The "She Said Yes!" 120 Gallon Build

[Mikeltee]

Nice! You are the oerfect candidate for an algae turf scrubber. 2 weeks in between 30 seconds of maintenace...

You don't need 2x backup batteries either. Mine is 14 years old supporting 2x MP40s. I too am in the Midwest so I know about your lack of power outages.

Matt's corals is awesome!

 

[dangles]

Nice! You are the oerfect candidate for an algae turf scrubber. 2 weeks in between 30 seconds of maintenace...

You don't need 2x backup batteries either. Mine is 14 years old supporting 2x MP40s. I too am in the Midwest so I know about your lack of power outages.

Matt's corals is awesome!

Thanks! I’ll be adding a refugium eventually. Much cheaper than a scrubber

I live way out in the country. We have a couple of outages each year. Usually shorter but still… Plus I also want to power my return pump, and may be adding more powerheads down the road.

Yes Matt’s is great! It’s a super clean and professional place.

 

[dangles]

My wife insisted we find a replacement for the clown that jumped because she didn’t want the remaining one to be lonely lol

So here it is!

 

[tsharpe291]

hopefully they pair up, two clowns are always better than one

 

[dangles]

I think I’m going to start taking a weekly photo to track the progression of my tank. Hopefully from here on out I’ll take the same photo every week and eventually put them all together into a time lapse.

Photo 1 (end of 3rd week):

 

[dangles]

TBS live sand is IN!

I was pretty let down on the nearly complete lack of visible critters, but that’s not really why I got the live sand in the first place That’s much more of a live rock thing.

I’ll post some more photos once the water settles. I’m pretty sure I’m going to blow through an entire roll of filter fleece polishing that water lol

I LOVE LOVE LOVE the look of this sand!

 

[tsharpe291]

very cool, ill be getting the same stuff when I set up my nano. wish I would of gotten it for my current.

 

[dangles]

very cool, ill be getting the same stuff when I set up my nano. wish I would of gotten it for my current.

Let me just emphasize that you absolutely do NOT need 1 pound per gallon. I have a 120 gallon display. TBS suggested I get 120 pounds of sand. I used 80 to achieve a 2 inch sand bed. I could have used even less. But didn’t want to waste any.

Thankfully I found somebody locally to buy the remaining box. Thanks @Cycleguy0623 !

 

[tsharpe291]

Let me just emphasize that you absolutely do NOT need 1 pound per gallon. I have a 120 gallon display. TBS suggested I get 120 pounds of sand. I used 80 to achieve a 2 inch sand bed. I could have used even less. But didn’t want to waste any.

Thankfully I found somebody locally to buy the remaining box. Thanks @Cycleguy0623 !

thanks for the heads up!

 

[dangles]

Oh and there was a mangrove in one of the boxes. No idea what I’m going to do with this

 

[Cycleguy0623]

Let me just emphasize that you absolutely do NOT need 1 pound per gallon. I have a 120 gallon display. TBS suggested I get 120 pounds of sand. I used 80 to achieve a 2 inch sand bed. I could have used even less. But didn’t want to waste any.

Thankfully I found somebody locally to buy the remaining box. Thanks @Cycleguy0623 !

Very happy to have the Tampa bay live sand in my new build! Pics coming soon to my build thread!

 

[dangles]

Long update...

6 weeks

No uglies yet for the most part. Thanks Tampa Bay Live Sand? Maybe also a result of pre-cycling my scape? There MIGHT be a very fine layer of brown dust on my rocks but it's hard to tell.

My Clearview Lids Pisces EXO lid arrived! Some minor fitment issues aside, I love it! REALLY well constructed and sleek looking. Adam has been really responsive and helpful in figuring out what the issues were with the fit (long story short, it was my fault, not theirs). If anybody ends up ordering from them, measure the tank AFTER adding water. I measured before, and my tank walls flexed SLIGHTLY when I filled it (within normal expectations according to the manufacturer), which effected the lid fit. It's not off enough to make any real difference though.

My nutrients have been too low, but improving as I slowly dial up the feedings (4.1 and 0.3 yesterday).

dKH is in the mid-high 8 range, and temps/lights are steady and unchanged.

My pH has been trending down though (as low as 7.52!!). My wife and I have both been off work and home for almost a week with both dogs so I'm sure the CO2 in the house is off the charts! I opened the windows yesterday and today and that's helping. I'm considering a big (for me) fish purchase so I can crank my feedings and thus my nutrient levels, which would allow me to fire up my refugium to help the pH! I'd love to find out if I can put my skimmer in and adjust it so it doesn't remove nutrients - just so I can plumb and air intake line outside and maybe install a CO2 scrubber! I'm not sure if it's possible to run a skimmer like that.

I'm planning a large water change later today because one of my gonis is ANGRY. Maybe it's a trace elements thing... I haven't started my water changes yet because my nutrients haven't called for it.

Filter roller.... I still love it (I'll never mess with socks). However it does NOT keep the water "crystal clear" like I've read about. There are always small particles floating around. This could be a result of my overall system flow being a little low? I'm around 650-700 gph total flow. I may try increasing that at some point. I did the calcium carbonate "coral snow" thing today for the first time in an effort to combat the particles. I'm curious if that will help.

Speaking of crystal clear, I've noticed that when I DON'T have my UV on, my water starts to get slightly hazy/cloudy. Maybe a minor bacterial bloom? It's happened twice now. If I turn the UV back on it goes away (it's mostly been on). I'd really rather not keep the UV on all the time for pelagic biome purposes, but unless I can find another solution I may have to. Maybe ozone? But that has similar effects on biome from what I understand. Plus I would need to install the skimmer I bought - which will hurt my efforts to INCREASE my low nutrients. Maybe it's just a "tank uglies" thing.

UV - As mentioned, I've been running it most of the time but have started experimenting with leaving it off. Even when it's on, it's not at the correct dose. I measured the flow a couple weeks ago using the bucket method. I'm getting ROUGHLY 360 gph through that return line. That translates to OVER 90,000 microwatts/cm2, which is ABOVE the AquaUV recommendations for protection from fish parasites (meaning I'm pretty much nuking anything that passes through it!). If I only want to address nuisance bacteria/algae I should be more than double that flow - which means I need to crank up my total system flow by a LOT. I may have to try that. We'll see.

Anyway if you've made it this far, thanks for your time

 

[dangles]

Oh. I just got back from the LFS with a few additional tiger conches, a second cleaner shrimp, and a few corals!

I got a pink branching cyphastrea, a Bird of Paradise seriatopora, and a Blue Zing seriatopora. The Bird of Paradise was a decent sized frag but I accidentally broke a few pieces off when I was removing the plug so now I have 4 BoP frags

Shown under blue spectrum and daylight(ish)... Except for the mini-frags, just blue. Sorry for the sh/it focus. I didn't realize how bad it was until I saw it on my laptop

 

[TheWB]

Oh. I just got back from the LFS with a few additional tiger conches, a second cleaner shrimp, and a few corals!

I got a pink branching cyphastrea, a Bird of Paradise seriatopora, and a Blue Zing seriatopora. The Bird of Paradise was a decent sized frag but I accidentally broke a few pieces off when I was removing the plug so now I have 4 BoP frags

Shown under blue spectrum and daylight(ish)... Except for the mini-frags, just blue. Sorry for the sh/it focus. I didn't realize how bad it was until I saw it on my laptop

I’ve had a branching cyphastrea for years now that looks great but has shown very little growth. I guess I’ve never found the right spot for it. Looking forward to seeing how yours does.

 

[dangles]

I’ve had a branching cyphastrea for years now that looks great but has shown very little growth. I guess I’ve never found the right spot for it. Looking forward to seeing how yours does.

My LFS has a couple of NFS larger frags (I hesitate to call them mother colonies!). They have shown slow but decent growth at around 300 PAR since they got them about 4-6 months ago. I've been watching them each time I go in. They had 2-3 small frags they cut from the main colonies that have been sitting for sale in their frag tanks for months. They were way overpriced initially ($145!) so I just watched them. They slowly dropped down to 75ish, then they had a 25% off sale so I snagged this one. Still not a great price but good enough for me!

Their Blue Zing and Bird of Paradise seriatopora mother colonies are REALLY hot

 

[Arkayology]

I've never run a UV before. I've also never had issues with blooms. Not sure why or why not really.

GL with the new frags.

 

[TheWB]

My LFS has a couple of NFS larger frags (I hesitate to call them mother colonies!). They have shown slow but decent growth at around 300 PAR since they got them about 4-6 months ago. I've been watching them each time I go in. They had 2-3 small frags they cut from the main colonies that have been sitting for sale in their frag tanks for months. They were way overpriced initially ($145!) so I just watched them. They slowly dropped down to 75ish, then they had a 25% off sale so I snagged this one. Still not a great price but good enough for me!

Their Blue Zing and Bird of Paradise seriatopora mother colonies are REALLY hot

I got mine for about 25 bucks 4 years ago. I had a great online vendor in CO that sold zoas by the polyp and had super reasonable prices on lps. His sps selection was just super basic but at the time I was only into zoas and lps so it was great. The website is still there but hasn't has any coral for sale that I can see in a long time so I'm assuming he's out of business.

 

[dangles]

Uglies!

Looks like diatoms. I’ve got a couple of jars of pods coming Thursday.

 

[Fishy Guy]

Uglies!

Looks like diatoms. I’ve got a couple of jars of pods coming Thursday.

Yep looks like my tank. Maybe I'm weird but I preferred that to the sterile white rock look.

Tailspot Blenny Alert @Katrina71 @kevgib67 !!!!! Don't mind us, we're sort of obsessed.

 

[dangles]

Yep looks like my tank. Maybe I'm weird but I preferred that to the sterile white rock look.

Tailspot Blenny Alert @Katrina71 @kevgib67 !!!!! Don't mind us, we're sort of obsessed.

I prefer it too lol. It means progress!