pleasants9
Member
I recently purchased a running 125 gal system. After driving the system the 2 hours back to my house in jacksonville and spending the rest of the afternoon setting it back up. It has been running now for 2 weeks. The system came with no coral other than a toadstool, some damsels, yellow tang, blue tang, purple dottyback, and coral banded shrimp. The system was using 3x165w black boxes for lighting. Dual-overflows plumbed in, with the drains going into a wet/dry. The wet/dry has the water dumping into an empty chamber which flows into the next chamber housing a reef octupus in-sump skimmer along with chaeto and an ATO. It then flows underneath to the last chamber where the intake for the external return pump (DART pump) is along with a small pump to feed a BRS dual reactor, and another small pump to feed two little fishies reactors with bio-pellets.
The previous owner was selling due to limited time to up-keep. It seemed he had an issue keeping corals and the tank had a fair bit of hair algae.
Once I got it home, I first took all the damsels to the LFS because i know i wasn't going to catch them again. I kept the sand in the tank during transportation slightly covered with water, so the rock went back into the tank, and all the water I was able to tote added back. This totaled maybe 40 gallons of water, to which i put a small external powerhead in the water to keep movement. The process of mixing saltwater to fill the tank began, while I left the livestock in their bags for a few hours until i could get some more water in the tank. By the evening I probably had about 70 gallons of saltwater in the display and all the fish acclimating to the tank to which i put them back in an hour later and let the RO unit spend the evening making fresh water. Unfortunately the next morning the blue tang was breathing heavy on its side at the bottom of the tank while the yellow tang and CBS were still doing fine. I left the lights off and finally had enough water in the tank to run the pump and start the tank by the end of the second day. I added in an MP60W to the tank and a 20lb bag of sand to the system and let it go. Unfortunately 2 days later i found the yellow tang also dead on the bottom of the tank.
It is now two weeks since then and the purple dottyback is doing well along with the CBS and leather. I decided to remove all 4 of the reactors and simplify the system. I have the lights running now with white from 1100-1500 at 35% and blues 1300-1900 at 60%. The return pump was periodically kicking out bubbles from what i believe to be cavitation which has been resolved with slightly throttling the ball valve on the return feed. The digital thermometer that came with the tank was consistently reading 79-80 F so I purchased a 1/10hp chiller to keep it below 76F along with an APEX JR both of which i was able to secure used for $300 total from a local reefer. I bought some $10 frags of a poccilopora, acro, millipora, and montipora about a week ago to see how they fare and so far are doing well.
https://imgur.com/a/lqvfefW
The previous owner was selling due to limited time to up-keep. It seemed he had an issue keeping corals and the tank had a fair bit of hair algae.
Once I got it home, I first took all the damsels to the LFS because i know i wasn't going to catch them again. I kept the sand in the tank during transportation slightly covered with water, so the rock went back into the tank, and all the water I was able to tote added back. This totaled maybe 40 gallons of water, to which i put a small external powerhead in the water to keep movement. The process of mixing saltwater to fill the tank began, while I left the livestock in their bags for a few hours until i could get some more water in the tank. By the evening I probably had about 70 gallons of saltwater in the display and all the fish acclimating to the tank to which i put them back in an hour later and let the RO unit spend the evening making fresh water. Unfortunately the next morning the blue tang was breathing heavy on its side at the bottom of the tank while the yellow tang and CBS were still doing fine. I left the lights off and finally had enough water in the tank to run the pump and start the tank by the end of the second day. I added in an MP60W to the tank and a 20lb bag of sand to the system and let it go. Unfortunately 2 days later i found the yellow tang also dead on the bottom of the tank.
It is now two weeks since then and the purple dottyback is doing well along with the CBS and leather. I decided to remove all 4 of the reactors and simplify the system. I have the lights running now with white from 1100-1500 at 35% and blues 1300-1900 at 60%. The return pump was periodically kicking out bubbles from what i believe to be cavitation which has been resolved with slightly throttling the ball valve on the return feed. The digital thermometer that came with the tank was consistently reading 79-80 F so I purchased a 1/10hp chiller to keep it below 76F along with an APEX JR both of which i was able to secure used for $300 total from a local reefer. I bought some $10 frags of a poccilopora, acro, millipora, and montipora about a week ago to see how they fare and so far are doing well.
https://imgur.com/a/lqvfefW
