Our new 1700 gallon reef tank! Help a noob out!

[museumguy]

Hi folks! Well, where to start... (sorry this is a long post!!)

I work at a childrens museum in Rochester, NY, the Strong National Museum of Play. 8 months ago I was hired to take care of their butterfly garden (I have a degree in Entomology), and with my background in biology I also inherited 4 salt water tanks ranging from 90 to 1200 gallons. I was a total noob, but have learned soo much over the last few months, in no small part from the help of this website. I am still no expert but now I can tell the difference between Seriatopora and Acropora, I know how much to feed, understand differences in kelvin on lightbulbs, etc.

Please feel free to check out pictures of our current tanks here:
http://reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=1481614&highlight=strong

Because of many problems/issues/opportunities we are replacing our current 1200g system with a 1700g system, swapping one out for the other.

Our current 1200 system gets lots of praise from the general public, especially the kids, but from a reefers standpoint, there is much to be improved. I'm excited to have a new contractor on board that is awesome, but I still have some questions about what to expect as we go forward and I was hoping I could both share in my excitement with you all and see if any of you could answer some of my questions.

We are getting a Seavisions custom built acrylic tank. 14 feet wide, 3 feet from front to back and 5 feet deep with 2 inch thick acrylic. We will be using their CADS and Dialyseas filtration setup. I am excited that the tank will start just two feet off the ground so that even the little guys coming to the museum can get a birds eye view of everything happening on the bottom of the tank.

For lighting we will have 4 1000 watt 14k metal halides, and approximately 12 24" T5 bulbs with individual reflectors. (Have yet to decide upon color, kelvin, wattage, etc on T5s).

We will have a skimmer, though final unit is still TBD from Seavisions.

A chiller system with 4 individual chiller units working in line.

Four UV steralizers working in line.

An adequate heater is also included.

At this time I don't have many details on sizes/brands etc for the life support equipment since he customizes that right before delivery.
---------------------------------------------

So for my first question, what corals do you have that are thriving at mixed depths in your large setups?

Our current 1200g tank is really a softie focused tank at the moment, with a few montipora cap colonies that are THRIVING and one acropora colony that is doing alright. We have some candy cane corals that are doing well also, but most of our SPS and LPS corals such as bubbles, foxs, and other acros didn't last a year in the tank before fizzling out. Mushrooms, leathers, GSPs all do well though.

Being a nonprofit organization our budget has tightened a whole lot with the economy's recent downswing. I would really like to get some impressive corals such as acans, chalices, beautiful acros, etc but don't want to be wasting my money if they won't survive in this setup.

We have made exceptional strides since I started in improving the overall health of the tank (nitrates down to about 100 from 1200+) and the new life support system should essentially keep nitrates and phos at or near 0, so I'm anticipating that water quality will not be an issue.

I'm just nervous about rounding up high end coral donations or purchases only to stick them in the tank and have them slowly fade away due to poor lighting, positioning etc, so would really like to hear what has or hasn't worked for you!

Thank you SO MUCH to anyone who has taken the time to read this and I thank you in advance to anyone who can help.

Thanks a lot,
MuseumGuy aka Tad

 

[FishyBiz]

Tad
This will be a great build and with some of the Big Dogs on RC it could be amazing.
My only 2 cents is you didnt really say anything about flow? Could be a big issue if you want to keep lots of SPS.

 

[museumguy]

Yeah, I am a bit concerned about flow. I have talked to the manufacturer about this and I hope we will have enough, though I have yet to hear any specifics. This was a big issue in our current tank, where a large part of the tank got basically no flow at all, and the corals suffered as a result.

 

[FishyBiz]

Those new Tunze 6305's would be nice.

 

[museumguy]

The first picture...

 

[stunreefer]

This rocks, and so does your job! :thumbsup:


In this tank the largest factor will be the depth at which you place coral. You should be able to keep anything in there with proper nutrient levels, lighting, etc.... I saw a blue-dot stingray in those pics you linked above, do you still have that? Those are incredibly hard to keep long term.

Anyways to start you off for cheap I'd recommend:

-Euphyllia sp. (Frogspawn, Hammers, Torches)
-Montipora sp. (Branching digitata, Capricornus, etc.)

Those are a couple genus that grow fast, pretty cheap, and have great colors and growth forms.

 

[museumguy]

Yeah, the stingray is great and a big hit. We've had him for about a year and a half now. When we got him he was just a little guy but he quickly outgrew our 190g aggressive tank so we moved him to the 1200g. He comes right out of the water and takes food right from hand, but still gets along with everyone else in the tank, including a 3+ foot long snowflake moray that he curls up with at night.

I like the look of the Euphyllias, we have a bunch of frogs and hammers in our mini reef/anemone tank, and will definately have them in the new aquascaping. Our contracter is an amazing aquascaper and likes the look of 'floating' colonies of hammers, torches etc suspended from rock work that seemingly defys gravity. (Needless to say, I'm excited).

And for the montipora, we probably have about 3-5 square feet of orange Montipora Cap in our 1200 tank. Its everywhere and really pretty, grows like whoa. So we will definately have that in our new tank too.

How deep would you feel comfortable placing things like Acans, Chalices or Acros? I'm trying to figure out what sort of light penetration we'll be getting. I think it is a reasonable assumption that there will be enough (or too much for some corals) light for everything in the first 1 to 2 feet of tank depth , but after that I don't have enough experience to know what will survive.


Thanks for the great advice, and yes, my job is the coolest job ever.

Cheers,
Tad

 

[stunreefer]

Yeah, I'd keep the top couple feet open of any rock at all... creates swimming room above the reef for fish, along with lots of room for the acros on top to grow up; Most reef tanks cant even remotely do this because they're not 5' tall. You could keep acros three feet down under 1000W halides (assuming they're under the reflector), maybe more. Most acans and chalices should be just fine on the bottom... I have to shade many species of both in my tank to prevent bleaching.

Congrats on the blue-spot those are too cool! :thumbsup: I used to breed "Cortez rays" (Urobatis halleri)... they have so much personality and are amazing to watch swim around.

...One other thing, how do plan on cleaning the front pane being its 5' high? Magnet?

 

[Elliott]

15Lx5Wx3H
with 36" depth and 4 1000w Halides you will have plenty of light, possibly too much for some LPS, you should make sure there is substantial flow, which can be difficult given the size of the display, however given adequate flow you should be able to keep a wide range of SPS, LPS and softies

 

[museumguy]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=13869281#post13869281 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by Elliott
15Lx5Wx3H
with 36" depth and 4 1000w Halides you will have plenty of light, possibly too much for some LPS, you should make sure there is substantial flow, which can be difficult given the size of the display, however given adequate flow you should be able to keep a wide range of SPS, LPS and softies

Sorry if I didn't make myself more clear, I'm not real good at explaining it, but from the sand to the top of the water line is 5 feet.

I really hope to have a tank that both appeals to people that have minimal to no experience with reef tanks, but also makes even the most experienced reefers stop and stare (and drool!).

Thanks for the great replies!

 

[museumguy]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=13869264#post13869264 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by stunreefer


...One other thing, how do plan on cleaning the front pane being its 5' high? Magnet?

Ugh, yeah... that will not be the best part. We will have both front and rear tank access from the top. We are having a light stand built where you flip a switch and the lights go up a few feet out of the way.

We will be using a magnet and scrapers, and hopefully we will have learned from past mistakes and not scratch the acrylic up. In the future I hope to get a scuba setup so that I can do some maintenance from inside the tank... I think people would go crazy over this. I'll probably end up having practice with the acrylic buffing kits too, but lets hope not.

Cheers,
Tad

 

[Elliott]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=13868345#post13868345 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by museumguy
The first picture...

it appears by this picture that it is 3 ft deep (water line to bottom of tank), 5 ft wide and 14 ft in length, am I not seeing this correctly?

 

[museumguy]

Optical illusion, definately 5 feet deep, thats a guy standing upright in the tank welding it.

 

[Lowredranger]

I think b/c the tank does not have the front panel on yet he thinks the tank is standing on end. It kinda looks like the top of the tank is facing us when really the top of the tank is facing up.

I am not sure about the scuba gear as 3' is wide but not wide enough to crawl in the tank especially if you are going to have large acro colonies growing.

 

[Elliott]

ok, I'm with you now, here's a tank the same depth for ideas on landscaping and livestock:

http://reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=1425559&perpage=25&pagenumber=1

 

[der_wille_zur_macht]

If you haven't yet, stop by the Upstate Reef Society forum on here. It's a club based mostly out of western NY - there are a ton of really great people in your immediate area who might be willing to provide advice or guidance locally.

 

[museumguy]

Yeah, I visit the URS forum daily. Good people.

 

[jejton]

Sounds like an exciting project. Did you consider making this, or any of the other tanks, into a biotype rather than just a hodgepodge of marine life? I think it would be much more educational that way.

 

[museumguy]

We have a 190g tank that is currently a predator tank that I have been trying to figure out what to do with in the future if we decided to change things up. One option is to do a biotope in it, possibly even an amazon rainforest fresh water biotope. Would be very cool, great idea!

 

[CHOPRJOHN]

Taggin along....Johnnie