Floridiot's new SPS tank journal

[Floridiot]

I finally decided to document my new reef setup, and figured this would be a great place to post it. I've learned much from reading other's threads regarding their own setups, and I could always use input on my own setup.

My tank is a custom made 150 gallon glass tank. Dimensions are 52" x 26" x 26" with a single corner overflow. This tank is setup barebottom with white starboard for the bottom. The stand is custom made to fit the tank.

The sump is an old 80 gallon glass aquarium. I use an Iwaki 30RLXT as a return pump (about 800GPH with my piping).

I have a pair of Tunze 6080 Streams along with a Tunze Wavebox for circulation. This makes a decent amount of current, but like most SPS keepers, I'd still prefer more.

**note** Wavebox not currently in the tank. I sent it to Roger for repair. For some reason, my wave box makes more noise than the others, so Roger agreed to look at it for me.

I'm using a Turboflotor Baby 48" tall skimmer. I really like this skimmer, especially for the price. It definitely performs well. I have 16 fish, 7 shrimp, 10 Mexican turbo snails, an urchin, and 25 scarlet reef hemit crabs with no detectable nitrates (using a Seachem test kit).

I setup the tank in August, and received my Marshall Island live rock in October. The LR cycled very fast, and I started adding fish in late October. I've since been adding livestock slowly until I'm at the point where I am at now. Current livestock includes:

3 yellow tailed damsels
5 tank raised ocellaris clowns
5 blue/green chromis
1 kole tang
1 yellow tang
1 majestic angel

2 skunk cleaners
5 peppermint shrimp
1 short spined urchin
10 Mexican turbo snails
25 scarlet reef hermits

One small porites colony which survived on the live rock.

Two small Acropora ? frags that I just glued down last week.

I feed the tank about 1 cube of the frozen marine angel food per day, along with a half of cube of prime reef. I change about 30 gallons of water every other week. I'm not supplementing with anything at all right now.

I have a second-hand Koralin calcium reactor which I haven't hooked up yet. A friend of mine has promised me a CO2 tank, but I getting impatient and will probably go out and purchase one soon so I can get this baby running. Even though I have no calcium supplementation as of yet, my coralline is taking off.

Current lighting is just 220 watts of VHO, but I'm in the process of replacing this with a 9 bulb T5 HO setup. I should have it installed in the hood within the next few days. Once I do, I'm hoping to color up the acro frags.

Most of the plumbing is run into the next room, which makes it much easier to work on stuff rather than trying to fit everything underneath the tank.

I do not use a chiller on my tank, but will be getting one for emergency use in case my AC ever dies, or if I need to run the tank off generator after a hurricane. I also will be adding a Belkin 1500Va UPS for the two 6080 streams. This UPS should run the the streams for several hours (6 to 10) in case the power goes out when I'm not home. I may even get two UPSs (one for each pump) which would double the run time. These can be purchased for about $130 each with free shipping.

After the new lighting is installed and my reactor is operational, I will be ready to add more SPS. I have the the 2 current frags which will be my guide as to when the time is right to add more.

Feel free to offer any comments or suggestions, or to ask any questions. My computer time is limited due to my newborn son, but I will try to check in at least once per day.

 

[bogg]

lookin good nice setup, I like the open aquascaping.

 

[Kreeger1]

Nice start, your on the right path
Erik

 

[reefdadx2]

I am also switching from 3 VHOs to 4 T5s, just thought you may want to know I have been told to switch back from 12 hours to 8 hours photo period and take window screen 3 layers at first as the T5s will be much brighter than the VHOs. Maybe you are already going to do this, just want to tell you it will be a lot of light difference. Good luck hope to see some pictures. That rack of lights looks great. Michael R

 

[Floridiot]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=6373199#post6373199 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by reefdadx2
I am also switching from 3 VHOs to 4 T5s, just thought you may want to know I have been told to switch back from 12 hours to 8 hours photo period and take window screen 3 layers at first as the T5s will be much brighter than the VHOs. Maybe you are already going to do this, just want to tell you it will be a lot of light difference. Good luck hope to see some pictures. That rack of lights looks great. Michael R

Thanks for the advice.

 

[Floridiot]

Time for an update:

The T5 retrofit didn't fly in my existing canopy too well due to the way it was designed, so I ended up going with a SLS TEK 8x54W hanging fixture thanks to some input from my wife. Some of the retrofit stuff is now up on ebay, and some if it already got sold. I do like the look of an open topped aquarium, so I guess it is all for the better.

The only bad part is that the TEK fixture reflects considerably less light than the retrofit using the IC SLRs. Grim says it is 10% difference, but I believe it is more. I'm going to try them for a while and see how my corals respond. Right now I'm trying 4 Aquablue+ and 4 actinic+. This looks a bit blue to me, but I will try it for a while. If you notice the back glass, my coralline seems to love it!

I also ordered and received a couple of frag packs, one from mattntara on ebay, and the other from kmagyar here on RC.

The pack from mattntara included 8 frags: a pink A. millepora, a green stag, a purple turak, a green digitata, orange/red M. Capricornus, white tip stag, blue tip stag, and a green/blue deepwater acro.

These frags all came in OK except for the blue tip stag. This frag lost all its zooanthae during shipping, and never showed any polyps before losing its flesh a couple of days later in the tank. The pink millie is brown upon arrival, and has not shown any signs of coloring up at all in the tank. The green stag is basically brown with a greenish tint, but still a nice coral. The Turak is a very tiny frag (1/2"), but very colorful. The orange/red cap is one of the brightest nicest specimens I've seen, and came in as a nice sized half dollar sized frag. The white tip stag, green digitata, and deepwater acro all came with nice color and are all doing well. Overall, a pretty good deal for $110 delivered.

The pack from kmagyar included 9 frags:
1.) Purple ORA A. Tortuosa
2.) Blue A. Tenuis
3.) Acropora yongei, green slimer
4.) Stylophora, pink
5.) Light Blue A. Loripes
6.) Acropora, ultra green tabletop
7.) Yellow Stylophora
8.) pink pocillopora damnicornis
9.) Tri-color acro

The tort, tenius, slimer, table, tricolor, and loripes all have great color. The blue tenius is absolutely beautiful! I just got through mounting these, and almost all are showing polyps already. This pack was an outstanding deal at $145 delivered.

I will be placing another order from Keith as early as next week. Great seller!

I will take pictures of these corals for growth sequence and color purposes as soon as I can figure out how to use my Nikon digital camera to take decent pictures. Anyhow, there's my update!

 

[Floridiot]

Well, life is not so good this week in the aquarium. That is if you're one of the frags I recently mounted. I lost one of the frags I got from that last order the night I mounted them in the tank. It was the pink Pocillopora Damicornus. It RTN'd shortly after mounting it. Since everything else was looking good, I figured it may have been mounted in a place with too much flow.

The next morning I awoke to find the Green slimer was dead. When I went to bed, it had open polyps. When I woke up, completely white skeleton. Out came the test kits (all SeaChem).

Alk - 3 ml/L
Calcium - 400 ppm
Nitrate - undetectable
Phosphate - undetectable

pH 8.1 (pinpoint)
SG 1.023 (refractometer)

Water parameters all good. I drip acclimated these corals for 2 hours. I was at a loss.

Then I woke up yesterday morning (next day) to find a completely white skeleton that used to be a stylophora frag. I also see a peppermint shrimp eating the last remaining bit of flesh off the base. and another peppermint shrimp nearby. Could the peppermint shrimp be eating my SPS?

I wasn't going to take any more chances, so I decided I was going to wake up real early this morning and try to catch them. I laid my trap out and baited it with a piece of shrimp. Within 15 minutes I caught three of them. I moved them to my FO tank where they can live for the meantime.

I had 7 in there, so I know there are 4 more on the loose, but they weren't coming to the trap. I started looking through the tank with my flashlight when I noticed the culprit who was eating my frags. It is a crab about the size of a half dollar coin. This crab was munching down on the purple Tort frag! When I went after him, he hid in the rocks and did not reappear before the lights came on. My Tort frag is still half alive, and hopefully it will recover.

Tonight my goal is to eliminate this hairy little bastard! When I get him, I will post pictures of him here. I had not heard of crabs eating acros until I started searching the threads here. It seems as if I'm not the only one this has happened to. I've had the reef setup since October and I did not know the crab was even in there.

It's going to be a long night!

 

[Sindjin]

Oh man. Im sorry to hear about your losses over there. I have some emerald crabs in my tank but they seem to keep to themselves.

 

[Floridiot]

This ain't no emerald. It is completely covered in hair. Almost reminds me of a tarantula. I can't wait to catch this little bastard and post a picture of him.

 

[Wiskey]

Hey, I just found this thread,...

Could I get more detailed shots, and a discription of how you have that skimmer hooked up? I have a turbofloater, and I think one of it's biggest problems is that it is very short, with only a 14 inch tall reaction chamber. I have a few ideas on how to make it taller, but I would like to see how they did it first.

How many GPH are you running through that skimmer?

Did yours come with some kind of goofy metric pipe? How did you get past that?

Thanks,
Whiskey

 

[Wiskey]

How is the crab hunt going? Will it come to any bait?

Whiskey

 

[Sindjin]

And whats up that tarantula...err...crab?

 

[Floridiot]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=6611121#post6611121 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by Wiskey
Hey, I just found this thread,...

Could I get more detailed shots, and a discription of how you have that skimmer hooked up? I have a turbofloater, and I think one of it's biggest problems is that it is very short, with only a 14 inch tall reaction chamber. I have a few ideas on how to make it taller, but I would like to see how they did it first.

How many GPH are you running through that skimmer?

Did yours come with some kind of goofy metric pipe? How did you get past that?

Thanks,
Whiskey

Well this Turboflotor has a reaction chamber height of 34" + 12" tall collection cup and a 1.5" tall lid. Yes it came with the goofy metric pipe, but it also came with adapters to convert it to US sizes. I'm using an Iwaki 20RLT to feed this skimmer (about 450 GPH), and the skimmer has a built-in OceanRunner 3700. I checked both of these pumps on a Kill-A-Watt meter and they don't draw much at all. The Iwaki draws 39 watts and the Oceanrunner draws 52 watts. That's a total of 81 watts for the entire skimmer.

The only complaint I have about this skimmer is that it won't skim very wet using the adjustment valves that are built into it. Setting the water level as high as it will go still only delivers about 12 oz of dark fluid per day. My nitrates still read zero, so I know it is working, but my chaeto is still growing, so take it for what its worth. My phosphates test zero on a seachem kit, but that doesn't really mean anything. I just haven't broke down and purchased a quality phosphate test kit or colorimeter.

I'm going to order a couple of 1" gate valves, along with a couple more metric to US adapters and try doing a mod to the discharge of this skimmer so I can skim wetter. When I get the parts, I will post detailed pictures of how I modded it if it works.

 

[Floridiot]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=6611165#post6611165 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by Sindjin
And whats up that tarantula...err...crab?

Well I could not find him last night before I went to bed around 1:00am. I tried the piece of shrimp in a glass leaning next to a rock trick, but there was no one in there when I woke up. I just got through searching the tank again with a flashlight and as of now, still no sign of him. Bad news is that I found out there is a second one in there. This one is much smaller, about the size of a dime, and not nearly as hairy. Now I got two crabs to catch.

I did get out two more of the peppermint shrimp thanks to my fish trap. I still have two more to go along with the two crabs.

 

[jackson6745]

I'm not too familiar with the turbofloater but couldn't you just add a gate valve on the drain line to restrict a little giving you a wetter skimmate?

 

[Floridiot]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=6613121#post6613121 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by jackson6745
I'm not too familiar with the turbofloater but couldn't you just add a gate valve on the drain line to restrict a little giving you a wetter skimmate?

Actually no.

If you look at the image, there are two pieces labeled part #10. These are the flow control valves. The tops of these valves have a vent hole. These valves operate in such a way that even when fully closed, they still allow quite a bit of water through. If I were to just put gate valves after the discharge, water would come out of these vent holes.

What I'm ordering is part #6. These are just an additional set of 40mm union fittings. I will then plug the holes on the top of parts labeled #10. Next I will get a pair of 40mm x 1" reducer bushings to connect these new unions to the 1" gate valves I'll be ordering. This will make everything water-tight up to the gate valves. After the gate valves, I will tee the return lines that go back to the sump to enable a vent there (instead of the ones on parts #10).

Not sure if that makes any sense, but it's getting late.

 

[Wiskey]

Wow, your skimmer design is compleatily diffrent than mine,... But what your design is, is what I am trying to make. Are there 2 recerc pumps on yours?

Mine is powered by a ocean runner 2700. I also want to put the gate valves on mine, at least that is the plan.

Thanks,
Whiskey

 

[Floridiot]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=6613742#post6613742 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by Wiskey
Wow, your skimmer design is compleatily diffrent than mine,... But what your design is, is what I am trying to make. Are there 2 recerc pumps on yours?

Mine is powered by a ocean runner 2700. I also want to put the gate valves on mine, at least that is the plan.

Thanks,
Whiskey

Mine only has one recirc pump. The diagram is for the 5000 series which includes 3 different models.

 

[Wiskey]

I just added 30 inches of riser pipe to the top of my skimmer, this thing looks crazy, I am not going to let it run when I am not here that is for sure. The water now feeds in from half way up my add on tube and I was able to block one output and use the existing gate valve to controal the water hight.

If this accually works/makes a diffrence, I will make this mod perminate (accually glue stuff so it is not dripping everywhere) but for now I am going to observe, and test.

Thanks for the diagram,
Whiskey

 

[Floridiot]

Progress!

I've finally captured the smaller Gorilla crab and the last two peppermint shrimp. I've also gotten real close to catching the larger crab.

I found a small piece of LR that I had placed in my sump which had a nice crater in the middle of it. I tied a piece of shrimp to the rock so that it is stuck inside the crater. I then set the piece of rock in the aquarium on the top of the other LR. After two hours, I quickly pulled out the small LR and the crab was hiding in the crater.

Here's a picture of the smaller one:

I also had the larger one hide in the rock, but he fled when I tried to pull it from the water. Next time he goes for the bait, I will hold a net in one hand while I quickly move the rock into the net with the other. I feel lucky tonight!