Mhucasey's SPS obsession

[mhucasey]

Hi everyone, I'd like to take this opportunity to introduce my current tank and myself. This is my tank today:

I caught the reef tank bug from my older brother, who had a couple of very large tanks back in the mid to late eighties. I was fascinated with all the tiny forms of life that came out of the live rock and was instantly hooked.

In 1991, I started my first reef tank "“ a 100Gallon acrylic system with a huge wet-dry filter/sump and some canister filters. Of course, after I had spent the money, I discovered a very good LFS in my town where the owner was quite a bit ahead of the curve - he introduced me to the Berlin method. I immediately tossed the bio-balls, bought 100LBS of live rock, and a pretty decent skimmer (for that time).

I had that tank for about three years. I ended up selling it to the fish store I was working at because I couldn't afford the electric bills from the halides and 1/5 hp chiller(I was finishing college). The bug never left, and I've been a member and frequent lurker here almost from the moment I found the forum.

In the years that I've had tanks, and reinforced by all the information I've gathered, I have built a set of core beliefs that guided my build of my current tank. I figure before I get too far into the build I'd lay them out. If you have a vehement disagreement with any of these I don't want to start an argument over them, so lets just agree to disagree"¦.

1) There is no substitute for good quality, cured live rock "“ with it, the concept of "œCycling" is not relevant
2) Mechanical filtration causes way more harm than good
3) You can never have too much skimmer
4) Variable, strong, diffuse flow is essential
5) The key to healthy, disease-free fish is keeping their stress low and their bodies nourished with a variety of nutritious foods. In my opinion quarantine is worthless if you put the quarantined fish in a display tank full of aggression and starve them to death.
6) Observation of the inhabitants of the tank is more important than any test kit. Test kits are good for correlating a parameter to what you see in the tank, but numbers are only part of keeping a successful reef.
7) Automation should be used for its consistency and reliability "“ stability is key especially when you grow SPS
8) Natural controls are better than chemicals the majority of the time

I started the current tank in July 2012, and decided that I would make it the focal point of the room that we are in most of the time when we are home. The tank would occupy the space where an end table stood, between two couches that are set in a "œL" arrangement:

 

[msaba]

Beautiful tank--thanks for sharing! What are your parameters and what/how many fish are in your system?

Mark

 

[mhucasey]

The tank is rimless, uses Starfire glass, and has dimensions of 36W X 28"deep X 22" tall. Working volume is approx. 84 gal. I build furniture as a hobby and do automation as a job, so I built the stand and did the entire electronics layout. The controller is a Neptune Apex with secondary EB8, EB4 and VDM modules. I laid everything out before final attachment and used Panduit to route all the cabling. The stand is built to access the sump from the side, and the electronics are in a spare compartment up front. The original setup had a sump that slid out on roller rails but almost everything was pretty easily reached without moving it.

The tank has about 65-75Lbs cured live rock, and about 30lbs southdown sand.
This is what it looked like after it was set up in the summer of 2012:

I started with LEDs because I got caught up in the hype and put too much faith in a store that had switched over to LED over all their tanks. After 5 months I decided that if I wanted results like the best tanks I saw on the net that I would need to improve the lighting

I decided that rather than spending a couple more thousand dollars on the newest LED system, I'd go with what I knew worked, so I got an ATI sunpower 8X39watt fixture and it is the best decision I have made.



One of the things that used to bug me with my first reef tank was when people would say "œwhere are all the fish?" I wasn't a big fan of more than a sprinkling of fish in a reef back then. My wife, however, loves them, and has rekindled my love for fish. I tend to look for fish that will fill a niche, then try to get the smallest fish I can so they can grow into the tank. With proper selection I believe that a lot of fish can exist in the tank without causing problems with shared space.

I wanted lots of natural food for the tank, so I added a 12 gallon rimless refugia to the system, but I decided that I wanted to see it, so it was set up on an adjacent table and designed to be viewed. This display refugia was to be a little copepod and amphiopod factory and serves as a timeout tank for inverts or corals that aren't integrating well with the Main display.

Right now, the list of fish that I have in the main display is as follows:
2 stubby snowflake percula clowns
1 standard percula clown
1 pajama cardinal
2 scooter Blennies
1 Swallowtail angel (Genicanthus melanospilos)
1 bellus angelfish
1 yellow Ora cleaner goby
1 blue cleaner goby
1 indigo dotyback
1 pseudochromis
1 gray head wrasse
1 yellow coris wrasse
1 vermiculate leopard wrasse
4 bangaii cardinals
1 blue line rabbitfish
1 Copperband butterfly

All right, I know that's a lot of fish. They are all healthy, active, growing, and pretty peaceful. The water quality isn't suffering. I feed at least twice a day, with spectrum pellets and either frozen fish eggs, Mysis, or live blackworms.

 

[mhucasey]

Beautiful tank--thanks for sharing! What are your parameters and what/how many fish are in your system?

Mark

Thanks very Much! Ive pre-typed the first few posts for this so there is more to come

 

[mhucasey]

I am an SPS coral addict. I want the best colors and I am obsessive about water quality. After about 10 months of running a system with a sump under the tank utilizing a moderately sized skimmer, I wanted more nutrient export. My problem was that the size of the cabinet didn't allow much more to fit under it. I decided to go big, so I decided to build a much larger sump system in my garage. The only problem was that the garage wall is on the opposite wall from where the tank is.

I ended up running three sets of piping through the wall behind the tank, down the wall, around the corner, down the side wall of my house, and through the wall into the garage. One is a 1.5" return from the Main tank, the second is a 1" return from the connected refugia/naughty tank, and the final is a ¾" supply line.

In the garage, the 1.5" line enters a 16 gallon conical settling tank and then overflows to the secondary sump/refugia. This tank contains the supply pump for the Diablo DCS 200ext skimmer. Most of the water goes out of the secondary sump through the skimmer, but the system is tuned to allow a small amount of water to overflow out of the secondary sump into the primary. The plumbing is set up to allow bypass of the conical tank.
Originally I didn't have the secondary sump, the system looked like this:

This is the current system:
Secondary sump/refugia:

The 1" return line is plumbed to empty in the back chamber of the primary sump, where it overflows a baffle to the heater chamber then out to the front chamber.
Primary Sump:

The system return pump pulls water from this front chamber and there is a second outlet from this chamber that supplied the recirculating pellet reactor, which uses All-In-One biopellets. The pellet reactor returns water back to the skimmer supply pump in the secondary sump.
Skimmer, Reactor, and return:

Randy's two part is dosed into middle heater chamber of the primary sump using BRS 1.1ml/min dosers. I currently dose ~185ml of each spread out over 12 doses during the day.

The multiple chambers have allowed me to try out various reactors and methodologies, including the Zeovit system. Because I have a lot of fish but also want very low PO4 levels, I wasn't able to achieve what I wanted with those systems and in the case of Zeovit, I pushed the system too hard and lost several acroporas in the process. The All-In-One pellets have been working very well for me and growth is fantastic.

 

[mhucasey]

I originally had a salt water makeup tank plumbed into the system and performed weekly water changes. I began experimenting with the makeup of the system water and discovered that the components that I was adding back could be directly supplemented, allowing for longer times between changes. At the beginning of April 2014 I performed my last 10 gallon water change and have not changed any water since that. So far my experiment has been a huge success, the corals have never done better in the system. Because of the size of the skimmer, I have found that the water changes were not needed as long as I added back the following:
Strontium(added to the calcium portion of the two-part)
Iodine
Iron
Silica(for sponges)

I was adding those additives directly but the Iodine is currently being added using the Fauna Marin colors additives for Blue and Red. I only add a very small amount of Iron, using the Kent Iron and Manganese supplement.
My parameters have been very stable and I rarely test anymore because of it:
Mg:1400
Ca:430
KH:6.7
NO3:2-5ppm
K:420
PO4:0.00

 

[mhucasey]

I like to play around with the various combos of T5 lights, probably more than I should. I currently use the following bulbs, front to back:
KZ Super Blue
Giesemann Aquablue Plus
B+
ATI Actinic
KZ Fiji Purple
B+
Giesemann Lagoon Blue
B+
The par from the sun power is pretty surprising, here are some readings I took recently:

 

[mhucasey]

Lately I have been rotating more drab/common corals out of the system to replace them with the corals that I want. In the beginning I got way too many corals of similar color, and so my emphasis has been on filling in the colors that are lacking. Some corals, like the orange monti that covers the back grew from a potato chip sized frag and are too visually dominating, so I'm constantly tweaking. I look at the tank as my coral animal flower garden, and so I don't have a problem moving or replacing flowers to get the best out of them. Here are some coral pictures:

 

[Redrosetuscan]

Looks good. Interesting about the no water changes and addition of elements you require, it's along the lines of the triton system. Would be good to see an icp test and see how it is.

Love the idea of the crazy plumbing round the house for another sump :bounce2:

 

[mhucasey]

I'm kind of interested in what a Triton Test would show but Id be worried that the test would lead me to make changes. if it ain't broke, don't fix it

My routine with the tank is pretty simple now, I have an auto top off system attached to a 5 stage RO/DI system, and dowers for the Randy's 2-part. I add the magnesium additive of the two part manually from time to time and top off the containers every couple of days, and clean the skimmer once a week. I add the colors additives every two to three days, about 5 ml each of the blue/purple and red/purple additive.

The plumbing is crazy but the pipes on the outside of the house are heat exchangers. I had to insulate the whole thing:

The heater runs a lot, especially now during wintertime. During summer it adds some heat but a fan over the sump keeps the temperatures from rising above 80.

 

[mhucasey]

One thing that was surprising about moving the equipment to the garage and up-sizing the skimmer was that the tank pH rose significantly. For a while I thought it was a testing error but after using two probes and calibrating multiple times and testing references, I've just come to accept it. My ph ranges between 8.6 and 8.8. I'm not joking.

The skimmer gets pure, low CO2 air, it really strips the water of CO2, and the Heavy lighting encourages any CO2 in the water to be consumed. Other than that I have no Idea why. I intentionally maintain low KH, at times it has been as low as 6.1. I still always had the high pH.

 

[jdm1114]

good work

good work

Good work, I enjoyed reading all the information you provided.

 

[mhucasey]

Thanks, I have been meaning to put a thread together for a while and finally had some time!

 

[YoungREEFA]

A very thought out and methodical thread, i like it!

 

[mhucasey]

Thanks very much!

 

[mhucasey]

When I started my first tank in 1991, all the best info was from Germany, they were(and still are) ahead of us in regards to corals. I special ordered the Peter Wilkens coral books from Germany through my Aquarium store, they are a really cool memento:

In the books there was one reference to acropora, a piece owned by Dieter Stuber collected in the late 80's. I pored over that reference as I had acroporas in my tank and there was precious little info on them at the time.

Now fast forward to a few years ago, I came across a cool frag in my local reef shop named the "Stuber Heirloom coral". Its a coral grown by ORA and yes, its a direct descendant of that same coral pictured in the book. I have grown out that small frag to quite a large piece, and its a good looking coral, a lot better looking when not under pee-yellow lighting! :

One of the many reasons that I absolutely love this hobby!

 

[reefmutt]

wow! love the system, love your methodology, your thread, your tank and love the little touch of crazy.
the nostalgia is great as well.
very nice, Matt.
and when i read your thread i remembered your settling tank form posts in the nitrate thread.. very cool.
i have a sump that the water from my main tank drains into before going through the skimmer and the main sump. it is very calm and my pump for water changes is connected to it so that i can remove all the accumulated detritus from it, when needed. works nicely.
not quite as efficient as your conical system but the same principle..
i'll be following!

 

[mhucasey]

Thanks Matt! The settling tank gets the heavier stuff and then the light stuff overflows out the top to the secondary sump where it is pumped out to the skimmer. It is pretty efficient, when i siphon out stuff out of the display i just send it to the overflow. Its easier than using a filter sock.

Originally the entire outflow of the conical tank went directly into the skimmer, but the skimmer was stripping the heck out of the water. Alage didn't grow even with high phosphate levels, but the corals were stressed. Adding the secondary sump increased the system volume by another 20 gallons or so, and gave me a new "naughty tank" for fish that don't play nice and corals i don't want to throw away.

Anyhow, thanks for following the thread, it feels good to finally get one going!

 

[evo187]

amazing tank!!

 

[mhucasey]

Thanks Evo!