Finally have a large tank... 280g Deltec Custom Reef Tank

I am planning on keep the snowflake for as long he behaves. I don't have an small rocks in my display and all of my corals are glued down so I don't foresee his bulk being a problem.

I have been trying to get rid of my insane sixline since yesterday though. I put in a aquamedic fish trap yesterday to let the fish get used to it. No one went near it until this morning when I put some food in it and as thing usually go everything in the tank but the sixline have been inside of it. So today I have been fishing since 5am without any luck and will try the trap again later. In my experience it takes a few days for the fish to warm up to the trap but it seems the sixline is the only one that has reservations.


On another note corals are looking great today. Much to my surprise I also noticed that the 3 smaller frags I epoxied down have encrusted nicely already. Not bad for a 3 week old tank with slight nitrate problems! I am also trying to get my superman monti to color up and have been trying different light and flow variations. I believe they enjoy medium to high light with high flow for best coloration, someone please correct me if I'm wrong.
 
even if there isn't much interest here it goes.

My encrusting little babies
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And other pictures I took today
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Thanks bart, appreciate your input... how's your tank coming along?

The sixline is homicidal. I was unaware of their reputation for violence until a store here said they have problem with them all the time. Basically he killed a lot of fish in my old tank and I though he would be ok in a larger tank. Unfortunately he killed the radiance wrasse I bought within 2 days and I think he took out a anthia or two so he has to go. To bad because I think they are very cool looking little guys.
 
Tom display coming along just fine and watching it grows and mature. i have 6 six line wrasse in my display and no problems. all of them was entered the same time
 
good to hear man... yeah I read up on your display and I'm happy to hear that your experience in the hobby is improving. It really is a hell of a past time and I'm glad your sticking with it, even if you did give us that little scare :D.

I had a six line in my old 120 with close to 20 other fish and he never was a problem, this little guy just seems to have personality issues.
 
i noticed all the fishes are different in many ways. yeah display is doing great as i am slowly adding corals and livestock. slowing learning this hobby as i taught it was easy, but guess with larger display means more maintenance.
 
More maintenance but I think its a greater reward when things start going in the right direction. I got lucky with my current system as it was pretty easy to setup (as it was about 85% of a existing system) and I didn't have to deal with a cycle or any major problems yet. Knock on wood.

Best of luck man. Learning new random things all the time is one of the perks. Its ridiculous what I have learned that I would have never come across outside the hobby. I doubt there will be a day when I stop changing and tweaking my tank. I learn new things every day and still very much consider myself a beginner in the hobby and the challenge is one of the things I really enjoy.
 
Today I zip tied 1/4 PVC risers on some eggcrate I cut to match the compartments of my sump. Here is what my sump looks like and how I have it setup. All the circles represent rock and I have eggcrate on the risers under all the rock. I also have 2 maxijets that keep crap more suspended.

I am happy with the way the eggcrate worked out. If anyone can think of a way I can improve or tweak my layout please let me know.

sumplayout2.jpg

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regardless of a lack of interest I am going to continue updating this thread.

Sump basics ideas and goals that someone asked me about on another site and I figured I'd post it up here as well.

The idea is that the extra rock in the sump acts as extra filtration. A bonus is that I actually get a lot of extra light down there because of the gaps in the sand behind a lot of the rock work. The guy who had the tank setup before never put anything under the rocks and really crammed it in there so when I took it apart there was almost 1.5" of detritus in the sump.

So the idea is that the rocks are raised up so that water can pass over, under, and in between the rocks without detritus getting trapped underneath them. So there is a clear path of water movement underneath all the time letting filtration take that stuff out. I also have the a modded maxijet pointing at each of the rock piles created a counter flow against the flow in and out of the sump. I'm hoping that this will help keep some of the detritus suspended as well.

The water comes into the first section, through a filter bag, that just holds rock to calm down microbubbles from the skimmer and give the water a chance to mix. It then continues into the narrow raceway were it is tested, then the eheim pump pulls a significant amount of what's passing by it into the skimmer and the rest passes by to the heaters so that they have a good amount of flow past them at all times and so they are downstream from the temp sensor so it only reads the temp of water coming from the tank, not the heated sump water. The water is then directed to the right side of the sump where the two shuran filters (which each have dedicated built in pumps) filter the water some more and pass it back into the two right side corners to keep detritus from building up there. The water then comes around and passes a final section of liverock before returning to the tank. Thanks to all the rock and repeated filtration I don't have an microbubble problems even though I'm pushing a lot of water through the sump.

I'm hoping that in between some of the rocks a lot of sponges will grow to create a sort of cryptic zone. I also wanted the water that had been filtered by the skimmer to have to go past the intake again as I don't see how that could hurt, the same goes for the two chemical filters.

So that's that, let me know if any of my reasoning is flawed.
 
Tom you can count on me keeping this thread alive. how gph going through your sump? also is it safe to have some live rocks by the return area?
 
<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=12027660#post12027660 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by thirschmann
good to hear man... yeah I read up on your display and I'm happy to hear that your experience in the hobby is improving. It really is a hell of a past time and I'm glad your sticking with it, even if you did give us that little scare :D.

I had a six line in my old 120 with close to 20 other fish and he never was a problem, this little guy just seems to have personality issues.
Click to expand...

I got rid of mine before I went to the big tank setup... I wanted multiple wrasses and was afraid of having the problem you had. I know the pain... they are great little fish and good pest hunters.

Love your setup so far.
 
awesome thanks bart, appreciate the support. As far as gph through the sump is concerned I'm thinking its 1200 but that is just an estimate based on 1289 rating and a little head loss. It is pretty quick though. I put a few of the biggest pieces of rock near the inlet, not that there is any rubble in the sump at all but but only large flat pieces where put there. Also there is an intake grill and a clip on guard that I think is actually supposed to be there so that one of those air vortex things doesn't draw air in. Haven't had a problem with it yet and I got high hopes.


Fishtruck.. I knew it was a risk as I was putting him in put I always had good luck with them as best hunters and they look awesome. Its to bad that they are so aggressive towards other wrasses. He still hasn't gone in the trap but I'll keep trying. If all goes wrong I'll just get a bigger meaner wrasse to put him in his place. I really wanted multiple wrasses in this tank as well so I'm going to have to get him out someway, just a waiting game.

Thanks, I'm happy with the way its going to far. Got some moon lights hooked up today as well. A strand of 15 blue moonlights on a dimmer for $11 plus shipping from ebay and they are perfect. Great compared to the $40 per LED from the LFS.
 
never use those one yet, but the PFO moonlights are very bright but pricey too. guess it depends on how tall your display is. did most of the corals come from your previous tank?
 
Yeah I just really didn't like how my tank was a dark hole at night so I really need the moonlights. A great improvement. I was wary of the homemade ones a well but these are working out great. Ikea is also selling a LED accent kit with 7 colors that can be set to blue which looks like it would work out great, but was out of stock here.

I would say that about half of my corals are transfers and they seem to be liking the change and upgrade in lighting. 1 coral has lost some of its color intensity but is still growing like before so I hope the color will improve again. Otherwise I'll have to move it.
 
i used total 9 PFO moonlights and alternate on and off days, but the display get total darkness 3 times weekly. most of the critters love the dark, especially all nass. snails come out during complete lights out and clean the entire sand bed.
 
oh yeah and some other things

-15 dimmable Moonlights added from ebay and were cheap and work great.
-Going BB to see how I like it on a big tank. 80% of sand removed tonight.
-Currently using algone along with water changes and wet skimmer to slowly bring down nitrates which appear to be leaking from the liverock
-Having a few problems with my aquatronica lately

Got a Vortech w/ wireless controller today and its working better then expected. Its putting out a great amount of flow and definitely improves my tanks overall flow. I currently have it on reef-crest but might switch to lagoon. Giving it a few hours to see how it goes.
 
will anything happened by removing the sand out that short period of time, possibly by stirring it up and releasing nitrate. also i set my skimmer to wet one week then dry the next.
 
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