TooMuchDog
Supporting Member
So we started our reefing journey about a year ago with a used 75 gallon tank, stand, canopy, and canister filter we got from a business in the Woodlands. I figured it's finally time to start a build thread.
When we started we used about 50 pounds of live rock, some filter floss, and some little rocks in filter socks inside the canister for filtration. After a few months we attempted some corals and had mild success but saw I was having phosphate problems, so we started with adding a HOB skimmer and some GFO into the canister to help. This still wasn't enough and had me believing it was the rocks leeching. Luckily, we won the algae reactor from the MARSH bingo. Setting that up without a sump proved a challenge because it was leaking everywhere. Eventually we gave in and turned a 15 gallon tall tank into a simple two chamber sump with a HOB overflow and the algae reactor pump as the return pump. This quickly stabilized our phosphates from about .3 to .07ish. We also had a huge algae bloom twice in the tank so we ran the little green machine UV sterilizer from petco to clear that up.
In terms of pumps, we just use two small tunze pumps we got from another reefer as the tank is mostly LPS and doesn't seem to enjoy higher flow. For lighting we have two AI prime 16s and 4 48" T4 bulbs we built into the canopy. Unfortunately these T4s put out enough heat to overheat and shut off the LEDs during the day so we had to get a bit ghetto and put a desk fan in the canopy to pump some heat out.
Currently we are just starting to dose using the kamoer x1 pump. Alk kept dropping down to 6 so we spent a week bringing it up to 9 using soda ash. Now I'm just trying to dial in the daily amount to dose. We also ordered an ATO and need to find an auto feeder because the tank will be alone for a week around Christmas. If anyone has any auto feeder suggestions please let me know.
For inhabitants Camille likes the stranger ocean life to be in the tank. This leads to us having things like:
Tiger tail sea cucumber
Wandering dendro
A huge feather duster
Blue linckia star which surprisingly has made it a few months now, found out they don't live long in the tank after we already purchased it
Many LPS in the tank plus a sherman bta we got when we started that has split once already
A gigantic green carpet anomene that has claimed a whole rock to itself with our pair of clowns as it's defender
A huge engineer goby that loves burying my things in sand
An orange back fairy wrasse and pintail fairy wrasse
A one spot fox face
A yellow eye kole tang
Now for some pictures of some of the tank, which is all that is interesting anyway. I'm sure Cody will recognize a lot of his corals in here.
Engineer goby stealing a whole algae round from the tang and foxface
Left side of the tank with some of our oldest corals. The red goni, elegance, smaller acan, and golden hammer were all some of the original corals we tried.
Clowns and their nem we got from galactic coral about 6 months ago. They started hosting this after we tried to force them into the rbta using a breeder box. There's also our mushroom rock in the bottom left. That red shroom already has two babies on that rock.
Chalice in the back turning into only eyes, foxface being in my face as usual, and our zoa rock.
One of my other favorite fish, our pintail wrasse.
NY Knicks torch we just picked up from TAP anniversary sale.
That's it for now. Let me know what you think. Any suggestions or advice is welcome as we are still kind of new to this.
When we started we used about 50 pounds of live rock, some filter floss, and some little rocks in filter socks inside the canister for filtration. After a few months we attempted some corals and had mild success but saw I was having phosphate problems, so we started with adding a HOB skimmer and some GFO into the canister to help. This still wasn't enough and had me believing it was the rocks leeching. Luckily, we won the algae reactor from the MARSH bingo. Setting that up without a sump proved a challenge because it was leaking everywhere. Eventually we gave in and turned a 15 gallon tall tank into a simple two chamber sump with a HOB overflow and the algae reactor pump as the return pump. This quickly stabilized our phosphates from about .3 to .07ish. We also had a huge algae bloom twice in the tank so we ran the little green machine UV sterilizer from petco to clear that up.
In terms of pumps, we just use two small tunze pumps we got from another reefer as the tank is mostly LPS and doesn't seem to enjoy higher flow. For lighting we have two AI prime 16s and 4 48" T4 bulbs we built into the canopy. Unfortunately these T4s put out enough heat to overheat and shut off the LEDs during the day so we had to get a bit ghetto and put a desk fan in the canopy to pump some heat out.
Currently we are just starting to dose using the kamoer x1 pump. Alk kept dropping down to 6 so we spent a week bringing it up to 9 using soda ash. Now I'm just trying to dial in the daily amount to dose. We also ordered an ATO and need to find an auto feeder because the tank will be alone for a week around Christmas. If anyone has any auto feeder suggestions please let me know.
For inhabitants Camille likes the stranger ocean life to be in the tank. This leads to us having things like:
Tiger tail sea cucumber
Wandering dendro
A huge feather duster
Blue linckia star which surprisingly has made it a few months now, found out they don't live long in the tank after we already purchased it
Many LPS in the tank plus a sherman bta we got when we started that has split once already
A gigantic green carpet anomene that has claimed a whole rock to itself with our pair of clowns as it's defender
A huge engineer goby that loves burying my things in sand
An orange back fairy wrasse and pintail fairy wrasse
A one spot fox face
A yellow eye kole tang
Now for some pictures of some of the tank, which is all that is interesting anyway. I'm sure Cody will recognize a lot of his corals in here.
Engineer goby stealing a whole algae round from the tang and foxface
Left side of the tank with some of our oldest corals. The red goni, elegance, smaller acan, and golden hammer were all some of the original corals we tried.
Clowns and their nem we got from galactic coral about 6 months ago. They started hosting this after we tried to force them into the rbta using a breeder box. There's also our mushroom rock in the bottom left. That red shroom already has two babies on that rock.
Chalice in the back turning into only eyes, foxface being in my face as usual, and our zoa rock.
One of my other favorite fish, our pintail wrasse.
NY Knicks torch we just picked up from TAP anniversary sale.
That's it for now. Let me know what you think. Any suggestions or advice is welcome as we are still kind of new to this.