Coral Tank from Canada (1350gal Display Tank)

[preef40]

There is not much I can say but Wow great work!!

 

[dainiusiva]

What? No update for 4 days??? There must be something wrong / or something awesome going on...

Which one is it?

 

[blkhwk]

Yeah things very quiet over there Peter,whats the news??

 

[Ibixable]

This is such a cool tank.

 

[nineball]

What? No update for 4 days??? There must be something wrong / or something awesome going on...

Which one is it?

Yeah things very quiet over there Peter,whats the news??

There is a ton going on here. Mr. Wilson and I have spent the last two weeks moving this project forward.....some of those days have been 14 hour days with four or five guys working on the tank or fish room installing and fixing stuff. Frankly we have been too busy to write about it much less post the pictures BUT we will I promise.

Our objective is to complete the tasks that will essentially complete the initial blueprint for the build phase of this project. Our goal is to produce a 'Mid Term Report' that will summarize our experience to date with the build and set the stage for the next part of this project which is going to try and identify the best practices in managing the continuing evolution of the tank and fish room. I believe that the upcoming chapters are the the most exciting and the most beneficial part of this whole project for all of us.

However before I get ahead of myself, we have the lighting to complete with the additional (18) customized LED modules, we have the 130 gal hospital tank with all the ICU assets to present to our thread community as well as further improvements to the three Wilson Bars. Mr. Wilson has been working to bring on the Profilux III ex controller to take on a significant portion of the monitoring and day to day management of this ecosystem. I will be discussing my take on the technology and giving a critical review as to the efficacy of the results.

Oh and we have been busy visiting all of the LFS in the greater Toronto area and buying a considerable amount of product which will be put on display in a relatively short time frame ......... so get lots of rest everyone because we are about to take off!!!!!

Peter and Mr. Wilson

 

[msr224]

<<<<======== is sitting on the edge of his seat!!!!!!!!!!

 

[mkbtank]

AWESOME! Cant wait to see

 

[dainiusiva]

Well Peter, i will know from now on, when you guys are silent, something AWESOME is brewing. Thanks again for your generosity in sharing information.

 

[mr.wilson]

Question: you have a lot of gorgonian corals in your tank, I have tried to keep one of those in my tank without any success? So, I though there were almost impossible to keep in our tank. Could you tell us which species you get and what their requirement to keep them alive? Because there are so gorgeous, I want to get some for my tank if they will ever drive in my tank.

I haven't been on the thread in a few weeks so I wasn't even sure where to start:idea:

The basic guideline for keeping gorgonians are...

1) Never take them out of the water and expose them to air. If they are, shake the bubbles off so the tissue isn't damaged.

2) Try to buy ones with grown polyps as they are photosynthetic. The white or brightly coloured polyp gorgonians are non-photosynthetic.

3) Feed them 50-150 micron food at least twice per day, especially if you are keeping non-photosynthetic varieties.

4) Gorgonians from the Caribbean are a little more hardy than their Indo Pacific cousins.

5) Try not to cover the base with glue or substrate as this stresses the gorgonian.

6) Give them moderate flow, not too strong, not too weak.

7) Orient them in a position where they can readily collect food. In other words, have the food travel through the wide "front" rather than the narrow "side" of it.

8) They are tall so they should be placed in the background.

9) They grow quickly so leave room at the top of the reef for growth.

10) Cut off dead branches to deter algae growth.

 

[mr.wilson]

Congratulations. So are sending out the cigars or do we have to pick them up?

Is he in the main tank or one of the backroom tanks? If you are keeping him in the main tank and you don't have a long spine urchine you may want to throw a fake one in. They will hide in the spines for protection when young. Or pull the babies and give them a rearing tank.

Believe it or not, I have made fake urchins before. A concrete ball base and some wood skewers is all you need.

 

[mr.wilson]

friend living in Medellin Colombia and just want to ask how do you sustain the mandarin. Thanks for the advice. By

Feeding the tank phytoplankton assures lots of live copepods and a full food chain. Some people use bloodworms or tubifex/blackworms, but they are too rich in protein and lacking EFAs and amino acids and all the other great stuff they get in live zooplankton.

 

[mr.wilson]

It is always a huge thrill for me to see my fish pairing and breading. I've never been able to raise the fry myself. It's great though because it's obviously fish behaving naturally! And it is a clear indication that your amazing efforts are working! :fish1: :fish2:

It has been over three weeks and the two baby cardinals are doing great. The are eating live baby brine shrimp and now frozen cyclops.

 

[blkhwk]

Great news guys,cant wait to see the results.
Keep up the hard work.
Rich

 

[bullitr]

Shawn and Peter
I thought you guys and heading down to LAX wholesaler
They have lot of nice corals there to choose from than LFS.

 

[mr.wilson]

Mr. Wilson, I dont mean for this post to sound rude, but i'm questioning some of the things you're saying.

By all means, question away. We are all here to learn, myself included.

- There shouldn't be more than one defnition for an algae turf scrubber, it is a system that uses high water flow over a screen and with high light to grow attached filamentous algae as a means of water purification. It's used both commerically and in home aquaria.

I said a refugium is "an algae turf scrubber of sorts"; I should have said, an Algae Turf Scrubber is a form of refugium to be more concise. The refugiums I use are as shallow as an ATS, the water is just as rapid, and the lighting is more intense. The only difference is I use higher form of algae (Chaetomorpha & Gracileria), free-floating without a screen. Refugia are not a new idea, I have a Saltwater Aquarium magazine from 1967 showing a marine tank with a remote refugium full of algae in an adjacent sunroom.

-Hair algae is exactly what should be used on an ATS because it is a fast growing algae that readily takes up nutrients. And although some "bleeding" may occur when you are harvesting the algae, the same thing happens when you trim chaetomorpha, as you pull it out from the sump the water drains out, and detritus that has piled up falls into the tank, so i'm not sure that there is much of a difference there.

Harvesting Chaetomorpha does not require the breaking of the thallus or release of its contents. Conversely, hair algae must be torn to harvest the trays. A better ATS system would be to keep the trimmed algae turf trays in a "hospital tank" for a day or two to repair itself. This will not only limit nutrient leak, but also avoid hair algae from spreading to the display tank.

Macro algae will grow equally as fast as hair algae providing the conditions are right. Chaetomorpha will adequately remove Po4 and No3, so there is no need for other forms of algae.

-You say that "algae release (alleopathic) chemicals into the water that may restrict the growth of invertebrates" although this may be true, chaetomorpha is also an algae so it would be do the same thing. As far as i know alleopathic chemicals are usually released by plants during chemical warfare to outcompete eachother, Having only one type of algae should limit the amount of competition therefor the release of these chemicals should be small.

Walnut trees and many terrestrial plants produce these same competitive agents (secondary metabolites). The Walnut tree doesn't need to have neighbours to exude these chemicals and either does algae in any form. The stress of cutting/tearing hair algae will however cause it to react more competitively. Alternating trays with ones in a hospital tank will minimize this problem.

- Simply using activated carbon in the tank will take out any "yellowing" of the water.

Yes, as will protein skimming, UV, Ozone and water changes. Many ATS proponents recommend discontinuing these filtration methods however. Macro algae will also yellow the water to a certain degree, but as you have mentioned, carbon is more than enough to deal with tannins.

-You also state that vertical ATS are a poor design because the vertical pannels cause the algae to tear off and fall, by using turf algae and having a rough screen you should be able to prevent this from happening as turf algae grows in high flow areas. If the hair algae happens to fall off it shouldn't create a problem, it will just be pushed back into the tank and your herbivors will take care of it.

Importing damaged hair or turf (nuisance) algae into the display tank is never a good idea. Neither of these forms of algae grow above the water level so they have not adapted well to do so in aquaria. Vertical ATS cause salt creep, noise, electrical hazard (lighting), add microbubbles, increase evaporation, use too much vertical space, and require too much maintenance.

-The chetomorphia algae also goes through photosynthesis, and respiration so you'll have the same thing happening. Many people just run a reverse cycle on their refugium/ATS lighting so as to have a steady pH, so why not just do this?

Yes, from a photosynthetic standpoint they are the same.

-I'm not sure how the cheatomorpha leaches nutrients at night, it would still be using what it gained during the day for respiration; the same byproducts would be produced during this as in photosynthesis (with the addition of CO2).

It probably doesn't add up to much, but algae does release some of its trapped nutrients at night. They take up nutrients during the day, and cease this action during the night.

In my opinion, elaborate ATS systems are a reinvention of the refugium wheel. ATS gained moderate attention in the late 80's with Addey's book, but anyone who set one up discontinued after a few months or years. Addey had never kept a marine tank at the time he wrote his book on the subject. The tank he set up at the Smithsonian has never been a success story, despite millions of dollars in resources and over 20 years of hard work. There is a promotion company trying to revive the ATS idea to sell plastic screens, but they are banned from more aquarium forums than I can keep track of. The misinformation and junk science offered by these companies give a viable idea like ARS a bad reputation. Yes ATS can work, but they don't offer anything you can't get with a simple refugium.

 

[mr.wilson]

just a question, maybe it was covered and I missed it. but do you guys dip the new SPS corals ? if so can you give us more info on this topic Mr. Wilson ?

We use two 10-15 minute bath buckets. Both use saltwater, one with Lugol's Iodine (Tropic Marin brand), and one with Two Little Fishies Revive (pine oil & lemon oil). Take out acro crabs first as they will die in 5-10 minutes.

Peter's tank is still getting the initial stock, but once any tank is properly established (6 months old) all corals should be held in a quarantine system for at least a week to allow the eggs of any parasites to hatch. Use a magnifying glass to get a good look at the coral before adding to the display and exposing your corals. You cannot assume that the LFS has done anything to isolate monti nudibranchs, red bugs, mantis shrimp (we just found one on an acro in the bath bucket this week), and flat worms.

 

[mr.wilson]

Mr. Wilson - What are the downsides to running a chaeto refugium 24/7?

Algae, like any plant needs light for photosynthesis and must have a dark period for photorespiration. Algae is driven by hormones which can get messed up if there isn't a "day" and "night". The ideal is 16 hours day & 8 hours of darkness. A 24/7 photoperiod often results in slow or non-existent growth rates.

Some people have experimented with an excelerated photoperiod, whereby the refugium gets 10hrs day > 2hrs dark > 10hrs day > 2hrs dark. This squeezes two days into one, but at the cost of stressing the algae. In my opinion a slow and easy natural photoperiod is the way to go.

 

[mr.wilson]

This is my first post. I would like to say thank you to all of the members of reef central! Great site, wisdom, knowledge, totm,s speak for themselves. You guys have inspired me to do a reef tank! Ive been out of the hobby for 10 years. Im back and its so fun!

In our case, the refugium is fed by the protein skimmer throughput/feed. Once the system has matured, we will shut the skimmer down at night by putting the feed pump on the same outlet/timer as the refugium light.

It might be wise to let the light in the ref. come on before the circ. pump in the ref.
This way the plants have time to reabsorb the co2 lost in respiration. This will usually take 1-2 hours. depending on plant mass, size of ref., amount of light during the day.(more light =more respiration).

It would be an interesting experiment. And pretty simple. The difference between the amount of co2 in the ref. at lights off. and lights on. is the amount of co2 the plants respired at night. From there you could figure the amount of o added during the day. You could estimate the amount of photo synthesis, nutrient uptake, and discharge of the plants. This has prob. been done. If anyone has access to results that would be cool.

Thanks Again to all of you!

You are correct, the lights should be on for a few hours to reach the photosynthetic compensation point. The only argument to having the pump and light come on at the same time (and it is a weak one) is that you can do it with one timer.

I will do some monitoring to see how many nutrients really leak out and see where our resources are best invested. The gas production/consumption rates would also be interesting to know. We have a lot of coral, but it's impossible to tell how much impact (Co2 & O2 production) the corals have in comparison to our ball of Chaeto???

The fishroom makes it hard to put the refugium on a reverse photoperiod, so the nightly shut-off seems to be a good compromise.

 

[mr.wilson]

Like this?

It would be an honour to be fired at that conference table.

 

[mr.wilson]

The new larger sumps are in for the two Mars systems, as well as the sump & wet/dry for the new hospital tank.

The new LED lighting from Orphek is on its way. Here is a preview/teaser picture of a 450 gallon reef tank with one 250 watt Giesemann metal halide and one Orphek 120 watt PR 156 LED light with 90 degree lenses.