Chopper320's 80 Rimless

[chopper320]

I just wanted to start a thread to track the progress of my 80 rimless. I recently moved and decided that was a good time to upgrade my 40 breeder to an 80 gallon deep blue rimless.

Here is the most recent FTS of my 40 breeder before the tear down.

When I moved, I had a period of about 6 weeks between houses so I had to move my tank to my parents house and it didn't get the same level of care it normally got. This caused me to lose quite a few pieces and have a pretty bad algae bloom.

I ended up moving the tank over to the new 80 about 2 months ago. It took a couple of weeks for everything to settle in but I finally got everything back under control and the colors are starting to come back nicely.

Here's a current FTS of my 80 rimless

 

[chopper320]

When I upgraded tanks, I also upgraded some of the equipment.

I switched out my reefbreeder value fixtures with 2 hydra 26 hd's

I switched out my 2 jebao rw8s that were failing for an mp10 and mp40

I also upgraded sumps and started to run filter socks periodically.

I'm starting to see colors in some of my corals that I had never seen before. I attribute this mainly to the lights but there may be other factors at play. I was running my last system very nutrient poor and always struggled to register any nitrates. For some reason with my new setup, my nitrates are staying right about 5ppm.

Here are a few closeups of some of my corals:

Not SPS but these rainbow ricordia are really coloring up

 

[cugly]

Looking good I like the rics and lots of stag

 

[chopper320]

Thanks! It was tough losing so much in the move. I was very close to just calling it quits but I'm glad I didn't. I'm loving the dimensions of this new tank.

 

[cugly]

Thanks! It was tough losing so much in the move. I was very close to just calling it quits but I'm glad I didn't. I'm loving the dimensions of this new tank.

Ya I feel you its been up and down with this hobby but the rewards are great when it all works out

 

[chopper320]

Update: The tank is doing great for the most part. My corals have better color and growth than I've ever seen. I think I've found the sweet spot with my nitrates staying consistently at about 5ppm.

The only problem is this is causing me some slight algae problems. I have a few patches of GHA and a small area of bryopsis that keeps popping back up after manual removal. My guess is that if I dropped the nitrates back down to 0 that the algae would recede but my corals would go pale again and stop growing.

I'm considering trying Vibrant to control the algae. I'm normally skeptical of products like that but I've been following the thread on the other forum and the results are pretty impressive.

 

[nyfishkid87]

Beautiful tank.

 

[chopper320]

Beautiful tank.

Thank you!

 

[nyfishkid87]

You're welcome.

 

[nyfishkid87]

Do you dose any additives to your tank chopper320?

 

[chopper320]

I only dose b ionic 2 part and periodically magnesium when it's needed.

 

[serenity]

What was the reason for swapping out the reef breeders? I'm setting up my 60 bought them from my LFS but thinking about taking them back tomorrow and just going with a Gen 3 Pro they are having a special on.

Would you keep the RB or get the Gen 3 Pro's. I know you went AI's but they are similar.


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[chopper320]

There were two reasons for switching. On my old tank with rbs, I was never satisfied with the color of my corals. The other reason was with my new tank being rimless, I wanted something a little nicer looking. The old tank had a canopy so it didn't matter what the fixture looked like.

It's hard to say which one you should get. The rbs will definitely grow sps and the price is very nice. I don't have any complaints for what they are.

On the other hand, I'm very happy I upgraded. I attribute some of my improved colors and growth rates to the new lights. The light mixing looks much nicer. With the rbs I always had that slight disco ball effect.