CyclistMT's 300 Gal Plywood and Glass Build

[CyclistMT]

Nice! How long are you QTing? Did your local place have them, or did you have to ship?

At least 3 weeks. They've been in a week alreay and I have to go out of town next week for work (my daughter will feed the fish when I'm gone). I think I'll give them another week of observation and fattening up when I get back.

I got the fish from Vivid Aquariums online. This was my first order from them.

 

[CyclistMT]

Any new pictures?

Nothing has really changed from what's posted above other than pipe organ and blasto frags that I got with the new fish. Once I get the fish in the main tank I'll get a shot of those frags and new tank pics. I got a new lens too so hopefully those pics will turn out even better (although I didn't get a new photographer so don't hold your breath).

 

[RJT]

How are the corals you got from pacific east aquaculture?

 

[worm5406]

HAHAHAHA... It takes time and lots of shots. Luckly now a days they are all digital and you can delete them. I started when you had to develop them to see how well you did.

 

[CyclistMT]

How are the corals you got from pacific east aquaculture?

They're all doing quite well and the jack-o-lantern leptosteris has clearly put on growth since the pic from above. I've ordered from PEA a few times now and have never been disappointed. They always call to check on the order once it's delivered and go out of their way to make sure everything goes smoothly. Living in MT and ordering this time of the year can be problematic when storms cause disruptions. I normally watch out for that and order accordingly but this last order with PEA I forgot to check what the weather was doing because I was just too excited to spend the gift certificates I got for Christmas. Well, they were watching out and wouldn't ship my order until their weather and mine was stable enough to ensure an on time arrival. I purchased almost all WYSIWYG and they held on to everything for me until it could ship. They are one of the top online vendors in my opinion. Their level of customer service is a rarity these days.

HAHAHAHA... It takes time and lots of shots. Luckly now a days they are all digital and you can delete them. I started when you had to develop them to see how well you did.

Yeah, I know I need to put in the time and learn the nuances of using a real camera. Most of my macro shots are from a relatively inexpensive point and shoot waterproof camera and it makes me sad that those turn out better than the ones I'm getting out of my micro 4/3. But that's all on me I know. So we bought the micro 4/3 because we needed a new family camera and I didn't want to get a full on DLSR due to size. Plus I figured I could take some awesome macro shots with something better than a point and shoot. So now we had to get a new lens for better telephoto work and I still need to get a macro lens AND learn how to use this darn thing to it's fullest. This is just what I didn't need, another expensive hobby with a big learning curve.

Oh, and I have prints of my first reef tank when we still had film cameras. I should scan those sometime and post them for giggles.

How about this blast from the past? When I was a teenager I had a Kodak Disc camera. That was the bomb and not much bigger than today's digital cameras. Loved that camera.

 

[worm5406]

WOW.. how old are you? I mean when I was a kid we had stone and chisel.

BTW... I know the disc cameras. I was born in 1970. HAHAHA

Scan them in and lets see how they look.

 

[muttley000]

Hi Lance, how are things with the tank, and yourself in general?

 

[CyclistMT]

Thanks for prompting an update Matt and sorry it took a few days to reply. In general it's been a very busy year. Our son finished boot camp in December but due to delays in a start date for his MOS, he was home for probably 10 weeks at various points this year. He's finally settled at Camp Pendleton so it might be a while before we get to see him again. It's been wicked busy at work so a lot of my energy has been directed that way and will be for a while to come yet unfortunately.

Physically the tank structure is great! (Much to the dismay of some of the plywood naysayers around here I'm sure.) So the tank is officially two years salt wet and I have no concerns about longevity. On a side note, I helped tear down my old plywood tank in July and it was in fine shape when we took it out so that tank had 7.5 years on it.

As for what's inside the tank, well, that's a story that might take a novel to tell since I'm very overdue for an update. I'll see if I can coble something together in the next week or so.

Till then I'm off to a cabin for some much needed R&R!

 

[ingtar_shinowa]

Love to see it sometime!

 

[CyclistMT]

It was the best of times,
it was the worst of times,
it was the age of wisdom,
it was the age of foolishness,
it was the epoch of belief,
it was the epoch of incredulity,
it was the season of Light,
it was the season of Darkness,
it was the spring of hope,
it was the winter of despair.

This is A Tale of Two Tanks.....

Dear readers, to bring this thread up to the present after a year on hiatus we must indulge in a literary expose the likes of which may strain your patience in it's persistence to babble on seemingly endlessly, which may create rancor in its feeble attempt to paraphrase one of the greatest writers of history, which may cause much wailing and gnashing of teeth in its pathetic pretense of being an eloquent monologue, but...hopefully... will satisfy all but the most jaded of you trying to make sense of this nonsensical authoring.

For those that lack the intestinal fortitude required to survive the descriptions above, or the wit needed to follow this diatribe, or the desire to bring yourself to care one bit, then I humbly ask that I may placate you with stunning photographs of the current state of the tank found below. Please scroll down and proceed to the egress.

For all others willing to embark on this perilous journey, then behold! Our tale begins thus.....



It was the worst of times,
it was the age of foolishness,
it was the epoch of incredulity,
it was the season of Darkness,
it was the winter of despair.

Hair algae. That would likely be enough said but then it would be selling the story short as there were several other low points over many of these months. When the last pictures were taken I had a couple areas of hair algae in the tank, nothing that couldn't be resolved through manual removal and I figured the ATS would take care of it once I changed out the blub on my fuge to help kick it up a notch.

Little did I realize at the time that I was in for battle that would result in a few casualties inflicted due to my strategy rather than the enemy itself. The battle raged on for nigh unto eight months. I tried manual removal by pulling what I could and scrubbing nearly every surface of rock with a brush several times (at least seven times over these months according to my log). After each scrub I would do a water change and of course I had my filter socks in catching as much of the algae as possible so it wouldn't die and release phosphate back into the system. RO/DI membrane and filters were changed out early on in case they were contributing. While it was time to change them, I don't think they were the root cause.

I was still running Radiums when this started and clearly I had a nutrient problem. By April I was sick of the way the Radiums looked so I got Reeflux 10K because I liked the look better. Of course the algae got worse with this change. Not wholly unexpected but I figured I could take care of this by addressing the nutrient issue. Which I proceeded to do with Lanthanum Chloride dosing. This is where the worst of times began through the age of foolishness which begat the epoch of incredulity which plunged me into the season of Darkness and the winter (summer/fall) of despair.



I began the LaCl3 dosing slowing, dripping into the appropriate micron sock. When nothing seemed to be really changing with the algae I upped the dose, still assuming I was within the established protocols (age of foolishness). Folks, let me tell you, this is nothing to mess around with if you're doing it half-assed like I was. I was using an Aqualifter to deliver the LaCL3 solution (diluted in R/O) into a 5 micron sock. Well, whether I underestimated the dose I was giving or the sock was overflowing before I got to it, putting LaCl3 into the tank proper or both of the above, it resulted in (or was at least suspected in) the following deaths.

Blond Naso Tang
Ember Blenny
Male Blue Jaw Trigger (found him dried up underneath the tank but think he may have jumped trying to escape LaCl3 poisoning).
Acro crab
Bad crab I found one evening with a flashlight (good riddance)
Various snails
Some corals and put a few others at risk due to a decline in heath (Among others, I nearly lost my Jack O Lantern Leptastrea. It was down to the size of a pencil eraser but I managed to bring it back.)

I will never try LaCl3 dosing again unless I have a reactor to catch all the bound phosphate and a proper dosing pump to manage the dose. I take full responsibility for this debacle in the way I administered and don't blame the method.
Ultimately I did triumph over the hair algae but that part of the tale comes later. For now we must continue to explore this period of woe if for no other reason to better appreciate the season of Light to come. So, intrepid adventures, once more into the breech!



Remember the pump on my skimmer had gone out and I was trying to secure warranty service from the owner of SWC? Yeah...well...I actually did get an address from him to send it back to (in Canada) but the Canadian post wasn't satisfied with my explanation on the documentation that this was for warranty service. So they tried to COD import fees to my recipient to the tune of $100+. Needless to say it was refused and returned to me. Now I'm out another $30 bucks for the shipping and still no working skimmer. Knowing warranty replacement was now a lost dream I sucked it up and bought new Laguna Max Flo 1500 pump since the motor block should have been the same as what I had. Swapping my volute and impeller should have made it an easy fix for under $150. I don't know if there was a slight change in the pump body or if my impeller was really the problem but it wasn't long before that pump started having jamming impeller issues. All told, skimmer was back online for only two months before a permanent fix was established. In August, I really sucked it up and bought a new Bubble Blaster 5000 to get my skimmer working again. So you may recall I went with the SWC skimmer instead of a Reef Octopus because I was mad that Coralvue had upped the price on the skimmer that would have worked for me to $799 at the time I think. Yeah, um, I'm now into this SWC for $1000+ all told. (Epoch of incredulity).



In addition to the loses at the Battle of LaCl3, this is the following list of the death of innocents, not directly due to the Hair Algae War of 2014 but certainly part of this season of Darkness. I take no pride in this list of tragedy and in my defense most of these died in quarantine during a warranty period so I don't feel wholly at fault other than placing my trust in the same vendor twice over. Twice fooled, shame on me indeed. This was the winter (summer/fall) of despair.

2 female Blue Jaw Triggers
1 Male Blue Jaw Trigger
2 female Swallowtail Angels
2 Orange Spotted Goby (1 did well for several month but just went missing one day)
2 Pistol Shrimp
1 Radiant Wrasse

I've just about had it with Blue Jaw triggers. I'm finding that they are fairly sensitive fish and almost always come in malnourished. They take very special care to get feeding due to how shy they are at first and most vendors are simply not willing to do what it takes. The two listed above both came in so skinny I couldn't get them eating before the succumbed. I had an active pair up until a couple of weeks ago. A female that had been doing really well (after bulking her skinny *** up through several weeks in quarantine) decided to go bat-s crazy (or had a stroke) and went flying out of the top of the tank and smacking hard into the interior of the stand. Made it back in the water but never swam right after that again. She would come out occasionally for food but ultimately succumbed somewhere in my rock work. The male I currently have I got from my LFS but he's no where near as nice as the one I had before the LaCl3 incident. For the most part he holds his own but does get picked on by my biggest female Swallowtail angel. She is pretty much the bully of the tank. Once the triggers get over their fear of eating in front of a human and with other fish, they feed with gusto but getting them to that point can be problematic.



On other losses, I have no more zoas or Discosoma mushrooms due to the addition of a Masked Rabbit fish. He was another failed attempt in the Hair Algae War of 2014. Oh, don't get me wrong, he's alive and well but just didn't do much for the algae. Go figure.

Oh, and by the time I finally found a winning strategy to employ over the evil infestation of algae, all my acros were thoroughly brown with maybe some hints of green.

I must admit that in my deepest moments of despair during this season of Darkness, I had fleeting thoughts of, "œMaybe I should just turn this into an African Cichlid tank." But perseverance in the face of adversity will ultimately lead to a season of Light.

Intermission....(best get a snack now)

 

[ingtar_shinowa]

Love it, not your plight, but your story telling. Great read as I only know that the story gets better from here.

 

[CyclistMT]

It was the best of times,
it was the age of wisdom,
it was the epoch of belief,
it was the season of Light,
it was the spring of hope,

Even through the darkness, hope springs eternal, of maybe it was just the spring of hope but in any event between algae cleanings, sometimes it felt like the war was turning in my favor. That brought enough hope that I actually purchased more corals and I thought, with more corals, they'll use up any phosphate in the system faster preventing the algae from getting it. Ok, I didn't really believe that but it was my justification. Our tale has not quite reached the age of wisdom yet. In April I purchased the following from Unique Corals

Gold Torch (frag)
Green Birdsnest
Green Bubble Coral (frag)
Green Cup Coral
Matrix Chalice (frag)
Orange Eye Favia (free frag)
Orange Leptastrea (frag)
Purple Bubble Gum Chalice (frag)
Raging Water Chalice (frag)
Red Acan bowerbanki (frag)
Red Goniopora (tiny)

I also purchased some things from Reeftopia
6 pack Rock Flower Anemones
Caribbean Yellow Gorgonian (Diodogorgia nodulifera, should have done my research first on this one)
Various algae snails

Most of this didn't do too bad but I ended up losing the following:
Matrix Chalice (Literally lost this one. Fell between some rocks and I could never retrieve it.)
Purple Bubble Gum Chalice
Red Goniopora
2 Flower Anemones (of course the red one was the first to go)



I already listed fish that were purchased during this time that didn't make it but here is a list of the ones that did.

2 Female Swallowtail Angels
Masked Rabbitfish
Male Blue Jaw Trigger
2 Banggai Cardinals (story on these next)



In July (winter (summer/fall) of despair and simultaneously the spring (summer/fall/winter) of hope) I received a call from the couple that bought our old house. They were selling the house and taking down the tank (my previous 150 gal plywood and glass) and wanted to know if I would be interested in any of their livestock. Since the Hair Algae War of 2014 was in full swing at this point, I really wasn't interested in purchasing any more coral just to see it succumb in the Killing Fields. But I did offer to help them tear down the tank since I had intimate knowledge of how it was installed and if there was any livestock to be had for helping out, I would happily take it off their hands. As fortune favors the bold, I did end up with quite a few pieces from their tank:

Large red Monti plate
XL Leather Coral
Blueish Trumpet Coral
Large green chalice
Lots of hairy mushrooms
Blue mushrooms (which my rabbitfish proceeded to eat)
Yellow Polyps
Hermit crabs
Turbo Snails
A Pearly Jaw Fish
and 2 Banggai Cardinals

It took about six hours to remove the livestock, drain the tank, and remove it from the wall. It was a sweaty, smelly, constantly damp project so I did work for what I obtained. It was a nice bit of closure though to be part of removing the tank I originally installed. And in case you're wondering, it was still going strong and at that point was seven years old.



The turbo snails I got from them started making quick work of the algae in my tank. However, within a couple of months they had all died off. Since they were thriving in the other tank I could only assume that my phosphate level was just too high for them and that's what killed them off.

By now I was getting a bit desperate. The LaCl3 dosing had failed to take care of the problem and had killed off my two main algae consumers (naso tang and ember blenny) and the newly purchased Masked Rabbitfish was showing no interest in it. I was still manually removing the algae and doing water changes to stem the tide in hopes of recovery (epoch of belief). I had even added GFO in desperation but ended up removing it when my reactor got clogged with algae after a cleaning.

I started refreshing myself on what I knew about carbon dosing (age of wisdom) and decided to give vinegar dosing a go. What did I have to lose? It was a cheap solution and I could pull it off with my ghetto dosing set up (kids, don't try this at home). Yes I do need to get a more precise dosing method but what I have did (and continues to) work.



It is now November 11th and I had just scrubbed the hair algae, once again, and did another water change. I also found my ATS was dried up because the power head providing water to it had failed. (Did I mention I had been ignoring the tank for a couple of months at this point?) Operation Vinegar Dosing commenced.

Within days, the hair algae had receded and was definitely on the wane. After a couple of weeks, coral colors has visibly perked up. I decided to put the Radiums back in (I still don't like the color) to help the corals color up even more. In early December I did another water change but didn't have to scrub any hair algae. It was completely gone (season of Light). While some turf algae remained (and does to this day) it was a far cry from how bad the tank had looked over the past several months.

Was it an early Christmas miracle? Maybe. It was, however, officially the season of Light and while there is still some work to do and better times yet to come, it was definitely the best of times of 2014. The Hair Algae War of 2014 was over, the allies were victorious, and it was time to turn our attention to rebuilding.



I will replace my blonde naso when my LFS gets a decent specimen in and I have plans to add more fish. Maybe I'll even try for another female trigger (hope springs eternal). We'll see. But I did celebrate with a few corals obtained at my LFS and a large order of frags during a sale at AquaSD in late December.

If you have hung in with me for this long (or are a slacker that opted to skip to the end), then you will see your reward below. Sorry, it's nothing so grand as getting the last several minutes of your life back (the time it took you to read this) but hopefully provides some fulfillment and closure to this novel.


So dear readers, that closes out 2014, brings the tank status up to the present, and ends the tale for now.....

"It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better tank that I go to than I have ever known."

 

[ingtar_shinowa]

Hurrah!

 

[CyclistMT]

 

[CyclistMT]

 

[CyclistMT]

 

[CyclistMT]

 

[Newbie Aquarist]

WOW!!! What a story. You have truly been dedicated where I believe least 50 percent would've either quit or did a total rebuild of your tank. I congratulate you on a slow but beautiful recovery. Looks like the tank was never affected despite the livestock you lost.

I helped a friend break his tank down because his life style changed and the tank was seriously neglected. Most of the rock had hair algae on it and I took a gamble and placed it in my main tank. Long story short, the hair algae didnt have a chance against my scopas tangs. It was gone in less than 12 hours. Note there was a shoal of 8. So just a heads up.

But as I said before, your tank looks amazing and again thank you for the story of your journey to recovery.

 

[muttley000]

Thanks for the awesome update Lance, always enjoy them and am glad you are back on track! FYI the sump you gave me the advice on had the baffles and glass bracing silicones in last week. I have 3 tanks plumbed into it and just need to get my sock holder solvents together this weekend and I will be ready to fill!

 

[CyclistMT]

...Long story short, the hair algae didnt have a chance against my scopas tangs. It was gone in less than 12 hours. Note there was a shoal of 8. So just a heads up.

But as I said before, your tank looks amazing and again thank you for the story of your journey to recovery.

Thanks for the kind words. I'm not a big fan of Zebrasoma tangs but I did consider a desjardini for a bit. If I didn't feel it would have gotten to big for the tank I might have put one in there. They are awesome at getting rid of hair algae, without a doubt!

Thanks for the awesome update Lance, always enjoy them and am glad you are back on track! FYI the sump you gave me the advice on had the baffles and glass bracing silicones in last week. I have 3 tanks plumbed into it and just need to get my sock holder solvents together this weekend and I will be ready to fill!

Glad to hear the sump is coming along! Would love to see some pictures posted here. We gotta keep the plywood club alive!