Ludnix's tropical 120!

[albertan22]

Hi Ludnix,

I'm in the process of planning out a 120 gallon tank myself and find myself loving your tank (especially the rockwork). I'll be setting up a similar mixed reef and was wondering how your lighting choices worked out for you? I know early on you mentioned that you thought the lighting may be overkill. Now that things have been established for awhile, do you think you'd change anything if you had it all to do again?

 

[ludnix]

I wouldn't change anything for lighting, It's a lot of light, but it definitely makes it easier on placing the higher light SPS. If I were to change anything it might have been nice to have a few more areas of rock where I could place low-light corals. Currently any low-light corals have to stick off the side of the rock towers, unless it's a sand bed coral.

The biggest piece of advice I can give is make sure you stand leaves plenty of room to work on your bulk heads, assuming you have them. That's the biggest thing I would have done differently if I had to redo this setup. As you can see in the first pictures the holes I left in the stand for tightening the bulkheads are far too small and had to be widened while the tank was setup.

If you have any more questions feel free to ask!

 

[ludnix]

Since the tank first started up we had been using some large filter socks. They definately muffled the noise and kept any microbubbles from leeching into the display, but the constant maintenance was a huge issue, especially since we plan on going on vacation for 3 weeks very soon. I knew from Melev's website the solution would have to be a bubble tower.

I hadn't worked with acrylic before, but using weld-on number 5 and an a sheet of 1/8th inch acrylic I was able to put something together.

The tower is 15" tall and the top opening is 4"x4". In this picture the two front sides are still missing, but you can see the overall shape that it was going to create. The water coming out of our megaflow dursos creates a ton of bubbles so I had a feeling I would need to something a little more advanced to keep the bubbles from escaping through the bottom of the tower. Copying the design from my skimmer, I placed two PVC 90s just above the bottom surface of my bubble tower, this allows only the water that is from the last few centimeters of the tower to escape, the section of the water that has the least bubbles.

With all four sides on, I filled the tower with some chunks of crushed coral and live rock. This follows what Melev's bubble towers usually look like, the only difference being the 90 degree outlets.

I cannot see any bubbles escaping through the 90s, the first day it ran there was a few, but the course of about a week they have all disappeared. You can see how dirty my sump is though!:eek1:

You can see how much bubbles the drain was creating at the top. I could definitely see turning these into some down draft skimmers down the road.

 

[Western_reefer]

Its lookin good!

 

[Jerm77]

I like that tower. I am starting to dislike ffiltersocks as well.

 

[Bernie21]

Very nice tank, love the aquascaping, just sick, really!!

 

[ludnix]

Update!

Update!

Hello everybody, I've been told it's about time I update the thread again so here I go.

There's been a few changes since I've last updated, a lot of growth and a few new additions, including the beautiful copperband you can see this first photo.

As can be seen we're experiencing a little diatom bloom from the new sand we added recently. It's receding again though so before long we'll back to clean white sand.

I managed to snag a few close-ups of some of the fish.

The copperband butterfly

Blue/Green Chromis

Psychedelic Mandarin

Tomini Tang

Royal Gramma

 

[ludnix]

I was very surprised to find the whiskers coral is sprouting a tiny new head. I don't know why, but I had a feeling this wasn't a coral that would spread quickly in my tank.

As predicted the maze coral darkened up quite nicely.

Our long spine urchin made his way inside the pagoda cup. I wondered what he could possibly want in there? It turns out he was munching off the coraline on a snail that had fallen in there.

I have two frags of this acropora, and both are now sprouting big purple tips all over. I'm glad they are finally getting some growth!

The montipora capricornus continues to grow out at steady pace. Before long it's going to reach to rock with the hammer coral on it.

This frogspawn is new, it was from my LFS's display tank. Their frogspawn is certainly their showpeice at almost 2.5' wide. You can see this frag has tons of little baby heads on it.

The female clown sure does love her anemone. The anemone itself does seems pretty happy too as it's darkened up a lot.

The pipe organ has been putting out lots of babies. I'm curious as to whether or not this coral is able to attach itself to the rock.

These polyps will be really pretty when all three meet on the rock.

 

[ludnix]

I thought I'd share some updates on the sump aswell.

The refugium continues to prosper under these bulbs and high bio-load.

We added a drain on the skimmate container as a failsafe for skimmer overflows. We had caught the container almost filled to the brim a few too many times to not have some sort of safe-guard, especially since we will be leaving for 3 weeks soon.

I finished the second bubble tower aswell. We now are filter sock free! I used a different method for this tower. Instead of gluing 4 peices together to make a box, I just heated and bent one peice 3 times allowing there to be only one seam on the side. I have to say it came out much nicer, almost good enough to sell!

The plastic bag over the top ensures that no salt water will splash on the inside walls of the stand.

Here's a full room shot to put it all in perspective.

 

[dougie]

great looking tank. i love the stand to.

 

[tcmfish]

Looks really good! Keep it up!

I love that brain coral.

 

[Bax]

Nice update.

That CBB is sweet!

 

[conorwynne]

Gorgeous, must show the wife.

 

[ludnix]

Thanks for the compliments everyone!

I did a water test today and found my alkalinity is a bit low. It measured around 120ppm (6.72dKH), which was expected with the high calcium and magnesium readings I have been getting. According to the reef calculator if I wanted to raise my dKH to 9 I'd have to add about .7 oz of baked baking soda. I'm considering adding .5oz very slowly after dissolving it in top off water.

Since I'm going to be leaving for 3 weeks I figured it would not be wise to attempt this right before leaving so I plan on giving it a try when I get back. If anyone has any input on dosing baked baking soda I'd love to hear it.

 

[Abraxos]

Your tank and room are awesome! It's like a really cool tropical bar that I would love to hang out in and drink those umbrella drinks.
I bet it is really relaxing hanging out in there. I also like the rockwork. I wish I had gone more for the tower look.

 

[OCdiving Deb]

Wowza.

I have been surfing RC for a week or 2, trying to figure out what set-up to get started on for my husband for his 50th birthday and have finally found something I'd want in our house! Stunning design, fabulous narration and pix that all help me understand the whole process. I am very impressed! Thank you so much for sharing!

 

[ludnix]

Thanks for the tremendous compliments! If you have any questions feel free to ask, I'd love to help any way I can.

 

[footbagger311]

Man, your tank is great. Your house looks pretty nice too. I dig that family room area the tank is in. Very Jimmy Buffettesque.

 

[Bax]

Tank looks great Eric!

Those bubble towers are very nicely done!

I agree, Your Alk isn't so bad that I'd mess too much with it before leaving, but you might want to bump it a little now. Low Alk has burned me twice in my 120. Both times it has caused sudden SPS decline in some corals.

 

[ludnix]

I've been reading and re-reading Randy Holmes Farley's article on making your own dosing solution in which he recommends raising the levels to be within the ideal range and then starting a regular dosing schedule. His article also says to dose slowly, but I'm curious how slow is meant by this? If I'm dosing 4oz (half of what reef calculator suggests I need) over what length of period should it take? I can setup a slow drip from a 1 gallon container and just let it drip for the next 3 days, but I'm interested for future reference what is really meant by slowly.

When I get back from vacation I'll have to pick up a new test kit for alkalinity since I'm running out, but I'm excited to start trying his dosing solution.