Large Polyp Dave's Rimless SPS tank

Hi im new to the community but I also have a mixed reef powered by T5. Very beautiful tank Dave, seriously. Was there a specific reason you went barebottom? What do you feed?
 
Great looking reef! :thumbsup:

You are correct, our tank specs are almost the same!
Other then a couple inches of difference in the tank dimensions and BB we have the skimmer and light fixture.

You ever think about adding a shallow sand bed to the tank? ;)
 
Hey sunnyx, good question!

When i first started the tank, I went barebottom - but I didn't do it properly, I wasn't diligent with detritus removal and my nitrates crept up over time without the denitrification from the sandbed. Even with water changes I was never able to keep it below 20ppm

I added a shallow sand bed in early 2007 and kept it for a year. Visually i enjoyed it a lot more than the black starboard. But then I started to get areas where cyano and just random crap would make the sand look gross and dirty.

So I vacuumed it all out and have been running a remote sandbed (in a 6g container). My nitrates are undetectable with a salifert kit. I've been running the remote sandbed for over a year now and really like it. It lets me crank up the flow in the tank (two tunze 6100s) without worrying about sandstorms.


I do like the look of a shallow sandbed but I just haven't had much luck with it.

I still need to siphon out detritus once a month during water changes
 
Dave, I've had no luck finding out what that black stuff is. Even when all the other algae in the tank is gone, it stays. It also keeps growing without light. I actually thought it might be some type of sponge, but that's just a guess. I pull it out every water change.

That said, your tank looks WAY better than mine - I don't think I'd notice the stuff in yours if you didn't mention it! :)
 
<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=14877453#post14877453 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by Large Polyp Dave
How's the shallow sandbed working out for your tank? Do you vaccum and replace ever?
Click to expand...

The SSB has been working out great for me. Once a month I vacuum the sand to keep it nice and bright. I use Caribsea Seaflor special grade which is a larger grain size and easy to vacuum clean.
 
<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=14881615#post14881615 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by Large Polyp Dave
how many inches is your ssb?
Click to expand...

About 1" at the most. I used only one 30lb bag of sand for the entire tank. Its mainly there for show and stability of ALK/Ph.

I tried BB for 6 months in the last tank and had major issues maintaining ALK and Ph levels, not to mention how ugly it looked. I placed sand back into the system and never looked back.
 
i just replaced much of my sand with the caribsea reeflor special grade. great call sonny, i love it. i was able to turn my vortechs up higher as it doesnt move like oolitic sand does and its a very clean looking substrate also.
 
I have been battling a similar algae problem. It has a velvet/grassy texture and the tips are kind of transparent. The only thing that helped was raising my Magnesium level.
 
Sorry for the long wait!

I don't really dose anything. No zeo etc. My hours at work can get really nasty at times so I've tried to achieve a simplistic system with as little daily maintenance as possible.

I target feed reef-roids to the goniopora/dendro/rhizo like once or twice a week
I feed the fish omega-one flake and PE mysis randomly. I think on average I feed the fish three times every 2 days
I do a 20% water change once a month
I change 2 cups of carbon once a month
I run rowaphos and change it once a month
I run a 6 gallon remote sandbed in my sump

I took more photos this weekend and I might have found some monti-eating nudis... I've had them before in the past in 2007 and I really hope I don't have them again!.. jeese. I'll keep an eye on it.

Sunnyx, did you notice any change in algae growth between BB and SSB? Also did you ever decide on whether or not you'd upgrade that skimmer of yours? Those ATB cones look pretty exciting huh? haha
 
That is beautiful...very clean! Nicely done. Curious to know, what is your bulb configs? Colors really come out under that 10K feel.
 
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