My SPS tank :)

[Flexin5]

greetings, long time lurker so i thought i would throw up some pictures of my 130 gallon mainly sps tank. this is my second tank, i started out with a small 10 gallon and when i bought my house last year i got to setup my big tank. i started the tank in febuary of this year, and so far it's going fairly good.

some stats:

tank: w18 L60 H20 rimless with corner overflow

lighting: 2 AI sols, 1 AI hydra in the middle

filtration: refugium in sump, vertex in-180, gfo, carbon (that i just took offline)

water movement: 1 MP40, eihim 1262 return pump

most recent pictures:

(no longer have the yellow tangs)

it is somewhat of a mixed reef, but i lean toward the sps side more

so recently i've found my sps to be pale, i took carbon offline, and i've been dosing amino acids (seachem fuel), i've been getting great growth,everything is encrusting quite well, just some colors arn't there. i was about to order the phol's extra but BRS is out of stock so i hope to give that a shot soon. any feedback is welcome

 

[Reefer1225]

Nice tank. I love the minimalist clean look of it! Pale SPS is likely low nutrients. What are your parameters? I am assuming you have undetectable phosphates and nitrates. How do you keep te rock and sandbed so clean? Could I ask what your feeding and maintenance schedule is like?

 

[jroovers]

Looks great Jason! You have the foundation of what is sure to be a really sweet reef.

In terms of your coral paling, I would try and up your fish feedings a bit. Don't go over board with the AA's, I've found that you can quickly go from too little nutrient to causing a cyano or other undesirable algae bloom. I'm sure they will color up in time.

 

[Flexin5]

Nice tank. I love the minimalist clean look of it! Pale SPS is likely low nutrients. What are your parameters? I am assuming you have undetectable phosphates and nitrates. How do you keep te rock and sandbed so clean? Could I ask what your feeding and maintenance schedule is like?

thankyou

i'm sorry i should have posted more info.

params check out good, cal = 420, alk = 8dkh (both api), mag = 1400 (red sea) nitrates = 0ppm (api) and phosphates = 0ppm (hanna)

for feeding, once a day i do a food soak consisting of 5 drops of vitachem, 3 drops of garlic xtreme, 3 pinches of flake, and a piece of seaweed for the hippo tang. right now the fish list is kinda on the small side (had an issue with a lfs's fish that kept dying) so in there is 1 hippo tang, 2 clowns, 1 fire fish goby, and 3 chromis. oh and i do a pinch of reef roids about twice a week.

for maintence, i do a 20 gallon water change (0tds ro/di) and use reef crystals, skimmer cup cleaned every week.

i don't really do anything to keep the rock and sandbed clean, i guess my strawberry conch is doing a good job lol if i do see a bit of algae on the right bigger rock i may blow it off with a baster but aside from that not much. i do have my light intensities and schedual at home that i'll post tonight aswell.

thanks for the help

Looks great Jason! You have the foundation of what is sure to be a really sweet reef.

In terms of your coral paling, I would try and up your fish feedings a bit. Don't go over board with the AA's, I've found that you can quickly go from too little nutrient to causing a cyano or other undesirable algae bloom. I'm sure they will color up in time.

Thanks Jordan! i'm just taking it slow, but it seems like things are coloring up a tiny bit, but more growth. in my latest attempt to keep nutrients in the tank i took the carbon offline, we'll see if that helps.

 

[basser1]

I like the lay-out, but.... Is everything really that dark and blue???

 

[NeverlosT]

in my humble experience, the paling of the SPS colors may be due to the AI modules, it is very tough to find the sweet spot where they are bright enough to encourage growth and good color but not so bright that they scorch. It looks like you are off to a great start though!

I dig the rock layout, keep it up!

 

[sahin]

Beautiful tank. Subscribed to follow along. :beer:

 

[Flexin5]

thankyou for the responses guys. i've read so much about the AI lights and sps colors, and you're right, you have to find that sweet spot. at this point, to cover my bases, i decided to stop playing with the lights and see if it's a water quality issue.

i just ordered all new salifert test kits to get some more accurate tests against the api's. i'm determined to figure out what's causing the pale color.

I've been using this colony of aussie acro that i bought that was already kinda washed out as a meter. it's supposed to be a very nice piece, (3rd pic, bottom right of the rock) and for the life of me i can't get it to color up. everything has great polyp extention day and night, great growth, just no color. next plan after taking the carbon offline and getting some better test numbers is to try some phol's extra to see if that works. i'm just running out of ideas...

I like the lay-out, but.... Is everything really that dark and blue???

lol oh no, sorry i took that pic as the lights were ramping down for the night.

i forgot to mention that the tank is in my man cave that i finished earlier this year, it's a penninsula style

 

[rovster]

Damn, really diggin the man cave. You one lucky bastard!

 

[cassklar]

Hey flex
If you don't mind me asking what type of sand bed is that I really like it I am tired of my fine sand in my sps tank blows all over the place
Thanks
Beautifull tank by the way

 

[sahin]

Daaaayuuuuuumn! Sweet looking man cave. And you dont even need to turn your head; with a slight turn of the eyes you got either the tank or that big screen in view! :beer: When are we invited over?

 

[Flexin5]

Damn, really diggin the man cave. You one lucky bastard!

lol thanks! i get the basement and the garage, the wife gets the rest of the house..haha when we bought the house last year the basement wasn't finished, but i already had the tank, so i basically built it around the tank for the most part.

Hey flex
If you don't mind me asking what type of sand bed is that I really like it I am tired of my fine sand in my sps tank blows all over the place
Thanks
Beautifull tank by the way

thank you i learned my lesson when i had sugar size sand in my 10 gallon. sugar size looks the best imo when it's clean, but man is it a pain, it flys everywhere! this time i went with the caribsea aragonite seafloor special. it's heavier than the sugar sand the mp40 can still manage to move it.

Daaaayuuuuuumn! Sweet looking man cave. And you dont even need to turn your head; with a slight turn of the eyes you got either the tank or that big screen in view! :beer: When are we invited over?

lol it's great except i find myself not paying attention to what i'm watching..LOL actually for any local reefers fight night at my house! :celeb2:



so here's my AI light schedual:

1) 11:00am w10 b65 rb80 2hr ramp /10 violet/10 red/10 green

2) 1:30pm w20 b85 rb90 3hr ramp /10 violet/10 red/10 green

3) 7:00pm w20 b70 rb85 2hr ramp /10 violet/10 red/10 green

4) 12:30am w0 b03 rb03 1.5hr ramp /0 violet/0 red/0 green

now i had turned down the lights when i noticed them starting to get pale, and i lost the nice yellow tips on my forest fire digi's. any insight would be great!

 

[golfsk8er]

Love seeing your tank Jason.
You're going to have to add a third pillar of rock soon to mount more sps!

 

[Flexin5]

^thanks buddy, i think i will add a small rock covered with coral, but i just have to figure out this color thing first :headwalls:

 

[Flexin5]

little update; i've been dosing the phols xtra aswell as feeding oyster feast and reef roids (oyster every night 1tsp, reef roids a pinch about 3times/week) and colors are getting alot better than before! growth has gotten even better aswell.

some crappy close-ups. this is a red planet, before it was totaly dead. no color, no polyps, nothing.

when I got this colony, it didn't have any color, and stayed that way in my tank for a long time. I've been trying so hard to get this to color up but it's finally showing small signs of getting some color:

this acro was totally dead before. it actually came back, had no color but took off in growth, growing over the old dead skeleton I'm guessing. now it's starting to show color, a very nice pink acro, it's been so long that I forgot what color it was supposed to be lol

my forest fire digi. fantastic growth, just trying to get the blue base and yellow tips going again, getting better but has a ways to go imo.

 

[sweet ride]

looks good Jason!

 

[sahin]

Your tank is making nice progress. Keep on putting the effort in. As the tank matures I'm sure corals will look even better than now. Keep the thread updated too.

 

[jroovers]

Looking good Jason! That forest fire is looking nice. You completely lost your RP? That stinks if you did... anyhow, I shot you a text, send me a PM here on RC if that works better.

 

[sahin]

Bump. How is the tank doing?

 

[Flexin5]

tank is doing ok, i upgraded to the AI hydras, so the corals went through a bit of a shock, and i also tried vodka dosing but my tank didn't take too well to it so i decided to stop; and things are looking much better now. i forgot to take a pic but now i have a AI sol over my refugium and i threw a frag rack in there aswell. I also had a blue starfish that i thought died but found him alive and well two weeks later lol

it seems like the tank likes nitrates at about 5ppm, as i was vodka dosing nitrates came down to 2.5ppm but things weren't looking very good, my red convexa that had great color lost it all, still having polyp extention but waiting for it to hopefully come back.