ReefTECK's 75 Gallon Update

[rst77]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=15537815#post15537815 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by ReefTECK
Hello there everybody, Josh M., Rad Chad, I'm happy to see you guys joined the conversation. I am writing to you all from Norwich Connecticuit at a Holiday Inn. Tomorrow Rhode Island, and Tuesday we head up Cape Cod.

Thanks again for the comments everybody.



You damn bare bottom guys! lol I guess I kind of like the look of a sand bed, but I am marginally opossed to a deep sandbed in the display tank. However I do have a 2" sandbed. My Halochores melenarus wrasse sleeps in the sand bed, and he's my favorite fish:

That is a gorgeous fish!!

 

[pschmitz]

D90 or not, that tank looks good. Looking forward to watching it grow!

 

[ReefTECK]

I was surprised to see a new post in this thread from you whilst you were on vaca! Hope you're having fun.

Yeah I know, I have been super busy! But good busy, right now I'm on the ferry headed back to mainland from two nights on Nantucket. Yesterday evening we went for a walk on Sconset Beach, and we saw two sea lions! They were just 10 feet out playing in the surf, probably eating something. We would walk down the shore and they would follow us and pop their heads out of the water and blow the water out their nose with a big blow off sound. Earlier we picked up shells at Jetties Beach and went to the Jetties light house, it was really a great day.

The day before yesterday we went out to block island, I wont go into details but, whoa great time! The day before that we went out on Katies parents boat on the bay out of East Providence Rhode Island all the way out to Newport, we passed a couple of aircraft carriers stationed at the naval academy, and there were some beautiful luxury yachts docked in Newport where we got gas. The day before that we went to the Thimble Islands and took a cruise and spent the morning in New Haven at the Museum. It's been a great time so far!

I'll buy you cheese curds.

Katie says don't say it if you don't mean it! You better get this girl some cheese curds, she asks me about them all the time, and she's serious!

I might have some time Tuesday to come out and take some pictures of your tank, we'll see. Definitely soon though.

That is a gorgeous fish!!

He's my pride and joy! I put up with alot to keep him around. He helps himself to my snails when I'm not around to feed him twice a day! Can you imagine the extra water changes I go through to keep up with the nutrient loading!

I'll post some updates when I come back. I talked to my brother yesterday and all seems fine and well in the aquarium, I'm just glad I can go away for a week or two and not worry about it!

 

[jmadison]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=15561653#post15561653 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by ReefTECK

I'm just glad I can go away for a week or two and not worry about it!

That IS a pretty sweet deal. Sounds like you're plenty busy and having fun so that's good.
BTW you can be the photohistorian for my tank build, thanks for volunteering

See ya when you're back man!

 

[buy_baff]

Looks sweet Andy!! Man that new camera of yours takes some sweet pics. I'm going to have to talk you into comeing to my house some time to take some pics for me. My camera is the cheapest pice of crap. I think my stag has passed yours in the last couple months. I have realy started to keep up on the chemistry side of things and man things have blown up.
Anyway looks great!

-Bill
P.S. I would be a little concerned about adam's moist comment LOL

 

[aaron1987]

The tank's looking nice!

 

[ReefTECK]

I thought I would mention that this past week I added two Vortec MP40w's and removed all other power heads from this tank!

Consequently I have a Tunze 6060 ~2600gph power head w/magnet attachement avaialble for sale, I'd like to have 100 for it, but I would be willing to bargain, especially if I can get 50 bucks cash and some sort of cool frag. I'm really wanting some superman monti, or a good size pink birds nest, or a hawkins blue frag!

I'll have a short video up soon for your viewing pleasure! Also some pix.

I'm working on building a refugium out of an 8 gallon biocube, the drill bit should be here tomorrow, it's going to look really slick. I'll post pictures of that project too.

cya ltz,
andy

 

[ReefTECK]

Here is where the new 8 gallon biocube/refugium:

Tank drilled and fitted with a threaded T attached to the male fitting coming through the inside of the tank that mashes a rubber gasket against the inside wall.

Filling up!

Tada!

 

[tangers]

Tank looks sweet! Is this your first fuge...? If so you're gonna love it, and what it will do for the tank. Looking through you're thread it may be time to get a new camera. lol. Watching your pics change from the old camera to the new one and the color that is captured is unreal! The camera does a good job elsewhere, not great, but a real good job. But just not a good job on the tank. I'm sure I could do a little better though if I knew how to use it properly!

 

[ReefTECK]

Yeah my Nikon is totally awesome too! They're not too difficult to learn how to use, you definately get better with experience, I'm pretty slick with adjusting all my settings quickly when snapping shots now, but that's occured over the course of ~4500 photos (and that's just the keepers) probably more like 18000 shots I've taken with this camera since this past summer. (sorting through all of them and doing post processing is a totally different story, I got alot of shots just laying there on my HD).

This is not the first fuge I've had on this system, but it is the biggest fuge I've had on this system, I had a CPR hang on tank fuge on my old sump beneath this tank, and I grew feather caulerpa like crazy, and it really kept my nitrates in check. I've found my nitrates creeping up on me and I was forced to take action. I've been doing alot of water changes over the course of the past 6 months without the fuge. This time I'm going to run cheatomorphia instead.

Also, next week I am replacing the left side of my sand bed, and after a couple of weeks later, I will do the other side, with special grade reef sand. I hate the crushcoral/aruba shell/ special grade mix I have now. It harbors alot of detritus and looks pretty crappy now. Plus it is 2 years old now.

Following that I will most likely be reaquascaping and making a brutal, serious, and forsaking attempt to exterminate the mushrooms. This will include breaking off all sps colonies from rocks infested with mushrooms, and hanging the rocks out to dry. From what I can tell this will involve about 3 major pieces of rock, and 2 smaller pieces. Then I'm going to need a few new frags, and I'll have to get my corals re-situated.

 

[tangers]

Sounds like you do have some serious plans boiling!!

 

[buy_baff]

hey andy, pull the rocks out and inject the shrooms with vinager should kill them verry quick. I did this to kill some apteasa and it killed them almost instantly. so i would think it would fry shrooms to.

 

[ReefTECK]

Just get some already you know you want to! These things totally rock, I'm using them in "reef crest" mode but I made a video of the "short pulse" mode to demonstrate what two of these bad boys can do on a 75. Both are MP40's second generation pumps, BTW.

and the video quality is kind of crappy, because youboob is still processing the video file. It should be available in HD in a couple of hours...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=my8n3gwVqAo

New sandbed, and aquascape coming in the next couple of weeks....

A few macro pix:

hey andy, pull the rocks out and inject the shrooms with vinager should kill them verry quick. I did this to kill some apteasa and it killed them almost instantly. so i would think it would fry shrooms to.

Haven't seen you forever Bill, hope all is well.

Yeah I tried scraping, kalking and destroying them that way, I could give it another go, but I'm going to all the way and be done with them. I want to reduce some of the rock in the display tank anyways. Once the mushrooms have dried out I'll put the rocks back into my wet/dry chamber for filtration. Wish me luck huh?

More pix in the upcoming weeks, stay tuned.

 

[SkinnY T120]

that blue polyp cap looks nice! where'd you get that?? and is that hydnophora???

 

[ReefTECK]

that blue polyp cap looks nice! where'd you get that?? and is that hydnophora???

Shameless self promoting whore! lol Thank you Jeffy! Hey you gonna give it up for that Tunze I loaned you? (I need acans, or hawkins blue acro, or micromusa).

I'm half way done with the sand bed/eradicate mushroom rocks project, finishing up this week, then I am embarking on a path toward a modified zeovit/vodka dosing system for nutrient control. My SPS leave me desiring more for colors, and zeo systems have undeniable coloration I've got a pretty hot thread on RC here.

Also, I just bought a JACO solenoid for my ATO system so I can run my RO unit directly into my tank instead of having this stupid 10 gallon reservoir that I have to fill every week and a half! What a hassle (lol @ you guys who top off manually).

Along with it I am attaching an Aquamedic Kalk rxr to keep my limewater from degrading like it does in the open environment manner it is used in now. I will install a fail safe controller to maintain that the ATO is shut off whenever my pH exceeds 8.2, to mitigate the possibility of an over dose. Even your mom doesn't want an over dose of kalk! lol The moderators are probably going to close my thread now!

I'll be posting new benchmark pix of my corals and tank before the ZEO/VSV transformation. I've got Sailfert testing supplies on order so I can get real specific about PO4 and NO3 measurements.

Cyall,
Andy

 

[snowman82]

does zeo help all that much?

 

[pschmitz]

Tank is looking good.

Im interested in seeing how you like the Zeovit system - and what it does for your corals!

 

[ReefTECK]

does zeo help all that much?

zeo is shown to drive down phosphate levels beyond what is capable of GFO, as well as nitrate also. Apparently softies and zoas, mushrooms etc. dont do very well in zeo systems because they are ultra low in nutrients.

The real benefit of zeo systems is the added feeding you are able to do due to such dramatically low N and P levels. Bacteria is dosed in these systems to get a poly culture of bacteria, each assimilates N and P at differing rates, eventually as a group they can drive them super low. This requires carbon dosing (vodka, sugar, vinegar, vitamin c) with controlled frequency, and amino acids for essential nitrogen that doesn't leave alot of phosphate behind, although heavy coral feeding with all the usual zoo and phyto cultures is added as well.

Pictures of zeovit systems are undeniably amazing. Although I'm sure not all zeo systems are maintained properly, and there are probably some pretty crappy ones out there.

 

[buy_baff]

hey Andy, how loud are the mp 40s? I have been thinking about geting a pair but have heard they make a lot of noise.

 

[ReefTECK]

Not any louder than the rest of the **** that I have! lol

If you tapped a soft eraser from the end of a pencil on a hard surface really rapidly (like 2000rpm) and fairly softly, then added a heavy shroud of bulk metal around it, you get about the same effect. IMO people are real babies about a little sound generated from aquariums.