Building an SPS Monster- my 1300 gallon SPS display

[copps]

Thanks guys... for those that had been asking and looking for frags (or colonies) from my system I posted my first frag sale thread since 2018 here...

http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2704820

Thanks,

Copps

 

[OrionN]

Anemones have always been my passion. I would love to see good pictures of your anemones.

Are your tanks connected? Love to read more about your anemone tank.
Beautiful tanks and corals and few anemones that I see.

 

[copps]

Anemones have always been my passion. I would love to see good pictures of your anemones.

Are your tanks connected? Love to read more about your anemone tank.
Beautiful tanks and corals and few anemones that I see.

Minh, thank you for your comments, and for your contributions here through the years. I admire and share your passion for anemones!

I've always had a particular passion for magnifica and gigantea anemones. I've owned the same three magnifica and four gigantea for years now.

Below is a shot of my three magnifica situated on an island in the center of my 1300 display. When my displays were smaller I was never one to want to keep anemones with my sps. With encouragement from fellow NY Italian Joe Yaiullo I bucked this fear making an island in the center of my display. If magnifica are happy with their spot, they won't walk across a sandbed and will stay put on their rocks... and this has held true for years now.

I started with the standard (but beautiful) bright purple base magnifica. This is shown to the left in the photo below. The center anemone is the blood red base type, and actually glows green under blue light. The third magnifica to the right is an incredible specimen and bright purple. This shot is a bit dated and these three have grown huge... and what a site they are!

In the above shot you can see the one large blue gigantea I keep in the 1300. After years of keeping gigantea I've realized them to not really eat healthy fish. That, combined with my ability to keep gigantea in place by getting their foot attached in a flower pot, gave me the confidence to put a gigantea in the 1300 a few years ago. This tank gets blasted with light and this particular gigantea has grown at a much faster clip than the others I keep in my anemone tank. The anemone tank has 400 watt 20K Radiums... my display uses 400 watt 14K Ushios, along with other supplemented light. I do not supplementally feed my anemones, except on rare occasions to show friends how they close like a venus fly trap.

My anemone tank is attached to my large system... the whole system is about 1950 gallons, which includes the 1300 gallon display and the 240 gallon anemone tank (5' x 3' x 25"). I need to get updated shots of my gigantea... but here is a good shot that shows them. This shot actually shows four gigantea... I got rid of the small "rainbow" gigantea towards the back to allow space for the others... I'm more of a white light guy and this anemone just didn't pop like the others... To the left in this shot you'll see a purple edged gigantea with a bright green center. On the bottom right is a solid blue/pruple gigantea, and in the center is my giant glowing green guy... about two months ago I came down to the basement to find the anemone tank cloudy, and this green gigantea stock in a still spinning MP40... I turn the MP40 off, got a razor, and sliced about a 6" piece off the anemone. Fortunately within days this anemone was healed, but it did give me a bit of a scare.

Thanks again Minh, and thank you to all who've enjoyed my system.

Copps

 

[OrionN]

Lovely. Thanks.

 

[Gig 'em]

Looking forward to the updated nem pictures!

 

[mansorinc]

Wow, this is a dream tank.. absolutely beautiful. I have a 135 gallon reef tank and I can barely keep up with it. This is stunning John keep up the good work


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[vetteguy53081]

Just absolutely stunning 0gorgeous.
Love the work, love the tank, love the house. . . .LOVE THE THREAD !!

 

[drs2140]

This is like reef porn! So jealous

 

[kangadrew]

Hi John, would you mind posting a bit about how the plumbing on this tank works? Where does water flow to and from?
Would love to also know what your fish QT process is nowadays. Still cupramine and nitrofurazone?

 

[kangadrew]

Might as well add on - how many/what species of butterflies are you keeping? What's your anthias collection look like?
Or further, do you have any ideas as to what your total species list looks like?

 

[copps]

Apologies for the tardy reply on these... things have been pretty crazy... getting ready to travel for work again finally... and what was supposed to have been a trip to Yellowstone and Glacier National Park this month turned into a South Carolina swing to add a new member to the family... my kids after years and years of asking for a "real pet" (they don't consider the ocean in our house a pet), are finally getting a dog. She's an F1B Aussiedoodle... 3/4 miniature poodle and 1/4 Australian shepard... I was the last one of the family onboard to agree to a dog, but I at least got to choose the name... Kona... for our love of Hawaii (and more specifically the Kona coast of the Big Island), one of the meanings of Kona in Hawaiian (lady), I drink Hawaiian coffee every day and it just so happens she's coffee colored and coffee is my drug of choice...

 

[copps]

I took some cell phone pics of the anemones in the center of the tank a few days ago for those that were asking. All the anemones have gotten huge... In the shots below you can see all three magnifica on their island to the left. A few months ago I also moved one of the gigantea from my 240 (the purple one with green center in the left of the shot above) to the 1300 so there are now two. I still have the large green and blue gigantea in the 240. These gigantea fill the void that was left by my gigas clam, and are also massive... the regal and asfur angels in these shots below are both about 5-6"...

 

[travisstewart]

Apologies for the tardy reply on these... things have been pretty crazy... getting ready to travel for work again finally... and what was supposed to have been a trip to Yellowstone and Glacier National Park this month turned into a South Carolina swing to add a new member to the family... my kids after years and years of asking for a "real pet" (they don't consider the ocean in our house a pet), are finally getting a dog. She's an F1B Aussiedoodle... 3/4 miniature poodle and 1/4 Australian shepard... I was the last one of the family onboard to agree to a dog, but I at least got to choose the name... Kona... for our love of Hawaii (and more specifically the Kona coast of the Big Island), one of the meanings of Kona in Hawaiian (lady), I drink Hawaiian coffee every day and it just so happens she's coffee colored and coffee is my drug of choice...

Nona sure looks like my full golden retriever as a pup

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[travisstewart]

Nona sure looks like my full golden retriever as a pup

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Kona***


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[copps]

Hah! Beautiful! The kids originally wanted a "goldendoodle"... a golden retriever/poodle mix... but I was trying to keep the dog as small as possible to protect the wide plank hardwood floors in the house, however the wife and kids didn't want a little yap yap dog as they called it... so we compromised with Kona, who will be about 25 pounds...

 

[travisstewart]

Hah! Beautiful! The kids originally wanted a "goldendoodle"... a golden retriever/poodle mix... but I was trying to keep the dog as small as possible to protect the wide plank hardwood floors in the house, however the wife and kids didn't want a little yap yap dog as they called it... so we compromised with Kona, who will be about 25 pounds...

Sounds awesome...Beats ginger at 88lbs!


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[copps]

Hi John, would you mind posting a bit about how the plumbing on this tank works? Where does water flow to and from?
Would love to also know what your fish QT process is nowadays. Still cupramine and nitrofurazone?

For the size of the system the plumbing is rather simple... here is a quote from a post I made on the first page...

I had the 1300 gallon built with just one hole drilled in it, circled below in purple. With my return pumps shut off, I open the ball valve and it drains exactly 200 gallons of water from the system for a water change. The redundant return pumps go through the heat pumps and return through two 1 ½" Sea-Swirls, circled below in blue. Most of the flow comes from six Vortech MP60s circled in red and green. Three turn on at a time for ten minutes, creating a gyre in the tank one way, and the ones of the other color turn on for ten minutes and create a gyre the other way"¦ boom"¦ enough flow for SPS in a 1300 gallon in under 200 watts at a time"¦ thank you Ecotech Marine"¦ another great company"¦

The overflow of the 1300 has four 2" drains... the closest two in the shot just have strainers inside the overflow and fully feed my skimmer. The third 2" has a stockman standpipe on it and takes the rest of the flow to the sump straight to filter socks. The forth drain has an even higher standpipe that is just there for emergency purposes in case anything gets stopped up.

From the sump I have three return pumps... Ecotech Vectra L2s... Two of these exclusively feed the 1300, after going through three horsepower heat pumps (one also goes through my 300 watt UV sterilizer). The third return pump feeds my refugium, two frag tanks, and 240 gallon mixed reef anemone tank. You can see on the first page the large 2" backbone I set up to connect the mixed reef to the main sump.

In terms of QT I do the same thing mainly I've been doing for years I explained above... most fish also get a 10 minute freshwater dip... and I also do Prazi in the bucket while acclimating... some sensitive fish I QT in my coral QT, which has a large UV on it. The key with cupramine and other copper products is to get a fish confidently feeding before introducing copper, and also introducing the copper over the course of days... I add 1 mL of cupramine per day for six days on my 40 gallon QT tanks. When I do water changes I replace the same amount of copper I take out... which is usually a 75% water change, followed by adding 4.5 mLs of cupramine back in. By getting fish from reputable sources, treating them well, getting them feeding, and giving them good water quality, you really can avoid the need for many antibiotics.

 

[copps]

Might as well add on - how many/what species of butterflies are you keeping? What's your anthias collection look like?
Or further, do you have any ideas as to what your total species list looks like?

I always have a group of Hemitaurichthys genus butterflies in the system... both pyramids and zoster, which you can see in the pics above.

For anthias I have a mix... from dispar and ignitus to rubrizonatus and hutchii... but the bulk of them are my favorite cheap and colorful anthias... lyretails... the females have a nice orange that is uncommon in reef fish and they are hardy and easily replaceable as most anthias are not very long lived compared to other reef fish... like one of my two tomini tangs... if you go back to my first TOTM in 2004 you'll see the tomini tang in there, which I still own... my second longest lived fish behind my Solomon Islands percula clown I got in 2001. I have a LARGE group of Zebrasoma tangs which represent all seven species... from gemmatum (gem) and rostratum (black) to xanthurum (purple) and flavescens (yellow). I have many hybrids and variants of Zebrasoma scopas too... like a "koi" scopas from Sumatra, a hybrid yellow/ scopas I collected myself in Guam, a couple of hybrid rostratum/scopas from Christmas Island, and a couple of the yellow variant of scopas out of Indo... I've always stayed away from Acanthurus genus tangs but I have something brewing there in QT I'll show in a while... I have many different species of cardinalfish which I love, many species of Chrysiptera genus damsels... three different species of foxface... and of course angelfish... which I always try to keep in pairs or harems as they live in the wild... for Centropyge in the 1300 I'm keeping only a few as they're really special and I don't want to risk them, like my Centropyge resplendens/ argi hybrid and Centropyge multicolor/ ferrugata hybrid that's shown on Lemon Tyk's angelfish poster. I have two regal angels... two blueface... two majestic... two bluelines... two bellus... two chrysurus... an asfur... I recently yanked my large French angel I collected with my son as a baby and may rehome him in a public aquarium... I just didn't like having a prominent Atlantic fish in the tank, and she is so boisterous she would just destroy a full sheet of nori all by herself. Not really a full fish list but I'll get some updated fish shots at feeding time at the nori drop... it's quite a site! And it was NOT easy getting this mix of fish to coexist... a 1300 gallon is still a drop in the bucket compared to the ocean.

Thanks,

Copps

 

[kangadrew]

For the size of the system the plumbing is rather simple... here is a quote from a post I made on the first page...



The overflow of the 1300 has four 2" drains... the closest two in the shot just have strainers inside the overflow and fully feed my skimmer. The third 2" has a stockman standpipe on it and takes the rest of the flow to the sump straight to filter socks. The forth drain has an even higher standpipe that is just there for emergency purposes in case anything gets stopped up.

From the sump I have three return pumps... Ecotech Vectra L2s... Two of these exclusively feed the 1300, after going through three horsepower heat pumps (one also goes through my 300 watt UV sterilizer). The third return pump feeds my refugium, two frag tanks, and 240 gallon mixed reef anemone tank. You can see on the first page the large 2" backbone I set up to connect the mixed reef to the main sump.

In terms of QT I do the same thing mainly I've been doing for years I explained above... most fish also get a 10 minute freshwater dip... and I also do Prazi in the bucket while acclimating... some sensitive fish I QT in my coral QT, which has a large UV on it. The key with cupramine and other copper products is to get a fish confidently feeding before introducing copper, and also introducing the copper over the course of days... I add 1 mL of cupramine per day for six days on my 40 gallon QT tanks. When I do water changes I replace the same amount of copper I take out... which is usually a 75% water change, followed by adding 4.5 mLs of cupramine back in. By getting fish from reputable sources, treating them well, getting them feeding, and giving them good water quality, you really can avoid the need for many antibiotics.

Hi John, thanks for the reply.

I love the technical details of your system - everything is so simply and smoothly planned out. Does your calcium reactor feed off of one of the sumps?

Are your heating pumps the Titan models off of Pentair/Aquatic Ecosystems? 3hp is insane to think about on a home system, are they serving separate purposes or two for redundancy?

As far as the anthias - do you find the lyretails start to behave more like a smaller grouper than an anthias in a tank this size? Any species other than the 4/5 you listed that you'd suggest for a display of this size?

Oh - and congrats on the puppy. She's adorable!

Take care
-Drew

 

[Fiish]

I took some cell phone pics of the anemones in the center of the tank a few days ago for those that were asking. All the anemones have gotten huge... In the shots below you can see all three magnifica on their island to the left. A few months ago I also moved one of the gigantea from my 240 (the purple one with green center in the left of the shot above) to the 1300 so there are now two. I still have the large green and blue gigantea in the 240. These gigantea fill the void that was left by my gigas clam, and are also massive... the regal and asfur angels in these shots below are both about 5-6"...

Amazing photos John, as always, it is worth waiting for each of your updates, those blueline angels have an incredible ridiculous color, and it's amazing that I still have some fishes from 2004, but I'm not surprised by you, because you are an absolute genius, cheers.