Return of the Crites - Jessezm's totally boring planning thread -

[jessezm]

This thread is going to start out a bit slow so I apologize in advance for that... It's been about 10 years since I had a reef tank up and running and have lately had the itch to start again. My last tank was a 200g mixed reef (sps-dominant) that was pretty successful. I took it down for a move/divorce (totally unrelated, I swear...) and just never got it back up and running again.

Well fast-forward to today, I've moved again and have a perfect partially finished basement space directly below the only good location in the house for a display tank. Still, it is not a big house, so I have to stick in the 90g range (I'd prefer 120 but the extra depth might be a bit much).

Here's the deal though - I am going to do this in stages and work on the "fish room" first. Down there, I want to start right away with a 45g frag tank, a sump, and remote refugium. Eventually I will send water to the main floor but that might be several months out (or more).

In the meantime I would love y'alls help with planning and navigating all these new toys and methods that have erupted.

So far, I have opportunistically gathered some equipment to get me started:

--Skimmer: Reef Octopus 3000-int with 3" neck extension
--Sump: Eshopps 300-Adv
--Lights: I have a Kessil 360We Tuna spot, a reefbreeders black box-style 165w bank and another one with no brand markings. all that is for the frag tank, not the main display. that will probably be Radions but not 100% sure.
--Pump: I have a Tunze Silence Pro 2900 gph pump but I am looking to acquire one or two DC contollable pumps
--Water Filtration: I have a 100 gpd 6-stage RO/DI filter on the way. I may add a second RO membrane in line as well.
--powerheads: 2 eflux wave pumps (1050 gph each) are on the way for the frag tank
--Chiller: picked up a 1/2 hp JBJ commercial series for stupid cheap
--Other filtration: in that same deal, got a Korallin 3002 denitrifier. It's a nice piece of equipment, don't know if I should use it or not!
--Calcium Reactor: Aquamaxx S-2 is on the way (hopefully will arrive intact). Also have a 10lb CO2 tank, but no regulator yet
--Live rock: so far I have 35lbs of nice cured LR in a rubbermaid with a heater and powerhead from an old friend from my local club (Atlanta Reef Club), but looking to add to that

And that's about as far as I've come so far with equipment and planning!

First things first will be setting up the frag tank. If I've figured out how to upload a file correctly, you are looking at a picture of it, along with the rest of my collected gear... I am going to put that tank on the stand it came with (THANKS SHAC) and use the table top for the sump and as a general workspace. I have a lot of cleaning up to do down there but I've got a pretty good start!

I'll be updating this thread with lots of questions and pictures as there are things to look at, so please stay tuned! Always open to input and constructive critique!

 

[NY_Caveman]

Sounds like a great plan. Following.

 

[Flippers4pups]

Welcome back to reefing! Slow is good. It took me a little over a year to build my current system before it got wet!

Slow gives you time to plan and save. It's all good!

 

[jessezm]

I'm back for a little update! This is still gonna be boring but bear with me I have a question or two about cycling, frag tanks, and refugia!

Sooooo.... I've made a little progress in the fish room (basement). I ended up buying a 20g peninsula AIO Fusion set up from a local reef club member that I will use as a QT eventually. It was up and running with a clown pair, a GBTA, and a CUC and a bit of live rock, so I just set it back up and have it on auto pilot. I didn't even have any RO/DI filter or saltwater made up at that point, and by some miracle I didn't lose a drop of water in the move...

So that's going on, and in the meantime I have plumbed the Eshopps 300-adv sump and the 45g frag tank together, got my RO/DI set up and filled the tank. It's now up and running thanks to a work buddy who provided the return pump I'm using (Jebao 10500). I have about 70 lbs of live rock in it now on a bare glass bottom. The rock was cycled already from local tanks (I'm watching closely for pests).

So those are the basics at the moment. Set up is not pretty but it's functional and my main goal was to get some water and rocks together and start maturing the system.

It's still gonna be some months before I set up the main DT, but I have plenty of room in the basement for more water volume.

First question: I've got some LEDs that I'm going to hang above the frag tank next week, but should I go ahead and add some macro algae to the refugium section of the sump? Or do I really need to wait until there are animals to provide nutrients? should I be feeding the bacteria in the live rock somehow before adding any animals? What else should be in the fuge? Also, I could potentially plumb in an entire remote fuge (I was thinking like a stock tank/pond set up with mangroves, even). Any thoughts on that?

BTW, I just got my salifert test kits in the mail and there are no detectable nitrates or Po4. pH is 8.15, temp 79.5. Haven't tested calcium or Alk yet but it is 4-day old water at this point, besides the 25g of water that the rock has been in for a few weeks in the dark.

Also I ended up with a really nice skimmer that I got locally - a Reef Octopus 250 Regal SSS. Obviously it's not pulling much out at this point. Should I keep it on anyways?

So many questions, I know. Feel free to just chime in with ideas at this point. My end goal is a mainly SPS DT on my main floor, plumbed into a stable system in the basement with a frag/grow out tank attached. I want to start growing SPS in the frag tank ASAP so I get a jump start on them for the DT. I know the key to success there is a stable environment with the right nutrients/elements, so any suggestions toward that end much appreciated!

 

[jessezm]

Some updates:

Had a lot of late nights this week but the fish/frag room in the basement is coming along. Picked up a package of liverock, fish, coral, and drygoods from a local club member breaking down his tank, and also a t5/LED hybrid from another local switching up his lighting. I didn't want to put anything in the tank yet but I had to house the animals since otherwise the pump and apex could not come offline... So far, however, everything looks happy. Nitrates and Phosphates are elevated but that is presumably from the new (to me) liverock which had been in a 4-yr old system and had some algae growth and presumably some detritus build up. I did my best to rinse it all off in a bucket of saltwater but certainly didn't get everything. Last night I did a 20% water change and switched over my biodenitrator to the frag system which had been cycling for several weeks on the QT.

Most of my equipment purchase is now complete, as I got a neptune Cor20, Apex controller, Kessil fuge light, and the Giesemann Aurora 60" fixture that will end up on my DT eventually. I still need to add a dual media reactor and plumb in the chiller, then build a permanent manifold to feed the calcium reactor and the biodenitrator so I don't have to rely on gravity/aqualifter feed.

The picture is before everything was straightened up but it's the only one I took (just to capture the light fixture). The lights are going to be on the frag tank for now and man are they something.

Next steps are to build a permanent water storage/mixing station, and plumb in a secondary sump/lagoon to hold liverock. Currently it's all sitting in the frag tank and there's no room for anything else!

 

[jessezm]

Small update:

Took charge of a few more corals the other day and have been testing and keeping track of water levels. Over the past week I've organized my electrical panel (well, it's more organized than before at least), brought the calcium reactor online (a third-hand korallin 1502 that needed some repairs), and added a few more corals from locals' tanks. Oh, I've also been slowly bringing the Apex Classic online. I was stuck for a while till I got the EB8 to show up finally.

Parameters this week have been:
pH: 8.15 - 8.45 (I calibrated the probe but it's 3 yrs old and encrusted with tube worms from the previous owner... probably need a new one)
Temp: 78.5 - 80f
Alk: 8.2
Ca: 470
Mg: 1350
No3: undetectable
Po4: .1 (a bit high but working on it - today I'm adding a 2-stage BRS media reactor with GFO and Carbon)

For salt, I'm using HW Reefer after cycling the tank with IO (well, half sorta cycling since all the rock came from established tanks and never really came out of the water).

Current fish are from a local reefer's tank breakdown (had to take the fish in order to get the drygoods!) But I'm looking to re-home a few I hadn't planned on keeping:
Yellow Tang
2 Ocelaris clowns (paired)
Filefish - weird little guy but I think I'll keep him...just in case

Corals include some new really nice montis: superman, sunset, undata, and a thick plating orange one I don't know
A small raspberry colored milli
cyphastrea
acan
zoas

you know, I'll just post some pics rather than list them...

 

[jessezm]

This weekend my plan is to plumb in the dual media reactor, finish programming the Apex, and last but definitely not least, set up a 36 gallon pond liner I got at Home Depot as a remote sump. The plan right now is to convert the 3/4" return line into a secondary drain, then send that to the remote fuge (where most of the liverock will be), and have that drain down to the main sump.

Does that make sense? The reason I want a remote fuge is to have increased water volume and have a place to stash the mountain of liverock that is overcrowding my frag tank and making water flow a challenge. As it is, the tang has very little room to swim, and I've been trying to re-home him locally...

 

[jessezm]

The weekend proved pretty productive! After nearly crashing my tank Friday night when I forgot to turn off my ATO while removing rock from the tank (and subsequently dumping about 1.5 gal of kalkwasser into the tank and spiking the pH up to 9.1), I got everything under control with several back to back water changes and the help of a little extra CO2 and flow through my calcium reactor. Scary, though! oddly, I could not detect any negative reaction in the corals and fish, at least visibly. I was a bit worried that the extra effluent from the calcium reactor could further complicate the situation, but I watched the levels closely until it was all stabilized.

Anyhow, Saturday morning I drew up "plans" to plumb in my remote sump - a 30-something gallon pond liner. The idea was to convert the 3/4" return line to the frag tank into a drain instead, and send that drain over to pool. The pool would then drain via a 1.5" bulkhead and strainer down into the sump's second drain input.

Since I was turning the return line into a drain, I had to also build an external return manifold. I also took this opportunity to swap out the Reef Octopus Diablo pump for a recently acquired Neptune Cor20. Man I love that pump! The scary thing was taking the tank offline for a couple hours to plumb everything in. I couldn't do a complete dry fit of the plumbing before hand because the old pump was in the way, and I ended up making a few stupid mistakes that necessitated 3 trips to the local Ace hardware before being able to turn the pump and skimmer back on. But besides the stress of not knowing if it was all going to work while having no way to return to the original plumbing, all went well, and no leaks!

The new system is up and running and I transferred a bunch of live rock to the pool to make more room in the frag tank. I'd love to hear feedback on ideas for what else to put in the pool. I'm thinking maybe mangroves would be cool? or should I just keep it all dark with live rock only? Is there any reason I should consider adding a sand bed to it? There is no sand in the 45g frag tank, but once I have the DT set up (lord only knows when that will be), I will have a sand bed there.

Here's a few shots of the pool:

 

[jessezm]

Oh also, how much flow should I have in the pool do you think? Right now the only flow is from the 3/4" drain off the frag tank. Should I add a powerhead?

 

[jessezm]

I really need to change the title of my thread so people will actually read it LOL!

 

[jessezm]

Found my old 200g tank build thread! Is it kosher to post a link to another forum here??
http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=866547

 

[jessezm]

Okay so it's been nearly three years since I've updated this thread but I'm trying to win a contest so here's and updated pic or two! I's say progress is being made ;-)

I'll do a more in-depth post on the system soon!

 

[jessezm]

And from today: