Eel Freak's 205g Build

[Eel Freak]

Little bit of an update here:

Coralvue sent the wrong skimmer... The 3000 came in and I had ordered the 5000. So, called them up, and by the evening they had already shipped out the replacement 5000 so that should arrive on Friday! No word on when the Water Blaster will arrive though...

 

[Eel Freak]

ORA Pearlberry I picked up today:

 

[Haplochromine]

That is one ugly bristleworm.

 

[Eel Freak]

It really is..... Easily the ugliest thing I've found in any of my tanks so far.

 

[Eel Freak]

A wonderful package arrived yesterday:

I knew the skimmer was big, but wow. The 6" neck on it and at 30" tall it was surprising....

And on the stand in place in the fish room:

The HY-3000W feed pump is still on backorder, however I will be going on vacation for a week on Tuesday so I wouldn't want to have it running while I'm gone anyways....

 

[Eel Freak]

New additions

New additions

Some updates:

Got the 125 in the fish room on Sunday... It will have at least an 8" sand-bed, a lot of rock, and definitely tons of Macroalgae. I currently only have Prolifera... The Toadfish, Javanese damsels, and other non-reef-safe creatures that I had in the 50g fuge will be transferred into the new 125g fuge.

NEW ADDITIONS!

I went shopping yesterday... Acquired 3 yellow tangs out of Hawaii, a Yellow-eye Kole tang, a show-size Table Acro from Australia (just came in on Saturday so it has yet to color up), a nice greenish Stag from Australia, and a frag of purple Stylophora (it has not yet opened up so no pictures of it...) Pictures to follow, enjoy!

Kole:

Lawnmower Blenny chilling in the old drains:

Stag in front of the ORA Purple Nana (not Pearlberry, my bad...):

Table Acro:

FTS:

 

[Genin]

Looking really good. Sorry about the refugium bust, that is a horrible call to get I bet.

 

[Eel Freak]

Thanks!

Yeah, it was. But, that's the way things go I guess. No damage to the home or anything, so that was good. Luckily that's the first and only call of the sort that I've gotten.

 

[muttley000]

Looks good! Love the acro. Do you feel your fuge still feeds your tank well with the fish in it?

 

[Eel Freak]

Thank you! Well, I am not 100% sure what you mean by that? Could you clarify please?

And right now, I don't actually have a fuge online. When I get back from vacation tomorrow I'll begin to bring it online, but that won't be completed until about the end of the week since I need to work on the skimmer too.

 

[muttley000]

Sorry for not being clear! Do you feel the fish that will be in your fuge will deplete the natural food production for your display before it gets there? Maybe food production is not one of your goals for the fuge and it doesn't matter. It is unusual to find someone who is planning on fish in the fuge and I am just curious, trying to learn a new perspective Thanks for trying to understand my question and give it some thought before answering, and I hope you are having a great vacation!

 

[Eel Freak]

I was asked earlier to share some pros and cons with my two-Brute sump setup, it's been running for a while so I can share what I've found so far.

Pros:
Really easy to work with; especially for drilling and such.
Very very very quiet. Pop the lid on the one where the drains enter and it's almost dead-silent. This means it can pour into it and cause tons of aeration. I have it stacked with LR the whole way up.
Very minimal sump volume. This means it can handle A LOT of drain off. I've only got about 5" of water in the sump. That leaves another 24" of height in two Brutes to catch drain-off during a power outage.
Cheap (relatively)

Cons:
Not easy to get a good seal on a bulkhead through the side near the bottom
Using two, I have a 2" pipe that connects them. If something were ever to clog that....
^Note here: I could have installed an emergency flow 2" pipe near the top. I am planning to, I haven't had a chance yet though.

That's about all I can say for now!

 

[Eel Freak]

Sorry for not being clear! Do you feel the fish that will be in your fuge will deplete the natural food production for your display before it gets there? Maybe food production is not one of your goals for the fuge and it doesn't matter. It is unusual to find someone who is planning on fish in the fuge and I am just curious, trying to learn a new perspective Thanks for trying to understand my question and give it some thought before answering, and I hope you are having a great vacation!

Ohh! I see what you are saying now!

Well, the Toadfish is a benthic carnivore. He isn't going to eat pods. At all. When open, his mouth is about the size of my fist.... The damsel, maybe. It never has been one to pick at rocks I've noticed. It just eats the shreds from the Toadfish. And that's it. The tank should be big enough to allow it to gorge if it so feels the desire. I may do a Rhinopias one day, but not right now. It falls in with the Toadfish as far as diet... My goals with the fuge are for food production secondarily, and primarily nutrient export, as I feed VERY heavily.

Thank you! I have been enjoying it very much!

 

[Eel Freak]

Time for a much-needed update!

So far, all the tangs I got just before I left for vacation are doing just fine. They all eat voraciously, and only bicker minimally with each other.

The corals I got were all Acros, my first try at them... Sadly, my parameters have been close to being perfect, but not enough. I lost the Staghorn Acro, and the giant Table is showing some burnt tips, but extending its polyps nicely. This is due to my Alkalinity being on the low end and calcium being up near 500... Nitrates crept up to 20 while I was gone, but now they're down to zero after having brought the skimmer online. So far the ORA, I think it's a Purple Nana, is only just not extending its polyps to a full extent.

Other than that, things are doing wonderfully! I'll get some top-down shots of some stuff later today when the Halides come on...

I filled the refugium this week. The 125g tank has around 400lbs of sand in it, about 75lbs of rock, and I'm waiting to see how dead the sand was... It's not connected to the display, but I have pumps circulating the water. It is naturally lit with LED supplementation. I currently only have Prolifera....

I also acquired a 1/4HP SeaClear chiller for free from a friend. I've been running it the last few days. It gets the tank down to 77 overnight and it doesn't break 80 all day. That beats the 86 it would hit on hot days without it!

Enough updating, picture time!

Fuge (excuse the terrible pic):

Broken-in and skimming like a beast SRO-XP5000e:

Full equipment shot (less the fuge, which is off on the right):

And the display:

 

[Eel Freak]

An interesting fact I thought of including: I go through 4-5 full algae sheets a day for the Tangs and Idol. They all eat from the two clips...

And so far, the Idol is actually showing signs of gaining weight!!

 

[Eel Freak]

Some terrible top-down shots.... Man.... These really exemplify how badly I need a quality camera.

A Montipora capricornis specimen:

ORA something:

Looking down into the small "canyon", local sand-dwelling anemone at the bottom:

Derasa clam:

 

[Eel Freak]

I ended up losing the Aussie Stag due to my water parameters... Things are being corrected quickly now though. Tomorrow I'm picking up large quantities of Brightwell's MicroBacter7 and their Code A and B supplements so I can correct my Alkalinity issue, then maintain it.

Took some pictures today! I'm getting better at this...

Kinda liked this shot:

My baby Maxima!

As a group:

Here's what the gargantuan hammer I had looked like a couple months ago:

And here it is now: :hmm2: I removed almost all the dead heads yesterday and separated the colony into a few smaller pieces.

Looking straight onto the canyon, which is not viewable directly front on:

And lastly, the only good picture I have ever gotten of my big Sailfin. This was from when the 205 was a FOWLR.

 

[Eel Freak]

Got the MicroBacter7 and Code B today!

I brought alkalinity up by about 1dKh. I'm at about 7.5 right now. I'm shooting for 10dKh as a target... The Aussie table is definitely showing signs of stress due to the water, but that's being corrected right now. Hopefully by the end of the week it will be right where it should be.

 

[Eel Freak]

Dug up the good old Olympus SP-500UZ today, played around with it for a while, and these were the results!

Enjoy!

The only decent(ish) pic of my baby Maxima I've ever gotten:

 

[RealReef7]

Nice tank, what kinda MH bulbs are you running?