Variant's Acros n' Nems

[Variant]

Things just got a bit serious....

Immediate impressions... tons of freebies (although I did spend $$$). A couple DOA (one I ordered and one freebie). Overall, great buy. Time will tell how the frags settle in...

 

[Janci]

Excited!!

 

[Clayton Jessup]

Absolutely beautiful system @Variant! The choice of equipment is absolutely TOP OF THE LINE!! I love Shallow Reef builds , looking forward to yours! Cant wait and following along!!

 

[Janci]

Things just got a bit serious....

Immediate impressions... tons of freebies (although I did spend $$$). A couple DOA (one I ordered and one freebie). Overall, great buy. Time will tell how the frags settle in...

So, what was in the box?

 

[blackizzz]

 

[Clayton Jessup]

Any updates on the tank @Variant ?

 

[Janci]

Yessss.... an update please!

 

[Variant]

Man it has been a really long time since I've updated this thread... While life has definitely been busy, I blame the fact that I didn't have a good camera to take pictures. That's all about to change now that I got a proper dslr + macro lens setup

More updates to come but here's a quick teaser picture. Still trying to figure out this photography thing!

 

[Aheinz]

Man it has been a really long time since I've updated this thread... While life has definitely been busy, I blame the fact that I didn't have a good camera to take pictures. That's all about to change now that I got a proper dslr + macro lens setup

More updates to come but here's a quick teaser picture. Still trying to figure out this photography thing!

Love the photo, and totally understand the busy life, mines the same way

 

[Variant]

As promised, here's a more fulsome update. I'll start off with a tank shot and a walkthrough of what's been going on. I'll sprinkle a few photos I took with the new camera.

FTS 01.31.2020

Lighting today... I'm still using the ATI T5+LED powermodule and overall I'm happy. I changed out the bulb combo to 4 B+, 2C+, and 2 True Actinic. Only complaint is that I don't know what the pay level is in the tank. Colors of some of my acros have paled and after testing my water at home and via ICP, it's not a nutrients issue. Good news is I finally bought a Apogee MQ 520 so I can test the par. I figured I'll be replacing bulbs, tweaking LED settings, trying new bulb combos, so might as well invest in my own par meter.

Lighting in the future... I don't have any plans on making changes to lighting other than taking apart the powermodule to get the outer metal frame powder coated white to match with the rest of the setup. I know a lot of reefers really like the blacked out look, but to me, the black seems to take away from the setup since my walls are white. Would also love to white out that thick black cord in the back too.

Male Resplendent Anthias

That Ugly Pipe... you'll notice quite a few things changed here. I now have a 1" over the top return pipe. One of the mistakes I made with this tank was underestimating the amount of flow restriction a 1/2" return was going to be. While I had a Red Dragon 50W to combat the flow loss, this meant the velocity of my return flow was intense. Whenever I turned the return on/off, it would spew water like a firehose. Plus loc lines made the matter worse. So now I run an over the top return with a siphon break hole drilled right under the water level.

Clutter on the Rim... Because of the frequent traveling I do, the tank runs on its own for at least 25% of the time. With fish like an anthias, it was critical to make sure I had something that could feed multiple times a day. So I added the Eheim feeder. After coming back home from my 2-3 week trips, I would always be surprised at how much my acros grew, but saddened by the dried up fish that were on the floor. I've lost 2 female anthias and my male now runs solo. I decided it was time to add a mesh top.

Re-Designing the Top... I despise mesh tops. Not because the designs themselves are bad, but the glare from the mesh, plus the tiny little squares from the mesh really cause visual distraction from me. On top of that, I now have a fan, auto feeder and a return pipe cluttering the top of the tank. I plan to solve this by using white cast acrylic to create a 4.5" open-top canopy rim that will sit on the top of the tank. It'll hide all the clutter and what was previous a bunch of small visual distractions will be a nice white covering that will blend well with the wall.

Yellow Eye Kole Tang

The Inhabitants... with two anthias dried up on the floor, I now have two clownfish, a male anthias and a yellow eyed kole tang. My cleanup crew consists of a single turbo snail and a few trochus snails, which apparently gave birth to several babies. With the two female anthias out of the picture, I'm thinking about adding replacement fish. Currently, I have the diamond tail flasher wrasse and half banded flasher wrasse in mind.

The rock... I ditched the Tampa Bay Saltwater live rock and switched it with Marco rock, specifically the shelf rock and a foundation piece. The anxiety that the parasitic isopods caused me for 3+ weeks on a daily basis, trying to save my fish and seeing bite marks all over the fishes' bodies did me in. I drained the display tank, threw out the TBS rock, put my new rock structure in and filled it back up. My sump and plumbing still have the original water so the biological process was seamless and I didn't really experience a cycle luckily. Plus, now my rockrock is lower in the tank, giving more room for acros to grow vertically. Plus I have tons of overhangs to create shadows that make the aquascape look more interesting.

Green with Purple Tip Microclados

Supporting the Sticks... Having spent a decent chunk of change on both generic wild and branded aquacultured acropora, I definitely have a lot riding on my corals not only living, but thriving. To aid in reducing my anxiety, I now added a KH Director from GHL. Setting it up was easy and straight forward. In such a technological world, I don't understand the stigma that GHL products are hard to set up. Given how helpful the KH Director is, I also pre-ordered the Ion Director to help me further track my elemental uptake. I'm particularly keen on monitoring nitrate since nutrient levels seem to bottom out when I am away from my tanks. This is probably due to higher pH > faster calcification. I use my KH Director to check for increased alk consumption to supplement it, but currently don't have an informed way to do this for my nutrients.

The Supplements... With just a roller mate and a skimmer, my nutrients are controlled pretty easily so I make sure to supplement the water with whatever my acros need. So far, I dose a series of Korallen Zucht products. I use Flatworm Stop, Coral Booster, Phols Xtra, Coral Vitalizer, Sponge Power, and Coral snow on occasion.

Blue and Purple Kimbeensis

Underestimating Electrical... I completely underestimated the space you really need to house all of your electrical equipment including your wires and the powerbars. With continual additions of equipment, I realized I had no space under my stand. I now have four powerheads, one return pump, skimmer, UV, Rollermat, Fan, two heaters, two doser 2.1s, KH Director, soon an Ion director, and the list goes on. So I ended up gutting the top side of the stand where my electrical equipment was originally housed and rehomed them. I'm still thinking through how I'll best organize and display them, but this dilemma definitely made me think about upgrading to a larger tank so I could have more space underneath for all of the equipment.

Green Tipped Torch

Reflecting on 2019... I learned a lot and I hope to see more success this year. I'm listing a few things I learned to remind myself not to make the same mistake again.

• Always oversize returns and drains
• Make sure sump can handle high flow or else you'll hear waterfalls between baffles
• Make sure 30-50% of the space in the stand is dedicated to equipment
• Use external overflow box instead of having any parts inside (even a ghost overflow)
• A shallow tank might seem cool, but mastering high flow is going to be challenging
• Positions all your pumps on the bottom of the tank means the detritus will sit on your rock work
• Always have a mesh top, always opt to have a nice tall trim +4" to hide the mesh top, fans, plumbing, and feeder
• Always remove the magnets off the frag racks when moving them, they'll scratch the tank otherwise
• Don't change major things just for one coral
• Relax, stay calm and just enjoy the tank

 

[blackizzz]

Very nice reflections Variant, and tank is looking great! Glad to see a full update

 

[Variant]

Got in some custom cut cast acrylic this week to build my faux white open top canopy to hide all the clutter that ended up building on the top of the tank. It nicely hides the mesh screen top, auto feeder, return plumbing and fan. Need to build in the custom fan ports on the backside but that'll be for next week.

Quick Friday Tank Shot

Inside the Canopy

Snail Patrol

 

[Clayton Jessup]

The tank looks amazing @Variant ! Very jealous of your set up , I hope mine gets to look like yours one day !

 

[Janci]

Great to see this progress and amazing shots.

 

[Janci]

@Variant, how is the tank doinh nowadays?

 

[Variant]

@Janci I recently moved so I am taking the opportunity to upgrade to a slightly larger tank. Roght now everyone is in a big rubbermaid bin.

Surprisingly everything is doing okay withput any filtration other than rock and weekly water changes.

 

[Janci]

Glad to see you are still around.
Congrats on the move.
Let us know more about the new tank when it is there!

 

[dbowman5]

looking forward to updates

 

[Janci]

Hi @Variant
I hope all is well and the new tank is up and running.
Would like to hear more about it.

 

[Variant]

Talk about life getting in the way of a decent build thread update! I had my first kid several months ago so things have been busy to say the least. But with the year quickly coming to an end, I wanted to document where I am with my tank(s) for future reference.

So my shallow reef become two tanks... an Elos 100 system which is now my acropora tank and a specimen tank to house my beloved blue gigantea. Two quick full tank shots below. Both tanks have reached a point where they're "boring" because they're on auto pilot in many ways, which is a major reason for me to bust out the old DSLR and take up photography.

Acropora Tank:

Gigantea Specimen Tank: