Piper27
I love bengals
Hello RC, my name is Paul and me and my wife have been reefing religously for a good 12 years and keeping saltwater fish much longer. I have wanted to share our system and particularly my sps tank for a bit so I hope you enjoy it. I set this tank up exactly how I like to keep a system and it isn't exactly how everyone does it but rather how I like it. High flow, high light, lots of fish and lots of food. I will start posting pictures of stuff throughout the weekend and update whenever it's needed. Hopefully this thread will help me keep track of the growth of this tank since I don't have a place other than this to share and document. Below is hopefully all the info on my tank.
- Display tank -
The display tank is a marineland 3' cube and is 24" high if I remember.* It's Starfire glass and is visible from three sides right now.* The rock work is raised from the bottom using an acrylic base and a few PVC pipes.* This really give a lot of places for the load of fish to hide and swim through. This tank is barebottom and we use high flow to keep the corals hopefully growing naturally.* I do not like skinny long branches especially when growing crooked because of inadequate or flow moving in one direction.
There are maybe 40 fish in the display now if I had to guess.* One day I will get a list from my wife who is the fish expert.*
- Flow -
1 mp60qd on about half power
3 mp40qd on reef rest at full power
One small jebo in the back bottom where the flow is low and detritus settles.* This helps keep the detritus from becoming a nutrient problem and lets the animals, bacteria, sponge, ect down there use what does collect as housing.* There are pieces of coral that broke off growing in it so I will leave it be. I think having varied high flow in all directions is a big key to healthy acropora.
- Other tanks -
The system also contains a couple other tanks which include...
3' by 2' by 18" zoanthid tank*
8' by 18" by 12" frag tank upstairs
4' by 18" by 2' which is going to be taken down soon
- Lighting -
On all my sps tanks I have been most successful with all three types of light.* I prefer a more natural look and have been happy with 10k and 12k metal halide bulbs.* I like to give as much light as I possibly can since most sps I like can tolerate and do best in a very high amount of light.* The halides provide the main light source and 400w seem to give me the best coverage and intensity. I use t5s to fill in and give me a little more of a color I like over the tank especially when using lower kelvin bulbs.* I use leds along with these to give the corals a good florescent sheen and color to them.* No other light can give this look and I am desperately awaiting a better way to supplement more and better blue led light over my display.* Reefbrights are great but don't provide a lot of light.* So I use a combination of reefbrights and a strip with leds clustered tightly together. I stagger the leds with optics and no optics throughout this strip.* This is the last one I will use because they burn out and controllers go bad too often.* We will wait til someone makes a better powerful led strip and switch. I would love to use a led fixture to provide this light but I have not found one I like that will allow me to still have room for t5 bulbs. The light rack I use is jam packed! Right now I am using the following...
Main light source...
Two 400w se 12k reflux bulbs on lumatek ballasts set on hqi.* I modified two large square reflectors in order to run two metal halide bulbs side by side.* I cut one side of each reflector 4" short and rivited them back together in order to fit both reflectors over my 3' tank from front to back.* This leaves enough on the left and right side for supplemental lights and covers the tank front to back with light directly under a reflector.
Supplemental light...
Two 3' t5 bulbs over the right side and two 24" over the left side in order not to light my overflow.
We run two 2' reefbrights and one 36" led strip with 36 3w leds half with optics and half without.* All leds are blue and angled from the side in towards the center of the tank.* There are a total of 60 3w blue LEDs surrounding the tank.
- Filtration -
We run two large skimmers on this system. The skimmers are the main filtration but we use a few other methods to help reduce nitrates and phosphates including carbon sources, gfo and we run a "cryptic refuge".
We use a bubbleking 300 if I remember correctly, but the small red dragon pump is not working any longer.* This skimmer still rocks though and is ran by the old red dragon with the white round housing.**
The large main skimmer is a modified euro reef external skimmer which is 4' tall and 12" wide.* We have two of the large ehiem needle wheel pumps running and I have added three 3/4" mazzei injectors running on a closed loop.* I had three ehiems running but one failed and the other two need replacing too.* I need to find out what pump can replace these without any problems.* The skimmer would benefit from three new needlewheels pumps.
I clean the skimmer necks weekly by hand (nasty!) and flush the air intakes with tank water at the same time.* Every couple of months I will clean all the pumps.
- Carbon sources and rock tank -
We use three main carbon sources on this system.* Vodka, vinegar and aquaforrest -np pro.* Last time I checked we were dosing 150ml of -np pro, 50 ml of vinegar and 50 ml of vodka per day.* The vinegar and vodka are dosed in small doses with a reef dosing pump 24 hours a day and the -np pro is dosed 6 times a day in 25 ml shots.
All of these dosing lines run into a 40 breeder which is compleetly full of live rock which is covered in sponges and other good stuff, you could call it a cryptic refugium I guess. The only flow in this tank is from a 60 gallon zoanthid tank above it which drains into it before hitting the sump and the large euro reef skimmer which drains into it before the sump.* I will so change the drain on the zoanthid tank to go straight to the sump to get more flow through it.**
This tank really helps me dose a high amount of carbon sources without getting bacteria blooms or bacteria in the display tanks.* I can also raise the amount of carbon sources dosed fast if nutrients spike, without any problems.**
- Other filtration -
I have recently started running zeolites in a pump reactor which I am gradually working into my routine.* I am pumping the reactor 2 to 3 times a day as of now.* It's a large vertex reactor and it's running at full speed.* I probably need another liter or two and may get another reactor once the system is stable and used to running this one.* The avast magnetic ones interest me but space is a problem.
Gfo is run in a reactor on top of a couple inches of zeolites with no sponges because it cloggs in days.* I also use a filter sock on the end to catch particles and prevent gfo spills.* I use rox carbon and rowaphos and the carbon is ran passively. I used to regenerate my gfo but need to build a bigger new reactor to make this process more efficient and only have to run one batch each time.
- Sump tank -
The sump is a three sectioned simple sump.* First chamber is where all the returns from all the tanks enter the sump.* It is filled with small rock and a lot of white branching sponge.* It is very nasty with bacteria.* It slows down everything before it enters the middle section where the bubble king is and the gfo and carbon reactor is also in this section.* The last return section houses a jeabo 12000 that feeds the 4' euro reef skimmer, which is on full blast.* It also houses the zeolite reactor. It uses a reeflo barracuda gold hybrid return pump to feed the tanks and chiller.
- Aquaforrest prouducts -
I have been running AF for 6 months or more so far. I use the dropper bottles and i just squeeze the dropper all the way and squirt a full squirt twice for each bottle. Some I do three times.
Here is what I use now...
Coral B
Coral V
Coral E
Micro E
AF Amino Mix
Kalium
Iodum
Fluorine
Strontium
Pro Bio S
-NP Pro
Zeo Mix
- Dosing -
For now we are using bionic two part and dosing pumps to maintain water parameters. This kills me because I want to hook up my calcium reactor which is always my go too.* In a couple months I will switch over.* For now I am using two dosers to dose the following...
Alkalinity bionic
Calcium bionic
Magnesium kent tech m
-np pro aquaforrest
Home made potassium solution
Vodka*
Vinegar
- Fish feeding -
We feed our fish a huge variety of food and use a number of supplements which it's soaked in randomly.* We use everything from large krill to baby brine to pellets on feeders because of the large variety of fish we keep.* It will be easiest to take pictures of everything we feed later on than list them.* We use selcon, vitamin c, omegas, Amino's, and garlic when we soak the food.* We feed from large pressed packages of frozen and break off about 4 square inches and a number of cubes of frozen a day for feeding.* Along with multiple pellet feedings and nori daily.
- Corals -
We use a variety of amino mixes for the corals from zeo, red sea, kent, brightwells to aquaforrest.
We don't feed corals directly unless they are recovering from a stressful situation.* The fish provide more than enough nutrients for the corals to stay healthy.
If nitrates drop lower than one most of the time I add a little stump remover and things react well.* I try not to keep uln because we have so many different corals in other tanks connected to this system. With the amount of fish and food going in uln is basically impossible.
- Husbandry -
We do not do much to this tank besides clean the skimmers and pumps. Skimmer necks wiped weekly and pumps cleaned every 6 months.* We don't really clean the glass until it affects how well we can see the corals which is maybe every two weeks.* We let detritus settle and the large amount of critters in the tanks will usually inhabit it and create "a mulm" which turns to housing for sponge, bacteria, and all kinds of animals.* The only time we take detritus out is when it collects in low flow areas of the sump where no life is.* If it settles there it will usually get blown and create excess nutrients.*I will clean the rock tank a little maybe once a year to keep detritus from collecting too much on the rocks. Once I am running only the skimmer return through this tank I may not need to clean it.
- Fresh water and storage -
We use a tunze top off unit and a ten gallon top off tank.* One day when I hook up the huge apex system we got I will automate the refill on the top off container to make it more efficient.
The fresh water and water change tanks are two white water storage tanks, one is 100 gallons with a 50 gallon on top.* One drains into the other with a gate valve so I can use them both to mix saltwater and do 150 gallon water changes if need be, and also have two brute trashcans available to do 220 gallon changes in emergencies.*
The ro/di unit hangs on front of my water change tanks and has auto shut off and auto flush valves with a booster pump.* These really are they key to making water up quickly and not killing membranes and resin.* In the past forgetting about the filters has been the cause of a few tank issues.* Automating this as much as possible is very helpful.* Here is the order I run my filters...
5 micron
1 micron
Carbon
150 gph membrane
Two different di resin chambers*
- Display tank -
The display tank is a marineland 3' cube and is 24" high if I remember.* It's Starfire glass and is visible from three sides right now.* The rock work is raised from the bottom using an acrylic base and a few PVC pipes.* This really give a lot of places for the load of fish to hide and swim through. This tank is barebottom and we use high flow to keep the corals hopefully growing naturally.* I do not like skinny long branches especially when growing crooked because of inadequate or flow moving in one direction.
There are maybe 40 fish in the display now if I had to guess.* One day I will get a list from my wife who is the fish expert.*
- Flow -
1 mp60qd on about half power
3 mp40qd on reef rest at full power
One small jebo in the back bottom where the flow is low and detritus settles.* This helps keep the detritus from becoming a nutrient problem and lets the animals, bacteria, sponge, ect down there use what does collect as housing.* There are pieces of coral that broke off growing in it so I will leave it be. I think having varied high flow in all directions is a big key to healthy acropora.
- Other tanks -
The system also contains a couple other tanks which include...
3' by 2' by 18" zoanthid tank*
8' by 18" by 12" frag tank upstairs
4' by 18" by 2' which is going to be taken down soon
- Lighting -
On all my sps tanks I have been most successful with all three types of light.* I prefer a more natural look and have been happy with 10k and 12k metal halide bulbs.* I like to give as much light as I possibly can since most sps I like can tolerate and do best in a very high amount of light.* The halides provide the main light source and 400w seem to give me the best coverage and intensity. I use t5s to fill in and give me a little more of a color I like over the tank especially when using lower kelvin bulbs.* I use leds along with these to give the corals a good florescent sheen and color to them.* No other light can give this look and I am desperately awaiting a better way to supplement more and better blue led light over my display.* Reefbrights are great but don't provide a lot of light.* So I use a combination of reefbrights and a strip with leds clustered tightly together. I stagger the leds with optics and no optics throughout this strip.* This is the last one I will use because they burn out and controllers go bad too often.* We will wait til someone makes a better powerful led strip and switch. I would love to use a led fixture to provide this light but I have not found one I like that will allow me to still have room for t5 bulbs. The light rack I use is jam packed! Right now I am using the following...
Main light source...
Two 400w se 12k reflux bulbs on lumatek ballasts set on hqi.* I modified two large square reflectors in order to run two metal halide bulbs side by side.* I cut one side of each reflector 4" short and rivited them back together in order to fit both reflectors over my 3' tank from front to back.* This leaves enough on the left and right side for supplemental lights and covers the tank front to back with light directly under a reflector.
Supplemental light...
Two 3' t5 bulbs over the right side and two 24" over the left side in order not to light my overflow.
We run two 2' reefbrights and one 36" led strip with 36 3w leds half with optics and half without.* All leds are blue and angled from the side in towards the center of the tank.* There are a total of 60 3w blue LEDs surrounding the tank.
- Filtration -
We run two large skimmers on this system. The skimmers are the main filtration but we use a few other methods to help reduce nitrates and phosphates including carbon sources, gfo and we run a "cryptic refuge".
We use a bubbleking 300 if I remember correctly, but the small red dragon pump is not working any longer.* This skimmer still rocks though and is ran by the old red dragon with the white round housing.**
The large main skimmer is a modified euro reef external skimmer which is 4' tall and 12" wide.* We have two of the large ehiem needle wheel pumps running and I have added three 3/4" mazzei injectors running on a closed loop.* I had three ehiems running but one failed and the other two need replacing too.* I need to find out what pump can replace these without any problems.* The skimmer would benefit from three new needlewheels pumps.
I clean the skimmer necks weekly by hand (nasty!) and flush the air intakes with tank water at the same time.* Every couple of months I will clean all the pumps.
- Carbon sources and rock tank -
We use three main carbon sources on this system.* Vodka, vinegar and aquaforrest -np pro.* Last time I checked we were dosing 150ml of -np pro, 50 ml of vinegar and 50 ml of vodka per day.* The vinegar and vodka are dosed in small doses with a reef dosing pump 24 hours a day and the -np pro is dosed 6 times a day in 25 ml shots.
All of these dosing lines run into a 40 breeder which is compleetly full of live rock which is covered in sponges and other good stuff, you could call it a cryptic refugium I guess. The only flow in this tank is from a 60 gallon zoanthid tank above it which drains into it before hitting the sump and the large euro reef skimmer which drains into it before the sump.* I will so change the drain on the zoanthid tank to go straight to the sump to get more flow through it.**
This tank really helps me dose a high amount of carbon sources without getting bacteria blooms or bacteria in the display tanks.* I can also raise the amount of carbon sources dosed fast if nutrients spike, without any problems.**
- Other filtration -
I have recently started running zeolites in a pump reactor which I am gradually working into my routine.* I am pumping the reactor 2 to 3 times a day as of now.* It's a large vertex reactor and it's running at full speed.* I probably need another liter or two and may get another reactor once the system is stable and used to running this one.* The avast magnetic ones interest me but space is a problem.
Gfo is run in a reactor on top of a couple inches of zeolites with no sponges because it cloggs in days.* I also use a filter sock on the end to catch particles and prevent gfo spills.* I use rox carbon and rowaphos and the carbon is ran passively. I used to regenerate my gfo but need to build a bigger new reactor to make this process more efficient and only have to run one batch each time.
- Sump tank -
The sump is a three sectioned simple sump.* First chamber is where all the returns from all the tanks enter the sump.* It is filled with small rock and a lot of white branching sponge.* It is very nasty with bacteria.* It slows down everything before it enters the middle section where the bubble king is and the gfo and carbon reactor is also in this section.* The last return section houses a jeabo 12000 that feeds the 4' euro reef skimmer, which is on full blast.* It also houses the zeolite reactor. It uses a reeflo barracuda gold hybrid return pump to feed the tanks and chiller.
- Aquaforrest prouducts -
I have been running AF for 6 months or more so far. I use the dropper bottles and i just squeeze the dropper all the way and squirt a full squirt twice for each bottle. Some I do three times.
Here is what I use now...
Coral B
Coral V
Coral E
Micro E
AF Amino Mix
Kalium
Iodum
Fluorine
Strontium
Pro Bio S
-NP Pro
Zeo Mix
- Dosing -
For now we are using bionic two part and dosing pumps to maintain water parameters. This kills me because I want to hook up my calcium reactor which is always my go too.* In a couple months I will switch over.* For now I am using two dosers to dose the following...
Alkalinity bionic
Calcium bionic
Magnesium kent tech m
-np pro aquaforrest
Home made potassium solution
Vodka*
Vinegar
- Fish feeding -
We feed our fish a huge variety of food and use a number of supplements which it's soaked in randomly.* We use everything from large krill to baby brine to pellets on feeders because of the large variety of fish we keep.* It will be easiest to take pictures of everything we feed later on than list them.* We use selcon, vitamin c, omegas, Amino's, and garlic when we soak the food.* We feed from large pressed packages of frozen and break off about 4 square inches and a number of cubes of frozen a day for feeding.* Along with multiple pellet feedings and nori daily.
- Corals -
We use a variety of amino mixes for the corals from zeo, red sea, kent, brightwells to aquaforrest.
We don't feed corals directly unless they are recovering from a stressful situation.* The fish provide more than enough nutrients for the corals to stay healthy.
If nitrates drop lower than one most of the time I add a little stump remover and things react well.* I try not to keep uln because we have so many different corals in other tanks connected to this system. With the amount of fish and food going in uln is basically impossible.
- Husbandry -
We do not do much to this tank besides clean the skimmers and pumps. Skimmer necks wiped weekly and pumps cleaned every 6 months.* We don't really clean the glass until it affects how well we can see the corals which is maybe every two weeks.* We let detritus settle and the large amount of critters in the tanks will usually inhabit it and create "a mulm" which turns to housing for sponge, bacteria, and all kinds of animals.* The only time we take detritus out is when it collects in low flow areas of the sump where no life is.* If it settles there it will usually get blown and create excess nutrients.*I will clean the rock tank a little maybe once a year to keep detritus from collecting too much on the rocks. Once I am running only the skimmer return through this tank I may not need to clean it.
- Fresh water and storage -
We use a tunze top off unit and a ten gallon top off tank.* One day when I hook up the huge apex system we got I will automate the refill on the top off container to make it more efficient.
The fresh water and water change tanks are two white water storage tanks, one is 100 gallons with a 50 gallon on top.* One drains into the other with a gate valve so I can use them both to mix saltwater and do 150 gallon water changes if need be, and also have two brute trashcans available to do 220 gallon changes in emergencies.*
The ro/di unit hangs on front of my water change tanks and has auto shut off and auto flush valves with a booster pump.* These really are they key to making water up quickly and not killing membranes and resin.* In the past forgetting about the filters has been the cause of a few tank issues.* Automating this as much as possible is very helpful.* Here is the order I run my filters...
5 micron
1 micron
Carbon
150 gph membrane
Two different di resin chambers*
