C5Chad's Sumpless 75gallon Reef Tank (Advice, suggestions much appreciated!!)

C5Chad

Member
Hey guys...I've been on here awhile....don't post very often, mainly just trying to read and learn. I started this 75 gallon tank back in April when I decided to upgrade my overrun with bubble and hair algae 29 gallon tank. Was overrun due to me becoming more and more careless with the tank and so frustrated with the algae issues I ended up just letting it get out of hand.

But anyways, I've now moved into a new house and saw a new opportunity to start fresh and put my few fish that were in my 29gallon into a new and better home with no algae and make sure i stay up on top of things this time. Would have liked to have done a sump setup but at the time I didn't have any idea where to begin on how to do it, have never done one before and hardly researched them yet until just the past month or so.

So here is my list of fish, corals and equipment I have going for my 75 gallon reef:
Fish and Inverts
Ocellaris Clownfish
Pajama Cardinalfish
Royal Gramma Basslet
Pink Spotted Watchman Goby
Sand Sifting Starfish
2 Emerald Crabs
Conch Snail
6 or 7 Hermit Crabs
6 Nassarius Snails

Corals
Leather Toadstool
Acan Brain (frag)(red&purple)
Green Mushrooms (3 on one piece of Live Rock)
Green Chalice (broke as I was gluing it to my live rock, so now instead of one I have two)
Starburst Polyp colony
Radioactive Dragoneye Polyp Colony
Metallic Green Wall Hammer
Elegance Coral
Close to a 50/50 mix of live rock and dry rock, no clue how much in weight
CaribSea Live Sand (Roughly 2" sand bed)

Equipment and Chemicals
Reef Octopus Classic HOB 1000 Protein Skimmer
Marineland Bio-Wheel Emperor 400
Cascade Heat 300watt Heater
Sicce Voyager 800gph powerhead
Hydor powerhead (rated for my old 29gallon tank)
Aquatop CPS-3 660gph powerhead
AquaticLife Reef Edition LED 48" Light

I use Instant Ocean Reef Crystals salt and mix it with rodi water from my AquaticLife ROBuddie DI+ that I have hooked up to my laundry room sink that fills a 55gallon drum of rodi water.

The only chemicals I use right now would be Seachem Phosguard for a few days that I put in my marineland filter media cartridge after a water change and tank cleaning to help try to keep any and all hair and bubble algae at bay.

I do a 20 gallon water change every other weekend and clean my protein skimmer collection cup every 2-3 days as well as scraping the walls of my tank every 2-3 days as well. And change filters in the marineland filter during every water change every two weeks as well. I keep my tank at 80 degrees farenheit.


So now onto my couple pics I have as well as the short video I took of my tank today. I just added the Elegance coral about an hour or two before I took the video. Pics and video came out kind of a blue hue to them, iphone pics and video, cant get anything to do the colors of the tank justice.

Video
https://youtu.be/6NDE6c-g7fs

lIp2oqO.jpg


haDC1pO.jpg


In the pics the evening lights are on, mix of blue and white led's, which will turn automatically to moonlights, 4 or 5 blue leds at night. Has morning, afternoon, evening, and moonlighting settings that gradually come on and off off of a timer built into the light.


Would love to know what you guys think, if you see anything you think I should be doing or not doing. Any advice, suggestions, criticism you guys can give me is greatly appreciated. Im still fairly new to all of this and learning as I go. Don't really have any plans on adding more fish at this time. But definitely more corals and maybe more rock.
 
Looks good, congrats on the move and upgrade. If you keep up the maintenance sumpless can be done. Keep going slow, start a log, and enjoy!
 
Looks good, congrats on the move and upgrade. If you keep up the maintenance sumpless can be done. Keep going slow, start a log, and enjoy!

Thanks I appreciate it! That's the goal.... I'd love to make this tank work being sumpless since it seems so many people use sump systems on larger tanks. Really hope to have success getting all of the corals to really grow. My polyps have been expanding further out and my toadstool seems to be a bit larger since moving him from the 29gallon.

Eventually I want to do a sump system once I get the funds and learn more about it. That'll be a future project for my basement once I finish the basement. Love to put a much larger tank down there. My 75 gallon is in my living room. Definitely making sure I stay religious with the maintenance on this tank. I want no problems at all.
 
Look into using poly filters. They can be cut to size and placed in the filter chamber.

I had a poly filter long time ago in my 29 gallon back when it was overrun by algae. Couldn't tell if it did much or not.... although my tank was almost beyond gone by that point.
 
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