My House Reef upgrade

Update.
So after another episode with the darn aqualifter pump, in which I phoned a local reef shop, I had a friend swap out the old pump for a new/used model.
Anyway. Tank is filling as of Feb 18.

Man did that ever take forever. My RODI is 150 gallons per day.
Tank as of 2/23

I took a break for the weekend so it's slower than usual.
After about two days running full of water and salt, I added a couple bacterial starters for a jump start and diversity. Tank is running on three heaters. About 700 watts keep it at 78 or so.
Miracle Mud went in the tank in an area designed to hold it and increase waterflow close to the surface of the mud. That stuff really makes a mess.
Two days for that to settle and then I added a 44 gallon brute full of liverock. Have not had any discernable cycle. No trace of ammonia or nitrite.
 
Next.
The refugium on my main display has rock and cheto algae. The tank is only 20 gallons so I figured [how much can cheto really grow I there]?
The tank was sectioned off so only 2/3 was cheto, but when I pulled it out it was like a brick.
I added the contents of my refugium to the new tank in the designed section, and the cheto expanded. It now takes up about the size of a 55 gallon tank.
It's swarming with pods and little worms so I expect them to populate the entire thing soon

 
I have been emptying out my main display in expectation of the tank swap. Corals in the sand first. Then some [plugged] into the rock. Then corals that are completely encrusted.
Main tank looks dull. No more colors:uhoh2:
Not really sure what to do with some of the larger pieces. The anemone is also a bit of a concern. It needs to go, but I don't want it to get hurt, or go on walkabout.
Next is to set up a temp holding bin and then go fishing. The tangs follow the nori clip around like puppies, so the first few should be easy.
After they get wise I will have to make a mess and pull out all the rock and start draining the tank.
A 55 gallon in place of my main, connected to the original sump will be plenty of filtration for a while.
Then on to disassembly of the old tank. Cutting holes in the floor, and connecting pipes to downstairs. Then to new sand, and re-aquascaping the new 120 display.
Moving the main return pump will make filling the new tank easy. Just fill extra water downstairs and turn on the pump.
Daniel. :wildone:
 
Lots of work done. Waiting for the last pieces of pipe to dry on the overflow before I fill the new tank with water. Hope I have enough...:frog:
Updates incoming later today. I changed back to 3rd shift and I have off tonight.
My boss did this to me.:blown:.... Jerk. I'm better off away from people like that.
 

First had to empty the tank of the water and rocks. Then move any fish I couldn't catch with the nori clip method. Also move all coral still attached to rocks into the basement tank.

Then had to remove the old tank and replace it with the new one with the built overflow.

All the corals not attached to large liverock were moved downstairs.






One of the toughest parts of the build on the replacement tank, was matching the lengths and getting the curves right on the spa-flex overflow hoses.
The three hoses make two 90 degree bends each in the ceiling downstairs.
Cutting holes in a perfectly good hardwood floor has a sense of finality to it. I took the advise of many on RC and cut the holes to the size of a heating vent so that if I ever move I can just pop in a vent and cover up the big hole in the floor.
 
Water went in easily. Still a little less salt in the system than I would like so I am letting it evaporate to a higher salinity. New sand went in after the rocks in a different aquascape minus the largest piece of rock.
Fish and coral went in next. All the coral from downstairs came up over about three days.
I left two fish to the tank downstairs, one mandarin and one yellow tang to eat algae in the coral section. The mandarin has since discovered he has the full run of the sump to explore. I will get him a mate some day but for now he sits at the glass and pecks at the copopods on the other side of it.



 
My spotbreast angelfish developed popeye just after the move. I suspect it came from chasing her around twice in two weeks with a net.

I now have her in a hospital tank with some epsom salt. I will treat her with an antibiotic made for things like that later. For now she is doing much better after just one day in her ICU tank.....

Daniel. :wildone:
 
Update.
I bought a clean-up crew as my collection of snails and crabs was severely lacking. Bought about 100 mixed snails and 30 or so dwarf crabs. Also some tigertail cucumbers and sand sifting starfish.
Distributed them all between the two tanks. Everything is doing well minus the starfish. They don't seem to ship very well at all and were disintegrating in their shipping bags.
They continued to basically fall apart over the last three days, so I just pulled them out and gave them a burial at sea.
Salinity is up where I want it finally and my top-off is running. I use a DIY 10 gallon Kalkwasser setup with my ato. I have a small mixing pump in the reservoir that turns on three minutes every three hours. I dump in about 5 heaping teaspoons of kalk and mix it up. My ato pump has been running just fine for more than two years with no problems. Kalkwasser is great for adding your dosing elements and the PH stays about right since the mix pump does not break the film on top of the kalk slurry. Have been testing daily to get my levels stable.
Going to start fragging my collection to let them grow out soon, and then go find me a frag swap or something else cheap to find as much variety as possible.
Happy Easter everyone!!
He is risen indeed!!!!
Daniel. :wildone:
 
Last edited:
Time for an update.
My anemone has split. I knew they do on occasion and it really doesn't come as much of a surprise.
It kind of exploded from the mouth, or kind of melted from the middle and separated into at least three smaller bubble tips.
I know that ALK swings can prompt this right? Well my ALK has gone down to below 6 DKH in the last few weeks. I have brought it up slowly with doesing and kalkwasser. It now is solid at 7.8-8.0 for a while.
I don't know. it's fine really as it was starting to wave at some sps corals.
I got it when it was only silver dollar sized, and last week it was reaching about 20 inches with it's tentacles.
We'll see if I can keep the kids from exploring too much. :hammer:
Almost time to go vote!:facepalm:

I also collected a bunch of frags from my main tank. Many of the zoa's have no more room to grow on their little rock islands so I broke off a bunch of little polyps growing on the sand and stuff. Also cut up some birdsnest and some acro's into multiples. Most of the zoa's I glued or epoxied to large rubble rock to give them lots of room to multiply.
Grow baby grow!
Daniel. :rolleyes:
 
Looks like a great build. How about some more pictures/video of this thing in action.
 
So I had my first real flood today. Nothing major but it still sucks.
I moved one of the lids today. It was holding the line from the ATO. So the line fell into the water and started a back syphon.
By my estimate I lost about 15 gallons of water onto the floor. My reservoir overflowed and made a puddle. No real biggie.
I kept the water from my last water change. I added enough from that along with some RODI water to make up for the salt in the topoff container.
I still had enough for a full waterchange on my three anthia's in quarantine.
Hopefully next week I can pick up the tangs I wanted and add them to the second quarantine I have set up.
A Desjardini and a two spot bristletooth. They both have work to do in the downstairs frag tank as the yellow tang is not enough to pick the algae in there.
Things are growing well. Picked up some new acropora from the local guy. They are 1 inch sticks and grow painfully slow if at all. I guess if they are not dying then they are growing. :twitch:

Daniel. :frog:
 
Lost the three anthia's in quarantine. I did a water change on the tank and forgot to turn on the heater again. After a day without heat the water was at about 65. The stress must have been enough because they broke out in ick.:sad2: I started out in slow doses of copper to bring it up to proper levels, but they all died.
I don't really have time for it, but next time I have fish in quarantine I will be using the TTM. I also want to set up a fish only system that I can keep a certain level of copper continuously.
I'm thinking about using a 55 as an all in one with rock and substrate. I will keep the system at a consistent copper level. I can introduce fish into an established system and not have to worry about ick. A hospital tank will be used for higher levels of copper treatment or Prazipro. Water changes will be from my periodic 44 gallon changes from the main system.
My filtration is keeping up well. The main tank has very little algae, could use more actually. The chetomorpha is steady in the refugium and there is very little hair algae even where snails are absent. My filter socks collect fairly little from the water even with higher levels of food in the main tank. I change them out maybe once in two weeks with very little particulate matter. My skimmer is about the same. It's about half full after two weeks of work.
A few weeks ago the skimmer stopped producing bubbles. I took it apart to find that the air intake was covered over by white gunk. The outlet from the bio-pellets goes into the skimmer intake, so that probably has something to do with it. Need to keep a close eye on that.
Everything is growing consistently and I have been fragging little bits here and there. My two part usage has been growing weekly which is encouraging.
 
Been a while between updates. Tank is on cruse control. As I had hoped, my frag section has been producing and growing things steadily. I took out about half of the corals downstairs recently and sold them for store credit. I got a good amount for the stuff. I then broke up one of my colonies of birdsnest and made about 40 frag plugs out of it. My bird of paradise has been the fastest grower which is nice. I can cut 3-4 frags off it every 3 weeks or so.
I set up a 55 gallon as a quarantine and have a permanent level of copper in it. 4 anthia's have been my first new additions and they are about a week away from going to the main tank.
Question about mandarin breeding....
When it is time for the female to do her thing, does she swell up real big? I though maybe I had lost her some time ago but today I found her against the eggcrate. They were both swimming back and forth together and she was huge.:hmm1:

Daniel. :bigeyes:
 
That would be incredible if you could raise some of the brood. Do you have facilities to give it a try?

Dave.M
 
Don't really have anything I can use to raise fry, but if newborns have any chance in my system they are in the right place.
It's in my sump which has about 300 pounds of liverock that has two years worth of growth on it. They also have access to about a 60 gallon section with cheto algae and other macro life. There is a large section with my coral frags. Every time I take a plug off the rack, I need to shake a half dozen pods off each.


I suppose she could have just been eating sand or something. I don't really know much about the breeding cycle of dragonet's. Other than a few people who have witnessed the act in their tanks I don't even know the method for this species.

Daniel. ;)

Daniel. :D
 
Wow extremely excited to see if there is really a brood. The tank is incredible. Im dying to try to raise fish in my tank so im really looking forward to your posts. Thanks for sharing!

Sent from my SM-N910V using Tapatalk
 
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