Maroun.c 390 G build thread
- Thread starter maroun.c
- Start date
maroun.c
New member
Mnours, Welcome to RC.
Its an honor to have your first post on my thread after registering from 2007
Small world I'm currently in Saudi in Jeddah and traveling out tomorrow.
Thanks for your kind words, I'm sure we'll find a stand design that matches your room and tank even better than mine!!!
Its an honor to have your first post on my thread after registering from 2007
Small world I'm currently in Saudi in Jeddah and traveling out tomorrow.
Thanks for your kind words, I'm sure we'll find a stand design that matches your room and tank even better than mine!!!
maroun.c
New member
Wow 1.5 years since the last update!!! Time flies.
A lot has been done since then unfortunately it hasn’t been an easy ride nor anything to be proud off.
To start with, connected the system to the basement setup which was cycled and run for 6 weeks to avoid issues and still it resulted in a nasty bacterial bloom that went on for days luckily not killing anything.
Following that the 2x Iwaki WDRT70 which were supposed to provide around 2000 GPH gave less than half which affected my skimmer performance for months till I got that fixed (aquarium pressure pumps not available here as we don’t have basements typically…)
Ended up shipping a MantaRay which finally got me the flow I wanted. Unfortunately the pump struggled with bearing issues at the 6 months mark. Customer support was good in providing replacement parts and shipping across the globe… yet the fix didn’t go fine and the pump failed again with shattered internal parts after the fix which took again spare parts and modifications to fix it only to leak again and come up with a broken impeller . At this stage found a very old and used Hayward Pool pump which I sent for an overhaul (seals bearings…) and it’s done an excellent jo since then. I’m in touch with Reeflo for a 2 pump alternative and also with Hayward for another newer pump to have peace of mind. This is a major concern but at least I have a backup in case things go bad using the Iwakis inline instead of parallel which gave me nearly double the performance.
Heres' how the used replacement looked: Scary to trust on a tank
And after it was serviced and cleaned:
A lot has been done since then unfortunately it hasn’t been an easy ride nor anything to be proud off.
To start with, connected the system to the basement setup which was cycled and run for 6 weeks to avoid issues and still it resulted in a nasty bacterial bloom that went on for days luckily not killing anything.
Following that the 2x Iwaki WDRT70 which were supposed to provide around 2000 GPH gave less than half which affected my skimmer performance for months till I got that fixed (aquarium pressure pumps not available here as we don’t have basements typically…)
Ended up shipping a MantaRay which finally got me the flow I wanted. Unfortunately the pump struggled with bearing issues at the 6 months mark. Customer support was good in providing replacement parts and shipping across the globe… yet the fix didn’t go fine and the pump failed again with shattered internal parts after the fix which took again spare parts and modifications to fix it only to leak again and come up with a broken impeller . At this stage found a very old and used Hayward Pool pump which I sent for an overhaul (seals bearings…) and it’s done an excellent jo since then. I’m in touch with Reeflo for a 2 pump alternative and also with Hayward for another newer pump to have peace of mind. This is a major concern but at least I have a backup in case things go bad using the Iwakis inline instead of parallel which gave me nearly double the performance.
Heres' how the used replacement looked: Scary to trust on a tank
And after it was serviced and cleaned:
maroun.c
New member
Further to this the tank took a turn for the worse and went into a 4-5 month cycle of Algae and then Cyano which heavy water changes and the usual fixes didn't even affect.
After that the hair algae resolved on its own. Leaching was not the suspected scenario at this stage as tank was at the 2 years mark.
I followed with a Zeo protocol (Zeobac, Coral Snow, Zeozyme and zeostart 3) which took care of the cyano but was too expensive to maintain on the large volume so stopped it 4 months later and cyano came back with a vengeance. At that stage any SPS I would add would look dry starting day 3-4 and turn into a skeleton without tissue sloughing or STN RTN. Softies and LPS were doing fine.
After that around a year ago I accidently discovered while cross testing with a friend that my Po4 was at at 0.9. Verified it in a lab test and it matched. So I switched to Hana from Salifert since then. I had previously tested with many PO4 testkits and for some reason they were only giving me a perfect 0 and my nitrate was on the rise up to 10-15 which tricked me into thinking PO4 was limiting nitrate reduction so I stopped the PO4 reactor making things worse. So several KGs of PO4 and hundreds of gallons changed and I got the PO4 down to where it should be. This resulted in immediate disappearance of the Cyano and a couple of frags that I thought dead coming back to life!.
The Irony was 3-4 tiny frags (couple of polyps each) made it through all the dilemma while I was burning my SPS collection and any new addition.
I normally thought that was the end of the ordeal and started adding corals only to have the same outcome even with controlled PO4 at 0.03-0.05. At this time I got in touch with several LFS and people that maintain tanks worldwide and also luckily was introduced to a team of specialists that were visiting a public display with a 10 m long Coral reef tank that was struggling with similar issues.
We went through a huge list of things: Chloramine, PH spikes or dips, O2 levels, contaminants, Pesticides, switched chillers in a row to make sure my 2 chillers were not leaching anything, change of salt, change of my RO unit and additional filters (1 Micron carbon, and 0.09 sediment) with frequent replacement, checking tank, frags and sumps with a magnet to make sure no metallic things have dropped there, air purifier in filtration room, lights change, slow acclimation process, leaving tank with no corals for weeks to make sure there was no pests and dipping corals randomly to make sure they were clean, adding established corals to avoid stressed ones. Corals were doing fine in the Quarantine tank but would dry off few days in DT.
No matter what I did Result was the same with any new addition and to make things worst the tiny remaining frags were still there completely brown.
At this stage the only logical next step was to restart the tank which wasn't an option as I wasn't going to go through another cycle with no warranty that whatever was wrong will happen again after a restart.
Went on for few more months with a regular maintenance method and not making any changes to address anything and few weeks back I started seeing colors on the survivor frags and a couple more I thought dead came back to life and since then the tank has looked better every day with growth and colors sign.
Since then I have started adding corals in batches and luckily things look good, Pics to come
After that the hair algae resolved on its own. Leaching was not the suspected scenario at this stage as tank was at the 2 years mark.
I followed with a Zeo protocol (Zeobac, Coral Snow, Zeozyme and zeostart 3) which took care of the cyano but was too expensive to maintain on the large volume so stopped it 4 months later and cyano came back with a vengeance. At that stage any SPS I would add would look dry starting day 3-4 and turn into a skeleton without tissue sloughing or STN RTN. Softies and LPS were doing fine.
After that around a year ago I accidently discovered while cross testing with a friend that my Po4 was at at 0.9. Verified it in a lab test and it matched. So I switched to Hana from Salifert since then. I had previously tested with many PO4 testkits and for some reason they were only giving me a perfect 0 and my nitrate was on the rise up to 10-15 which tricked me into thinking PO4 was limiting nitrate reduction so I stopped the PO4 reactor making things worse. So several KGs of PO4 and hundreds of gallons changed and I got the PO4 down to where it should be. This resulted in immediate disappearance of the Cyano and a couple of frags that I thought dead coming back to life!.
The Irony was 3-4 tiny frags (couple of polyps each) made it through all the dilemma while I was burning my SPS collection and any new addition.
I normally thought that was the end of the ordeal and started adding corals only to have the same outcome even with controlled PO4 at 0.03-0.05. At this time I got in touch with several LFS and people that maintain tanks worldwide and also luckily was introduced to a team of specialists that were visiting a public display with a 10 m long Coral reef tank that was struggling with similar issues.
We went through a huge list of things: Chloramine, PH spikes or dips, O2 levels, contaminants, Pesticides, switched chillers in a row to make sure my 2 chillers were not leaching anything, change of salt, change of my RO unit and additional filters (1 Micron carbon, and 0.09 sediment) with frequent replacement, checking tank, frags and sumps with a magnet to make sure no metallic things have dropped there, air purifier in filtration room, lights change, slow acclimation process, leaving tank with no corals for weeks to make sure there was no pests and dipping corals randomly to make sure they were clean, adding established corals to avoid stressed ones. Corals were doing fine in the Quarantine tank but would dry off few days in DT.
No matter what I did Result was the same with any new addition and to make things worst the tiny remaining frags were still there completely brown.
At this stage the only logical next step was to restart the tank which wasn't an option as I wasn't going to go through another cycle with no warranty that whatever was wrong will happen again after a restart.
Went on for few more months with a regular maintenance method and not making any changes to address anything and few weeks back I started seeing colors on the survivor frags and a couple more I thought dead came back to life and since then the tank has looked better every day with growth and colors sign.
Since then I have started adding corals in batches and luckily things look good, Pics to come
maroun.c
New member
Fish wise I have been doing well relatively. Struggled with jumpers although my tank was closed expect from sides, vertical acrylic sheets also failed as I had a couple of losses through a tiny area left uncovered… Ended up adding a screen for the first time on my tanks and It’s been great since then except the annoyance each time I need to reach in the tank or feed.
I also had some flesh eating disease,that I thought I cured in quarantine, reappear even after 6 weeks observation in an introduction tank. Disease came on a couple of yellow eye kole tangs which I thought I had cured in quarantine. It reappeared 2-3 weeks after moving them to DT even after a 5-6 weeks observation period after treatment. It not only killed the yellow eye kole tangs but also infested and killed the following from my fish.
-Achilles tang that was kept in a friends tank for around 4 years before and 5-6 months in my tank.
-Blotchy Anthia 6 months in the tank.
-Pair of Sunburst 6 months in the tank.
-Mated Pair of Red Sea Octotaenia that I had for 2 years.
Again had to be the nicest and hardest to replace fish. One interesting behavior was my Melanurus female which stuck by the Achilles and was cleaning it all day, couldn’t catch to treat till it was very sick and it died after 2 days treatment in Prazipro.
Since then I have implemented a more strict Quarantine approach and haven’t faced this or any other issues in the DT.
I also had some flesh eating disease,that I thought I cured in quarantine, reappear even after 6 weeks observation in an introduction tank. Disease came on a couple of yellow eye kole tangs which I thought I had cured in quarantine. It reappeared 2-3 weeks after moving them to DT even after a 5-6 weeks observation period after treatment. It not only killed the yellow eye kole tangs but also infested and killed the following from my fish.
-Achilles tang that was kept in a friends tank for around 4 years before and 5-6 months in my tank.
-Blotchy Anthia 6 months in the tank.
-Pair of Sunburst 6 months in the tank.
-Mated Pair of Red Sea Octotaenia that I had for 2 years.
Again had to be the nicest and hardest to replace fish. One interesting behavior was my Melanurus female which stuck by the Achilles and was cleaning it all day, couldn’t catch to treat till it was very sick and it died after 2 days treatment in Prazipro.
Since then I have implemented a more strict Quarantine approach and haven’t faced this or any other issues in the DT.
maroun.c
New member
Thanks Dave.
I've switched 3 types of GAC (Eheim, RowaCarbon, and now Vertex) and had both periods with heavy Crabon use and long periods with minimum to no Carbon...
As for the Grounding probe, Got one but still need to install but my understanding was that this will affect fish more than SPS?
I've switched 3 types of GAC (Eheim, RowaCarbon, and now Vertex) and had both periods with heavy Crabon use and long periods with minimum to no Carbon...
As for the Grounding probe, Got one but still need to install but my understanding was that this will affect fish more than SPS?
dave.m
Active member
re. grounding probe - Who knows? It can't be very comfortable being zapped by stray voltage no matter who or what you are. It is an easy fail-safe precaution to take. Mount it in the sump and be done with it. Only use one grounding probe per system as you don't want to create a ground loop.
Dave.M
Dave.M
maroun.c
New member
Now for some positive stuff starting with fish.
My current fish list is the following:
-Hippo tang had him for 8 years and rules the tank and has grown beautifully.
-2 yellow tangs
-Purple tang
-Yellow eye kole.
-2 Platinum clowns not yet a pair and only one hosting the BTA.
- 7 Lyretail anthias at around the 4 years mark with an undisturbed hierarchy since the dominant female turned male soon after intro.
My current fish list is the following:
-Hippo tang had him for 8 years and rules the tank and has grown beautifully.
-2 yellow tangs
-Purple tang
-Yellow eye kole.
-2 Platinum clowns not yet a pair and only one hosting the BTA.
- 7 Lyretail anthias at around the 4 years mark with an undisturbed hierarchy since the dominant female turned male soon after intro.
maroun.c
New member
Gramma Loretto
-1 firefish
-2 Purple Firefish
-7 Blue eye Cardinal (apogon leptacanthus) down from 15 I started with around 3 years ago
- Midas Blenny
Copperband Butterfly
-Yellow Cories Wrass as big as it gets and with a hooked spine both vertical and horizontally.
Red scooter blenny
Mandarin
-1 firefish
-2 Purple Firefish
-7 Blue eye Cardinal (apogon leptacanthus) down from 15 I started with around 3 years ago
- Midas Blenny
Copperband Butterfly
-Yellow Cories Wrass as big as it gets and with a hooked spine both vertical and horizontally.
Red scooter blenny
Mandarin
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maroun.c
New member
- Mated pair of Melanurus a favorite as the male switched in tank and they paired up and display mating behavior every night.
http://i1188.photobucket.com/albums/z414/mcaqua390g/Fish/_DSC1034.jpg[/IMG]
Courting
-2 ornatus wrasses yet to pair up.
-1 Meleagris wrass
-1 teminicky wrass
1-Radiant Wrass
http://i1188.photobucket.com/albums/z414/mcaqua390g/Fish/_DSC1034.jpg[/IMG]
Courting
-2 ornatus wrasses yet to pair up.
-1 Meleagris wrass
-1 teminicky wrass
1-Radiant Wrass
Last edited:
fadi_abu_tahoun
Member
Very Nice fish collection Maroun, and great photography skills.
maroun.c
New member
LPS:
Chalices a long time addiction and not so easy to score nice specimens in this part of the world:
Please do give ID suggestions as I haven’t IDd most of these yet
An Aussy Chalice I scored from Dubai a while back.
Another one I got bleached and which healed nicely.
Psychedelic chalice I got at 1 eye frag few months back.
Another new addition which is still coloring up.
One I got from an LFS here. Pictures don’t capture the pink in it.
Elegance.
A brown Cynarina I got which keeps getting closer to red
Blastos never made it in my tanks but this single head one has been there for the last 2 years and have gotten 2 new heads recently.
Might sound crazy but I like Galaxea and have a small frag left from my huge colony in my previous tank. Its on its own island in the back. Still not sure if I’ll keep it when I see sweepers.
Chalices a long time addiction and not so easy to score nice specimens in this part of the world:
Please do give ID suggestions as I haven’t IDd most of these yet
An Aussy Chalice I scored from Dubai a while back.
Another one I got bleached and which healed nicely.
Psychedelic chalice I got at 1 eye frag few months back.
Another new addition which is still coloring up.
One I got from an LFS here. Pictures don’t capture the pink in it.
Elegance.
A brown Cynarina I got which keeps getting closer to red
Blastos never made it in my tanks but this single head one has been there for the last 2 years and have gotten 2 new heads recently.
Might sound crazy but I like Galaxea and have a small frag left from my huge colony in my previous tank. Its on its own island in the back. Still not sure if I’ll keep it when I see sweepers.
syedjilani
Active member
These are amazing.... Love Chalice...
