The 'Down Under' SPS Prop System

[chcgregg]

Hi guys,

My name is Callan, this is my first post on reef2reef! I'm from Adelaide, South Australia (hence the thread title, lol)

I have been collecting and propagating Acropora, and other various SPS for quite a while now here in Australia and I thought I'd share my system and any progress I make.

So far, the system is 700 litres in total, low nutrient, although I am dosing nitrate occasionally to help with colours. Running NSW parameters and doing a 200L waterchange per week with natural seawater.




On the display I'm running a 6x80w ATI with 3x Giesemann Tropic, 2x Coral Plus, and 1x Blue plus. On the grow out mother colony tank, I'm running a 3x400w Giesemann spectra with 400w Radiums, and 4x Giesemann Actinic.

Calcium and alk is maintained with a Reef Octopus 2300 Calcium Reactor.

I have in total 23 Chromis, 2 Yellow Tangs, 2 Foxface, 1 Powder Blue, 2 Bangii Cardinals, 4 Lyretail Anthias, 1 Coral Blenny, and 2 Mollies.

Don't hesistate to ask any questions, I'll be certainly picking at eveyones brains with a couple issues I'm trying to overcome.

More photos to come also :)

 

[zachxlutz]

Cool setup. Looking forward to more pictures.

 

[joseserrano]

any filtration pics?

 

[chcgregg]

any filtration pics?

Sump is nothing special. The two tanks drain into a section with a skimmer and that flows over a baffle with the return pump, feeding all three of the tanks.

The calcium reactor is on the ground with a feed pump supplying water from the skimmer section, through the reactor, and into the return pump section.

 

[chcgregg]

Here's some bad photos of the growout tank. The glass needs cleaning, but I'll bust out the DSLR and do some nice shots soon.

 

[cracker]

Very Nice !

 

[Daniel@R2R]

Sweet build! Welcome to R2R!

 

[chcgregg]

Sweet build! Welcome to R2R!

Thanks mate!

 

[chcgregg]

So, here's a photo of the sump tank. The return pump supplies water to this section, which then flows over a baffle into the skimmer section.

It needed a big clean out for obvious reasons as you can see. Big nutrient sink. Took me 4 hours, lol.

Plans for this is to make it a dedicated frag holding tank, which allowes me more space in the colony tank. Going to light it with two Radion Gen 3 Pro's on the Halide setting.

 

[chcgregg]

Here's a couple shots of some colonies in my display.

 

[mdlc805]

How do you keep so many chromis I've read that they start killing each other till there's only one left

 

[chcgregg]

How do you keep so many chromis I've read that they start killing each other till there's only one left

There's a bit of bickering, but nothing serious. The largest male keeps everything in line. I'm thinking about adding another 5 to increase bioload, and possibly getting a Lieutenant Tang.