013-2015 I used man made rock and it just wasn't the same, tanks did/doing ok but not at all thriving.. My latest tank (see my build thread) I'm back to real live rock and the tank is thriving along with insane growth that I never had with dry or man made rock.

understandable, but the risks associated with just adding stuff from the ocean are to high.
cant be tearing down a 200G because of aiptasia or majanos (I’ve had to tear down a few tanks due to aiptasia explosions) or trying to catch fish out of it because they now have brook or something.
there’s already well over $1000 worth of fish alone.....

 

[Retro Reefer]

M

understandable, but the risks associated with just adding stuff from the ocean are to high.
cant be tearing down a 200G because of aiptasia or majanos (I’ve had to tear down a few tanks due to aiptasia explosions) or trying to catch fish out of it because they now have brook or something.
there’s already well over $1000 worth of fish alone.....

Yeah It's a risk Vs reward with adding live rock to an existing system, maybe order 20-30 lbs and QT it before putting in display? very little chance of getting Aiptasia or majo's from KP rock (they claim "0"), it's grown out on the Atlantic side not the gulf, worst I got was a bunch of gorilla crabs and one pistol shrimp that I have never seen. Of course if the tank is set up and cycled with real live rock you can control a lot of things from the beginning before you start stocking.

 

[GlassMunky]

Yeah It's a risk Vs reward with adding live rock to an existing system, maybe order 20-30 lbs and QT it before putting in display? very little chance of getting Aiptasia or majo's from KP rock (they claim "0"), it's grown out on the Atlantic side not the gulf, worst I got was a bunch of gorilla crabs and one pistol shrimp that I have never seen. Of course if the tank is set up and cycled with real live rock you can control a lot of things from the beginning before you start stocking.

Yea that’s why we got all the stuff from GARF and IPSF. Once added to the main tank in 76 days it should add quite a bit of good stuff

 

[GlassMunky]

Got back the results of the first Triton test.
nothing seems crazy out of line even if a couple are slightly off.

 

[Retro Reefer]

ICP looks almost perfect to me. I don't necessarily agree with their PO4 set point.

 

[GlassMunky]

ICP looks almost perfect to me. I don't necessarily agree with their PO4 set point.

It is good to know though that my Phosphate test kit is at least somewhere close...
I tested with Red Sea Pro and got 0.1 and Triton said 0.113 so pretty spot on

 

[GlassMunky]

After a bit of a wait (Thanks Covid) i finally got back the results from our first Aquabiomics test.
Heres the test results and then followed up with the letter explaining the results in a bit more detail along with my responses to some of the questions/statements.

I'll start with diversity. Your tank had a high score, in the top half of the distribution. You're familiar with the debates on this subject, I'm sure -- how much diversity is needed? How much is enough? I won't claim to have an answer to those! Speaking for myself, I consider diversity beneficial, and would be happy with a score like this in my tanks. I'd feel confident ruling out low diversity as an explanation for any problems in the tank.

In contrast, your balance score was very low. In other words, focusing on the major families of Bacteria and Archaea that are present in a typical aquarium, we find that these are present at very different levels in your tank than in the "typical" (average) tank.

Overall, your tank has the diversity of an established reef tank, but the abundance of the different families are very different than expected. You can see this clearly in the community barplot (part 2 in the report).

You don't have a simple bloom of one type, like some tanks with low balance scores. Instead, you have several kinds of differences. 1) Some of the major families are present at lower levels than typical in your tank (Pelagibacteraceae, Flavobacteriaceae, and Alteromonadaceae). 2) Some of the major families are present at higher levels than typical (Oceanospirillaceae and Vibrionaceae). 3) A couple families that arent a major part of the typical microbiome are present at relatively high levels in your tank (Pseudoalteromonadaceae and Colwelliaceae).

I notice that you are using a UV sterilizer. This is a recurring pattern - systems with UV sterilizers almost always have low or no Pelagibacteraceae. This makes sense, because these are free-living Bacteria while most of the other groups detected in these samples are also found on surfaces.

Weve been running the UV since the start of the tank to try and help with any Algal blooms, which it seem like it has helped. Would it be recommended to maybe turn the UV off for a few hours a day or week to help with the bacterial load in the water or does it not matter so much?

So your tank's microbiome was diverse, but atypical. What does this mean? Does it matter? The different groups metabolize different nutrients, so we can infer that your tank will have a different capacity for processing nutrients (in the broad sense) than a tank with a more typical community.

So I would only want to adjust the community balance if my tank was not processing nutrients in the way I wanted (e.g. if I had nuisance algae growth, cyano, etc). I will say that adding live mud was effective for reducing the dominance of this group, and promoting increases in the relative abundance of the others, in my tanks.

This is good to hear as we currently have some live mud and rock from the ocean almost done with QT and will be added to the system soon.

Nitrifying microbes -- your tank had high levels of both the ammonia-oxidizing microbes (AOM), and also the nitrite-oxidizing bacteria (NOB). Don't take this for granted; in many tanks the NOB are present at such low levels they are not detectable, so I interpret your results as an aquarium with relatively large nitrifying communities compared to many tanks. Your tank also has an unusually diverse NOB community, including both Nitrospinaceae and Nitrospiraceae.

Could this possibly be due to the fact that we started the tank 100% dry with only added bacteria from bottled sources including Fritz TurboStart900, Brightwell MicroBacter7, and PNS ProBio (https://www.algaebarn.com/shop/aquarium-supplies/foods/pns-product-combo/) as well as heavily feed the fish?

Your sample shows high levels of cyanobacteria, in a group that is not common detected. Its entirely a single type, in the genus Spirulina, which is commonly used in algal foods. Do you feed any Spirulina containing foods regularly?

Yes, some of the frozen foods we use contain Spirulina (one of our Anthias (fathead) LOVES Spirulina Brine and we have to feed it at least once a day for him as he will sometimes not eat if its not there)
We feed the tank between 4-8 cubes of frozen food per day (2 cubes 2-4x a day)

Your tank shows no evidence of any known pathogens of coral or fish. In addition to the known pathogens (what is described in the report), I also checked your sample for the bacteria associated with the Caribbean disease SCTLD, and found no evidence of these either.

I hope this was useful and will be happy to discuss further,

-Eli

 

[Jeto2004]

Great build threat! I’m on the fence to get the microbiome for my tank tested. However, I don’t know if we have the right tools yet to adjust if needed.

Nice work - hope you fill figure it out.

 

[GlassMunky]

Great build threat! I’m on the fence to get the microbiome for my tank tested. However, I don’t know if we have the right tools yet to adjust if needed.

Nice work - hope you fill figure it out.

Thanks.
In regards to the microbiome testing, it’s more a curiosity, and to see if we can maybe notice some trends over time.
example: right now the 200 DT is having issues with moth a lot of the corals starting to die, even with proper water parameters verified via Triton ICP, so they had to get moved to the QT tank or our Biocube which both have thriving corals and clams.
so it will interesting to see what differences in bacteria the tanks have, and weather that plays a role in coral health.
We will moving rocks/sand from both the QT and Biocube to the 200 to seed it and then check the biome again after the transfer to what populations transfer, and in what numbers, and then weather or not that positively effects the tank through our observations of corals health.

 

[Jeto2004]

Thanks.
In regards to the microbiome testing, it’s more a curiosity, and to see if we can maybe notice some trends over time.
example: right now the 200 DT is having issues with moth a lot of the corals starting to die, even with proper water parameters verified via Triton ICP, so they had to get moved to the QT tank or our Biocube which both have thriving corals and clams.
so it will interesting to see what differences in bacteria the tanks have, and weather that plays a role in coral health.
We will moving rocks/sand from both the QT and Biocube to the 200 to seed it and then check the biome again after the transfer to what populations transfer, and in what numbers, and then weather or not that positively effects the tank through our observations of corals health.

Makes sense - nice little experiment with before and after. I’m in the same boat, started a tank from dry rock and is wet for almost a year. Coral’s hang on for a few month and slowly fade even so I have coralline (albeit slowly) growing in the tank. Still trying to figure it out, maybe I’m just going to fast and you really have to hit the mystical one year mark to achieve maturity to support complex ecosystem balance to make it a thriving tank.

 

[ScubaEthan]

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