Phuzzykins' 300 gallon AGE Build Extravaganza

[phuzzykins]

I've moved a few corals (and ~ 10 snails and crabs) over from my Solana to the 300 gallon system. Current critter list:

2 scarlet hermits
3 dwarf blue leg hermits
4 banded trochus snails
1 chestnut turban snail

1 Favites colony (tan with green eyes)
1 Platygyra colony (brown with green eyes)
1 Fungia (purple/pink)
1 Toadstool leather (green polyps)
1 Hammer coral (branching variety, 4 heads)
3 Zoa frags
3 Mushroom frags

Water parameters:

SG 1.026
pH 8.21
Ca 400
Alk 7 dKH
Mg 1200
Ammonia 0
Nitrite 0
Nitrates 0
Phosphates 0

Alk is down a bit more than I expected from 11/1, which is probably because I brought my phosban reactor online. It's been my experience that phosban sucks up alk for a few days.

1 royal gramma and 9 chromis are in quarantine and doing well. I had one chromis DOA, and another chromis and a yellow watchman goby that arrived with injuries and didn't make it.

Your shot of the day is the edge of my Favites colony under actinic only, with a 60mm EF-S f/2.8 macro lens on my EOS 20d body.

<img src="http://www.placebco.com/favites.jpg" height=400 width=600>

 

[drywallninja]

Beautiful.I love your aquascape

 

[kawicivic]

gonna tag along for this one as its got lots of pics already and the deep dimensions make awesome options for tanks!

 

[phuzzykins]

Beautiful.I love your aquascape

Thank you! I think it looks a lot better in person than in the photos, too.

 

[mordibv]

Nice tank . Those pic shots of the reflectors on and off show a good example of t5's at their best . I think that your control panel with the hardware was well executed .:dance:

 

[phuzzykins]

Here are a few shots of the corals I added earlier in the week. This was shortly after moving them, and they were still a little annoyed.

Favites

Fungia

Platygyra

Euphyllia Parancora

Sarcophyton

 

[phuzzykins]

Just got new Salifert test kits for Alk and Ca, to get better resolution over the API kits.

I dosed Ca, Alk, and Mg yesterday, targeting 425, 9.0, and 1360, respectively.

I just tested and got:
Ca - 425
Alk - 8.3
Mg - 1360

So it looks like the Alk is still being depleted pretty quickly.

 

[phuzzykins]

The algae blooms have begun. I have some diatoms, hair algae... and bryopsis.

And the pile of sand I transferred over from my nano to seed the sand bed has started to sprout too:

And finally, a FTS from a different perspective.

To be honest, I'm not thrilled with how the rockscape comes across in photos. It looks good in person, but gets flattened and made a lot less interesting by the camera.

 

[Rickyrooz1]

Can you take a top down shot?

 

[phuzzykins]

Can you take a top down shot?

Unfortunately, I can't... there isn't nearly enough headroom above the tank to manage that. The best I can do is a high angled shot, which is coming right up!

 

[phuzzykins]

Can you take a top down shot?

Here's as close as I can get... I think these three shots together give a pretty representative view of the rockscape.

 

[GoToSleep]

Once you get a bit of top down perspective, that rockscape looks fantastic.

 

[meredith1985]

I dissagree with your oppinion on your shots of your tank. I think the rockscape looks amazing! I can definately imagine your tank full of corals and swimming fish. It makes me feel like I'm looking at the very edge of the reef where the sandy bottom starts to extend outward. Your scape gets my imagination working on the possibilities. I find myself very dissapointed in my own rockscape from time to time but I have to remind myself that in a year or so the rocks will be almost totally covered with coral growth and coraline algea and will look great. Patience is the key... but if you wanna change it now is the time to do it with the most ease. for what it's worth though I love it!

 

[taz13777]

Your tank looks awesome. I am thinking of getting the 300 gallon marine land tank also. Are there any cons to this tank? Do you have metal halides? I am going to go with the ecosystem refugium is that a good choice?

 

[dedecv3]

This tank is coming along awesome!! I'm hoping to get this tank sometime in the near future.

 

[sowellj]

phuzzy, looking great so far. How are you liking the vortechs for circulation. I have a 180 build in progress. I plan on purchasing 2 mp40's but have the feeling I will need a bit more .... maybe some mp10s on the back.

 

[phuzzykins]

Your tank looks awesome. I am thinking of getting the 300 gallon marine land tank also. Are there any cons to this tank? Do you have metal halides? I am going to go with the ecosystem refugium is that a good choice?

Thank you for the compliment, but you may want to read the first couple of pages of the thread.

The tank was made by AGE, not Marineland. I ended up going with AGE because I wanted external overflows, and a steel stand while maintaining the warranty. The Marineland DD tanks are nice, but I had to go custom to get exactly what I wanted.

I don't have any experience with any off-the-shelf sumps or refugiums, so I can't comment on whether or not any of them would be a good choice for you. It depends on how much you want to spend, what space you have available, how handy you are, and what you intend to keep in your tank. The best advice I can give you is to read everything you can about the type of system you want to have - books, build threads, reefkeeping magazine articles - read it all, and then make your own decisions.

I'm running 3x 250 watt Ushio 10k MH lamps in LumenBright reflectors, on IceCap ballasts for primary illumination.

I also have 8 x 39 watt T5 lamps (420nm actinic) with single bulb reflectors, split between two IceCap 660 ballasts.

Cheers,
-Matt

 

[phuzzykins]

phuzzy, looking great so far. How are you liking the vortechs for circulation. I have a 180 build in progress. I plan on purchasing 2 mp40's but have the feeling I will need a bit more .... maybe some mp10s on the back.

The vortechs are nice bits of equipment, and I have no regrets thus far.

I've had to throttle back my vortechs by about half, so I'm guessing you won't need more than two. It'll depend on your tank's layout, and exactly how much flow you want. You may need supplemental pumps to address specific problem areas, if you have dead spots.

My three throttled-back vortechs plus a Reeflo Snapper return pump are more than enough to keep my LPS and softies swaying in the current. As the tank fills in, I can crank them up.

 

[phuzzykins]

I haven't posted an update in a few days, so here we go.

8 of the 9 chromis and the royal gramma were transferred from quarantine to the 300 gallon tank today. The remaining chromis has a couple of missing scales on its side, and I want to give it a chance to heal.

My water parameters have been holding up very well. I shut off the flow to the GFO reactor, which was dropping my alk. I'll bring it back online when there's more of a bioload, or detectable phosphates.

Later this week I have a Randall's goby, blue jaw trigger, and gold spotted rabbitfish coming from BlueZoo. Tomorrow, 3 dozen snails, a Derasa clam, and 4 hard corals from LiveAquaria.

I slapped together a quick video of the tank and my fish room setup... hopefully it's at least mildly interesting.

<object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/B7wRtquHj14&hl=en&fs=1"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/B7wRtquHj14&hl=en&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object>

 

[tdukes]

phuzzykins, meticulous build, nice pics.