SC Aquariums 150 gallon build

DaveC · Sep 10, 2021

Summer took over and I haven't gotten to the rockwork.

I have received a really nice top from @ArtFully Acrylic They are REALLY nice to work with and well worth the cost.

They were extremely patient working with me to get the proper dimensions & placement of my new @AVAST Marine Plank automatic feeder. The cutout could have been about 1/4 bigger, but that was no fault of @ArtFully Acrylic a sander made quick work of the auto feeder mount for a proper fit.

And this is how it stands today. I know the rockwork is really bad.

ArtFully Acrylic · Sep 10, 2021

Thanks so much for the awesome pub! We appreciate that and the good review! I will be sharing the link on our FB page, as well!
--Kerri and the Clearview Lids Team

DaveC · Sep 10, 2021

ArtFully Acrylic said:
Thanks so much for the awesome pub! We appreciate that and the good review! I will be sharing the link on our FB page, as well!
--Kerri and the Clearview Lids Team

You earned it.

DaveC · Dec 9, 2021

Time for an update.

I haven't had the best luck with corals as life got in the way during the summer. I got the rockwork a little better, did a few 20% water changes and received two packages 1) from World Wide Corals with SPS 2) Three hammers from Queen City Corals

After a few days the hammers recovered from shipping and are looking great!. The SPS came looking really good, but started fading after a few weeks.

After watching Trace Elements and Coral Coloration with Mike Paletta was talking about how to color-up corals, he mentioned the Reef Moonshiners Program run by @PSXerholic Reading about the program I realized that I was most likely low on trace elements. I am already using TM pro reef salt, bacto-pellets, & bacto-balance ( containing the K+ Elements ) I decided to start dosing the A- Minus elements. During this time I ordered the necessary ICP test to see how I would compare with the dosing requirements of RM.

About two weeks went by after the start of the A- Minus elements, the SPS started regaining some color, it wasn't dramatic but I could tell I was heading in the right direction. Last week I sent off the samples for the ICP test and today I received the results.

First ICP test results with no Moonshine applied.
https://lab.atiaquaristik.com/share/b95411590e4401a15581
For reference this is about 180 gallons total volume.
Tropic Marin Pro reef salt
np-bacto-pellets
NP-Bacto-Balance dosed at 1.5 mil \ day
A- Elements at 6 mil \ day
brightwell kalk+2 in a kalk reactor as auto top off

I plugged the numbers into the supplied calculator and ordered the elements that were listed in the First Time user Shopping List. dang if he doesn't make this easy ... and shipping? I got the shipping notice about 30 minutes after my order.

DaveC · Dec 20, 2021

Got all of the Moonshiners elements and started the corrections. I have the tank looking somewhat good, at least I’m happy with it for now. Let’s see how things grow. The right is higher light SPS and the left (lagoon) is lower light. The lagoon walls are blocking some of the flow. I’ll see how this works out over the next month.

DaveC · Dec 20, 2021

Another really interesting observation was that my kalk seemed to be bottoming out my P. Kalk participates P.

I switched from a kalk reactor to TM All for reef. This doesn’t follow Moonshiners method exactly because your not supposed to be be dosing trace elements, but I have it and with the ICP test I can adjust as necessary.

flatlander93 · Nov 5, 2023

Any updates? This tank still up and running?

DaveC · Nov 6, 2023

It's still running but it has been a struggle. I've never been happy with the rockwork, so I'm having @chandlerrocks Aquascaping redo the rockwork and restart. I don't have anything in it atm. I've been focusing on my nano which is doing really well.

Gumbies R Us · Nov 6, 2023

DaveC said:
It's still running but it has been a struggle. I've never been happy with the rockwork, so I'm having @chandlerrocks Aquascaping redo the rockwork and restart. I don't have anything in it atm. I've been focusing on my nano which is doing really well.

Curious to see what the redone scape will look like!