One year in Reefing, 2 tank builds and still learning

[Slim18]

Since this is my first post on Reef Central I might as well introduce myself, I name is Ryan and I live on Long Island NY. I was going through my phone pictures and came across a picture of the first 2 fish I have ever owned. I couldn't believe that the date on the picture was 12/28/2014 and I have been doing this for little over a year now.

I have been reading Reef Central for quite a while now and I wanted to give back to community what I have learned over the past year. I have to admit I was hesitant on posting my experience over the past year, but I feel like I have to share what I have accomplished over a year's time.

I have to say that I got the inspiration from a freshwater tank that was in the family for a very long time. When my brother said he wanted to clean out the tank and rebuild it, I started looking at different tanks that I could setup. I went to the LFS with him just to look around and I came across a 3' 45 gallon bow front that fit the size requirements of my bedroom. After seeing the tank in person I started to do as much research about saltwater tanks as possible. I knew I didn't want a freshwater tank and in true brotherly fashion had to "œone up him" and setup a saltwater tank. At this time in the hobby I knew nothing about setting up a saltwater tank, I mean nothing.

Now looking back at where I was a year ago the amount of knowledge that I have acquired is crazy. I find it very interesting how much an individual can learn if they actively go and seek out the information.

I eventually bought that 45 Gallon Bow front tank and set it up with Tap Water to leak test it. I experienced my first major problem, the center brace separated from the front glass. I quickly drained the tank and called the store where I bought it from. The next day they swapped out the tank no questions asked.

After I had the tank and it was leak tested, I went online and ordered the rest of the stuff I would need to setup this tank.

This included:
RODI system, 35lbs Pukani Dry Rock, Live Sand, Power Heads, 300W heater, IO Salt, Refractometer and various other goodies.

My first mistake was thinking that I was going to be content with just a community fish only system and thinking that a very old Eheim 2015 Canister filter was going to be my primary means of filtration. As you can see later on this canister filter didn't last long on the tank.

The Dry Rock went into a 4 week curing process in a 32 gallon Brute Trash can with heated salt water. One thing I did learn early on is not to rush anything. Everyone kept pestering me about having an empty tank for so long but but i believe that this process saved me a lot of headache in the long run.

After 2 months of preparation I had a fully cycled tank and was ready to add my first fish you saw earlier, 2 very tiny clowns.

Here's what the tank looked liked finally setup.

A month later I added a Royal Gramma to the tank. Not known to me at the time these 3 fish would be my only livestock in the tank for a while.

One thing I quickly noticed is the oily film that accumulates at the surface of the tank. I tried everything I could to get rid of this and it bothered me so much that I ended up buying an internal overflow box and putting it on the back where the canister filter would surface skim. But even this was not good enough to get rid of the film and didn't work as I expected.

At this point in time I decided to actually do things the right way. I took the tank down and decided to add a sump. I bought all of the necessary plumbing parts and 1" diamond coated drill bit and drilled 2 holes for a Herbie style overflow. Since the tank was not Reef Ready out of the box I had to change the stand as well. The stand had a center brace that was removed and then reinforced with 2x3's. It's at this point in time where my wallet opened up and money started to fly out of it.

The sump was made from a 20 gallon long that I picked up during a dollar per gallon sale and the baffles were made with ¼" acrylic.

The sump design included space for a 4x8" filter sock, Protein skimmer, bubble trap and a return section.

 

[Slim18]

During this time my 3 fish went into a small 8 gallon nuvo tank that a family member was setting up. The timing couldn't be more perfect because the tank had just finished cycling. I also added some ceramic media from my tank to the 8 gallon nuvo to help with the cycling process. 3 fish in that tank was a bit much, but ammonia was monitored closely and at any sign of a spike a small water change was performed to keep it down.

It took me about 2 weeks to go through the process of taking the tank down and rebuilding it with the sump.

At this time I decided to re-do my aquascape as well. The 2nd time around this came out a lot better.

Added a Vertex Omega 130 and a BRS 5" Carbon/GFO Reactor.

I knew topping off the tank was one of those daily chores that had to be done. So I bought a Tunze ATO system. I hid the storage bin in the bottom filing cabinet so it's hidden from view. The top off container holds about 4 gallons of water and for this tank lasted about 8 days.

Here's what this tank looked like after I added my fish back to it.

I waited about a month for everything to stabilize and then slowly started to add livestock. Over the next 3 months I added, Cleaner Shrimp, 2 Red Firefish, 2 Zebra Barred Dartfish, and an Orange Sand Sifting Diamond Goby.

Since the tank is located in the 2nd floor of my house I knew eventually I would need to control the temperature of the tank during the summer months. I debated on creating my own "œchiller system" but I broke down and just bought a 1/5 Hp chiller.

Over the next 2 months I decided that I wanted to upgrade the tank to a wide shallower tank. I didn't like the bow front design and it was only 12" to 15" front to back. When I said I did research about the salt water hobby I did research about equipment, filtration, livestock, cycling, but the tank itself was not part of this.

After 2 months of being undecided I finally bought a Deep Blue Professional 80 gallon Reef Ready rimless tank. Dimensions 48"x24"x16". And a Marineland Majestic Stand. I had to cut down my desk to the left in order to fit the bigger tank. That was sacrifice that had to be made.

I still wanted to use the Herbie Style overflow and this tank had a ¾" return that I used as the Primary Drain and the 1" as the backup. This tank is in my bedroom and had to be quiet. This was one of the challenges that I had to overcome throughout the entire build process and took a few tries on both tanks to get right. But I can say in the end that my computer is louder than the tank.

I also had to find a way of hanging my existing light. This was a 36" Aquatic Life Edge fixture. This was done with bending ½" EMT conduit and attaching it to the back of the stand. This conduit was painted black to match the stand. An eye hook was installed at the end and a chain would wrap around the light fixture. A hole was drilled in one of the conduit so I could feed the power cord through it so it was hidden.

 

[Slim18]

I also wanted to build a new sump, this was built the same way as the first one I made for the other tank. This sump was made with a 30 Gallon Breeder (36"x18"x12") and has the same basic design. Filter socks, skimmer section, bubble trap and return section.

All of this work took about 3-4 week to complete and I was finally ready to tear down the 45gallon and setup the 80 Fathers day weekend.

All of my livestock went into a 20 gallon brute trash can you can see to the right of the tank in this picture. This included the live rock, heater, chiller and power heads. It took me about 36 hours to tear down the old tank and setup the new one. The major limiting factor was making and storing enough RODI water for the larger tank.

During this downtime I took the chance to vinegar clean most of my equipment, most of it was fairly clean but I figured it couldn't hurt. I added all of my equipment back to the sump to help mix the salt faster and I also had to build another rock structure to the right. 40 more pounds of sand was bought to cover the large foot print.

The screen top was added in 2 sections. The front section is 5 ½ inches. This was done so I do not have to remove the entire top when I need to do simple things like defrost food. The back has a strip of plastic and has a cutout for the return. The plastic is just silicone to the frame. The one thing I would recommend is to not make the screen too tight when rolling it in. Doing this will actually create a slight bend in the frame and create a gap.

I tried to make a cutout for the return in the screen but as soon as you roll the screen into the frame everything becomes twisted and slowly comes apart (even with glue I was not successful)

 

[Slim18]

After setting up the 80 the tank went on auto for a few months, I started to add a few new fish and coral to the tank and they did well. Fish I added were a Kole Tang, 2 Bangi Cardinals, Black Combetooth Blenny, and a Tiny Blue hippo Tang. Some coral were, Torch, Duncan, Zoas and various others I do not know the name of.

In August after doing a ton of research on Organic Carbon dosing I decided to give it a shot with vinegar. I followed a regiment that I found online but I adjusted the doses for about 85 gallons of water. I thought this was a conservative number for the amount of water I had in the tank + sump. I never had a major problem with nitrates but they were always in the 10-20 range. I achieved these numbers with doing 15 gallons of water changes twice a month.

I started to dose vinegar with a BRS 1.1 mill dosing pump and it took me close to 20 weeks of slowly ramping up the dose to get to the Maintenance dose. Currently i do not carbon dose my tank, i believe after the implementation of the Auto Water Change system and dialing in my skimmer i can achieve nitrate levels in the 2-5 ppm range.

Below is the chart that I kept during the entire process.

I knew one day I would buy an APEX aquarium controller and at the end of October I did. I got the APEX with the lab grade PH probe and added an extra Energy Bar. The rat's nest of wires is something that always bothered me and I tried to keep it to a minimum by buying wire raceway to hide as much wiring as possible. I made the mistake of getting some that was just too small for the amount of wiring I had so some of it is hidden and some of it is not. Still bothers me to this day and maybe one day i will rip everything out and rebuild it with larger raceway.

I also wanted to have a power head on a battery backup that was controllable through the APEX. I decided on a Maxspec Gyre 150 with the IceCap battery backup and controller. This power head is really too large for this tank however if I decide to upgrade to a larger tank in the future I can use it then. The max I get it to is 45% without moving any sand at the other end.

Water changes were one of those chores that I didn't like doing, I knew one day I would find a way to automate changing the water in the tank. After reading a very in depth thread here on RC I decided to buy a Stenner dosing pump for Automatic water changes. I use to change 15 gallons every 2 weeks. Now I swap out about ~ ¾ of a gallon once a day. All I have to do is make sure that my salt water bucket is full of water and I have implemented float switches connected to the APEX to warn me if the bucket is low and shut the pump off if it gets really low.

The Stenner pump connects to ¼" RODI line; I ran 2 from the tank to my saltwater mixing station + a CAT 5 cable. The CAT 5 Cable is not use for a data connection but to connect to my float switches at the salt water mixing station.

There are 3 float switches by the mixing station. 2 of them in the fresh saltwater bin and 1 at the top of my RODI storage bucket. I already overflowed my RODI bucket once and I don't plan on doing it again. Of course Apex alerts were setup to warn me of any issues with these systems via text message and email.

 

[Slim18]

One of my more recent projects that I just completed is to upgrade my lighting. The aquatic life EDGE fixture is most likely ok for low light corals but I knew I wanted to upgrade this component. This was the same fixture that was on the 45 and I didn't buy it with the larger tank in mind.

So I decided on 2 Kessil A360 Wide's supplemented with 2 39Watt T5 Fixtures. Current T5 Bulb choice is an ATI Coral+ and an ATI Aqua Blue Special

I had to figure out a way of hanging these lights over the tank. So I decided to build a suspended canopy.

Test Fit

The canopy was painted black to match the stand and was suspended from the same mounts as the other light.

Currently I am working on setting up redundancy for my heaters. Having 1 heater connected to the apex incase of a failure in the on position is good however if it fails in the off position I would have a problem heating the tank. To solve this problem I bought a Ranco Temperature controller and a Finnex 300 Watt heater to be my primary means of heating the tank. My old heater will be set a few degrees lower in case of a failure in the off position. If I like the Ranco and Finnex Heaters I will eventually get another set to perform as the backup. Currently this is not setup on the tank and maybe this weekend I will have time to set this up.

 

[Slim18]

So if you're still reading this, this is where the Reef Tank is today. I know some of you were looking for an epic looking reef tank however I wanted to write up my experience in the hobby as of today.

I want to thank everyone on reef central that has contributed to the community. There is a lot of useful information on this forum and I know I learned a lot from numerous people and posts.

If anyone has questions about how or why I did something please let me know and I will respond to it.
Thanks for reading,
Ryan

 

[Slim18]

So I received a PM with the following question. Since i do not have 10 posts I cannot respond via PM.

Hey there, was looking at a picture of your cable management runways. What size did you go with and are they deep and wide enough?

Thanks
John

This is the stuff that I have, it works well but its way to small for all of my cables. Once i added the new lighting and heater I would say half of my wires are hidden and half aren't. I would recommend at least double the size of what i had and even then it may be tight to fit everything. The size was 1.2"W X 1.4"H

http://www.cableorganizer.com/wire-duct/economical-wiring-duct.html

 

[NYCSTORMTROOPER]

Hi and congrats on the setup ,I think you did pretty well on the DIY builds.... Let me ask you, how quiet is the herbie setup you have ? I'm thinking of doing a similar setup on mines ....Bougth a CPR overflow box , just waiting on the drilling and plumbing components...Thanks

 

[Slim18]

Hi and congrats on the setup ,I think you did pretty well on the DIY builds.... Let me ask you, how quiet is the herbie setup you have ? I'm thinking of doing a similar setup on mines ....Bougth a CPR overflow box , just waiting on the drilling and plumbing components...Thanks

The tanks in my bedroom so it has to be quiet. On both tanks it took me a few tries to get everything super silent but it is possible. one thing i found out is to make your emergency overflow stand pipe height about 1/4" to 1/2" below the teeth on the overflow. this insures that the water is not falling a long distance into the overflow box. i always let a very small amount of water flow through the emergency pipe to insure that the water stays constant height in the overflow box. This helps keep it quiet.

With the windows closed in the winter time the only thing i can hear on the tank is the skimmer. I don't hear the pump running but what i do hear is the air being drawn into the silencer. I hear no falling water or trickling sounds.

If you have never drilled a tank before its very easy, Just remember your grinding through the glass not cutting through it. Just take your time and it will be fine. Good Luck!

 

[NYCSTORMTROOPER]

This is going to be first time drilling a tank...These fool in LFS were charging me $55 a hole :eek1: ...So I decided to pass on that and just do it myself....but I appreciate the heads up and advice ....Thanks

 

[hawaiifavo]

Very cool setup! Really enjoyed reading about experience.

I just purchased a Deep Blue tank as well for a frag tank, its awesome - seeing yours makes me want to upgrade already and I havent even put anything in it yet.

Look forward to seeing more from you.

 

[boshk]

For someone who 'knew nothing' about fish tank, its damn impressive for what you did especially as its saltwater too.

All those DIYs too.

Looks great man!

 

[aquamann183]

Just read everything, looks great Ryan, keep up the good work!
I have had a 40B for a couple years now and working on upgrading to a 150 soon.
It is nice seeing what different people do with their setups and compare them to what you personally have done. I really liked the ATO in the file cabinet. Pretty cool.
I will definitely be following this thread to see what's to come!
-Ben

 

[csb123]

Nice clean set up!

 

[Slim18]

Thanks for the Replys,

I got the Ranco controller and heater in 2 weeks ago, It seams to be working well however my temperature swing is slightly larger then before, but nothing to be concerned about.

I have also been battling some Cyano for the past 2 weeks or so. Last weekend I did a 15 gallon water change and siphoned as much out as I could. Tank looks a lot better and I do not see any coming back yet.

One thing about the Auto Water Change system is I do not get a chance to siphon out stuff from the tank during weekly maintenance.

I'm thinking i will still have to do a manual water change, but not nearly as often. Maybe 15 gallons once every 3 months or so just when I have to siphon stuff out.

 

[mgoulding]

Awesome builds

 

[Slim18]

Ok Time for an update.

The tank is doing really well and has slowly transitioned into an SPS Reef system. I knew I wanted to make this an SPS reef with some LPS mixed in, and in order to support the growth of my acquired SPS corals a daily supplementation of alkalinity and calcium is required. I am currently dosing BRS 2 part for my calcium and alkalinity needs. The dosing is being done through 2 BRS 1.1 ml dosing pumps.

So far I am happy with this system and my SPS coral have been steadily growing and encrusting on the rockwork. Since I am new to Dosing 2 part the only potential issue that I see is that the ALK portion of the 2 part is slowly driving my PH higher and higher. (Especially during the summer time with the windows open in the house) Right now it is stable between 8.1 and 8.3 however as my SPS grow I am going to have to start dosing more and more ALK to keep up with the needs of the corals. I may run into an issue where it brings my PH up to high. Right now I'm just keeping an eye on it and if I run into an issue I may have to switch to a different solution.

I also recently acquired a PAR meter, since I am using LED's as part of my Lighting solution I really had no idea how much light I was providing to my corals. I was always on the low side just to make sure I didn't bleach anything out but I had no number to go by. After doing some testing with the PAR meter, my 2 Kessil A360WE's and 2 39 Watt T5 fixtures at Full intensity and color, would put out a total of about 200"“225 PAR.

I thought this number was low for SPS and I decided to add 2 more 39Watt fixtures to my suspended hood.

After the change I could max my PAR out at 325. Using the Wide angle Kessil's and 4 T5 bulbs I noticed that the PAR level is very even throughout the entire tank. And I am very happy with this setup at the moment.

Currently my Kessil's are running a max of 40% intensity and 70% color. This brings the PAR level to the highest coral at around 225-250 PAR. I am still adjusting this value as time goes on.

Back
-------------ATI Coral + -----------
--------ATI Aquablue Special-------
--------Kessil ------ Kessil---------
-------------ATI Blue + ------------
-------------ATI Coral + -----------
Front

I also decided to redo my aquascape. I have never been happy with the right side of the tank since it was setup. Everything looked to blocky or unnatural. My goal when changing the rock work was to not remove any rocks or places that my fish like to hide and to find something visually appealing to me. All I did was remove a few rocks and I came up with 2 islands that I really like.

SPS Island

LPS Island

The only problem when I aquascaped the tank was that one of my Zebra Barred Dartfish jumped out while I was working on it. Sadly I didn't see him until much later in the day as he jumped out on the side of the tank.

One of these days I'm going to have to buy larger cable raceway and redo my electrical board. The cables underneath my tank have gotten out of control and I am very unhappy with its current state.

Some updated sump shots

That's the update for now; I am currently working on a Quarantine tank. I want to build it like one of those All in One tank from Nuvo. I'm thinking a 20 gallon long tank with baffles for filtration would be fine.

Thanks for Reading.
Ryan

 

[Coralmassa]

Beautiful setup and progression. I've been wanting to get an auto water change station set up for forever!

 

[Slim18]

Beautiful setup and progression. I've been wanting to get an auto water change station set up for forever!

Thank You! The Stenner dosing pump works great for an automatic water change system. I feel like it keeps my parameters very stable over time.

The only issue is that I do not get to siphon out as much stuff as i would like to during weekly maintenance. Every once and a while i still have to do a normal water change to siphon out things like cyano, bubble algae or anything else that comes up.

 

[Slim18]

It's been a while since an update. The tank has officially been up for 1 year and 3 months now.

The tank is doing well, like all saltwater reef tanks problems pop up that everyone has to deal with. I have had a small outbreak of green hair algae but I'm finally getting a handle on it. I started to carbon dose the tank again with vinegar once again.

I was consistently keeping my nutrients low (nitrate 1-2 ppm and Phosphate undetectable on a salifert test kit) but the hair algae was still not going away, even after sucking as much out as I could by hand for many weeks. I'm assuming that the algae is using the nitrate and phosphate faster than I could test for it. I started to carbon dose and hoping that the bacteria will out compete the hair algae for nutrients. I am using a much more aggressive dose then I had in the past. Currently I am dosing 30ml of vinegar daily and am slowly ramping up to about 40ml per day. Every week I upped the dose by 10ml so this is only my 3rd week of carbon dosing the tank.

Another issue that I am currently dealing with is that all of my Euphyllia corals have slowly started to die over the past 2 months or so. All of the corals just seem to be melting away 1 head at a time. I'm thinking it is a bacterial infection however it is hard for me to tell exactly what is happening. All of my SPS seem to be largely unaffected.

Other than those 2 issues everything is going great.

I finally got around to cleaning up wiring disaster underneath the stand. I bought larger wiring raceway and I was able to fit all of the cabling into them without any problems. The raceway is 2"x 2" in size.

Also I am dosing about 100ml of calcium and alkalinity into the tank every day and my old dosing containers would only last about a week. I bought the BRS space saving dosing jugs and they hold about a gallon of solution. This should last me a month or so without having to refill them.

I did go on vacation at the beginning of august and the tank survived 5 days without any issues. The tank sitter just had to feed 1 cube of frozen food a day. Really not that hard to mess up.

That's where the tank stands now, if anyone has any questions let me know and I will get them answered for you.

Once again thanks for reading.