My System From Start to Now

[fasterhobbies]

I have a few pictures from the last year or so of growth of my system, inside and out. I decided to do a build thread to show my struggles and accomplishments. I have been reading build threads on RC since I got my first tank. There is just so much awesome information on this forum.

So basically I will be sort of remembering as I go through the pictures. This might take a while to get up to current date so PLEASE DONT ANSWER QUESTIONS OR GIVE YOUR INSIGHT ON PROBLEMS YOU SEE.....that is until we get to current date. I just figure that some of the problems everyone will address and want to give answers on will have been solved long ago.

OK so my brother, younger by 2 yrs, bought a 56gallon column tank with a serpent star and an urchin and a shrimp. I went over and seen this tank for the first time and was hooked. I came home that night and hit the kijiji and started looking for a tank that was all up and running. (not knowing I wouldnt be getting a headstart, I was just inheriting someone elses problems.)

So back to thinking about my awesome jump start to where my bro was at.
Sept 2013 - I found this beauty(this is the actual for sale pic from kijiji):

Keep in mind I knew nothing about the hobby and neither did my brother. We were just instantly addicted to the hobby.
I think I will stop here and make sure the pics are uploading ok. It will give me a chance to save this, so to speak.

 

[fasterhobbies]

Sept 2013

Sept 2013

Well the edit button just tells me that it is an invalid something something. idk.

OK so to continue. My bro and I rush up to this family home where they have this tank. Its up and running and looks cool to me so I make an offer of 200$ and buy the whole kit and kaboodle. We break the tank down and have it setup in my house and running by that evening. What a day that was.

Some info on the tank.
50Gallon Glass with a waterlogged pressboard stand. 8Gallon sump that only held about 3 gallons.
2 36" T5 in a GLO enclosure. 1 powerhead korillia #3

In the tank was a few snails, bengai cardinalfish, two clowns(pair), yellow wrasse and a Desjardini Sailfin that should have never been in a tank this small. and all the N03 and P04 you could ever ask for.

So we are at home and setup now and I'm all excited cause water is turning over and the fish are swimming.

So the next day I was out to buy some better bulbs for the reef to be.
I picked up an actinic 420+ and a 10K and this looked much better.
I also added about 20lbs of liverock and thats all i can remember from that day.

 

[fasterhobbies]

Oct 2013

Oct 2013

So Im reading and learning and reading and learning....

I decide a test kit is important so i can make sure the tank is all good and that the previous owners were keeping up with water changes and what not.

This is my very first test of my tank lol

So in the meantime I had met a local fish guy, Like I mean very local. He was just down the road and his entire 3 car garage was a nice clean fully converted saltwater only fish store. I had no idea at the time that this guy was an idiot and I would have been way farther along to have never met him and his fish holocaust store. Anyways, he had lots of cool livestock and used gear coming out the yingyang so he was my "fish guy".

OK so back to the tank, the stand was going to let go any day so this was the first step. I did not want 50g of SW all over the house.

So I could have bought another cheapy stand but where is the fun in that

This Stand was strong. All heavy wall 1.5" square tube. Fully welded, Solid 1/4" plate bottom shelf and 16gauge removable side panels. I get steel from work hence the very heavy stand. I would rather it too strong though.
Primed and Flat Blacked the stand and my bro and I switched It over. And I was pumped. The tank was finally level and it didn't wobble when you touched it.

So, I didnt like the little leaky acrylic sump that came with the tank and if i was going to get my nitrates down i needed so room for filtration of some sort. So i built a sump and bought a skimmer
Cadlights TIA-1150 Skimmer

30 Gallon Tank with some baffles for Skimmer and Refugium.

Picked up a Two little fishies phosban 150 and a quiet one 3000 pump(used) to replace the current maxijet 1200 the tank was running on.
Also grabbed a sock holder. I was ready to switch the sump and redo the plumbing.

Gotta take a break and head to the local fish store. I will continue more later tonight.

 

[fasterhobbies]

Oct 2013 Cont.

Oct 2013 Cont.

Ok, So I had my sump all ready to go in.

Voila. Sump in and running on my new pump and now running carbon and rowa phos gfo, and a skimmer.

Added impractical fuge light that would have grown algae everywhere.

First sings of skimmer working after a night.

Sailfin Doin his thing, he was a beautiful fish in good health with no HLLE so we took him to the fish store and sold him. It was just cruel to keep him in a 50g tank. We got $90 and he got a new home in a nice 180g reef tank so everyone was happy.

I put some reef sand and liverock and cheato in the fuge. Along with a pencil urchin that was being a nuisance in my brothers tank.

Gave the fuge its own light at a lower kelvin to help the algae growth.

Tank was looking much better these days and now housed a green bubble tip anemone.

 

[fasterhobbies]

Late Oct - Nov 2013

Late Oct - Nov 2013

So it looked like everything was going well. Then we started buying fish. Every fish we would get from the old fish store would show severe ich signs and within 24-72 hours was deceased in the tank. My previous fish guy would lie and cheat and steal to sell a fish so he is telling me its common and some fish travel poorly and all this crud. I didnt know what to do at this point because after trying 3-4 fish I realized I couldnt add anything. It seemed the ich was either in the fish or in the system and the original fish were immune from prolonged exposure. In either case I started reading on ich and learned alot. I learned ich sucks and I hate battling it. I also learned that I was going to need a quarantine setup if I was going to save my tank and continue.
I decided to treat with cupramine and let the display tank sit dorment for 10 weeks or longer if i could stand it.

To the garage.

Picked up an acrylic and a canister filter with just filter floss in it. This was supposed to make it easy to extracting the cupramine with carbon

Then over a few discussions with my fish guy I decided now was the time to change my glass. I had wanted to go to a taller tank so I could utilize my stand. Also it was a good time to start fresh and have my own good clean biological cycle. Not someone elses dirty old neglected tank.

So I started collecting pieces while setting up the qt tank.

Setup a 10G to house my inverts because they could not go in the qt tank with the cupramine.

Moved everybody and drained the main tank. Oh I used a product called stability to quick cycle the qt tank which proved to be pointless because the cupramine would just kill off the cycle anyways.

 

[fasterhobbies]

Nov 2013 Beginning of the New Reef Tank

Nov 2013 Beginning of the New Reef Tank

So its early Nov and Im working like a dog. Getting ready for deer hunting and trying to build my tank to have it ready for when my fish are cured. I figured a proper cycle should be done around the time they were all cured up in the qt tank. At least it was excuse enough to get the wifey to let me buy the new tank and a couple small things to go with it.

So I ordered a new 70 (Actually 69G or something) Had it drilled, And put an overflow box in the top left corner. I didnt want to drill out the bottom. I wanted a nice clean look and the whole bottom and back as well. So thats what I came up with. I would do my next tank differently but this opened up alot of real estate over my other tank of the same footprint. And with the extra height I could afford to put the 6" overflow box up top.

Painted the back

Got her all plumbed in and ready for water

Added some aragonite reef sand.

Wanted a DSB So I added Some more. Totalling 75lbs in the DT and 15 in the fuge.

So I threw some RODI Water at it and fired the whole thing up. This is something I dont have pictures on but OMG NOISY!!!!!!!!!!!
It sounded like a toilet continually flushing and gurgling.
The problem was discovered after a night of hair pulling and trial and error. I had thought that the overflow box would fill up over the open bulk head, Instead of using the T at the back the air was coming right from the bulkhead. So i tried a short nipple and a 90 and put it in facing down and BAM silent. It was so much quieter than before. I insulated the PVC drains with pipe insulation and that reduced the tank to just a tranquil trickle of water. It was awesome!!

So I laid out all of my rock and went at my aquascaping.

And this is what i had that night.

Ok stopping for the night. Will continue tomorrow and hopefully get up to date by the weekend. I am hoping no one chimes in till then so the thread is nice and in order until its at current date. Maybe there is a way i can lock it from other posts until im done? if so someone please pm me with that info. thanks.

 

[fasterhobbies]

Early Nov 2013, Deer hunting and Tank Build.

Early Nov 2013, Deer hunting and Tank Build.

So the frost is on the ground now and the deer are moving well. I go out opening day and am in my tree stand for about 40 minutes when this 5 point walked out to me. I hit him when he was about 30 yrds from me.

So I threw my back out that morning trying to load my deer onto my bike to haul him out. So i took the day after opening off from hunting (and work) and laid on the couch.
So the next morning I felt a bit better so I went out for an afternoon hunt. Nikki(My buddy's sister hunts with us) and I went back towards our stands. We only make it half way back and she jumps off her bike and starts blasting. She dropped a doe in the middle of the field. I proceeded on to the tree stand I was heading to after the excitement stopped. I was just really up there to make sure her doe didn't up and run while we were waiting her out. Then I hear this crashing and commotion coming from the branches out in front of me and this monster 8 point comes tearing out. He must have been laying down from when Nikki started shooting. So i blasted while he was full blown on the run 100 yrds out. Blew his front leg off at the knee, lead too much.
Took another shot because i had a semi and wasn't thinking. Now he's heading across the field doing mach 10 and getting farther and farther away. Nikki shoots with her 243 and hits him in the front shoulder. I now thinking about my next shot. He's 275 yrds and counting and i squeeze on him. The shot goes in his left side and down threw is one lung and resides in his neck. We tracked him for over a mile. But boy was I happy when we came up on this boy.

So back to Reefing...
Weird little crabs I found in my fuge. The big one looked MEAN!!

Skimmer is starting to break in now on the new tank, It took me a long time to get this skimmer making a substaintial weekly collection. I would say for the first 3 months of owning it I wanted a different one because I could get this one to work the way it should. I honestly cant say whether it was my limited experience with a skimmer or if it was the skimmer "breaking in"
But ill go into what I did to get it working better later on.

Ah yes, I remember these tank cookers. Went through 3 off them under warranty because they would continually go tropical on me. I still use one to prep my water change but they have since been replaced with a stainless steel 300watt with external electronic thermostat.

SO, My old fish guy seemed to think there was nothing wrong with putting corals in a brand new running tank, He assured me they would be fine and only the fish need a cycle running in the tank. ugh... So i bought my first brain coral because it looked so awesome. He was pretty much just a coral skeleton when i got him. I didnt know really what to look for when buying corals and couldn't tell the difference between a healthy and dieing coral. This all goes back to the "Too much Too fast" saying. But at this point I hadnt learned that everything goes way better slow in a reef tank. Plus, I was just trying to catch my brother as stupid as it sounds.
Heres my first purchase. I also added some trochas and nassarius snails the same day.

So now we are getting into late Nov - Dec 2013 and the tank is looking nice and clear and everything seems to be going well. The fish are showing excellent results in the cupramine tank. Unfortunaley the yellow wrasse jumped out on us, so we were down to the bengai and the 2 clowns. When I first started treating with the cupramine they all blew up with ich and stopped eating. but after a few days they lost the spots and then the cupramine did its job in the other life stages of ich.
I hope I never have to fight this again but I imagine I may some day and if I do I will use a qt tank and cupramine. It was very effective the first time and I followed the instruction carefully to not overdose copper.

I guess I dont have many pictures up until Dec 20th. This is when i moved my newly cured fish and all the inverts into my nice new frech cycle in the new tank. They were probably happy to come out of that water as there was always detectable nitrite and nitrate.
I did a 4 hour acclimate because of the vast differences in water quality.

I picked up some 2 dollar doors at a home hardware on clearance and framed the front in and put them on. I loved how this turned out.

 

[fasterhobbies]

December 2013

December 2013

Then I painted It all flat black to match the stand. I left the doors to stain at a later date.

The brain coral had been in for a few weeks now and was always just a coloured skeleton with his mouth all weird and hard looking. This one day he just puffed up.

He stayed better looking for a few days so I ran out and bought another coral. It was an elegance coral and I thought it was just beautiful.

I seen a canopys on all kinds of tanks and decided to budget build one. So i drew it out and picked up some wood and hacked it all up.

And voila! I liked this but It trapped alot of moisture inside so I ended up leaving the door off the top after the first week.

At this point now the tank is going through its early stages of algae. Everyone told me just just wait it out and it will pass.
I wasn't dosing anything. Doing weekly 10G water changes and using Instant Ocean. RODI Water. Changing the filter sock in the sump at water change time.
The rocks were green, there was brown starting all over the substrate that was so nice and clean. And the brain, well as you can see he was on his way out.

The brain died and I removed him. His little bit of coloured flesh started leaving the skeleton and I didn't want that in the tank causing more issues.
So I tested....

 

[fasterhobbies]

Jan 2014....

Jan 2014....

The Elegance looked fine to me so I went to the LFS and got another brain.

It looked like that the day I put it in until a week or so later when it fell apart. It was the corals where already way too far gone when I was buying them from a very low quality source, plus the tank was too new for these types but I didn't know that then.
Tried moving him to less light, I doubted my 2 t5s was too much but my fish guy assured me I was killing these corals somehow.
Elegance was looking better all the time.

Brain was gone but my fish and shrimp and other inverts were doing well.

I think this is around the time when my brother was trying to get me to go see his fish guy in kingston. I was reluctant because its a guys basement turned into a fish store, and when you have one fish guy you think he knows everything. So I went one day and Oh my god. I have never seen water so clear and clean and corals so colourful. And selection. like huge shallow tanks full of hundreds of species of coral. Tanks flooded with LPS and stocked SPS tanks under halides with big beautiful Tangs. It was insane, I cant believe I was missing out on all this due to being competitive with my brother. I got to talk to Don and learn about water quality and that just testing for ammonia, ph, nitrite and nitrate was not enough. He flooded my head with information and I went home to process and read and try and remember some of the info he gave me.
I was hooked, I wanted a reef tank that looked like these tanks.

I picked up giesemann bulbs and added 2 more bulbs totalling 4 - 36" T5HO
So I had 2 actinic blue and a purple and 10K.
This is with all 4 on

Just the 2 new blues

 

[fasterhobbies]

Spring 2014

Spring 2014

I picked up a sea slug. I had no idea they could nuke a tank and got him from the old fish guy who brought these in by the bucketfull. I thought it was cool how his face opened up like something off of a resident evil movie.

Scored a coco worm as well. In this picture you can sort of see what I was mostly worried about at this stage in my tank. There was a snotty brown slime algae all over my substrate and spreading randomly throughout the rocks. It produce bubbles on the end of its snot and seemed to be multiplying daily. Old fish guy told me to just wait it out as its just detritus and it will go away.
I also picked up a big branching hammer coral but I dont have a pic of him till the next step.

So Another tag along trip with my bro to the awesome new fish store. I talked to new fish guy about my brown slime. He suspected it was Dino and recommended that before i buy any corals from him I should go home and do a 3 day black out. Also I removed my sea slug once I learned a little more about him.
I thought this was a great time to comfortably introduce a new fish. So i bought a decorated rabbitfish and put him in the tank. I also wrapped the tank with garbage bags and a blanket and shut the room off to begin the black out. 3 days later I opened it up and turning my light on to a 4 hour photoperiod. Increasing by 1 hour every day until I was back to 8 hours.
What I had was what I was hoping for. A clean Dino free tank.

So back to the new fish store. Now I was ready to get some frags and see how they do, and maybe even another fish

Got a decorated firefish, Hes got the coolest fumanchu. Frags and Corals are the big purple lord acans, small group of orange and green acans, pink tip torch, pink gonipora, favia, a mushroom and branching candy cane.

 

[fasterhobbies]

Spring 2013, New fish guy.

Spring 2013, New fish guy.

Tank was looking awesome these days, housing all these beautiful corals.
The new fish guy had recommended that I start testing for Alk, Calc, Mag, Phosphate as well. Also talked me into switching to a descent salt.

D&D salt. A bit pricey but I switched and I will never go back.

Hanna Alkalinity(ppm), Calcium(ppm), Phosphate ULR(ppb)
And this seachem magnesium and carbonate hardness kit. (absolutley useless) I ended up replacing the Calcium and Mag test with ELOS kits that work very well. The Hanna calcium kit is a chore to use and seems innacurate to me. The only good thing my seachem mag reef status kit came with was a bottle or two of different reference fluids. Calcium always tested 50-80ppm higher on the hanna than the reference fluid or the elos kit.
I stopped using the hanna calcium kit after many attempts with different ro and deionized water.

120 ppm or 6.72dkh Alk

404 ppm Calcium

63 Phosphorous or .19 ppm P04

Started liquid dosing kent liquid dkh buffer
also started adding kent turbo calcium. All at a very slow rate. I think I started the alk at 1 capful every 2 days and then moved to everyday after a week
Turbo calc was mixed 4tsp to 1 liter ro water and dosed in 4 parts over 4 days.

Oh and somewhere along the lines I threw my hydrometer out the window and went to a refractometer. Much more accurate.

New Gonipora, Cleaner wrasse, and white frogspawn.

The decorated Rabbitfish has not eaten anything since his acclimation. He was also showing signs of ich, This was my worst nightmare after my last battle. I felt like quitting this day, It was just so overwhelming to think of re quarantining for another 2-3months.

I know these are bad pics but in the very blurry pic you can see the ich in his fins.

Up to the new fish guy and ask him what I should do. Now For the next little part of this build I'm going to discuss my next few choices. This seems to be a subject that people go insane about. Every thread I have read on this ends up with a bunch of guys bickering and arguing. I made my choices based on the couple weeks of open minded research I did. I also talked to many people who purchased the same uv unit I was about to buy.

I understood that a UV unit wasn't going to kill ich off in my system completely. I had researched that a properly setup uv system was going to put a hurting on the swimming stages of ich. With what I knew about ich now I decided that with the uv I would battle the ich in my system.
So I ordered a AquaUV 57watt sterilizer. I upgraded my main pump to a danner mag drive 12 and went to town plumbing it in.
The plan was to have ALL of my water going through the UV at some point so I plumbed it in my return line.
The Danner pump also drove my carbon/GFO reactor.

NOTE: I forgot to mention that sometime before this point(cant remember when) I had picked up a Tunze osmolator. which was an excellent purchase I will add. I have replaced the pump on the unit once but that was my fault for repeatedly running the pump dry. It was a 30$ repair so that was more than reasonable. Also the entire system can be replaced piece by piece so it helped ease the burn of the $260 ATO system.

Gotta stop for a bit, I'm gonna come back and edit some more info into this one later. I seem to be able to edit now so that should make this easier.

 

[fasterhobbies]

Somewhere around March 2014

Somewhere around March 2014

UV looks cool at night. Also the water clarity improved greatly. My tank just looked insane. My brother was in aww every time he came over to see it. Any small algae issues I had before were literally gone. I cleaned my glass every second or third day at the latest. I was now cleaning once a week and it hardly needed it. These improvements alone are worth the $400 investment to me if it does nothing else to help. (I now will say that it helped tremendously with ich because I have added multiple fish and have not seen one ich parasite to current date.)

Picked up a few more frags, I know iPhones suck as cameras. The colours just don't show up.

Time had passed and the tank was looking better and better all the time. The rabbitfish was the only one who would not eat and died one day from starvation. (or maybe ich) But he never ate a thing from the day I brought him home to the day he died.

Phosphates are dropping!

I have been dosing Alk for a bit now and used maybe a 1/4 bottle.

Calcium was now up to about 430. Dosing 20grams of kent per 5gallons RO water added to my ATO. Evaporation was about 3-5gallon per week

Magnesium was 1250, wasn't dosing for this.

So I kicked the kent liquid dkh buffer up to 1 capful a day.
This raised me over a month to about 158ppm(8.8dkh) and leveled out there.
I wanted more like 180-200ppm(10-11dkh)
It was also getting expensive dosing the liquid kent so i switched my alk dose to kent superbuffer dkh powder.
I mixed this 6 - 1/4 cup level scoops to 2liters RO water. Dosed at 60ml per day.
I also picked up Magnesium-P from Brightwell Aquatics. this is mixed 4 - 1/4 cup level scoops to 2litres RO water. Dosed at 30ml per day.

In a month or more time I was leveled out to
Alk - 182ppm(10dkh)
Calc - 470ppm
Mag - 1350ppm
PO4 - .08
Ph - 8.3
Nitrate - 5ppm

 

[fasterhobbies]

So I tried out some SPS frags. It was early, I was only maybe 5 months in.
Put in a green birdsnest and it lasted a week and had ok polyp extension. Put in a green and red montipora cap.

Heres some Actinic pics during a water change.

Got this Long Tentacle anemone, I read they will always go for glass or sand and always the bottom. Didn't want him there so i dropped him wey down in this whole in the rocks and the next day he looked to be enjoying it. Hes still there to this day, just rather massive now.

 

[fasterhobbies]

 

[james30ct]

Coming together nicely.

 

[Adam G]

Nice review of your reefing experience. Amazing how many mistakes one makes and the learning curve we all must experience. Your tank is looking great. I have found better results with Alk in the 8.5 to 9 range once I was able to maintain next to no Nitrates and Phosphates.

 

[Ilsimen]

Been following this all day and wondering when someone was going to chime in before you were done!

 

[DannyTC]

This is awesome! I'm really enjoying it too.

 

[fasterhobbies]

Thanks guys, I have been busy last couple of days but later tonight ill get at it again. I cant wait until I get up to date on here. It should only take me a couple more days. Looking through dated pictures and trying to remember many late nights, is taking forever.

To Adam G, I now hold my alk at 9dkh. Many things I learned and changed over time. I will soon be up to date on this thread and will welcome (and cant wait for) advise on any current date issues.

 

[murdock84]

Nice pictures. I like the hunting one's two. I saw a duck species poster up near the top and I was hooked on looking at the tank!