Jupiter (Mike`s) Anemone tank

[jupiter]

I was out of the hobby for 6 years. During that time I moved into my house. I was putting off starting a new tank until I was "œready". Well who knew when that would be so I thought, "œLife is too short to wait," so I went to the LFS during Boxing Week (Canada) and picked up a 75 gallon tank (48x18x21). Originally I wanted to go with a 60 gallon cube (24x24x24) but I had trouble finding one. When I did, it was 3x the cost of the 75 and I still wasn't even sure I wanted to return to the hobby at that point. I could have gone with a 90 gallon (3" taller) but the focus was the sea anemone and the shallower 75 allowed the anemone to be closer to the lights.
The tank is dedicated to a host sea anemone and clowns. I hadn't exactly decided which clown species I would go with but I did know I wanted a natural host for the clowns. That meant I could potentially limit the species of clown (or anemone) I could choose. I also wanted a clown that isn't very common but also, isn't trendy (and ugly). Ultimately, A. clarkii would have been the best clown choice based on their anemone preference (since they like every anemone) but I wanted something a little different. So I made the decision to go for A. nigripes (black-footed or Maldives clownfish). Unfortunately these aren't the easiest clowns to find and when they are found they tend not to survive import. So I did my pre-planning and asked a local dealer if he could import them for me. After several weeks he contacted me and can provide tank-raised fishes. I still haven't got them yet and it's been a couple of months but I'm trying to be patient.
With Maldives clowns, the only natural host is the Ritteri (Heteractis magnifica) which is a very difficult anemone to keep. I'm still on the fence about whether I want to risk one. The idea is that I will upgrade the tank in the near future so it wouldn't be in the 18" wide tank too long. We'll see what the future holds.
With host anemones, there are certain requirements:
1) Clean water
2) Strong lighting
3) Strong flow
And based on the species of anemone there are more requirements:
4) Sand bed depth
5) Tank size
6) Quantity of rockwork
7) Neighbours

 

[jupiter]

Problem solving

Problem solving

So how I "œsolved" these problems I'll address one by one:
1) Clean water: I used an oversized protein skimmer and limited the amount of fishes in the tank. I'll discuss the skimmer in a later post.
2) Strong lighting: The only viable options were T5 fluorescent and/or Metal halide (MH). I opted for MH but I will discuss lighting in a later post. LEDs are still too new a technology and not enough people have provided evidence of success with host anemones yet. VHO may have provided enough light but the number of dealers offering this form of lighting is dwindling so I didn't want to take that route as my full lighting system.
3) Strong flow: The best option for strong flow would have been a closed loop (CL). However in an anemone tank, the intake for the CL is a very large potential disaster. It is many-fold more dangerous than powerheads (PH). I didn't want to go that route. Instead I went with a mix of strong return pump and propeller pump. I will discuss plumbing in a later post.
4) Sand bed depth: All anemones except the Bubble-tip (Entacmaea quadricolor) and Ritteri anemones need a deep sand bed to burrow their foot. Although I wanted a RItteri anemone, I didn't want to leave out the option for a different species so I used a 4" sand bed. I may increase it later but I'm not sure yet. 4" is the absolute minimum sand depth for burrowing anemones.
5) Tank size: The length of my tank is fine but the width isn't. I am limited to small specimens of the large species or to the smaller species. I didn't really "œsolve" this problem.
6) Quantity of rockwork: For burrowing anemones they tend to like to expend their mantles on the sand bed. That meant I had to provide an open space for the anemone to expand. In this case, I added two "œpiles" of rock on either side of the tank and an open space in the centre.
7) Neighbours: I limited the number of fishes in the tank to reduce bioload and waste. I also did not add any fish or invertebrate that would harm the anemone. This also included some inverts that are called "œreef safe" but seem to like tormenting anemones (like Coral banded shrimps which like to snip the tips off anemones tentacles).
So that's the long story of my tank. Now I will get into the details.

 

[jupiter]

Water Quality and Lighting

Water Quality and Lighting

Water Quality
To purify my water I went with a 4 stage RO/DI unit. I purchased this from BWI plumbing. The unit works well. The brand of salt I'm using is Instant Ocean because it is the most readily available and is very economical for the quality. For the skimmer I am using a SWC Xtreme 200 I purchased from Saltwater Connection in Canada. This skimmer is rated for about 350 gallons at light bioload (like my tank). It's a little big for my tank but I wanted something I could use when I upgrade. I like the skimmer and it works well but the Sicce pump is noisy. When and if sound becomes an issue (e.g.: if a use it on a tank in a living room) I might consider changing the pump.

Lighting
Here is a full tank shot showing the lighting system.

I chose to use a pair of 250W Radium bulbs powered by a pair of Galaxy Select-A-Watt electronic ballasts. I chose the Galaxy ballasts because I read that they provide a good output for the Radium bulbs (which are supposed to be run using magnetic M80 ballasts). Also this allows me to change to any type of MH bulb I choose in the future.
I thought Radiums would be a good choice because the colour of the bulbs would make actinics unnecessary. I find them a little too blue though and I don't think I will use them in the future.
I wanted to use a pair of pendants over the tank so there would be no place to put fluorescent lamps. For the pendants I chose to use CoralVue Lumen Bright mini pendants. My tank isn't wide enough for the full sized pendants and I have enough space over the tank that I didn't need the mini wides. The pendants are hung using 4 chains, 2 to each eyelet on the top of the pendant. I used 2 chains per eyelet to give the hooks supporting the pendants at the ceiling more support. Also, one chain per eyelet would have meant the pendant could shake around more if it was knocked.

 

[jupiter]

Plumbing

Plumbing

Plumbing
The only system that could handle the volume of water I needed without producing a lot of noise was the Beananimal System. I won’t go into details about the system as you can read all about it on the link provided.
I purchased all the plumbing parts I needed from JJ Downs in Toronto. They had everything I needed except for bulkheads. This was everything I bought:

I didn’t use a full coast-to-coast overflow system. I used a 24x3x4 overflow with ¼” glass. I had the glass cut at a local glass cutting shop. I wanted space on either side of the overflow to drill for return pluming. The standpipes are 1.5” with unions on the Emergency and normal standpipe and a true union ball valve on the siphon. These are Tee-d off at 1” bulkheads installed on the back of the tank and reduced to 1” elbows in the overflow.

The overflow drains into a 36x12x16 sump. I wanted to use a bigger sump (18” wide) but glass tanks are more expensive than I remember so I got a cheaper, smaller one. The sump has 2 baffles that divide the tank into three sections.

Water enters into the skimmer chamber and flows to the right to wards the return pump. The Emergency pipe exits into the middle chamber. The Emergency should only run if there is blockage in the other pipes so it is okay if it bypasses the skimmer.
The return pump is a Reeflo Dart rated at 3600 gph.

img
This is a lot of flow for a 75 gallon tank so I Tee-d it back to the sump. I found, however, that the overflow is very capable of handling this entire flow so I have the Tee shut off and the full flow goes directly to the tank. This gives a nominal turnover of 48x tank volume. I also added a VorTech MP10 propeller pump at full power so the nominal turnover is closer to 65x. Realistically the turnover is about 50x which is still good for Ritteri anemones.

I installed true union ball valves at all important sections of the plumbing to allow me to remove the pump or sections of the plumbing for servicing.
The intake for the pump is 2” so I installed a 2” bulkhead in the sump. There is a hosebarb at the bulkhead and at the pump and these are connected with flexible vinyl tubing. I used flexible tubing so the vibration would be minimal. The output of the pump is 1.5” so the return pipe is 1.5” and reduces to a 1” Tee at which point I have 1” hosebarbs that connect to hosebarbs on 1” bulkheads on the back of the tank. I used flexible tubing here, too, so that I didn’t have to worry if the PVC return pipe didn’t exactly match the barbs on the tank, and also, to reduce vibration.

I’ll post more about the tank later.

 

[bues0022]

Looks like a good start to your thread. I'm looking forward to seeing more.

 

[jupiter]

I designed the rockwork so that there would be open space in the centre of the tank and “rock piles” on either side.
Right side:

Left side

Centre

The sand bed is about 4” deep which is the minimum depth for most sand-dwelling anemones. I might go deeper in time but not right now.

 

[jupiter]

Livestock
Right now the tank houses a purple long tentacle anemone (LTA) and a pair of pink skunk clowns. I have a number of other corals and inverts in the tank but I have avoided anything harmful to the anemone or significantly harmed by the anemone. This limits me to mushrooms and zoas which is just fine. The anemone is the focal point.
Purple LTA Anemone. The Radiums really mess up the colour.

Clam

Red zoas

Skunk cleaner shrimps

Frogspawn coral

Pompom crab. I only see this guy at night.

Popcorn shrimp

Plate coral. I only have this for the popcorn shrimp

 

[a.stebel]

Excellent looking setup Mike.

 

[bristlebasher]

Nice setup:beer::beer:

Do you have any updates to share with us.

 

[Zero Cool]

Never heard of a popcorn shrimp.... other than the fried kind. Do you know the scientific name for them?

 

[Tripel_Hornet]

looks like he quit RC or was banned so he isnt answering this thread. hehe