BrianB421
Community Member
Hello R2R Community!
I'm almost equally as excited to start this build thread as I am for my tank to be ready for it's first test frag!
A bit about me and a bit about my plans for this tank:
Me: I've been in this hobby off and on for 20 years, with about 15 of those years having a tank or two or three. I have a slew of epic failures and even a couple of successful tanks under my belt. I consider myself an intermediate reefer and an avid consumer of hobby knowledge, even during those years when I didn't had a tank. My last tank was a pretty successful mixed reef Red Sea Reefer 250 that I ran for 3 years in the DC area before I broke it down to move to Europe. I'm an American diplomat living and working in Belgrade, Serbia and honestly a had no intention of setting up a tank here because 1) I didn't think I would have the time, and 2) I didn't think the hobby would be prevalent in Eastern Europe. Needless to say, it didn't take me long to find a few local fish stores and get the itch (not the ich!) to start another tank. Unfortunately I had sold all of my reef gear before I left the states so I'm starting from scratch here.
Goal for the Tank: I want an SPS dominant tank with possibly some LPS or a few zoas in the lower PAR areas. My job keeps me very busy and has a fair amount of travel and doesn't lend itself to ample free time or extreme consistency in schedule. I'm also prone to significantly overestimating my long term desire to conduct water changes. So I knew starting off that I wanted a tank I could automate tasks for and could get on auto pilot from the beginning. I will also only be here for 2-3 years so I wanted a smaller tank I could fill out quicker so I settled around the 40 gallon size. I also know that I will likely want to upgrade to a larger tank in the future (next 5 years). So I wanted to buy equipment that would grow with my tank upgrade addiction and not need to be replaced. So much of my equipment is overkill and running on low power percentages, so please keep my futureproofing in mind.
Tank Specs: I found a great local fish store here in Belgrade, Serbia called ReefRoom (Hi Aleksandra!) and they have a decent variety of more commonly found SPS, LPS, and softie corals you can find in the States. They also design and build custom aquariums and the owner is a very passionate hobbyist so I opted to have them build the tank and I plan to source my coral from them. I have a custom built ~160 liter (42.8 gallon) aquarium that measures 80cm x 45cm x45 cm (31.5in x 17.7in x 17.7in) 8mm thick glass main display with a corner overflow into a custom sump. I opted for black silicone and a black wrapping on the back of the tank. Overall I'm happy with the quality of the build, especially for the price and speed at which it was built. Reef Room went from initial consultation to delivery in about 60 days, even with some hiccups along the way I will discuss later.
Filtration/Nutrient Control: My plan for success is to rely on auto water changes and a well lit refugium as my means of nutrient reduction and export. I will do 1.5% daily water changes using an Apex DOS. I designed my sump specifically with the refugium in mind and I am lighting my spinning ball of cheato with 1 x AI Blade Refugium light. I do have a filter sock area in the sump, though I don't plan on running them at all unless I'm trying to polish the water for a short period of time. I am self aware enough to know I will not keep up with them properly, plus I like the idea of keeping the nutrients in the water for coral and cheato growth as I've had positive results with that in the past. I don't have a protein skimmer nor do I plan to use one. If nutrients rise I will increase my AWC schedule and my refugium lighting schedule.
- AWC: About 30 feet from my display tank, I have this Harry Potter like cupboard under the stairs that I'm using to store 3 x 60 liter (15.85 gallons) plastic pickling barrels which are freaking perfect for my lazy proof AWC schedule. 1 container is full of new salt water, 1 is fresh water for my ATO, and the other is empty for waste saltwater. Unfortunately there really isn't a good option for me running the waste water to a drain and the Embassy housing office frowns on me drilling holes in the floor/walls to get to a drain. So to avoid running 100 feet of tubing across my house, I will stick with the waste container. At 1.5% daily water changes, my containers will last me 24 days. I'm tempted to reduce the water changes to 1.33% daily so it lasts me 28 days, meaning I could dump and refill the containers every 4th Saturday. This would allow for more consistent monthly water change container maintenance for me (remember my propensity for laziness in regards to water changes?). But for now, I'm going to stick with 1.5% and refill and dump the containers every 3 weeks. In my basement approximately 60 feet away (12 feet below), I have 2 x 200 liter plastic pickling containers that I use as my mixing station, one with salt and one with fresh RO/DI. I am using the Sicce utility pump and the python with extended hose to drain the waste container and to refill both the salt and fresh ATO water. I'm honestly expecting about 10 minutes of work every 3-4 weeks to empty and refill these containers to keep up with my maintenance schedule, so no Deadpool "maximum effort" required in hauling buckets upstairs!
Lighting: I currently have 3 x 30 inch AI Blades (2 Grow/1 Glow) waiting for the dark phase to end so they can light the tank. I am an avid consumer of BRSTV's content and was impressed with the Blades performance in their testing and reminded me of the successes I've had in the past with T5's. With the shallow depth of my tank, I should have no issues growing SPS, though I've yet to measure the par output myself, which I plan to do later. I can always buy another blade or a kessil for that shimmer I love if I need the PAR, but I don't think I will.
Flow: I have 2 x MP40's running on each side of the tank at approximately 20% power right now and the flow seems good. Obviously I have room to increase flow should I want to later, but right now my tank is in the later cycling phase and only has 4 fish in it, no corals. I have Ocean Direct sand and the flow doesn't seem to be impacting it too greatly.
Return: I have a Neptune Cor15 and it is running on 34% with the return plumbing being slightly different than I'm used to. This is two 90 degree pvc pipe connectors coming from the sump so the open pipe outlet is pointing down the back wall of the tank towards the bottom of tank which is helping keep detritus suspended but also pushing all my sand towards the front/sides of the tank. I'm not sure I like that or hate it yet, but I can tell you it is evoking emotions... My aquascape does a good job of making that bare spot not very visible so I'm not sure I hate it and may love the efficiency of that downward flow for detritus/deadspot removal. But I may end up correcting that with more plumbing and a proper nozzle for more control, though I'm certainly not lacking for flow in this tank. Open to thoughts from the community here. I found that at 4% power, the Cor15 keeps water in the pipes with barely a trickle coming out, perfect for feed mode.
Controller: I'm running the Neptune Apex to control the tank. I'm a long time user and honestly wouldn't run a tank without one. I have the standard model with pH and temp probes, leak sensor, and optical eye sensor (run to my ATO container)
ATO: I'm using the Tunze Osmolator 3155 from my 60 liter ATO container about 30 feet away from the display tank. After increasing the pressure to max, and solving a self inflicted plumbing issue, it pumps water that distance like a champ.
Calc/Alk/Mag: I plan on dosing Kalkwasser to the tank using a RedSea dosing pump from a separate container. I won't turn this on until I have corals in the tank and a noticeable reduction in alk. I plan to achieve and adjust levels in my tank with BRS 2 Part and maintain with Kalk. I opted for this over 2 part for the pH benefits and to reduce the need for ATO container refills.
Other Dosing: On my other three dosing heads, I plan to dose some sort of cheatogrow if I can get it shipped here. I would also like to dose an amino acid supplement eventually as well, though I will start dosing the brightwell concentrate by hand in the beginning. The other head I haven't decided... possibly a trace element of some sort? What do you guys think?
Aquascape: I started with a Marco type dry rock (sold in Europe) and did my best to create a HNSA (BRS style) aquascape using Aquaforest Stonefix concrete mix. I'm happy with the overall shape of the aquascape. However, I am not happy with the current look of the aquascape because, frankly, I'm not a fan of Stonefix for a few reasons. I will gladly admit that I haven't worked with concrete before for aquascaping and there is likely a great deal of operator error here. But I genuinely did not enjoy using that product. 1) If you mix it to the consistency recommended by AquaForest on the packaging, the concrete is so watery that it was difficult to work with and drips everywhere on the rock. I wanted a less viscous puddy like consistency but I found you can very much mess up the structural integrity of the cement if there isn't enough water, creating a brittle chalky finished product that isn't sound or stable. There seemed to be a sweet spot I found eventually but it was after so much trial and error. 2) Stonefix cures dark grey and frankly looks like concrete against the bone white dry rock. I realize this is temporary and soon enough it will be covered with coral and coralline algae. But right now it looks like I lost a fight with a small bag of concrete, which is true. Eventually I was able to make something structurally sound that will make for mounting corals nicely and make great homes for my fish, though that came at the cost of my 11 year old son suggesting we create a swear jar that is used to fund future Ice Cream/Candy runs.
Cycling/Biome: Seeing BRS's Biome series, I opted to use Ocean Direct live sand, as well as some live rock rubble in my return chamber for a cryptic fuge to jump start the bio diversity in the reef. I also purchased Maxspect Ceramic Bio bricks and had them soaking in a dark area of my LFS tank while I waited for the aquarium to be built and deliverd. I've added them both to the input chamber of my sump for high flow and lower light. I also used Dr. Tim's One and Only (60 gallons) on day one to seed the tank with nitrifying bacteria. I added 2 ppm ammonia to the tank immediately and found that there were 0 measurable ammonia 48 hours later, with nitrates starting to show trace levels. I don't bother testing for nitrites. I've used Dr. Tim's before but this felt faster than I remember. Possibly the combination of all my efforts above with the sand, rubble, and bio media? Confident it could handle a small bio-load, I went to a local fish breeder and picked up a pair of mis barred percula clowns.. I started my AWC schedule at 1.5% as soon as the fish went in. I also grabbed a baseball sized chunk of cheato and put it in my refugium at this time running it 20 hours a day (I hope to keep the nutrients extremely low during the cycling phase, dark phase, and slowly pull back the lighting schedule to get desirable nitrate and phosphate levels after I add corals. I tested the water daily for 4 days and never saw ammonia and my nitrates actually reduced, likely do to the AWC and fuge kicking in. I considered my tank cycled at this point and slowly began increasing bioload.
- Cycling plan: Dark phase for the next 30 days as I let the fish settle in. This will be 40 days of dark phase which is impressively patient of me, I'll admit. But before I pat myself on the back too much, I will be going out of town for 3 weeks soon so I prefer to have the tank dark to avoid photosynthetic issues in the tank while I am gone. When I get back, I will add a bristletooth tang (baby) to the tank and turn the lights on low, acclimation mode up to LPS PAR levels over the course of 2 weeks. If I start seeing photosynthetic problems in the display, I'll pull back and extend the acclimation mode. I may throw a few zoas in at this time as my first test corals. Given I avoid issues, I'll add some LPS from the LFS as they have a few nice chalices, hammers, and torches I'm looking at. I'll let the tank sit at that level to deal with the uglies and let the fish and clean up crew do the work. Once leveled off, I plan to start ramping up to SPS PAR levels and have my first SPS coral in the tank in the next 60-75 days.
Livestock: Currently I have the 2 perc clowns because a reef isn't a reef for me without them, a juvi Christmas wrasse for pest control, and a midas blenny because my kids love them. I plan to add a baby bristletooth tang to help with algae control and a pigmy file fish for aiptasia just before I turn the lights on. I may have room for a few other small fish but will wait and see. I can get cleaner shrimp here but I haven't seen any peppermint shrimp, so I will rely on the filefish to fight the inevitable aiptasia that I see in my LFS's frag tank.
- QT: For the clowns I purchased straight from the breeder out of his breeding tanks that are getting 100% water changes frequently to keep the various sized fry alive so I wasn't concerned about parasites or illness. Those I acclimated and they went right into the display tank. For the midas blenny and wrasse, the local fish store here runs their fish systems with anti parasitic meds (copper) and a short observation period before selling. I did a shortened observation during a drop acclimation in a 10 gallon tank, accompanied by multiple dips and rinses (salt to fresh to salt) and then put them into the display. Do you think that coral and fish pests respect diplomatic immunity? I'm not holding my breath.
- Feeding: I'm feeding Reef Nutrition TDO in various sizes and will feed Hikari pellets and nori sheets when the tang arrives. I also am feeding frozen mysis shrimp. While I am gone for work the next few weeks, I will be relying on my ehiem fish feeder that I'm currently trying to dial in over a paper plate to ensure I won't overfeed. I plan to get some help from my housekeeper and neighbors to drop in frozen food a few times a week that I've already sized appropriately. I won't be able to test levels while I am gone, though I am confident that the current filtration is working well and my daily tests have been reading 0's across the board. I plan to put the autofeeder on the tank today so I can observe it's feeding routine for a while before I leave.
Problems/Challenges I've dealt with:
- Tank issues: I had a few delays in the tank construction and set up. The LFS builds the custom tanks in house, but has the stands are built by a local carpenter. The first stand that came in was built 80cm x40cm, instead of 80cm x 45cm. I'm not sure where the error was made but Aleksandra, the LFS co-owner, was great in getting the carpenter to rush a new stand. This really only delayed delivery by 3 or 4 days. However, when the tank was delivered, they discovered that the custom sump did not fit inside the stand, because of the horizontal front brace at the bottom front of the stand. The sump sits directly on the floor as there is no bottom to the stand, which is odd to me, but seems to be the norm in Eastern Europe and I didn't specify otherwise in my build instructions. So with the horizontal front brace in place, the sump was 2.5 cm too large to fit. I wasn't pleased, but the LFS had the carpenter come out and remove that brace and they installed the sump as is so that I could start cycling the tank. The LFS is building me a new sump that will fit in the stand and they plan on putting that brace back into place, no charge to me of course. I'm annoyed that there was some planning oversight resulting in a lack of attention to detail and that this was not determined until it was being set up in my living room. However, I'm pleased overall with the quality of the tank and stand, especially for the price. It looks clean and sleek and they did a great job making my general design come to life. The company is owning their mistakes and is making things right, which I support. There are some fit and finish aspects to the tank that would make it appear lesser to custom tanks built in the states, but this comes at a fraction of the price and fraction of the wait time in a place where this hobby is not as popular as in the states. So all said and done, I'm happy so far with the system itself.
- ATO: I was genuinely concerned the Tunze ATO pump wouldn't be able to handle the 22 inch vertical to the top of the container, followed by a 30 foot run to my tank and a 30 inch vertical to get to the opening of the stand in the back. But I plumbed it anyway in Harry Potter's room and ran the lines along the floor, under the tv and to the tank, alongside the AWC tubes. I tested the pump and sure enough it wasn't working. I cranked the intensity up to 11 in the Tunze controller. Nope, nothing. The head pressure was just too strong. I even tried to blow water through the lines from where the pump was and it was nearly impossible for me. I'm telling you it was as if the line was completely clogged. I did use two 1/4 tubing connectors to get the length right and to use the slightly thicker tubing that fits in the ATO pump output and the local 1/4in tubing to run the length to the tank. I thought for a minute those were to blame. So I decided to try and manually prime the lines by sucking water through the line to see if that would help. It was actually much easier to pull the water through the line than it was to push it through. As I was sitting there sipping through my 30 foot RO/DI straw, I ended up getting a mouth full of salt water. Another dollar in the ice cream fund swear jar. How in the @#$#% did I get salt water in my ATO container??? I ran to the container and tasted the water: fresh as a spring rain. I'm not proud to admit how long it took me to realize I switched the lines and had my salt AWC container line running to my tank for "ATO" and my ATO line connected to my DOS. Ah.... That's why it felt like I was trying to blow a golf ball through a garden hose and the ATO pump wouldn't work. Once I switched the lines as appropriate, the ATO pump worked like a champ and I've had no issues. How's that 20 years of experience looking now? Brian - 0, Tank - 1.
- ATO syphon issue: Because my ATO container is on the taller side (57 cm/22.5 inches), I couldn't put the R/O line directly into the sump without creating a syphon. So right now I have it temporarily taped to my return pump pvc plumbing about 10 inches above the water line (24 inches high from the ground) in the sump's return chamber with the water level sensors are. I actually have the hose pointing directly at the plumbing so the water runs down the plumbing silently going into the sump. Is it pretty? No. Does it work? Beautifully. I will be looking for a more long term mounting solution so I'm not relying on tape to hold up forever. Probably go with zipties. or something similar once my new sump arrives.
- AquaForest Stone Fix: As I said before, likely a great deal of operator error here. But sweet salty Poseidon, it is ugly. PLEASE let the coralline grow fast...
- Wire management or lack thereof: I'm waiting for my controller board to arrive so right now my wire management looks atrocious. The fact that I don't have that board yet and my sump is going to be switched out isn't motivating me to make things pretty quite yet. I'm prioritizing safety over pretty right now. Pretty will come when the board and new sump arrive. But right now I have wire spaghetti.
I promise to post pictures soon as well! Thanks for coming along with me on this journey!
Best!
Brian
I'm almost equally as excited to start this build thread as I am for my tank to be ready for it's first test frag!
A bit about me and a bit about my plans for this tank:
Me: I've been in this hobby off and on for 20 years, with about 15 of those years having a tank or two or three. I have a slew of epic failures and even a couple of successful tanks under my belt. I consider myself an intermediate reefer and an avid consumer of hobby knowledge, even during those years when I didn't had a tank. My last tank was a pretty successful mixed reef Red Sea Reefer 250 that I ran for 3 years in the DC area before I broke it down to move to Europe. I'm an American diplomat living and working in Belgrade, Serbia and honestly a had no intention of setting up a tank here because 1) I didn't think I would have the time, and 2) I didn't think the hobby would be prevalent in Eastern Europe. Needless to say, it didn't take me long to find a few local fish stores and get the itch (not the ich!) to start another tank. Unfortunately I had sold all of my reef gear before I left the states so I'm starting from scratch here.
Goal for the Tank: I want an SPS dominant tank with possibly some LPS or a few zoas in the lower PAR areas. My job keeps me very busy and has a fair amount of travel and doesn't lend itself to ample free time or extreme consistency in schedule. I'm also prone to significantly overestimating my long term desire to conduct water changes. So I knew starting off that I wanted a tank I could automate tasks for and could get on auto pilot from the beginning. I will also only be here for 2-3 years so I wanted a smaller tank I could fill out quicker so I settled around the 40 gallon size. I also know that I will likely want to upgrade to a larger tank in the future (next 5 years). So I wanted to buy equipment that would grow with my tank upgrade addiction and not need to be replaced. So much of my equipment is overkill and running on low power percentages, so please keep my futureproofing in mind.
Tank Specs: I found a great local fish store here in Belgrade, Serbia called ReefRoom (Hi Aleksandra!) and they have a decent variety of more commonly found SPS, LPS, and softie corals you can find in the States. They also design and build custom aquariums and the owner is a very passionate hobbyist so I opted to have them build the tank and I plan to source my coral from them. I have a custom built ~160 liter (42.8 gallon) aquarium that measures 80cm x 45cm x45 cm (31.5in x 17.7in x 17.7in) 8mm thick glass main display with a corner overflow into a custom sump. I opted for black silicone and a black wrapping on the back of the tank. Overall I'm happy with the quality of the build, especially for the price and speed at which it was built. Reef Room went from initial consultation to delivery in about 60 days, even with some hiccups along the way I will discuss later.
Filtration/Nutrient Control: My plan for success is to rely on auto water changes and a well lit refugium as my means of nutrient reduction and export. I will do 1.5% daily water changes using an Apex DOS. I designed my sump specifically with the refugium in mind and I am lighting my spinning ball of cheato with 1 x AI Blade Refugium light. I do have a filter sock area in the sump, though I don't plan on running them at all unless I'm trying to polish the water for a short period of time. I am self aware enough to know I will not keep up with them properly, plus I like the idea of keeping the nutrients in the water for coral and cheato growth as I've had positive results with that in the past. I don't have a protein skimmer nor do I plan to use one. If nutrients rise I will increase my AWC schedule and my refugium lighting schedule.
- AWC: About 30 feet from my display tank, I have this Harry Potter like cupboard under the stairs that I'm using to store 3 x 60 liter (15.85 gallons) plastic pickling barrels which are freaking perfect for my lazy proof AWC schedule. 1 container is full of new salt water, 1 is fresh water for my ATO, and the other is empty for waste saltwater. Unfortunately there really isn't a good option for me running the waste water to a drain and the Embassy housing office frowns on me drilling holes in the floor/walls to get to a drain. So to avoid running 100 feet of tubing across my house, I will stick with the waste container. At 1.5% daily water changes, my containers will last me 24 days. I'm tempted to reduce the water changes to 1.33% daily so it lasts me 28 days, meaning I could dump and refill the containers every 4th Saturday. This would allow for more consistent monthly water change container maintenance for me (remember my propensity for laziness in regards to water changes?). But for now, I'm going to stick with 1.5% and refill and dump the containers every 3 weeks. In my basement approximately 60 feet away (12 feet below), I have 2 x 200 liter plastic pickling containers that I use as my mixing station, one with salt and one with fresh RO/DI. I am using the Sicce utility pump and the python with extended hose to drain the waste container and to refill both the salt and fresh ATO water. I'm honestly expecting about 10 minutes of work every 3-4 weeks to empty and refill these containers to keep up with my maintenance schedule, so no Deadpool "maximum effort" required in hauling buckets upstairs!
Lighting: I currently have 3 x 30 inch AI Blades (2 Grow/1 Glow) waiting for the dark phase to end so they can light the tank. I am an avid consumer of BRSTV's content and was impressed with the Blades performance in their testing and reminded me of the successes I've had in the past with T5's. With the shallow depth of my tank, I should have no issues growing SPS, though I've yet to measure the par output myself, which I plan to do later. I can always buy another blade or a kessil for that shimmer I love if I need the PAR, but I don't think I will.
Flow: I have 2 x MP40's running on each side of the tank at approximately 20% power right now and the flow seems good. Obviously I have room to increase flow should I want to later, but right now my tank is in the later cycling phase and only has 4 fish in it, no corals. I have Ocean Direct sand and the flow doesn't seem to be impacting it too greatly.
Return: I have a Neptune Cor15 and it is running on 34% with the return plumbing being slightly different than I'm used to. This is two 90 degree pvc pipe connectors coming from the sump so the open pipe outlet is pointing down the back wall of the tank towards the bottom of tank which is helping keep detritus suspended but also pushing all my sand towards the front/sides of the tank. I'm not sure I like that or hate it yet, but I can tell you it is evoking emotions... My aquascape does a good job of making that bare spot not very visible so I'm not sure I hate it and may love the efficiency of that downward flow for detritus/deadspot removal. But I may end up correcting that with more plumbing and a proper nozzle for more control, though I'm certainly not lacking for flow in this tank. Open to thoughts from the community here. I found that at 4% power, the Cor15 keeps water in the pipes with barely a trickle coming out, perfect for feed mode.
Controller: I'm running the Neptune Apex to control the tank. I'm a long time user and honestly wouldn't run a tank without one. I have the standard model with pH and temp probes, leak sensor, and optical eye sensor (run to my ATO container)
ATO: I'm using the Tunze Osmolator 3155 from my 60 liter ATO container about 30 feet away from the display tank. After increasing the pressure to max, and solving a self inflicted plumbing issue, it pumps water that distance like a champ.
Calc/Alk/Mag: I plan on dosing Kalkwasser to the tank using a RedSea dosing pump from a separate container. I won't turn this on until I have corals in the tank and a noticeable reduction in alk. I plan to achieve and adjust levels in my tank with BRS 2 Part and maintain with Kalk. I opted for this over 2 part for the pH benefits and to reduce the need for ATO container refills.
Other Dosing: On my other three dosing heads, I plan to dose some sort of cheatogrow if I can get it shipped here. I would also like to dose an amino acid supplement eventually as well, though I will start dosing the brightwell concentrate by hand in the beginning. The other head I haven't decided... possibly a trace element of some sort? What do you guys think?
Aquascape: I started with a Marco type dry rock (sold in Europe) and did my best to create a HNSA (BRS style) aquascape using Aquaforest Stonefix concrete mix. I'm happy with the overall shape of the aquascape. However, I am not happy with the current look of the aquascape because, frankly, I'm not a fan of Stonefix for a few reasons. I will gladly admit that I haven't worked with concrete before for aquascaping and there is likely a great deal of operator error here. But I genuinely did not enjoy using that product. 1) If you mix it to the consistency recommended by AquaForest on the packaging, the concrete is so watery that it was difficult to work with and drips everywhere on the rock. I wanted a less viscous puddy like consistency but I found you can very much mess up the structural integrity of the cement if there isn't enough water, creating a brittle chalky finished product that isn't sound or stable. There seemed to be a sweet spot I found eventually but it was after so much trial and error. 2) Stonefix cures dark grey and frankly looks like concrete against the bone white dry rock. I realize this is temporary and soon enough it will be covered with coral and coralline algae. But right now it looks like I lost a fight with a small bag of concrete, which is true. Eventually I was able to make something structurally sound that will make for mounting corals nicely and make great homes for my fish, though that came at the cost of my 11 year old son suggesting we create a swear jar that is used to fund future Ice Cream/Candy runs.
Cycling/Biome: Seeing BRS's Biome series, I opted to use Ocean Direct live sand, as well as some live rock rubble in my return chamber for a cryptic fuge to jump start the bio diversity in the reef. I also purchased Maxspect Ceramic Bio bricks and had them soaking in a dark area of my LFS tank while I waited for the aquarium to be built and deliverd. I've added them both to the input chamber of my sump for high flow and lower light. I also used Dr. Tim's One and Only (60 gallons) on day one to seed the tank with nitrifying bacteria. I added 2 ppm ammonia to the tank immediately and found that there were 0 measurable ammonia 48 hours later, with nitrates starting to show trace levels. I don't bother testing for nitrites. I've used Dr. Tim's before but this felt faster than I remember. Possibly the combination of all my efforts above with the sand, rubble, and bio media? Confident it could handle a small bio-load, I went to a local fish breeder and picked up a pair of mis barred percula clowns.. I started my AWC schedule at 1.5% as soon as the fish went in. I also grabbed a baseball sized chunk of cheato and put it in my refugium at this time running it 20 hours a day (I hope to keep the nutrients extremely low during the cycling phase, dark phase, and slowly pull back the lighting schedule to get desirable nitrate and phosphate levels after I add corals. I tested the water daily for 4 days and never saw ammonia and my nitrates actually reduced, likely do to the AWC and fuge kicking in. I considered my tank cycled at this point and slowly began increasing bioload.
- Cycling plan: Dark phase for the next 30 days as I let the fish settle in. This will be 40 days of dark phase which is impressively patient of me, I'll admit. But before I pat myself on the back too much, I will be going out of town for 3 weeks soon so I prefer to have the tank dark to avoid photosynthetic issues in the tank while I am gone. When I get back, I will add a bristletooth tang (baby) to the tank and turn the lights on low, acclimation mode up to LPS PAR levels over the course of 2 weeks. If I start seeing photosynthetic problems in the display, I'll pull back and extend the acclimation mode. I may throw a few zoas in at this time as my first test corals. Given I avoid issues, I'll add some LPS from the LFS as they have a few nice chalices, hammers, and torches I'm looking at. I'll let the tank sit at that level to deal with the uglies and let the fish and clean up crew do the work. Once leveled off, I plan to start ramping up to SPS PAR levels and have my first SPS coral in the tank in the next 60-75 days.
Livestock: Currently I have the 2 perc clowns because a reef isn't a reef for me without them, a juvi Christmas wrasse for pest control, and a midas blenny because my kids love them. I plan to add a baby bristletooth tang to help with algae control and a pigmy file fish for aiptasia just before I turn the lights on. I may have room for a few other small fish but will wait and see. I can get cleaner shrimp here but I haven't seen any peppermint shrimp, so I will rely on the filefish to fight the inevitable aiptasia that I see in my LFS's frag tank.
- QT: For the clowns I purchased straight from the breeder out of his breeding tanks that are getting 100% water changes frequently to keep the various sized fry alive so I wasn't concerned about parasites or illness. Those I acclimated and they went right into the display tank. For the midas blenny and wrasse, the local fish store here runs their fish systems with anti parasitic meds (copper) and a short observation period before selling. I did a shortened observation during a drop acclimation in a 10 gallon tank, accompanied by multiple dips and rinses (salt to fresh to salt) and then put them into the display. Do you think that coral and fish pests respect diplomatic immunity? I'm not holding my breath.
- Feeding: I'm feeding Reef Nutrition TDO in various sizes and will feed Hikari pellets and nori sheets when the tang arrives. I also am feeding frozen mysis shrimp. While I am gone for work the next few weeks, I will be relying on my ehiem fish feeder that I'm currently trying to dial in over a paper plate to ensure I won't overfeed. I plan to get some help from my housekeeper and neighbors to drop in frozen food a few times a week that I've already sized appropriately. I won't be able to test levels while I am gone, though I am confident that the current filtration is working well and my daily tests have been reading 0's across the board. I plan to put the autofeeder on the tank today so I can observe it's feeding routine for a while before I leave.
Problems/Challenges I've dealt with:
- Tank issues: I had a few delays in the tank construction and set up. The LFS builds the custom tanks in house, but has the stands are built by a local carpenter. The first stand that came in was built 80cm x40cm, instead of 80cm x 45cm. I'm not sure where the error was made but Aleksandra, the LFS co-owner, was great in getting the carpenter to rush a new stand. This really only delayed delivery by 3 or 4 days. However, when the tank was delivered, they discovered that the custom sump did not fit inside the stand, because of the horizontal front brace at the bottom front of the stand. The sump sits directly on the floor as there is no bottom to the stand, which is odd to me, but seems to be the norm in Eastern Europe and I didn't specify otherwise in my build instructions. So with the horizontal front brace in place, the sump was 2.5 cm too large to fit. I wasn't pleased, but the LFS had the carpenter come out and remove that brace and they installed the sump as is so that I could start cycling the tank. The LFS is building me a new sump that will fit in the stand and they plan on putting that brace back into place, no charge to me of course. I'm annoyed that there was some planning oversight resulting in a lack of attention to detail and that this was not determined until it was being set up in my living room. However, I'm pleased overall with the quality of the tank and stand, especially for the price. It looks clean and sleek and they did a great job making my general design come to life. The company is owning their mistakes and is making things right, which I support. There are some fit and finish aspects to the tank that would make it appear lesser to custom tanks built in the states, but this comes at a fraction of the price and fraction of the wait time in a place where this hobby is not as popular as in the states. So all said and done, I'm happy so far with the system itself.
- ATO: I was genuinely concerned the Tunze ATO pump wouldn't be able to handle the 22 inch vertical to the top of the container, followed by a 30 foot run to my tank and a 30 inch vertical to get to the opening of the stand in the back. But I plumbed it anyway in Harry Potter's room and ran the lines along the floor, under the tv and to the tank, alongside the AWC tubes. I tested the pump and sure enough it wasn't working. I cranked the intensity up to 11 in the Tunze controller. Nope, nothing. The head pressure was just too strong. I even tried to blow water through the lines from where the pump was and it was nearly impossible for me. I'm telling you it was as if the line was completely clogged. I did use two 1/4 tubing connectors to get the length right and to use the slightly thicker tubing that fits in the ATO pump output and the local 1/4in tubing to run the length to the tank. I thought for a minute those were to blame. So I decided to try and manually prime the lines by sucking water through the line to see if that would help. It was actually much easier to pull the water through the line than it was to push it through. As I was sitting there sipping through my 30 foot RO/DI straw, I ended up getting a mouth full of salt water. Another dollar in the ice cream fund swear jar. How in the @#$#% did I get salt water in my ATO container??? I ran to the container and tasted the water: fresh as a spring rain. I'm not proud to admit how long it took me to realize I switched the lines and had my salt AWC container line running to my tank for "ATO" and my ATO line connected to my DOS. Ah.... That's why it felt like I was trying to blow a golf ball through a garden hose and the ATO pump wouldn't work. Once I switched the lines as appropriate, the ATO pump worked like a champ and I've had no issues. How's that 20 years of experience looking now? Brian - 0, Tank - 1.
- ATO syphon issue: Because my ATO container is on the taller side (57 cm/22.5 inches), I couldn't put the R/O line directly into the sump without creating a syphon. So right now I have it temporarily taped to my return pump pvc plumbing about 10 inches above the water line (24 inches high from the ground) in the sump's return chamber with the water level sensors are. I actually have the hose pointing directly at the plumbing so the water runs down the plumbing silently going into the sump. Is it pretty? No. Does it work? Beautifully. I will be looking for a more long term mounting solution so I'm not relying on tape to hold up forever. Probably go with zipties. or something similar once my new sump arrives.
- AquaForest Stone Fix: As I said before, likely a great deal of operator error here. But sweet salty Poseidon, it is ugly. PLEASE let the coralline grow fast...
- Wire management or lack thereof: I'm waiting for my controller board to arrive so right now my wire management looks atrocious. The fact that I don't have that board yet and my sump is going to be switched out isn't motivating me to make things pretty quite yet. I'm prioritizing safety over pretty right now. Pretty will come when the board and new sump arrive. But right now I have wire spaghetti.
I promise to post pictures soon as well! Thanks for coming along with me on this journey!
Best!
Brian
