Woody's 4x3 150g Innovative Marine Build

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I’m in the process of building a 200 INT from Innovative Marine.

I really like the dimensions of that tank. IM frustrated me with the nearly seven month wait for my tank but I appreciate that they are often deeper front to back.

 

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The tank crossed the six week old mark. If you're following along you know all the rocks are 6+ months old but they moved into this tank Oct 6th.

I've told the ugly stage happens at 4-6 weeks. Well, six weeks have passed and I still have brown algae in the sand and on the rocks. The tangs, snails, and hermit crabs keep it from getting too long but it is what it is.

I haven't lost any fish in the move. I have one frammer that isn't doing well so I moved it back to the 25g tank it came from. It may be the only loss, we'll see.

 

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This is a side view of my sump. The back, right side of picture, is the top off reservoir. I learned that it lasts about five days before running out, which isn't enough.

I may eventually plumb it in to my mixing station but since I like to use kalkwasser anyway I set up dosing instead. Now I add a gallon per day of kalkwasser solution (limewater) and the top off lasts about two weeks.

I use BRS sodium carbonate and calcium chloride as my two part solution. I'm told new tanks don't need trace elements yet, that I'll just grow algae with it if I add it. For now, I'm counting on my water changes to handle my trace elements but I'm interested in feedback around that.

The kalkwasser reservoir. (Excuse the wire management, we make a little progress on that almost daily.)

 

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I know it's blue but these are my lights. I thought the two kessil a500x's would do the heavy lifting while the led strip lights added the fill lighting that corals need.

However, at the edges of the tank all the light still came from the center. Some of the corals were looking a little brown on the shaded viewing side.

It makes sense in hindsight but I didn't see it coming. My solution was to grab a pair of Kessil A80's and mount them to the left and right of the fixture. Now I have a stronger fill light from the sides of the tank.

 

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Well, the tank has been running for almost nine weeks now and the nitrates recently hit the upper teens until today when they touched 20 ppm. This is higher than I prefer. My theory is that the bella goby stirred up the sand and released some nitrates. If not that, it's probably my over feeding.

I've been waiting to set up a refugium, I've always had them in the past. Today was the day. My LFS didn't have chaeto but said they use something better. However, the owner wasn't there and the employee didn't know the name of it. I think it's codium but I'm not sure.

I have a pair of Tunze refugium lights so I put them in the water, pointed down, to minimize the light spill. I'm not sure that worked but here we are.

I straightened them out a bit after the picture.

 

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I don't know why I started have PH problems at the eight week point. My alk consumption lowered when my PH went from 8.3 to 8.1 or so.

I had a CO2 scrubber laying around so I figured it was time to set it up. It's worked great. Three days later and I'm hitting 8.4 and dropping to 8.3 (or a high 8.28) at night.

It's set up in a temporary way right now because I'm testing it, considering plumbing it outside or recirculating, etc. Still, I have it and it's been super effective for the tank. ALK consumption and PH are back up again.

 

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The CO2 scrubber media was barely lasting a week. I updated the system to a recirculating CO2 scrubber.

I have a thread with charts that shows the results. It's working really well.

I added a CO2 scrubber (PH charts with results)

I added a CO2 scrubber and thought you guys might be interested in charts/results. This one shows a fairly typical daily PH range and how it changed with the introduction of a CO2 scrubber. Note that I added it on Dec 2nd.

www.reef2reef.com

 

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It's been a minute, this is my update. I'm growing a little hair algae and my nitrates are in the low 20's. It's probably because I'm overfeeding but some of my less aggressive fish don't eat unless it hits them in the nose. I'm still sorting that out.

The hair algae is probably worse than it looks because I remove it a lot. If it wasn't for me, it would be more visible.

My wife and I both dislike wavemakers on the display glass. For that reason we have gyres on the back glass and the flow wraps around and crashes into the middle. It seems to be working but I had to make "bricks" out of rubble and sand because the sand was washing away from the glass. That's why my sand is clean except for the 4" near the glass.

Overall, the frags are growing and the system is maturing. So far so good.

 

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On the equipment side, I made a CO2 scrubber mount. It's simple but I'm happy with the design/idea. It allows me spin open the media canister and to drain it easily. Also, I can slide it out of the way because I like to do my water changes from the sump.

 

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Finally, my dosing game has become more complicated. I dosed BRS 2 part and kalk for a while now. However, I'd added magnesium and vinegar. This picture shows me stirring the calcium chloride. That stirrer was $30 and it came with a magnet/pill for the KH and the CA.

I got it from amazon and it's just the perfect tool for the job.