tas5tas' 237g Total System Build (1 Viewer)

[andrew7b]

Thomas,
The tank is a mess. I'm having a bad algae outbreak for the last 4-5month now. I'm about to break everything down and start over. I'm thinking going BB this time around. How safe is it to placed rock on glass. I seen some do that and some used cutting board. I want tp sleep w/o any worry. I took down the reactor after the outbreak. How your tank doing. Are you getting alot of growth.

 

[tas5tas]

Here is an up to date list of the corals currently in my tank......

SPS

ORA Orange Monti Cap
ORA Blue Voodoo Stag
ORA Turquoise Stag
ORA Brett's Purple Rim Monti Cap
Tyree Superman Monti
Green Pavona
Unknown Teal/Blue/White Acropora
ORA Rose Mille
ORA Cali Tort
ORA Nathan's Green Mille
Purple Tip Acropora Turaki
ORA Joe the Coral
Green Table Acro
ORA Tri-Color Valida
ORA Red Planet Table
ORA Bali Green Slimer
ORA Green Digitata
ORA Orange Digitata
ORA Blue Mille
Tyree Ponape Birdsnest
ORA Purple Digitata
Tyree Idaho Grape Monti Cap

LPS

Orange Crush Acanlord
Green Tip Hammer Coral
Purple and Green Fungia
Teal and Pink Cup Coral
Green Center Candy Coral
Blue Ice Chalice
Pink Eye Chalice
Green Alveopora

Softies

Mantis Zoas
Incredible Hulk Zoas
Pink Panther Zoas
Green Stardust PPE Zoa
Nuclear Sunset Zoas
Solar Zoas
Mettalic Green Star Polyps
ORA Toadstool

 

[tas5tas]

Here are pics of the corals I received for my birthday.......

Tyree Superman Monti

Blue Ice Chalice

Pink Eye Chalice

Purple Tip Turaki

ORA Red Planet Table

 

[tas5tas]

Here are the rest of the corals I received for my birthday.....

ORA Purple Digitata

ORA Green Digitata

ORA Nathan's Green Millepora

 

[andrew7b]

Thomas
Nice ORA collections.

 

[GAW]

Man all of your corals are nice! Jealous I am

 

[tas5tas]

Thomas
Nice ORA collections.

Thank you Andrew.

 

[tas5tas]

Man all of your corals are nice! Jealous I am

Thank you. Everything is finally starting to grow up and out and not just encrusting anymore. I am lucky to have gotten the deals I have on my corals otherwise I wouldn't have but about 20% of what I've got now.

 

[tas5tas]

Ok, it seems that I have either hit the tank maturity stage or some rare sweet spot with my water parameters.......

Over the past week I have had some outrageous growth on ALL of my SPS!!!! Finally!!!

My bali green slimer has sprouted 10 new branches this past week and each one is between 3/8"-1/2" long. All of my monti caps have added around 1/2"-3/4" of growth this week as well. My new frag of red planet has encrusted about 3/8" over the epoxy I mounted it with. My turquoise stag has grown 5 new branches about the size of the new ones on my bali green slimer. My blue voodoo has grown 2 new branches about 1/4" each and has also grown upwards about 1/2". My cali tort has started to branch out as well. There are 2 branches on the top now around 3/8"-1/2" each and 1 on the backside around 1/4".

I am amazed at how a tank can go through a transformation of this magnitude in a week's time. I've had more growth on the acros and stags listed above in the last week than I've had in the 9 months this tank has been setup. I was told by some "experts" that I should notice my tank taking off around December or early January....I guess it came a little early. I will admit that I had started to become discouraged about the lack of growth in my tank and even contemplated selling everything. For the life of me I couldn't figure out what I was doing wrong or what I wasn't doing right. This just goes to show that with the right advice, husbandry, equiptment, and lots of patience anything is possible.

I would like to thank a few people that have made this journey possible so far....

My wife...for supporting me in this venture with SPS
My brother-in-law...for getting me started in the hobby 5 years ago
Mike and Jeremy @ Reef Specialty...for great customer support, prices, and availability of products
SunnyX...for helping to convince me to change to T5's and for his dosing advice
Lrnasd90...for the frags we've swapped and the advice given towards overall setup
Greg @ Reefgeek...for putting up with me and my multiple questions about T5's
Grim Reefer...for helping me get the perfect T5 combo
Melev...for tips with my sump design, tips for photography, and being an overall great person
Colt @ Aquatic Habitats...for moral support, finally carrying SPS frags, and help with system design/equiptment selection
R-ballJunkie...for the awesome hookup on the frags when I first setup my tank
Dobber99...for the insight behind your system and the corals I received from you

SETRS, MARSH, and Reef Central...for educating us hobbiest, your conservation efforts, and for the great relationships formed through your organization

 

[tas5tas]

Tank Update....

Ok, I finally got around to upgrading the return flow of my tank. I added a second Quiet One 4000 to the mix to help boost my turnover from 4.5x-5x/hour up to 9x-10x/hour. While adding the second pump, I also re-did the plumbing on the first one. I took the feed to my calcium reactor off of my return pump and placed it on the maxi-jet 1200 that feeds my GFO and carbon reactors. Now the return pumps have no valves or anything else to cause additional head loss. I can also shut them off to feed without stopping my calcium reactor effluent as well. Hopefully the increased turnover will benefit the tank in many ways......one of which being stabilizing the pH through the night. I may end up adding a kalk reactor to balance the pH during the lights off period and have it run only at night.

 

[decimal]

why so much flow through the return? i thought the generally accepted theory to go with lower turnover and higher flow through powerheads?

 

[tas5tas]

I wanted to increase the effeicency of my in-sump skimmer and to also raise O2 levels to combat my pH falling at night. I have found that having more turnover through the return promotes a healthier tank. I wanted to try the low turnover thing when I set this tank up just to see what the hype was about, but I have not been impressed. I have never had pH issues before and my previous tank's growth rate was much better than this one.

 

[decimal]

interesting.. please let us know if the higher flow through the recirculating system has an impact on your ph stability. i thought everything had taken off and was growing at unprecedented rates. was this after you made the flow changes?

 

[tas5tas]

Everything has started growing really well, but I attribute that to the system being 9 months old and the corals that have taken off recently have been in the tank for 8 months. The flow change was just made yesterday evening around 5:00pm. I can tell you that my skimmer is already pulling more gunk out than usual, which means it will probably have to be cleaned every 2-3 days now instead of every 3-4 days.

The growth I had in my 55g was off the charts!! Even my LPS grew at astounding rates in that tank. The return turnover rate for that tank was 13.5x/hour. I had my hammer coral go from 2 heads to 18 heads in 1 year. The same hammer has gone from 18 heads to 30 heads in 9 months. The are only 2 differences in the two tanks.....

1. The turnover rate..... 55g=13.5 125g=5.0/now 10.0
2. Refugium with DSB..... 55g=yes 125g=no

 

[RR-MAN]

I wanted to increase the effeicency of my in-sump skimmer and to also raise O2 levels to combat my pH falling at night. I have found that having more turnover through the return promotes a healthier tank. I wanted to try the low turnover thing when I set this tank up just to see what the hype was about, but I have not been impressed. I have never had pH issues before and my previous tank's growth rate was much better than this one.

Your low PH could be because you are running a C/R. Were you running a C/R on your previous tank???

 

[decimal]

i would thing the refugium with dsb played a role as well. the fuge should definitely add to the buffering capability. i don't know how big it was or anything of course.

 

[tas5tas]

I wanted to increase the effeicency of my in-sump skimmer and to also raise O2 levels to combat my pH falling at night. I have found that having more turnover through the return promotes a healthier tank. I wanted to try the low turnover thing when I set this tank up just to see what the hype was about, but I have not been impressed. I have never had pH issues before and my previous tank's growth rate was much better than this one.

Your low PH could be because you are running a C/R. Were you running a C/R on your previous tank???

No, but it only drops at night. I reach around 8.13 during the day and it's down to 7.94 before my lights come on. I am thinking of adding a kalk reactor on my ATO, but only letting it run at night to help with ph. I would really like to minimize the swing as a swing of .2 is pretty big. Not sure if it's affecting anything, but I'm sure getting it down to .1 or less wouldn't hurt. I also wouldn't mind being able to keep it above 8, but I think the CARX and VSV dosing are counter acting with the pH. By increasing the return rate, in theory I should be increasing O2 levels which will counter act the CO2 levels and raise pH.

 

[tas5tas]

i would thing the refugium with dsb played a role as well. the fuge should definitely add to the buffering capability. i don't know how big it was or anything of course.

The refugium on my old tank was a nutrient sink. There was so much detritus on top of the DSB it looked like silt from the Mississippi River. That is the main reason I didn't do a sandbed/refugium in this setup. I had a green brittle star and about 15 nassarius snails in there and they didn't stir the bed worth a darn.

I may add a refugium external to the main setup and pump water to it from my return section so that it helps eliminate detritus buildup. I doubt I would be able to keep any macro alive though as what chaeto I had eventually died off a few months ago due to ULNS.

 

[tas5tas]

Ok miracles are possible............

I just come to find out yesterday that since I first set my tank up it's been running between 83 degrees and 87 degrees respectively for the last 10 months. I thought it had been running between 78.5 degrees and 81.5 degrees. Mostly between 78.5 degrees and 80 degrees.

Here's what happened......

Wake up Thursday morning to find several frag plugs knocked out of my frag rack. Stick hand in tank to retrieve plugs......oooh that water feels a little cool. AC/JR says the tank is at 78.5 degrees. I grab the laser thermometer that my dad brought me home from work.......83 degrees!!!!! Double check......83 degrees!!! Check the temp of the sump.... 83 degrees!!!!

Ok..I begin to panic.....but don't change anything yet. Tell my wife to pick me up a stick on glass thermometer and a digital thermometer from the LFS on her way home from work. She gets home and the digital doesn't work...the LCD display is wigged out. The stick on glass reads 84 degrees!!!! We go to Wal-Mart to go grocery shopping and I pick up another stick on glass thermometer and an indoor/outdoor digital thermometer. Come home and stick the glass thermometer on the sump..... 82 degrees!!!!! Ok, next I put the sensor for the digital in the sump and it reads 83.4 degrees!!!!!

Ok...now I take an average of all the thermometer readings and average them and recalibrate the AC/JR. The AC/JR now reads 83.1 degrees.....so I reprogram the AC/JR to slowly start bringing the temperature down over the next few days.


This could be the reason for ALL the issues I've had since setting the tank up...

1. Slow growth
2. pH instability
3. Some SPS Bleaching

Here's the positive.......

I have been able to keep everything alive(so far) in these extreme temps. By lowering the temps to the 79-80 degree range it should accelerate growth. Also, lowering the temperature to where it needs to be will increase the oxygen levels in the tank therefore stabilizing the pH better. I am really looking forward to the positive effects this should have on the tank. Growth has been alot better the last 2 months, but I feel it should explode now.

Moral of the story....
Always have a backup thermometer.....or 2 or 3 or 4. just because the one you have is attached to a $$$$ controller doesn't mean it's correct.

 

[crvz]

I hope this is a means to more success, but I don't at all think 87 is an extreme temperature (natural reefs often hit summer high temps in the 86-87 degree range); especially if the corals have been acclimated to it over the last few months. I'd be very cautious trying to lower temperatures as much as 8 or so degrees in quick order. Also, growth is usually increased as a result of higher temperature (which corresponds to higher metabolic rates).