Vaiodude's 55 Gal Mixed Reef

[Vaiodude]

I have been wanting to put a build thread together for my tank for quite some time, so today seemed as good a time as any to start it.

Back in November 2012 we were shopping at Exotic SuperPet in E Hartford and bought a rare Six-Barred Disitichodus for our tropical community tank. It ended up being their anniversary sale and to make a long story short we won the grand door prize a 55 Gallon Deep Blue reef ready tank, stand, top and light. Having always wanted to start a saltwater tank me and my wife (Aquamama13) were stoked.

We picked up the tank the next day and brought it home and put it in the basement. That would be it home for the next several months. Being that we didn't know much about marine tanks we needed some time to research setting this tank up. Not to mention Christmas was right around the corner so we didn't have the cash to sink into it to get it up-an running.



So over the next several months I spent most of my free on my iPad researching Reef tank setups, livestock and equipment. By the time our tax refund came I had just about figured out where we were going to put the tank and what equipment we would buy. So at this point I spent a bunch of time on Amazon and added all the equipment I would need (or so I thought).

The hardest thing about this particular setup was that the stand only has 9" width to it which really limited our sump options. I finally found that the Aqueon Pro Flex 2 sump would fit in the cabinet if I took the top of that cabinet off. Only downside is once it is in there.....that's it.


Finally in March 2013 The Day came to put it all together, how exciting!

Checking the Sump for leaks:



Adding water to the tank!! Or course with all my research I still was a newbie and added city water!!



Sump plumbing and Skimmer - Coralife Super Skimer 125



Sump shot with Refugium



And Finally a Full Tank Shot let the Cycling begin!!



I will keep adding more of the progress I made..

 

[DarkTang]

Adding city water to test for leaks or used to mix salt?

 

[Vaiodude]

I let the tank run with just the water and sand for a few days to ensure no leaks!

At this point I ordered 70 lbs of live Fiji rock from Live Aquaria and in just a few days it arrived at my door. Time for some aquascaping.



Finished aqua scape



So as the tank cycled I started working on my DIY Auto Top off. Behind our tank is the stairwell to the basement so I was able to make a cabinet to the gravity fed ATO container that I made from a rubermaid trash can. I used an Eshopp float valve in the sump to keep the water level stable at all times. I also Ran a separate 20 amp circuit for the tank and put out let in the cabinet along with my koralia Smart wave unit.



Also after reading more I decided that an RO/DI was a must.

 

[Vaiodude]

Adding city water to test for leaks or used to mix salt?

Unfortunately to mix salt, but immediately I bought an ro/di unit and used ro/di water going forward.

 

[Vaiodude]

After about a month of patience, the diatoms started and the water was testing 0 Ammonia and 0 Nitrites. Time to add a clean up crew.









Once the clean up crew did their Job we bought our first saltwater fish a Sailfin Tang which our girls named Ariel



Finally we bought our first coral. Green Star Polyps!! Like most newbies we thought they were awesome..at least for a little while. Then you read about them being weeds and they are hard to get rid of.

 

[Vaiodude]

Things were still going smooth so we decided to add some more livestock

Coral banded shrimp



Mandarin Dragonet



Clownfish and a Blue Hippo Tang (Nemo and Dory) for the kids



And some polyps

 

[Vaiodude]

Stay tuned more to come. I have to say I haven't looked at these pictures in quite some time and I cannot believe the progress the tank has had over the last almost two years.

 

[Red88rick]

awesome setup

 

[DarkTang]

Very cool and exciting!

 

[fishroomlady]

would love to see some updated pics! I was watching Ellen Degenerous (sp) the other day and they are going to be coming out with a sequel to Finding Nemo calling it Finding Dori I believe. Should be awesome!

 

[Vaiodude]

Very cool and exciting!

awesome setup

Thanks folks!

 

[Vaiodude]

So at this point the tank was around 3 months old. We started branching out to new LFS around the state and found some awesome stores, each with a different lineup of live stock. The addiction had really set in, we were buying new corals almost weekly.

Torch Coral from TCR



Green Hammer, Pulsing Xenia, and a ZOA colony from PC







Blue/Purple Mushrooms, Green Goniopora, and Lobo from Exotic Superpet







In June we joined CTARS and went to our first meeting. We won our first SPS frag. We learned soon that our dual lamp T5 HO Light wasn't going to cut it for SPS.



Full Tank Shot at 4 Months

 

[DarkTang]

Niiice more more please!

 

[Vaiodude]

We continued our coral buying spree..

Duncan and Pearl Bubble Coral from TCR





We went to Collins 1st Annual Old Fashioned Frag swap and came home with some goodies. We bought a favia, a plate coral, a leather and a few other small frags.





As we evolved in the reef hobby we made tons of little mistakes as I think everyone does. This little guy was one of them. We bought the sleeper goby to try and clean up the sandbed because we were getting brown algae all over. We put him in the tank and he disappeared for about 4-5 days. Then he decided to come out and drive me insane. Now I knew going in that they move sand, but this guy made mountains. I would come home from work and corals would be buried and there was huge mountains of sand everywhere. Not to mention all the detritus that he was constantly stirring up. I would fix the tank up and then the next day it was a mess again. After a few weeks of this I decided I had enough. Catching him went better than I could have imagined. I used a clear plastic tube from a syphon and tied a fishing line to the end and put some food inside and laid it on the sandbed. I came home and he was in the tube! Yanked the fishing line threw him in a bucket and went over to PC to get some store credit.



Another mistake was buying a green goniopora without researching them beforehand. After about 3 months it started to slowly decline.

 

[sassAwrasse]

love the plate in post #14 .

I did the same thing with the gonipora. And it was from Exotic Superpet also. LOL.

Nice progress, following along.

 

[Vaiodude]

So after about 5-6 months we started having issues with both of our tangs bothering corals specifically our Duncan. The Duncan was our favorite at this point and the tangs were bothering it so much it had not opened for days, only at night when the tangs slept. When it did open and they nipped at it pieces would actually fall off. We decided that we would need to catch them and bring them to the LFS. We did not realize how difficult it was going to be to get them...sometimes I thought they were smarter than us. Finally after several days, lots of swearing and nets everywhere we caught them and brought them to the LFS so they could find a new home.





At this point we wanted more fish, but decided to go with some smaller fish that would not bother the corals so we went with a trio of Bengai Cardinals. This may be the only picture of them together. After a bit two paired up and the other is a loner and is not allowed near the other two.



We also picked up a lawnmower blenny which is Amy's favorite!



In October of 2013 my in-laws surprised me for my birthday with a 4 Bulb Aquatic Life T5HO fixture to replace the weak dual bulb Deep Blue fixture we had. Ths was a huge upgrade for the tank and one that was needed.



The new light was MUCH larger than the existing fixture so I needed to modify the Canopy to fit the new light. I basically added some fancy trim around the bottom of the canopy to build it up higher and pained it black to match. The new light was awesome.



Full Tank Shot at 8 Months

 

[Vaiodude]

Well the new light fixture was awesome, but I did not take into mind that it was double the PAR with better reflectors. After a few week we developed a bad case of dino's. So much that most of my corals had closed up because strands of dino's were stuck to them. It was a very trying time and I was getting so discouraged as every attempt I made to fix this did not work. Finally I came across a thread about hydrogen peroxide dosing. After reading extensively I decided I had nothing to lose. After two weeks the dino's were completely gone and I was a happy reefer again!! As a bonus we didn't lose any corals..they all came back!

We started adding more corals to the tank now that things were stable again



Won both of these at the Jan or Feb? CTARS meeting 2014

Purple Branching Hammer


Trumpets


Here's a few pictures of my conch's being funny...





Full Tanks shot at 10 months

 

[Vaiodude]

Me and Amy went to the March 2014 CTARS meeting for the St Patty's day feast at the Little Kitchen in Mystic. We had a great time and won some awesome raffle prizes to add to our reef

Power Brown Tang, we had bad luck with tangs in the past but gave it a try. She has been a model citizen



Purple Gorgonian



Full tank shot at 15 months

 

[Vaiodude]

Summer 2014 flew by and I really didn't do much other than maintain the tank.

We were doing well with the Grow out competition though. Think we finished in 4th or so



The end of summer came and so did the Reef hobby itch. We decided to take drive up to Agawam to Aqua Dreams. We were very impressed and came home with a ultra blue maxima clam and a red fromia starfish





Tank at 17 months

 

[Vaiodude]

After about a year our clownfish decided to have our Duncan host him. The Duncan did not dig it at first but after a few days they were inseparable.



Finally decided to buy that purple tipped elegance that we always wanted. Unfortunately It was one from Indonesia not Australia. I looked great for 2-3 weeks then It withered away.



Some updated coral pictures















Finally got a Fire Shrimp and the coral banded get along with him too!



We had a blast at CMAC this year and picked up some awesome pieces from Pacific East and Orange County Corals

Aussie Elegance



Lobo


Pink Goni



We had a great time helping out at CMAC!!



Here is the tank at 20 months....it has come a long way!!!