SweetReefOH 75g Reboot/Build

[SweetReefOH]

I’ll be documenting how I got to where I am today with my 75g SPS dominant system.

This system was built in 2017. I drilled the tank for the Synergy Shadow Overflow and the 2 returns.

The sump is a Skimz 34g I believe. Plumbing was bean animal style.

 

[Arthacker87]

Like how clean it all is already

 

[SweetReefOH]

The stand was made out of the typical 2X4’s and then shelled with plywood. I made the top out of 5/4 Ash. Cheap and sturdy.

I also put a plywood floor in the stand. Before I painted the inside of the stand, I covered the entire base in a thick coat of Flexseal. My thinking is that if the sump leaks, hopefully I’ll catch it filling the stand before it gets to the floor!

 

[SweetReefOH]

Like how clean it all is already

Thank you. I actually had a terrible experience paying a LFS to custom build a 29g/20L system and it leaked all over my brand new living room floor. So, I didn’t want to cut corners on my own build. I also wanted to fix everything I didn’t like about that “custom” system that failed.

 

[SweetReefOH]

My other passion, that goes hand in hand with reefing, is photography. Once I had the tank up and running, it was time to get the D750 out!

 

[Arthacker87]

My wife does photography (just wont take any of my tank!!!) All of our kids lol. She used to do it professionally (weddings, family, individuals etc) but since having our kids she cut back. She has the cannon 5d mark3 something and another backup dslr cannon 7d. All the lenses and what not. Great pics btw. I love marine photography.

 

[SweetReefOH]

BamBams

 

[SweetReefOH]

So this is the July 2017 timeframe for the tank. Everything was humming along. I purchased many frags of all varieties and didn’t have a single loss.

 

[SweetReefOH]

Then came the Dayton, Ohio frag swap. I purchased some frags at the swap from a place in northern Ohio that I can’t remember the name of. These frags gave me MEN. Montipora Eating Nudibranchs. In a couple of weeks I had eggs hanging all over all of my branching montis and the encrusters were being eaten from the outside in. It was heartbreaking. However, it was a lesson I needed. NEVER trust a frag plug, NEVER keep a frag plug. Anyone that has ever had a pest went thru a period where they didn’t KNOW they had a pest. You just never know if that happens to coincide with your frag purchase. Lesson learned.

 

[SweetReefOH]

This brings us to the apocalypse of 2017 that lasted over a year. I am still not positive on what caused my coral deaths but I lost hundreds and hundreds of dollars in coral. At the time I was using API test kits for nitrate and a Hanna checker for phosphate. I was always on the border with PO4 and the API nitrate kit is so vague you won’t get a reading on nitrate if it’s 0-5. So hypothetically, I may have been running too lean a system. And the corals consumed every trace of NO3 out of the system. The other possibility is a pathogen, introduced with the frags that had the MEN. I basically struggled with coral deaths for the next year......

 

[SweetReefOH]

I’m gonna fast forward to today...or close to today
FTS!