180 Gallon Azoo Tank

[ReefMonger]

Well I am finally going to do it. I have started the sell off of all my photosynthetic corals and am going to try my hand at an Azoo tank. Merriq tank really inspired me. I am contemplating running the filter in the basement and doing a 3 tier stepdown system.
The water would drain first into a cryptic fuge, then into a regular fuge, then into a tub with skimmers and Denitrator.

My other idea is to keep the 50 gallon breeder tank and run two protein skimmers in there along with a denitrator but no fuge.

What I plan to do is is when food is added to the tank my return pump will be turned off so the food will stay in the aquarium for a few hours before being filtered out.

Flow right now in the tank is a Vortech MP40, Tunze Nanostream, and a korallia 4. I am either going to hook up another MP40 or I was thinking of dropping a mag 12 or 18 into the back of the tank and run some pipes up with penductors on the ends.

Im hoping things are up and running fully by mid to late January. I also hope to keep my Florida Rics with 5-6 hours of VHO light just to fill in the rocks

 

[stunreefer]

Sounds awesome J :thumbsup: I was wondering if you were going to start this...

What type of NPS coral do you plan on keeping? Do you plan on continuously feeding or just several times throughout the day?

If continuous, I might lean towards the triple fuge idea. As you know, the head on skimmers dies down while feeding and if feeding continously I would be worried about the lack of skimmer performance, where the fuge could "back it up" so to speak. With that said I run your second idea more or less, without a Denitrator, but use Prodibio. I do not continuously feed. If you don't run the fuges you'll also want some additional means of PO4 removal... NO3 is covered by the Denitrator, but PO4 will rise so maybe addd a GFO reactor, or I know several NPS keepers who utilize a liquid PO4 remover/neutralizer. Or... probiotics will cover both

I'm a fan of Vortechs, but the Mag would be mighty easy - tough call. You would have the ease of switching out VTs quickly if necessary, which makes me lean toward them (plus low energy consumption).

 

[aninjaatemyshoe]

Very cool. Excited to see the results!

There's one thing though; are you sure you want to run the sump with skimmers right after the two fuges? A good portion of your microfauna (amphipods, copepods, etc.) will be growing in your fuges. If you run the skimmers after the fuge, chances are you'll be skimming out a bunch of them. I would run the sump first or keep the fuges with the tank and have them overflow into the tank.

 

[ReefMonger]

I was just talking to someone today and may do an algae turf scrubber instead.It seems much more efficient than the refugium.

Feeding will be continuous. I got a cool idea how to do from the same guy. Im getting excited about it.

I plan to have a little bit of everything.

 

[aninjaatemyshoe]

What continuous feeding mechanism? Please share.

 

[ReefMonger]

Well he told me about a guy that took one of those wine bottle chillers and would fill a bag full of food and set it in there to keep it cold.

Im going to use one of those along with a maxijet 400 reduced down to 1/4 in line set to a drip. I then am going to plug the maxi into a time that has 15 minute intervals and feed it that way.

For food Im going to start with Coral Frenzy, Oyster Feast, Roti Feast, and Phytofeast and probably try a few of the Fauna Marin products.

 

[stunreefer]

Mike (uhuru) on this forum has a similar continuous feeder. His ELOS Mini is in the ELOS forum... check it out!

We'll have to start NPS swaps in the future

 

[uhuru]

I was advised by Gresham of Reef Nutrition not to mix the foods in one container for too long, refrigerated or not. I now dose separately and am hoping for less problems ... so far so good. I was getting constant bacterial blooms without any vodka dosing. Today I am implementing a modified kalk reactor to dose the FM dendro line, along with foods like cyclopleeze, squid juice, oyster juice. I have a bunch of sun corals I will be adding and I'm hoping this method keeps them open and feeding throughout the day. I look forward to your build! The challenge of keeping NPS corals is truly addictive!

 

[ari5736]

Please let us know how you like the FM dendro line.

 

[GreshamH]

I was advised by Gresham of Reef Nutrition not to mix the foods in one container for too long, refrigerated or not. I now dose separately and am hoping for less problems ... so far so good. I was getting constant bacterial blooms without any vodka dosing. Today I am implementing a modified kalk reactor to dose the FM dendro line, along with foods like cyclopleeze, squid juice, oyster juice. I have a bunch of sun corals I will be adding and I'm hoping this method keeps them open and feeding throughout the day. I look forward to your build! The challenge of keeping NPS corals is truly addictive!

thanks, you saved me from posting the warning

 

[ReefMonger]

Thank you for that tip. Im excited for the challenge.

 

[ReefMonger]

Well I am getting a specra pure litermeter this week and I think I am going to get a mini fridge and drill some holes into it and run lines out of it to keep the food cool. Ill spray foam the holes then to keep the cold air from escaping.

 

[stunreefer]

They make little bulkhead like devices that you can install and run your lines in/out of that keeps the cool air in the fridge. My roomates are into "homebrewing" and I plumbed a fridge for their CO2 line on a quadruple "kegerator" like this... worked perfectly!

 

[ReefMonger]

Well the litermeter fell through. Guy sold it to someone else.

 

[ReefMonger]

I have some medical dosing pumps coming and I think Im going to do the kalk reactor idea over the syringe pump.

This weekend Im going to be building a few algae turf scrubber.

 

[ReefMonger]

Well so far this weekend I cleared out a few more photosyn corals and gutted the refugium and installed an algae turf scrubber. I have been dosing Microbacter 7 the last week also to build up the bacteria also.

And being the impatient person that I am I have a few nonphotos in the tank already.

 

[Romulox234]

Any pictures? Maybe some growth progression shots as time goes on, id be intresting in seeing how it will turn out

 

[ReefMonger]

Here are some pictures of the algae turf scrubber 2 full days into operation. I am going to go and find some thicker plastic grid so I can rough it up more so the turf has something to root into. The tank divider screener is too slick and wouldnt scuff up well without ripping.

Skimmer pulling out some yummies

Now for the azoos

 

[Romulox234]

What does that algae turf scrubber do exactly?

 

[ReefMonger]

The algae turf scrubber is a more efficient way for nutrient control than a refugium. Im giving it a try to see how effective it is. I changed the mesh to a thicker wall more grid style piece of mesh. This allowed me to rough up the mesh better to make it so the turf can root in better.