Maroun.c 390 G build thread

[maroun.c]

Quick question, how come your eurobracing doesn't go all the way around the tank and include the end panels? Don't you think if it did you'd have greater strength holding the tank together?

The Left side pannel is shorte than the other pannels for the external overflow to go on so extending the bracing till the end won't hold it. on the right side I'm adding a couple of seaswirls so having those go 8 inches inside (bracing width) will mean a very nasty shadowing. from a structure perspective the tank has more pressure in the middle of front and back glass which can cause bowing and put pressure on the seams. the middle brace alone and the extra couple braces on left and right make the whole tank become a single unit and any pressure is shared by all the pannels. .

 

[maroun.c]

With tank in place, next step was logically a leak test. I hate those regardless how small a tank is. and filling up this one after having the previous tank leak few weeks before was even more stressful.

Luckily no leaks

After that I prepped the room for moving in the sand and scaping. to think that I'm worried about a few splashes after flodig the house with 400G of tank water

New sand was extensively rinsed and placed in a tank connected to my system to seed it with some bacteria.

 

[maroun.c]

Next to scaping which was the tricky part as most rocks had corals on them and I had to do it before adding water. Luckily left island is all made of ceramics and wasn't broken when taken out tot the holding tank. all I had to do was epoxy that bridge back in position. middle island was a bit tricky but as I'm returning to same position which I had taken pictures off to see where exactly each rock goes that was supposed to be easy. Rt island I never liked and decided to redo.
Going in the tank with the braces wasn't difficult so didn't really regret adding the braces. yet it felt sad to be rescaping and restrating the tank at the 5 years mark when the tank was supposed to be at its peak.

Scaping took way over than I anticipated (2.5 hours instead of 1 hour) and the fact that corals were out of the water and that it was cold weather had me freaking out. as soon as scape was done I filled up the tank with 1500 Litres of newly mixed salt I had prepared in a large home barrel I had. I placed a back on top of the sand to avoid stirring the sand with the jet of water. I had to gradually push water from mixing barrel to sump and pump up to the tank. took around 30 min to get the rocks covered. and another half hour to have the tank full. and start the flow.

I also made a modification on my return pipes as my return pump rated at around 20000 LPH (5500 GPH) and delivering 12000LPH (3250 GPH) After head loss was split on two outputs one with a mocean and I added a sea swirl on the second one to make use of that flow making it redundant in case of a constant linear flow hitting some corals and also causing sand to fly from opposite side.

So tank was full with a minor haze which was way less than I feared

Moved all the fish in

And after few hours.

 

[maroun.c]

Tank was restarted on the 26 th Dec. some corals looked really bad due to being moved and staying that long out of water... luckily they all healed with very minor losses. i made a few changes in coral positions and minor changes in the rockwork mostly on right island and here's how it looked on the 8th Jan 2017 after a minor bacterial bloom I had, resolved.

View from left

View from Right

 

[fadi_abu_tahoun]

Sorry To hear that Maroun, you told me about this accident earlier and couldn't imagine how big it was until i saw the pictures

Congrats on the new tank looking nice and at the end you have peace of mind now

 

[maroun.c]

Sorry To hear that Maroun, you told me about this accident earlier and couldn't imagine how big it was until i saw the pictures

Congrats on the new tank looking nice and at the end you have peace of mind now

Thanks Fadi,
That was nasty. believe that was my worst experience in 20 yrs of keeping a reef tank. I hope it'll be smooth ride going forward.

 

[maroun.c]

Few weeks after tank restart most SPS were doing great and a few that browned out during temporary storage had already regained their colors and showing signs of growth.
these shots were taken around Feb Mar.

Mystic montipora had lost most color, recovered nicely.

Blue oregon tort looking at its best

wwc Tricolor Valida

Chillipepper got broken to pieces during the move. showing signs of growth already

SSC colored up and growing

An old accro i had in my previous tank in 2010 which I lost and recovered a tiny frag a year back. finally exploding in growth

Yellow Tipped green accro

No final ID on this one but didn't even loose it's colors after the shift to and from temporary holding tank.

 

[maroun.c]

Setosa back in growth and coloration mode.

Blue matrix had many broken branches from the move but I'm sure it'll be back to its glory in no time

Tricolor valida was reduced to a crust after the move but it's colored up and I'm sure will be growing fast in coming weeks.

Rosaria growing from a single branch frag and coloring up.

Sunset monti on sand bed filled up the plug and growing fast. wan't affected by the move at all.

2 purle monti frags finally in growth and one in the back showing a nice color pop and much faster growth (guess it is the one staying in the tank

Green monti regrew its scroll that was broken

monti Digitata growing from a single small branch frag

Red monti frag finally growing and coloring up.

 

[maroun.c]

A frag I once got and got confused with 2-3 other frags so not sure about the ID and its grown a lot but dind't color up to ID it. not sure whether to remove or keep.

One baby blue red sea accro which browned ot since I acquired it is finally showing color change.

couple corals not looking well after the move.

Purple haze monti that lost colors, it's actually more white in real life than in pic.

Purple efflo with some die off in the center gtting some algae growth. I also lost a fe frags of green efflow I had as well. also a frag of forest fire digitata seen to the front is nearly lost. will see how those progress in coming weeks.

 

[maroun.c]

Red planet back to growth and colors. I still love this coral and can't wait to have the colony size I had in my previous tan in 2010

added a Psammacora and an anacropora

all my chalices have continued to improve even the ones that were doing bad before the tank failure. a few of them.

Psychedellic chalice

 

[maroun.c]

A chalice I picked up that was looking on its way out just because I saw some potential in it. recovered and turned up to b e a beauty.

And a rainbow chalice frag I scored

Made my Acacns garden which will take a few months to fill up a look good. still looking for a few nice frags as well

 

[Hussain Ali]

Amazing as usual Maroun


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[maroun.c]

Amazing as usual Maroun


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Thanks.

 

[maroun.c]

Duncans still growing. from a 2 head frag:

Meteor shower up from a couple of polyps frag:

Couple Aussie Scolys improving as they never did well in my tank.

And a new addition:

a single head blasto I got 3-4 years ago. I coulud never keep those in any of my tanks for the last 10 years. Finally growing new heads and looking great.
Considering finding a few more ones and having a blasto garden.

 

[maroun.c]

2-3 months after the tank leak all corals were already in growth mode and colors were popping and all seemed to be going in the right direction. very few additions fish wise except for a couple of wrasses I added around Jan:
flame wrass

and an orange back

so with every thing heading int he right direction it was time for a new tragedy. while all my fish were religiously quarantined (well except for a pipe fish that was added in Jan but doubt this was the cause) around mid march my wife informs me that some of the fish are fully covered in white spots. I had not seen white spots more than a year in the tank and it had been around 3 months after the move to the temp system and move back to the DT so doubt it was the move stress that caused it. couple days later fish few fish start dropping and its confirmed to be velvet.
I was in Dubai at the time and wasn't able to fly back for more than couple of days after a week. and the fish situation was miserable.
Velvet is a very fast killer usually but I guess the fish were too healthy and gave it a fight till most ended up dying at the 3 weeks mark. which was very weird.
it was very difficult to see especially for my wife who has been caring for the tank since Sep and also for the kids. some fish would look as if they won't make it till following day but still stayed alive getting a bit better and then getting re infested over days. a pretty sad sight. the only fish I could catch to quarantine were one yellow and my clown pair but they didn't make it in the quarantine. Having around 60 fish didn't allow for any quarantine option so the tough decision was taken to leave the fish to fight it off and try to help by over boosting their food with vitamins. Tried to source a big UV to handle the system but that wasn't an option on short notice.
So 3-4 weeks later it was all over and I lost all my fish except for all wrasses (more than 20 wrasses) and my hippo tang that I had since 2007 and purple tang that I had since 2009.
Weirdly some of the fish (Lyretails, blotchii) dropped without even showing any spots. others as said stayed infected for days.
so the sad list of fish losses:

2 yellow tangs that I've had since 2008
2 platinum clowns that I've had since 3-4 years
5 Lyretails anthias school that I've had for around 4 years
2 Chocolate tangs
2 Tomini tangs
2 Bellus Angels
1 Yellow eye kole tang
1 Blotchii
2 firefish
1 Majestic Angel
1 Latezonatus clown
1 Gramma loreto
1 mandarin
1 Red Scooter
1 midas blenny
5 blue eye cardinals
2 Swallowtail angels

 

[maroun.c]

 

[maroun.c]

One of the worst affected fish was my purple tang which kept on improving and getting worse through the whole outbreak and for many days form the pics and videos I was getting thought he would die the day after. he even couldn't see food from the cloudy eyes he got on top of the velvet and was following pellets by the smell.luckily he made it back.

throughout the velvet outbreak few wrasses only showed a few spots and they all recovered. as I couldn't keep tank fishless I have decided to stop any fish additions for 2-3 months, as from many discussions I've had it seams that velvet most of the times disappears after an outbreak... plan is to quarantine a few fish and make sure they are clean and then do some water changes while they are in the q tank from the tank water to see if they get any signs of disease and then treat immediately.
I have setup 5Q tanks for an even more strict quarantine regimen for coming fish and hopefully will rebuild the fish colleciton in the coming months.

 

[maroun.c]

Another sad update about my setosa colony which was growing out nicely and was one of the first corals one would notice while looking at the tank.

oct 2015

26 Mar 2016

June 2016

My wife contacted me few weeks back and told me that the side of the setowas turning white and sent me some pics. and it turned out that blue matrix next to it had grown and touched. was a small burn on the edge so asked my wife to clip either of the corals which she did the following day. yet unfortunately the burn didn't stop before it consumed it all.

First time I see such an aggressive wipe out from a simple burn so not sure if the blue matrix is an over aggressive accro or if the setosa was ticked by something else. Yet I have another smaller piece in same tank and many frags of it in the frag tanks linked to the same setup and all are fine.

 

[maroun.c]

also struggled with electricity at home where I lost many electrical appliances as well as many related aquarium pumps... I finally tested the electricity and found out that the electrical stabilizer we placed to have safety against Voltage fluctuations or surges was giving 270 V instead of 220 which unfortunately also toasted my return pump. this is annoying to fine and replace but luckily found and ordered and I will install when back in 2 weeks. Pump unfortunately died after stabilizer was fixed and after I had traveled out, luckily my wife was able to disconnect the malfunctioning pump, close the valves from and to it and open the valves of 2 spare smaller iwaki pumps I have then turned the flow on and tuned the skimmer and overflow as flow rate was different which changed the water level in the sump.

 

[maroun.c]

one last negative update is that I'm struggling with an algea outbreak which could just be a small cycle after having restarted the tank or maybe lack of grazers as I lost many tangs... believe this will improve in coming period with bacteria dosing, minimum biopellets running and GFO additions although my phosphates and nitrates are at 0.
Now finally for some positive updates.
fish have been doing great since the velvet incident few months back there has been no sign of disease in any of the fish. I have a few fish in quarantine and will start adding to DT in 2 weeks when back.
coral growth and coloration is kicking off. being away and only seeing the tank every 2-3 weeks allows me to notice growth much better than I would when seeing it on daily basis. guess no hands in tank is also helping in stability as well.

purple haze monti was doing very bad but it colored up again.

pics couple months back where it was even whiter than in the pic

coloring up

next to my superman monti where the growth shows a nice blue hidden by the polyps

Efflo still looking bad but I can see some color improvement

now for positive coral updates.
forest fire digitata seen up next to efflo couple months back on its way out has recovered to this:

Blue oregon tort now growing Id say faster and coloring up nicely next to it a nother setosa I have which is starting to grow fast as well.

Montipora hirsuta which I had to place in a shaded spot and worried it might not color up and grow has grown froma frag to this in 3-4 months