An aussie's shallow SPS peninsula build

[mixedreeflife]

G'day folks, so the tank is going live tomorrow and I thought why not take this time to catalog its progression.

So some background, I've been in the hobby since 2015, first real tank was a Aqua reefer 300 mixed reef. It was filled with mostly soft coral and LPS, obviously being a beginner I jam packed it with fish and had a ridiculous bio load. Within a year or two, I progressed to wanting to grow some fuzzy sticks and jumped into the deep end. High nutrients and a sump full of detritus put a stop to having any real success with SPS, furthermore all the LR I had soaked up the high phosphates in my tank, suffice it say it was a RTN'ing failure.

Recently I've moved house and with fresh vigour thought, lets give it another crack, armed with the knowledge from rookie errors and ill informed decisions, I'm determined to slay thy fuzzy sticks. Custom build this time, tank and sump from LFS (cheers Milton) and metal stand/light arm self made with a lot of help from a pal (cheers B).

System type: Shallow peninsular SPS

Tank: opti clear 1000x610x410 ( DT volume approx. 241L)

Sump: 800x500x400

Stand: 1300x610x830
40mm metal stand, treated with white epoxy enamel.

Light: ATI sunpower 6x39w
Bulb configuration I'm considering going the 14k look: 3 B+, 2 C+ and 1 P+

Return: Eheim compact 3000+

Filtration: filter socks, Deltec 1350, marine pure big block and will be carbon dosing NOPOX.
Decided against running a refugium, didn't see the point considering how well carbon dosing works.

Circulation: 2 x Jebao rw4 and Tunze 6040.
Turnover will roughly be 40x

Dosing: Kamoer 7 channel dosing alk, ca and mag. Also for the first time I'll be running the Sustainable reefs "“ coral essentials programme which includes, trace A+B+C as well as boron+bromide and aminos.

Aquascape: real reef rock. An open design, minimal rock work so as the SPS grow they will be the focal point. A number of small islands spread across the tank. A larger rock structure towards the back end cascading to smaller rock islands to the front, channelling the fish to the front.

So there you have it that's my build, thanks for reading and stay posted for updates.
If you have any helpful tips or suggestions, please post them up, cheers.

 

[ssgss gogeta]

Keen to see it progress and locked in to follow. looking good so far! Fellow Aussie checking in


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[mixedreeflife]

So yesterday with the help of a buddy, we filled the tank up. I was quite nervous having not had much experience with a herbie overflow but with some patience and adjusting, the tank is close to silent. The deltec 1350 is sitting on my marine pure block and is working a treat, it overflowed slightly at the start but once it got going is producing a nice thick foam.

Slightly naughty and I wouldnt usually cycle a tank with fish.... but I purchased 2 chromis :devil: :devil:
My reasoning is as follows, for the last 5 months my lfs has kept my marine pure big block and about 3L of marine pure spheres in there sump. I've pulled that out and put it in mine along with the 2 chromis. Thus, having fully seeded biological filtration in my sump from the get go should lessen any deathly ammonia spikes... I could be wrong :nut: :wall: but there wasnt much literature on the web about anyone trying this so why not.

Also lastly, one thing I learnt from my previous tank was to go with coarser sand. So I opted for 3mm coral sand, its amazing! No whirlwinds of sand and the water was clear straight away. As I add more wavemakers and jack up the turnover in the tank for SPS, i think opting for coarse sand will be one of the best decisions.

 

[Marou]

Very promissing build! Following along

 

[mixedreeflife]

3 month update on tank: :wavehand::wavehand:
So about a month a go I began to stagger in the coral and fish. First went in a few zoas, they went fine, then an LPS, and finally ordered some nice SPS pieces online. The tank is now made up of plenty of sps frags glue to rock a few small colonies. Theyre all doing great, seeing incrustment and growth. although the strawberry short cake lost its bright pink and is not pinkish brown. So i moved it to a higher light zone, hopefully that helps.

I was battling brown hair algae for a while :headwallblue: and dosing NOPOX wasn't keeping it under control. I then experimented stopping feeding the fish frozen food and started them on new life spectrum pellets. Its been 2 weeks and the algae is gone. (Must have been the excess nutrients from frozen maybe)

Medium term goal is to purchase gyre xf150, for better flow as the coral grow out.

Also, regarding my 6 bulb lights. I was running 3 b+ and 3 c+. Recently about a week ago, I decided to take out one of the c+ and replaced it with true actinic. I did some research, seems that 420nm spectrum is useful for colour and growth, which the true actinic peaks at. Will let you know how it goes.