Scoto's Equipment Room Build + 8ft Tank (1 Viewer)

[Scoto]

Little bit since an update. The tank will imminently be delivered so I've been getting everything ready to basically plug and play the day it arrives. First, I painted the wall behind the tank a nice dark green, I think it will go really well with the black stand (while not also being black) and green won't clash with blue lights (is my thought). Also I just liked the color. Started planning out a few holes for running plumbing through (and got unlucky with a wire on the placement of the overflow pipes hole. I'm planning to plumb then seal the space with some expanding foam, reckon it'll be okay?

The brute has about 150lbs of rock in it, it's been fully cycled for a couple of weeks now so I'm just feeding it fish food every day or so to keep the bacteria load fed. I have another 80lbs dry sitting in boxes ready to go. Over the course of 3 or so weeks I added a bunch of different bottled cycle starting bacteria, I have no idea if they all use different strains or what but I figure diversity never hurts.

Did some more work on the fish room, got the sump in place and about half of everything wired up. I feel weird having the sump just on the ground but seen plenty of other people do it like that so figure it's all good.


And final update was I got a quarantine tank up and running and the first fish arrived today, trying out a small haram of black ice clowns. They were shipped from Cultivated Reef who picked them all from the same clutch for me, I got excellent customer service and the fish were packaged well if anyone is thinking of ordering from them. Everyone seems lively and healthy so far. I'll probably keep them here for a good while under observation though. Also they're in my office so nice to have some company there.

 

[Tangs]

Awesome tank. You have a lot more patients then I will ever have.

 

[Scoto]

Update on the clowns. I'm guessing one had a rougher time in shipping and has developed an eye discoloration/abrasion in quarantine. It's not full on pop eye, mostly just cloudiness and a bit of a distorted lens. He has been separated from the others into a breeder box for now. He eats well but is a target for bullying and just seems a little weaker/seems exhausted by the flow so was picking low flow areas. They're at day 6 of copper combined with some metroplex and I've been umming and ahhing about just draining it all and adding new water to give him something else to help with the eye then going back for a second go at the copper. Thoughts?

 

[soymilk]

seems like might be bacterial or possibly flukes.

have you tried a freshwater dip just to rule out flukes?

 

[Scoto]

seems like might be bacterial or possibly flukes.

have you tried a freshwater dip just to rule out flukes?

Tried a methylene blue dip today, it's so gentle I figure it can't hurt. Their appetite has really picked up now and everyone is eating great, so I'm not worried about anyone going down hill. I think another has a similar looking discoloration coming on his chin but hard to say yet. The eye has looked basically the same for the last few days so its not progressing either.

 

[Tangs]

Good luck with your clown fish.

 

[Scoto]

Fish tank is here and full of water! Lots happened the past weekend or so.

Getting a pic that is decent with all the glare is a little difficult, but you get the idea. Sump pic included as well. Next problem I'm now moving onto is humidity management while we wait another few weeks and let the dark cycle continue while waiting for the clowns to complete quarantine. Got some fans for the canopy (real nervous about cutting some holes but it needs to be done, that thing will rot without them given how enclosed it is) and not sure yet for the fish closet, might just need some ventilation on the door. I also need to raise the overflow pipes at the moment, the water is dropping a little too far at the moment and it's making more noise than I would like.



Clownfish update - I dropped the copper to switch over to some prazipro to try and treat that cloudy eye, I've also been doing a methylene blue dip once every couple of days, usually for about 20min. The eye is looking much clearer but he is still a bit listless, seems put off food now, and hides from the other clowns if he's not in his box. So progress I think. Unfortunately while transferring him for a dip as well he got a little scrapped against the side of a plastic container (he went to wiggle out the side just as I closed the scooping container I was using against the glass so he got squished for a moment by the lip of the container) so has a bruise as well which is probably not helping him feel better . Poor little guy. The other five are fat and happy and doing just fine. We have a few stringy white poops so need a good protocol for some internal parasites maybe (I didn't think prazi did great against internals?)

 

[soymilk]

i think the go to for internal parasites is mixing api general cure with focus and frozen food. general cure has metro and prazi

tank looks great so far. so cool your water reserves are so close to your sump. water changes gonna be so easy

 

[Tangs]

Wow looks awesome and a lot of thought put into building it.

 

[Scoto]

Update for the weekends work. Installed some fans on the canopy that has the humidity completely under control. There is one on each end, one pushing and the other pulling. Long term, I'd love to hook them to the Apex with a humidistat controlling them or something but honestly running them constantly on the lowest setting is working great. I also glued some craft foam to all edges of the fan to help vibration, they are about as loud as the power heads and get lost in the hum of the tank now.

 

[Scoto]

This weekend we finally got lights on the tank! So I can finally do the first full tank shot where it looks like it might just be a reef tank yet!



Went with 2x 48" Reef Breeders Photon fixtures. My only complaint so far is that one seems to be having a hard time syncing the time and is an hour off the programming of the other one. It's very weird. But as far as budget options go I think they're a great choice so far.

We also had our first accident. So I moved the 5 clowns that were happy and healthy out of quarantine (the bug eye one is still staying in the quarantine tank till his eye clears up more, I'll post more pictures soon - the swelling has gone down but I don't think he can see fine detail yet and I have to feed him in his breeder box cause he can't find food otherwise, I'm a little concerned his vision won't come back properly :/).

Anyway, the two gyres on each end of the tank I had alternating on and off with about a 1min interval, so 1 min left, then 1 min right, etc. I gather one of the newly introduced clowns being a complete idiot decided to investigate the gyres a little too closely while it was off... I'm guessing it suddenly came on while he had is head between the bars of the guards and it essentially bisected him . I have never seen anything like it before. I fished him out before his siblings decided to eat him but it was a pretty disappointing start even if it was a freak incident. Experience tells me though that if there is a way for an animal to kill itself in the habitat your create for them, they will eventually kill themselves so lesson learned quickly at least. I've set them both now to a wave function so neither is completely off to help discourage curiosity.

I also picked up a 55G so goal is to start quarantining a tang gang for the tank next, now lights are on I'm expecting the ugly stage to hit hard and fast, even if the rocks had a good 2.5 months of cycling in the dark.

 

[Scoto]

Been a while since an update, this has been an interesting tank start and not as smooth as I hoped.

Been fighting some bacterial blooms in the main display which seem to be replacing my ugly phase. I've had barely any diatoms and only just now am I starting to get a film of algae on the rocks and glass which is nothing like the early tank phase that my previous tank had. I've never used UV on my tanks before, but this slight cloudiness just will not budge so I'm thinking about it.

The plus side is my water change system is great and a total breeze which was my pain point on my previous tank. I've been doing around 10% every 2-3 weekends and Nitrates are steady 3-5ppm ish and barely detectable phosphates, but it's not like I'm feeding heavy with so few fish.

Added two tangs to the main tank - a powder blue, a yellow eye kole, and an attempt at a powder brown. I was hoping I could be that exception that could get the two powders to get along and maybe with more tangs to disperse aggression it could have worked out. They were fine quarantining together, a little territorial with each other, but once in the DT the fighting got rough and the powder brown got re-homed. The blue was fatter and I liked him more so he got to stay. So just the two tangs for now.

Also added some starter corals - got some blastos, some clove polyps, a hammer, and trying two different colored leptos as well.

No photos, everything looks like trash through my camera phone, I have some little clip on lens on my holiday wishlist so maybe once I get those I can post some updates.

Finally update on the bug-eyed clown - he'd been looking much better after hanging out through quarantine with the tangs so I tried adding him to the DT. Found him dead in the filter sock the next day . I dunno if he got stuck in the overflow in the first night and sucked down to the sump and that killed him (I've fished one of the other clowns out of the overflow when they first went into the DT, but they didn't go down any of the pipes), or if he died and that's just where the body ended up. So disappointing to have put so much work into trying to get him to come good.

 

[Scoto]

I lied, I took some some photos and did my best!

 

[BigRick]

Looking real clean.

 

[soymilk]

looks great, I really like the tile under the tank. makes me wanna try the same. But i'm too afraid to make such a commitment lol

 

[Scoto]

looks great, I really like the tile under the tank. makes me wanna try the same. But i'm too afraid to make such a commitment lol

Given we renovated the closet behind this wall for the sump/equipment, we were pretty 'all in' on the tanks location so adding tile was kind of a no brainer (also cause we hate the flooring, nothing wrong with it I'm just not a fan of dark colors but it came with the place) so wanted to give ourselves a way in the future to swap the flooring out without having to contend with moving the tank.

 

[Scoto]

So weird question for you all. I bought a frag of blue sympodium and I'm having a really hard time getting it to stay in place. It seems to excrete something or shed an outer layer and keeps coming free from the plug and super glue. It's looking miserable cause it ends up in the sand covered ever few days and then I pull it out and glue it again hoping it'll stay put and settle in. Any ideas??

 

[Seaworthy Aquatics]

So weird question for you all. I bought a frag of blue sympodium and I'm having a really hard time getting it to stay in place. It seems to excrete something or shed an outer layer and keeps coming free from the plug and super glue. It's looking miserable cause it ends up in the sand covered ever few days and then I pull it out and glue it again hoping it'll stay put and settle in. Any ideas??

You can treat them like loose mushrooms to get it to attach. Put it in a container of some sort with rubble and it should grow to it. Then you can take said piece of rubble and glue it where you like. Warning though that these things are crazy invasive and will completely take over a tank and I usually toss anything I find with them attached.

 

[Scoto]

You can treat them like loose mushrooms to get it to attach. Put it in a container of some sort with rubble and it should grow to it. Then you can take said piece of rubble and glue it where you like. Warning though that these things are crazy invasive and will completely take over a tank and I usually toss anything I find with them attached.

I have an acrylic introduction box I'll try it in with a small rock. It's a calculated risk introducing it! I was very carefully to get blue sympodium not blue clove polyps which is apparently much slower growing and either way I have an 8ft tank to fill and I like polyps!

 

[BigRick]

I have an acrylic introduction box I'll try it in with a small rock. It's a calculated risk introducing it! I was very carefully to get blue sympodium not blue clove polyps which is apparently much slower growing and either way I have an 8ft tank to fill and I like polyps!

Blue clove polyps are a nightmare... they reproduce asexuaully releasing hundreds of eggs into the water column.