109 gal Reef Savvy SPS

a tank with great potentials Chris!
i will keep an eye on your tank developments

Thanks Roger. Feedings are Mysis, fish flakes, blackworms, Zeobak, Zeostart, and Sponge Power with an occasional dose of the Pohl's and Coral Vitalizer. I'm also dosing potassium nitrate and vinegar (weaning off the pellets). Here are the par numbers that old saint took recently.

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It's been a week bruh. Anything new we haven't discussed yet?

I put the third doser pump to work today. I'm using it to dose a combo solution of zeofood7, zeostart3, and zeospur for now. The recipe is fairly easy and seeing others dose gave me the confidence to give it a try. I set the doser to dispense 70ml of liquid a day from a 590ml water bottle. In 7-8 days the bottle will be used up. I added 7 days worth of zeofood7 (10drops), zeostart(7ML), and zeospur(7ML) following the recommendations on each bottle for 150 gallons. The rest of the solution is distilled water. Like I said, it should be dispensed over the course of a week.

The only thing I didn't put in the solution is the zeobak. I'll just dose that one manually twice a week as per the instructions.

I know that you keep all of the zeo solutions separate but I wanted to try this combo for now since I just have the doser available. Any concerns?
 
Quick question. Why the vinegar with zeo? Or are your plans to ween off vinegar too?


I'm advised to slowly ween off of vinegar and GFO. The one thing they don't tell you is if it will take 4 weeks or 4 months. Every tank is different so I get that. The vinegar dosage is now only 20ml/day, which is a small dose for 150 gallon system.
 
Here is our latest fish child. He (or she) is a young powder blue tang and he's been receiving a treatment of coppersafe for 10 days now. He's eating well and the bio filter seems to be keeping ammonia in check. He isn't that fond of the video camera being so up close though!

I'm using a seachem ammonia-alert gadget. According to Seachem and others on RC, it is one of the best ways to detect ammonia in a tank being treated with cheleated copper. Ammonia test kits including of ones made by Salifert and API produce inaccurate results when copper is present.

 
What are you using as your flows? I don't see any powerheads in there. Very nice clean tank.

If you don't see the returns then I know the design is working! The goal was to try and hide the returns as much as possible. I also wanted it to be a quiet system with lots of flow to spare. There are actually 4 returns encased in the rockwork with a little help from an inexpensive marine safe epoxy material.

You can kinda tell from the plumbing underneath where the returns are located. The pump is a reeflo hybrid and I'm currently running the smaller 100 watt snapper impeller. The larger impeller creates too much flow for now but later when the corals mature, I'll try to use the larger impeller again.

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Here are some pics up close at the right angles so you can see them clearly.

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109 gal Reef Savvy SPS

Very awesome. Thanks for enlighten my knowledge and thanks for attaching pics to show how it done. Picture does tell a thousand words :)
 
That is a very small PBT hopefully he makes it, but I think he will. Mine is the size of my hand and thick as my hand, I have had him for about 4 years now, I think.
 
That is a very small PBT hopefully he makes it, but I think he will. Mine is the size of my hand and thick as my hand, I have had him for about 4 years now, I think.

Yeah, I'm kinda torn treating him with copper when he has no symptoms of ich but its the right thing to do. I have my fingers crossed that he has the right temperament and won't eventually need a larger tank. If he does, I have a friend with a 500 gal DT that I think will happily take him. Right Wayne?
 
Why do you have to treat him with copper if he is not showing any ich symptoms? I thought after collection, these animals go to all different treatment and systems to gets rid of most wild bacteria and pathogens.
 
Yeah, I'm kinda torn treating him with copper when he has no symptoms of ich but its the right thing to do. I have my fingers crossed that he has the right temperament and won't eventually need a larger tank. If he does, I have a friend with a 500 gal DT that I think will happily take him. Right Wayne?

I will take great care of him in your honor sir.
 
water change system

water change system

<TABLE cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=5 width="100%" border=0><TBODY><TR><TD class=alt2 style="BORDER-TOP: 1px inset; BORDER-RIGHT: 1px inset; BORDER-BOTTOM: 1px inset; BORDER-LEFT: 1px inset">Originally Posted by neuro
Hi RK64!

I was looking through your build thread, and I appreciate the thought you put into the water change system. However i have a few questions if you don't mind answering:

1. What do you do about top-off? Does that conflict with your water change system?

Not at all. I get alot of water evaporation with my setup because there is an A/C vent pushing air over the tank all day (I don't have a chiller). I use a tunze osmolator ATO to replace the evaporated water.

2. I see the reservoir tank that feeds RO/DI water into your water change.
2a: Do you have that automatically filled also through your RO/DI setup from below?

Yes, there is a float valve installed in the 20 gallon RODI reservoir tank up top. The water level drops when the ATO kicks on once a day around 2 AM. The valve goes down and then the RODI kicks in to replenish the reservoir.

This is related... There are two chambers in the sump. One for the skimmer that keeps the water level constant and another where water overflows out from the skimmer chamber and over a glass divider into the second chamber. The level of this second chamber varies depending on evap. The ATO is on a timer nowadays so that it only kicks on once a day at around 2 AM for a max of one hour. I have it setup on a timer this way just because I don't like being bothered by the sound of the ATO pump kicking on every so often throughout the day. A tunze osmolator ATO can keep your water level extremely constant though and the skimmer chamber isn't really necessary. I just like this setup better. The RODI is only working for an hour or so a day right after the top off kicks in.

2b: I see a float switch, did you drill into your glass for that? Sorta, I'm not very good at drilling glass but I had a glass shop drill a 1/4" hole for $15.

2c: I see two pvc pipes in there, I'm assuming one is to pump water out, but the other one I can't tell.
The PVC pipe on the right pumps the water over to the 10 gallon salt water tank used for the auto water changes. There is a small pump connected PVC at the bottom of the tank and I manually turn that pump on once a week to refill the 10 gal.

The PVC pipe one of the left doesn't move water. It is just there to organize the wiring and 1/4" tubing for the ATO pump. The ATO pump is resting on the bottom of the tank at the end of that piece of PVC.



thank you!

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Any time!
 
Our latest addition is now fattened up, copper treated (just in case), and doing well in his new home. He's also getting along just fine with all the other fish.

Felix over at Reef Savvy had recommended building the tank with as much depth as possible since I was getting a matching stand. He said the more depth the better so we went with 28". The stand is custom built to match the tank size and the stand is slightly larger at 30". The door into my office is 31" so that door became the limiting factor on that decision.

Having 28" of depth and a minimal amount of aquascaping provides more swimming space for the fish than a typical 24" depth for a 4 foot tank and I'm really happy with this decision. Here are some pictures that include side views so hopefully you can see the extra depth I'm referring to.



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