Building an SPS Monster- my 1300 gallon SPS display

[tom obrecht]

Any advice on keeping mag anemones in the reef? I'm also interested in not only dwarf angels as we have talked about but either a mag or gig anemone. Any helpful hints?

 

[peder]

I Have a Dream............You just made your life!

 

[copps]

Thanks for sharing the new tank John! I am curious, did you collect many new acros for this tank? If so let's see em How do you go about making sure no pests enter your system? Have you had any coral pests before? I would love to see this setup in person!

I do have a number of Acros I haven't shown... I'll get new pics soon and share them... I go through two levels of QT for all new additions... the first thing I do is set up a temporary quarantine... before things go into my quarantine tank... I use a simple 10 or 20 gallon... with one of my Kessils over the top...

Like all old school guys I dealt with SPS pests in the past... fortunately I left them in the past in the early 2000s. I remember I had Joe Burger (JBNY here on RC) over my old apartment in maybe 2002... all SPS guys had red bugs on their Acros, and Dustin Dorton had come up with the Interceptor treatment... Joe gave me the warm fuzzy and I treated not long after... since then I've used Interceptor for red bugs... not long after that we found out about AEFW. Many acros were killed trying to get rid of those back in the day... and fortunately now we have better dips and protocols... including Bayer.

When I get new Acros they first go into a bucket for about 24 hours to recover from the stress of shipping... in the bucket I do at least a double dose of Interceptor... which takes care of any potential red bugs. After the 24 hours they get a dip in Bayer and into the first stage of QT... I'll monitor... and after three or four days do another dip in Bayer... then another three or four days and another Bayer dip... if I see nothing they will go into my fully set up 60 gallon QT tank, where I forget about them for a few months and let them grow in... I am 100% sure they have nothing when they go into the 60 gallon second stage QT... so that is just an extra layer. You can see that system here... has a 250 watt 20K Radium and Avast Marine Skimmer... a full setup where anything can thrive...

The photo above also shows my the RO/DI I plumbed in. I run RO/DI water all over the house... to my fish room to fill the top off and water change vat... to the water change vat for my fish QTs that I showed earlier, and to this RO/DI vat shown above. In the vat above I use gravity to my advantage... and have 3/4" plumbing going to a few different places outlined in red. It shoots to the left to tweak the water level of my 200 gallon water change water vat if necessary, and then down to the floor for when I need to fill a five gallon bucket with RO/DI... it also shoots to the right where I have two ball valves... one to fill the topoff water to my coral QT tank near the floor, and the other goes into the sink... I rinse all of the frozen food I feed in RO/DI water in a net, so that I limit the nutrients going in to just the food the fish are eating... and not the soupy water that remains when the frozen food is thawed...

With a quick swap out of the union in the bottom left of the above picture I add an extension to fill the 55 gallon tank that serves as the topoff for my large reef system... this allows me to monitor how much I'm evaporating and know if there was ever a leak in the system, and eliminates the potential catastrophe of an endless stream of topoff water going into the system and dropping the salinity...

Wow ,one amazing build thread and a dream tank .
Any idea who sells those angels and hybrid tangs.

Depends which fish you mean... some are unavailable and others are obtainable if you know where to look...

 

[copps]

Also, it's about time I show the 240 gallon... I've always kept a mixed reef... and wanted to keep a gigantea carpet anemone collection... and my Solomon island onyx percs that I've had forever... the female since 2001. As I mentioned above this tank is 5' x 3' x 25" high... and I set it up so that no plumbing is seen... not even the two Vortech MP40s that provide flow can be seen...

This system is down the hallway from the 1300 gallon...

And again the split screen at setup... and when it was finished...

A full tank show early on...

And a top shot...

I love reflection shots...

Even though this tank is only 240 gallon... I set it up to look like a little patch of reef... not like a tank full of rocks stacked like oranges at a citrus stand...

Also like a public aquarium I use a material called Kydex in my aquariums... this is a thin plastic that comes in many colors... I use black... and this allows me to hide all of the seams of the aquarium... and algae and everything to train your eye on the patch of reef... so that it looks like a reef... and not like an aquarium... this is what it looks like out of the tank...

When I'm on travel for a while and don't swap it out it gets overgrown with algae... like this...

But rather than scraping and scraping... I just swap in another piece of Kydex... I keep multiple sets, and clean them with muriatic acid to get all of the algae off and get them fully cleaned... look at the difference when a new set is swapped in... it takes minutes... forget algae scraping! Work smarter... not harder...

 

[copps]

The 240 of course grew in quickly...

Here you can see two different groups of cardinals I have... I love cardinals... so cool to see a fish that will school in even small systems...

The tank got away from what I really wanted to display... so I made room for my anemones... mainly my gigantea collection... I know this is the SPS forum but is there really any animal as beautiful as Stichodactyla gigantea? Here's a top shot of my giant green one...

And I do have many bubble tips in there too...

But they take a back seat to my gigantea... here's an updated shot of the left side of the tank... just what I've always wanted... a BLANKET of all colors of gigantea... from left to right... a multicolor purple... my giant green... a rainbow... and a blue... this species is just incredible...

Copps

 

[fishguy597]

John , can you give a little more info on the kydex ? Is it pretty rigid and does it bow in the tank? I did a quick Google search and what I found was .8 for thickness. I assume you just cut it to size of each panel? Also where did you get yours from? Sorry for so many questions it's just a great idea that I have never seen before. Seems like a great application for acrylic tanks. Thanks in advance.

Btw love your tanks. Long time follower first time poster.

 

[Haksar]

Depends which fish you mean... some are unavailable and others are obtainable if you know where to look...[/QUOTE]

I was referring to those beautiful hybrid angels and blackxscopas tang.

 

[gregkn73]

Wow, unbelievable system. Great commitment from a veteran. And you also skiing
Did you ever think to use a Carlson surge maker to your system? If not why?

At waakiki aquarium, do they use any other flow devices, except Carlson surge makers?

Thanks in advance. Great reading.

 

[copps]

Any advice on keeping mag anemones in the reef? I'm also interested in not only dwarf angels as we have talked about but either a mag or gig anemone. Any helpful hints?

Tom, with Mags and Gigs there are few things that make your chances of success much greater...

1. Be sure to get your anemones in good shape... many times as fresh from the ocean as you can get them is best. If you order them in at a LFS I'd take them in the bag from the wholesaler, assuming the water in the bag looks clear and the anemone looks ok. If you can get them from the Diver's Den that great too... Kevin Kohen is the man...

2. Prophylactic treatment with antibiotics has been a godsend, particularly with gigantea. Look it up and understand it. I drop the Cipro in right after the lights go out, and just before they turn on in QT I do a 100% water change and allow them to be in antibiotic free water during lit hours. I do two five day treatments with two days in the middle to rest. It's brought the success rate of gigantea up significantly...

3. For magnifica, the nice thing is that once placed in a place they're happy, they will not travel over sand or crushed coral. This gave me the ability to keep them in my 1300 without fear they'd travel and mow through my SPS... for gigantea, I came up with another way to keep them happy, and where I want them. I place them in clay flowerpots. Once they're foot is attached they're quite happy there, and it gives you the ability to place them where you'd like, and remove them if necessary for more antibiotic treatment. Here is a shot of a few in they're temporary QT that I treated with antibiotics...

And in their secondary QT... when grown in you cannot even see the clay pot, as shown in my photos above...

John , can you give a little more info on the kydex ? Is it pretty rigid and does it bow in the tank? I did a quick Google search and what I found was .8 for thickness. I assume you just cut it to size of each panel? Also where did you get yours from? Sorry for so many questions it's just a great idea that I have never seen before. Seems like a great application for acrylic tanks. Thanks in advance.

Btw love your tanks. Long time follower first time poster.

Thanks... I got my large order brought in by my buddies at Avast Marine here locally... great guys I've known from long before they started their company... but I've ordered it from here...

https://www.interstateplastics.com/Kydex-T-Calcutta-Black-Sheet-KYDB0T1ST.php?vid=20180309012207-9p

I've used the two thinnest sizes... 0.028 and 0.04 inches thick. I now use the thinner one... because it's easier to get in and out of the tank and curl up around the mass of corals I have growing. You can order a few small sheets and decide for yourself which works best. For most sizes you don't have to worry about bowing... I strategically place a few magnets here and there to hold it in place on the 1300... but on the 240 it holds in place by itself. To cut it you need to score it very carefully with a razor blade knife... only one track... and then bend it along the track and it will snap.

Here's a shot of it at the Steinhart Aquarium... that's another MASNA Aquarist of the year... Rich Ross... another great guy to have a beer with. this is probably the 0.04" in black...

Here's another shot from the Waikiki Aquarium... this aquarium was a great inspiration to me... despite it's lack of colorful corals... Hawaii doesn't have much so they don't have much to work with... but it's setup is incredible... from the front you see no plumbing or anything... your eyes are fooled into thinking it's a patch or reef, despite the relative small size of the tank. here's a front shot of the tank...

From the top you can understand its setup... and looking at it this way you would not believe how stunning it is from the front...

Here's a shot showing the light blue Kydex they use... and a way of keeping carpet surfers in the tank...

Depends which fish you mean... some are unavailable and others are obtainable if you know where to look...

I was referring to those beautiful hybrid angels and blackxscopas tang.[/QUOTE]

Wow, unbelievable system. Great commitment from a veteran. And you also skiing
Did you ever think to use a Carlson surge maker to your system? If not why?

At waakiki aquarium, do they use any other flow devices, except Carlson surge makers?

Thanks in advance. Great reading.

Thanks... the biggest drawback to Carlson surge devices in closed systems is that they produce a temporary burst of microbubbles... this is not really that unsightly as it's temporary... and quite striking... like wave breaking... but the problem comes when artificial lighting like metal halides are used. In Waikiki they use lots of natural sunlight, so this doesn't become an issue. They use many more modern methods of wavemaking technology there now... like the Hydrowizard... but the CSDs are great and hold up for many applications still...

Copps

 

[xiaoxiy]

That Kydex idea is insanely cool. What do you do when the Kydex starts growing algae and misc?

 

[hanas]

xiaoxiy - read above, he incorporates multiple sets of kydex and cleans them with muriatic acid.

 

[gregkn73]

Thanks... the biggest drawback to Carlson surge devices in closed systems is that they produce a temporary burst of microbubbles... this is not really that unsightly as it's temporary... and quite striking... like wave breaking... but the problem comes when artificial lighting like metal halides are used. In Waikiki they use lots of natural sunlight, so this doesn't become an issue. They use many more modern methods of wavemaking technology there now... like the Hydrowizard... but the CSDs are great and hold up for many applications still...

Copps

Did in the past ,kept that beatifull externall tank, with huge sps colonies with just CSD?
do you thing, that a natural sunlit tank, can support sps, with just CSD? Nowdays wavemakers produce a lot of flow, with low Watt demand, but the simplicity of CDS, the lack of parts that can fail and the very natural and huge flow they can produce, is something intriguing, especially if they can be used, as the only mean of flow...

And something irrelevant with flow. Why do you think detritus are so bad for our tanks? Due to increased no3 and po4 they cause, or and something else?

 

[fishguy597]

And something irrelevant with flow. Why do you think detritus are so bad for our tanks? Due to increased no3 and po4 they cause, or and something else?[/QUOTE]

I also am curious about this. I like to hear a little more about your say no to detritus talk that you spoke of on page one. I get that it's basically just waste rotting in your tank. I try to blow of rocks with a turkey baster every so often.What do you do for removal of detritus?
I see you have open rockwork which helps however stuff still settles.

You spoke of using crushed coral for your sand bed along with epoxying it to acrylic under your rocks. Is it pretty coarse? How often do you vacuum the sand bed and do you recommend doing it in sections? How deep is your sand bed?
Thank you

 

[nbcreef]

I've been looking forward to this for a long time. Sincere thanks for sharing your masterpiece.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[ClintY]

You are a systems engineer! That explains the intricate thought and planning behind your setup.

And placing new additions in quantized for months! I guess there is no better way of keeping the bugs out of a monster display with coral grown from frags that are from the beginning of reef central.

This is completely humbling.

 

[biodegraded]

Even though this tank is only 240 gallon...

That got a chuckle out of me.

Great thread. Thanks for taking the extensive time to put it together.

 

[reefried]

Wow great set up...I enjoy reading well written and documented builds as well as different tank theory’s...I like how you said if there is one thing you could tell people is “say no to detritus”.....I tend to believe in this too, but you also see people like Sanjay who’ve had their tank up for ten years and have never vacuumed the sand bed or the sump..(and has had the same skimmer for 20 years!!!) ..or even newer people like Jason Fox who runs an all bare bottom system, and regularly vacuums detritus, while at the same time having a Rubbermaid sump with 300 pounds of live rock that’s next to impossible to vacuum , and is basically a detritus sponge.... anyways great build, love the house too!....and keep the pics coming.....your a reef central legend and a great influence on the hobby

 

[Mark SF]

Also, it's about time I show the 240 gallon... I've always kept a mixed reef... and wanted to keep a gigantea carpet anemone collection... and my Solomon island onyx percs that I've had forever... the female since 2001. As I mentioned above this tank is 5' x 3' x 25" high... and I set it up so that no plumbing is seen... not even the two Vortech MP40s that provide flow can be seen...

This system is down the hallway from the 1300 gallon...

And again the split screen at setup... and when it was finished...

A full tank show early on...

And a top shot...

I love reflection shots...

Even though this tank is only 240 gallon... I set it up to look like a little patch of reef... not like a tank full of rocks stacked like oranges at a citrus stand...

Also like a public aquarium I use a material called Kydex in my aquariums... this is a thin plastic that comes in many colors... I use black... and this allows me to hide all of the seams of the aquarium... and algae and everything to train your eye on the patch of reef... so that it looks like a reef... and not like an aquarium... this is what it looks like out of the tank...

When I'm on travel for a while and don't swap it out it gets overgrown with algae... like this...

But rather than scraping and scraping... I just swap in another piece of Kydex... I keep multiple sets, and clean them with muriatic acid to get all of the algae off and get them fully cleaned... look at the difference when a new set is swapped in... it takes minutes... forget algae scraping! Work smarter... not harder...

I loved this method. I volunteered with Matt when he was at CAS for a little over a year, and my weekly chore was to clean the Kydex (amongst a bunch of other stuff). Pretty unreal how quickly you can clean a dozen or so tanks!

I've really enjoyed reading your thread - I guess I have the passion but don't yet have a tank. I'm currently in the design phase and enjoying the process all over again. Once I get her set up I will be coming to you for a SPS frag pack!

-Mark

 

[YoeriV]

Thank you very much for sharing these incredibly smart solutions. I've managed to work out a comfortable way of working myself, but did have some struggles with the algae cleaning as I like my sides and back to be clean as well in stead of overgrown which gives more depth. Also the color I chose is to bright blue to my personal taste.

But now you've given me the solution for both: the kydex... yet so simple, but I had never heard of it. I'll try to get some in my country (I'm from Belgium)
No more scraping anymore, just easily daily cleaning the front window and swapping out new kydex.. And I can choose for a darker/black color. Thanks for that!

Just a little extra question on it: You wrote that it holds its place on itself, but how does it do that in the front sides towards the front windows? Don't you see a gap there or is it due to it's stiffness that it tends to stick?

 

[Mark SF]

Also, it's about time I show the 240 gallon... I've always kept a mixed reef... and wanted to keep a gigantea carpet anemone collection... and my Solomon island onyx percs that I've had forever... the female since 2001. As I mentioned above this tank is 5' x 3' x 25" high... and I set it up so that no plumbing is seen... not even the two Vortech MP40s that provide flow can be seen...

This system is down the hallway from the 1300 gallon...

And again the split screen at setup... and when it was finished...

A full tank show early on...

And a top shot...

I love reflection shots...

Even though this tank is only 240 gallon... I set it up to look like a little patch of reef... not like a tank full of rocks stacked like oranges at a citrus stand...

Also like a public aquarium I use a material called Kydex in my aquariums... this is a thin plastic that comes in many colors... I use black... and this allows me to hide all of the seams of the aquarium... and algae and everything to train your eye on the patch of reef... so that it looks like a reef... and not like an aquarium... this is what it looks like out of the tank...

When I'm on travel for a while and don't swap it out it gets overgrown with algae... like this...

But rather than scraping and scraping... I just swap in another piece of Kydex... I keep multiple sets, and clean them with muriatic acid to get all of the algae off and get them fully cleaned... look at the difference when a new set is swapped in... it takes minutes... forget algae scraping! Work smarter... not harder...

I loved this method. I volunteered with Matt when he was at CAS for a little over a year, and my weekly chore was to clean the Kydex (amongst a bunch of other stuff). Pretty unreal how quickly you can clean a dozen or so tanks!

I've really enjoyed reading your thread - I guess I have the passion but don't yet have a tank. I'm currently in the design phase and enjoying the process all over again. Once I get her set up I will be coming to you for a SPS frag pack!

-Mark