TMC 600 Nano - UK

Rosie · Feb 12, 2019

Hello from the UK!

I thought I’d finally introduce myself! I’ve been lurking around the R2R posts for a while now and I quickly discovered you’re all really friendly and helpful people! So that’s why I’m taking the plunge and saying HELLO!!!!

A little bit about me. I’m from the UK and have recently become a family of 3 with my little boy being born 7 months ago now. He loves looking at the tank and to be honest he’s reignited my love for the tank again. We now spend quite a bit of time in the games room (where the tank is) and just look at the fish and all the colourful corals.

I’ve had my marine tank for just over 4 years now (set up Jan 2014). It’s a Tropical Marine Centre (TMC) Signature 600, includes a sump and the entire system holds roughly 140ltrs / 36 US Gallons. I’m also using TMC V2 Iluminair 600 LED lights.

I’ve had a lot of ups and downs with my tank, mainly more downs than ups, but recently I’ve thrown myself back in to it.

I hope you enjoy my build thread - I will make sure to fill it with plenty of pics so you don’t fall asleep ;-)

Rosie · Feb 12, 2019

The Spec!

Original Set Up!

I’ve just realised I put Jan 2014 as the original set up.... I meant 2015..... I’m already throwing curve balls with my first post! To be fair its nearly midnight so i’m going to let myself off.

Ok, where was I.

Tank:
Tropical Marine Centre (TMC) Signature 600
Main Tank 600mmx450mmx450mm
Sump 530mmx380mmx360mm
Entire system holds roughly 140Litres

Lighting: v2 ilumenair 600

Dosing: Ca, Alk, Mg, Strontium, Amino Acids and Iodine (I’ve only recently started dosing... I’m now in the process of setting up 2 Neptune DOS Dosing systems)

Substrate and Rock: Dry Rock, 3inch sand bed and ATM Colony Nitrifying Bacteria to set it up.

Hardware:

Jebao SW4 Wave Maker
TMC v2 Skim Protein Skimmer
TMC v2 Vection 200 – UV Steriliser
Eheim Return Pump
TMC Reef Bio Grow – using Chaetomorpha
AquaRay Lighting Strip (now only used to see what I’m doing in the sump)
Heater

New Hardware (still setting up – building a tank cabinet to house it all):

Neptune Systems APEXel
Neptune Systems DOS Dosing and Fluid Metering System x 2
Neptune Systems Advanced Leak Detection Solid-Surface Probe
Neptune Systems ATK - Automatic Top-Off Kit
TMC EASI-Dose - Dosing Container 2.5 Litre x 4

I’ve already had to get in touch with the support team at Neptune Systems to help me with some teething issues - they were absolutely fantastic!

Wish List:

Neptune Systems DOS (for auto water changes)
Neptune Systems AFS Automatic Auto Feeder (for hols)
Neptune Trident!!! (When it’s released…)

Simon Cushing · Feb 12, 2019

Rosie said:
Hello from the UK!

I thought I’d finally introduce myself! I’ve been lurking around the R2R posts for a while now and I quickly discovered you’re all really friendly and helpful people! So that’s why I’m taking the plunge and saying HELLO!!!!

A little bit about me. I’m from the UK and have recently become a family of 3 with my little boy being born 7 months ago now. He loves looking at the tank and to be honest he’s reignited my love for the tank again. We now spend quite a bit of time in the games room (where the tank is) and just look at the fish and all the colourful corals.

I’ve had my marine tank for just over 4 years now (set up Jan 2014). It’s a Tropical Marine Centre (TMC) Signature 600, includes a sump and the entire system holds roughly 140ltrs / 36 US Gallons. I’m also using TMC V2 Iluminair 600 LED lights.

I’ve had a lot of ups and downs with my tank, mainly more downs than ups, but recently I’ve thrown myself back in to it.

I hope you enjoy my build thread - I will make sure to fill it with plenty of pics so you don’t fall asleep ;-)

Hi

Rosie said:
Hello from the UK!

I thought I’d finally introduce myself! I’ve been lurking around the R2R posts for a while now and I quickly discovered you’re all really friendly and helpful people! So that’s why I’m taking the plunge and saying HELLO!!!!

A little bit about me. I’m from the UK and have recently become a family of 3 with my little boy being born 7 months ago now. He loves looking at the tank and to be honest he’s reignited my love for the tank again. We now spend quite a bit of time in the games room (where the tank is) and just look at the fish and all the colourful corals.

I’ve had my marine tank for just over 4 years now (set up Jan 2014). It’s a Tropical Marine Centre (TMC) Signature 600, includes a sump and the entire system holds roughly 140ltrs / 36 US Gallons. I’m also using TMC V2 Iluminair 600 LED lights.

I’ve had a lot of ups and downs with my tank, mainly more downs than ups, but recently I’ve thrown myself back in to it.

I hope you enjoy my build thread - I will make sure to fill it with plenty of pics so you don’t fall asleep ;-)

Hi r

Rosie said:
Hello from the UK!

I thought I’d finally introduce myself! I’ve been lurking around the R2R posts for a while now and I quickly discovered you’re all really friendly and helpful people! So that’s why I’m taking the plunge and saying HELLO!!!!

A little bit about me. I’m from the UK and have recently become a family of 3 with my little boy being born 7 months ago now. He loves looking at the tank and to be honest he’s reignited my love for the tank again. We now spend quite a bit of time in the games room (where the tank is) and just look at the fish and all the colourful corals.

I’ve had my marine tank for just over 4 years now (set up Jan 2014). It’s a Tropical Marine Centre (TMC) Signature 600, includes a sump and the entire system holds roughly 140ltrs / 36 US Gallons. I’m also using TMC V2 Iluminair 600 LED lights.

I’ve had a lot of ups and downs with my tank, mainly more downs than ups, but recently I’ve thrown myself back in to it.

I hope you enjoy my build thread - I will make sure to fill it with plenty of pics so you don’t fall asleep ;-)

Hi Rosie, from Stratford upon avon I like your set up

I noticed you have the same lighting unit that I have the 600 what are your settings for Dawn sunrise Daytime sunset moon the percentages . I have a 60 g cube.

Rosie · Feb 12, 2019

It’s Alive!!

Fish:

2 Percula Clown Fish (Peaches - Orange/White + Creme - Black/White)
Blue Cheek Goby
Orange Banded Goby

CUC:

Coral Banded Shrimp (boxer)
Halloween Hermit Crabs x4
Blue Legged Hermit Crabs x2
Emerald Crab
Blue Tuxedo Urchin
Banded Trochus Snails x 4

Corals:

Lettuce
Kenya Tree
Red Mushrooms (trimmed back after they started to carpet a couple of rocks)
Blastomussa
Green Button Polyp
Blue Finger Leather (unsure if this is the correct name)
Tubastrea Sun Coral
Green Montipora Plate (frag)
Photosynthetic Gorgonian x2 (purple and orange)
Acan
Duncan
Candy Cane
Bird of Paradise Seriatopora (frag)
Turquoise Acropora Staghorn (frag)
Yellow / Purple Turbinaria (frag) - it just looks brown at the moment....
Toxic Rim Diaseris
Shimmer Stylophoras x3 (2 of which are emerald shimmer frags)
Favia
Montipora Digitata
Forest Fire Montipora Digitata (frag)
Green Montipora Hirsuta (frag)
Orange / Red Montipora Setosa (frag)
Elegance

The Soft..ish Rock

The Hard Rock

My most recent coral purchases - I’m becoming a very big fan of Montipora

NY_Caveman · Feb 12, 2019

Looks excellent @Rosie ! Welcome to R2R!

Rosie · Feb 13, 2019

Simon Cushing said:
Hi Rosie, from Stratford upon avon I like your set up I noticed you have the same lighting unit that I have the 600 what are your settings for Dawn sunrise Daytime sunset moon the percentages . I have a 60 g cube.

HI Simon!

Do you have a more recent version on the 600 lights with WiFi? I’ve got the older version myself so all the settings are ABC from 0-32.

In percentages they work out at:
Dawn A:3% B:3% C:3%
Sunrise A:3% B:22% C9%
Daytime A:72% B:78% C:56%
Sunset A:3% B:75% C:22%
Moon A:0% B:47 C:0%

I’ve seen a few different set-ups online and I think people mainly aim for around 70% for both white and blue for the daytime settings and just play about with the red setting until they like the look of it. I suppose the other settings don’t really matter as much. I recently asked my LFS what his Iluminairs were set at and he said he didn’t bother with the start light, sunrise, sunset and moon - he just used the daylight setting and also went for 70% for both white and blue, I cant quite remember what he said about red.

Rosie · Feb 13, 2019

NY_Caveman said:
Looks excellent @Rosie ! Welcome to R2R!

Thank You! :-D

Rosie · Feb 13, 2019

Tank Issues - Green Hair Algae :mad:

I am currently at war with green hair algae (I think I’m actually winning it, but I don’t want to speak to soon).

At its worst it got to the point that I wanted to shut my tank down…. But after having my little boy and spending a lot of time looking at the tank, I decided I wanted to make it enjoyable for the whole family to look at again! So I prepared myself for battle with some rubber gloves and a toothbrush!

You can kind of see the extent of it behind the Duncan coral.... this was the state of my rocks at the top of the tank....It was EVERYWHERE!

I started on the rocks nearer the top of the tank first. I couldn’t believe how well they scrubbed up!

Then a few days later I pulled them all out again to get the rocks at the bottom of the tank. The only rock I couldn’t take out was the one on the left with the large lettuce coral on it. I tried to tackle that in the tank to make things a little easier.

At the time, not many of my corals were glued down to my rocks, so it allowed me to take as much as the rock out as I could.

I set up two buckets and a big plastic sheet, filled one bucket with saltwater and dumped my first rock in for shake and scrub. After every rock I poured the water into the empty bucket over a large fish net, I then sieved out the hair algae and tried keep my bucket water as “clear” as possible for the next rock. Rock by rock I placed it all on the plastic sheet. Once I was all done I decided to re-scape my entire tank which was a lot more enjoyable than scrubbing hair algae….

To keep on top of the GHA I’ve taken the following measures: reduced feeding, set up the TMC Reef Bio Grow and stocked it with chaeto, increased my CUC with a Blue Tuxedo Urchin, an Emerald Crab and some snails. I am also spot treating the tricky areas with Hydrogen Peroxide.

These pictures were all taken around a month ago and I can see the GHA is slowly creeping back again.... So, I will dig out the toothbrush, sharpen those bristles and prepare for battle once more!

Rosie · Feb 13, 2019

Tank Issues - Aiptasia

Luckily my Aiptasia issue isn’t as bad as my GHA issue (well I hope it’s not anyway…). I’ve found a couple in the tank and used kalk paste to destroy them, so far so good!

I tried boiling water before kalk paste, what a waste of time that was…

I’ve actually read a build thread (I’m sure it was on R2R) of someone setting up a mini tank just for Aiptasia. It looked pretty cool. I’m not at the stage of “enjoying” them that much though…

My first Aiptasia.....

Rosie · Feb 13, 2019

Cabinet Build

Ok, so I think i’m finally up to date!!!

Which leads me to the cabinet build!

The past couple of days I have been focused on building the cabinet to house all my Neptune APEX equipment, test kits, etc. My brother is a joiner and built it for me and I’m at the stage of adding all the equipment and battling with the amount of cables there are....

To Do:

- Paint cabinet black
- Add LED strip lights inside
- Add wall mounts to the outside of the cabinet to hold the IPad (for APEX Fusion)

…..I’m sure there’s loads more….

But in the meantime, here are some more pictures!

There’s not much room for anything at either side of the tank. If you look really close you can see how the tank was set up with utility hooks running along the wall to the right of the tank, these held all my cables / extension leads off the floor. So with the clear lack of room for anything else, I decided to have the cabinet on the other side of the wall and put a hole in the wall for all the cables and pipes to run through.

The top two shelves are for test kits, dosing powders, maintenance bits, etc. The the mid section is for the equipment board and the bottom section is the house the RO and dosing solutions for the DOS pumps and Auto Top Up.

The only job I had was to draw the equipment layout on the board. As you can see, I didn’t do the best job at lining up the 3 lower cable holes..... ;Facepalm

All the equipment in! I was going to paint inside but I clearly got too excited!!
I was just checking it all fit

Needs painting next, I’ve been meaning to do it today but never got round to it.

I think that’s it on the cabinet build for now. I will update you all as soon as progress is made!

Star reefer3 · Feb 13, 2019

Beautiful platygyra wish I had one like it

Lovemyreef2015 · Feb 13, 2019

Nice! I always wanted a forest fire digi. Following along

Rosie · Feb 13, 2019

Star reefer3 said:
Beautiful platygyra wish I had one like it

Thank you! Its definitely the centre piece of the tank! [emoji2]

Simon Cushing · Feb 13, 2019

Rosie said:
HI Simon!

Do you have a more recent version on the 600 lights with WiFi? I’ve got the older version myself so all the settings are ABC from 0-32.

In percentages they work out at:
Dawn A:3% B:3% C:3%
Sunrise A:3% B:22% C9%
Daytime A:72% B:78% C:56%
Sunset A:3% B:75% C:22%
Moon A:0% B:47 C:0%

I’ve seen a few different set-ups online and I think people mainly aim for around 70% for both white and blue for the daytime settings and just play about with the red setting until they like the look of it. I suppose the other settings don’t really matter as much. I recently asked my LFS what his Iluminairs were set at and he said he didn’t bother with the start light, sunrise, sunset and moon - he just used the daylight setting and also went for 70% for both white and blue, I cant quite remember what he said about red.

Hi Rosie
Like you I have the original version and not the New ilumenair connect which incorporates the wifi settings from your phone. Thank you for updating your settings,I mainly have soft corals so my settings are much lower in percentage compared to yours as you have SPS . I think it down to personal choice how you set the settings. I use them all like you, the important setting is the daylight, blues and whites are the main spectrum as for the reds you don't need them so high as as it promotes Algae.
May I add your reef set up looks great

Rosie · Feb 13, 2019

Lovemyreef2015 said:
Nice! I always wanted a forest fire digi. Following along

Thank you for following! I'm becoming a massive fan of montis and the forest fire is definitely my favourite of the bunch!

Simon Cushing · Feb 13, 2019

Simon Cushing said:
Hi Rosie
Like you I have the original version and not the New ilumenair connect which incorporates the wifi settings from your phone. Thank you for updating your settings,I mainly have soft corals so my settings are much lower in percentage compared to yours as you have SPS . I think it down to personal choice how you set the settings. I use them all like you, the important setting is the daylight, blues and whites are the main spectrum as for the reds you don't need them so high as as it promotes Algae.
May I add your reef set up looks great

My settings are
Dawn 1=A5=B 1=C
Sunrise 12=A 16=B 5=C
Daylight 18=A 28=B 7=C
Sunset15=A 19=B6=C
Moon1=A 20=B1=C

Star reefer3 · Feb 13, 2019

Ok

Rosie said:
Thank you! Its definitely the centre piece of the tank! [emoji2]

What kind of platygyra is it?

Simon Cushing · Feb 13, 2019

Rosie said:
Tank Issues - Green Hair Algae :mad:

I am currently at war with green hair algae (I think I’m actually winning it, but I don’t want to speak to soon).

At its worst it got to the point that I wanted to shut my tank down…. But after having my little boy and spending a lot of time looking at the tank, I decided I wanted to make it enjoyable for the whole family to look at again! So I prepared myself for battle with some rubber gloves and a toothbrush!

You can kind of see the extent of it behind the Duncan coral.... this was the state of my rocks at the top of the tank....It was EVERYWHERE!

I started on the rocks nearer the top of the tank first. I couldn’t believe how well they scrubbed up!

Then a few days later I pulled them all out again to get the rocks at the bottom of the tank. The only rock I couldn’t take out was the one on the left with the large lettuce coral on it. I tried to tackle that in the tank to make things a little easier.

At the time, not many of my corals were glued down to my rocks, so it allowed me to take as much as the rock out as I could.

I set up two buckets and a big plastic sheet, filled one bucket with saltwater and dumped my first rock in for shake and scrub. After every rock I poured the water into the empty bucket over a large fish net, I then sieved out the hair algae and tried keep my bucket water as “clear” as possible for the next rock. Rock by rock I placed it all on the plastic sheet. Once I was all done I decided to re-scape my entire tank which was a lot more enjoyable than scrubbing hair algae….

To keep on top of the GHA I’ve taken the following measures: reduced feeding, set up the TMC Reef Bio Grow and stocked it with chaeto, increased my CUC with a Blue Tuxedo Urchin, an Emerald Crab and some snails. I am also spot treating the tricky areas with Hydrogen Peroxide.

These pictures were all taken around a month ago and I can see the GHA is slowly creeping back again.... So, I will dig out the toothbrush, sharpen those bristles and prepare for battle once more!

I would tone down your reds on the daylight setting that will help as GHA thrives on reds

Star reefer3 · Feb 13, 2019

Rosie said:
Tank Issues - Green Hair Algae :mad:

I am currently at war with green hair algae (I think I’m actually winning it, but I don’t want to speak to soon).

At its worst it got to the point that I wanted to shut my tank down…. But after having my little boy and spending a lot of time looking at the tank, I decided I wanted to make it enjoyable for the whole family to look at again! So I prepared myself for battle with some rubber gloves and a toothbrush!

You can kind of see the extent of it behind the Duncan coral.... this was the state of my rocks at the top of the tank....It was EVERYWHERE!

I started on the rocks nearer the top of the tank first. I couldn’t believe how well they scrubbed up!

Then a few days later I pulled them all out again to get the rocks at the bottom of the tank. The only rock I couldn’t take out was the one on the left with the large lettuce coral on it. I tried to tackle that in the tank to make things a little easier.

At the time, not many of my corals were glued down to my rocks, so it allowed me to take as much as the rock out as I could.

I set up two buckets and a big plastic sheet, filled one bucket with saltwater and dumped my first rock in for shake and scrub. After every rock I poured the water into the empty bucket over a large fish net, I then sieved out the hair algae and tried keep my bucket water as “clear” as possible for the next rock. Rock by rock I placed it all on the plastic sheet. Once I was all done I decided to re-scape my entire tank which was a lot more enjoyable than scrubbing hair algae….

To keep on top of the GHA I’ve taken the following measures: reduced feeding, set up the TMC Reef Bio Grow and stocked it with chaeto, increased my CUC with a Blue Tuxedo Urchin, an Emerald Crab and some snails. I am also spot treating the tricky areas with Hydrogen Peroxide.

These pictures were all taken around a month ago and I can see the GHA is slowly creeping back again.... So, I will dig out the toothbrush, sharpen those bristles and prepare for battle once more!

I'm also dealing with hair alge my fix is cover your tank in cleaning crew