NeilFox
New member
Hello all, I've basically been out of Reefkeeping for awhile. I broke down my last major tank in 1993 since my job pretty much required me to travel about 8 months of the year. I've also been reassigned to different parts of the world for a year or so at a time. A year in Holland, a year in the UK, etc. I've been in Vietnam about 7 years now and at this stage in the game I don't plan on going anywhere for awhile if ever since I have a little family here now.
At any rate enough of the history. I started planning a tank about three years ago at the same time we were making some home renovations. The renovations took longer than expected due to some zoning issues and the house just got put back together (rebuilt from the inside out as a matter of fact). Actually there is an entire top floor to go but thats another story. I've had a Reef on my mind for some time now and my wife is onboard with it so I started to put the plan into action.
Aquarium supplies lighting etc are not as straightforward as in many parts of the world. Almost all the aquariums are one off affairs. The guys that make them typically are involved in building holding tanks for the live seafood trade so I tried to seek out a shop to put together a tank for me. I thought my Vietnamese had progressed pretty nicely until I suddenly had to learn a new vocabulary. How do you say Protien Skimmer in Vietnamese? I originally had plans for a 60 gallon rimless cube but my wife thought something bigger vwould be nice. I talked to the guy over the phone and settled on a size of roughly a 120 gal. I went to a different shop to pick up the remainder of my supplies. After doing alot of searching on foot in the old Saigon area of town I'll call Fish Street, I found a guy that actually seemed to know what he is doing. Quite a bit of gear and I was surprised to see he had quite a nice little frag tank going. I explained to him what I was doing and got a list of equipment together. Most of the stuff here comes from China, I don't think that there is a huge market just yet but I tried to get the best stuff that I could. I am also starting out pretty basic until everything gets settled down. Here is a list of the things I got at Son Ha's shop:
Lighting: Odyssea 48" 2x150w 15000k MH, 5xT5 Blue
I know it's kind of a budget affair but for around here it's Cadillac! I swapped out the t5's for ATI's and replaced one of the blues with a 6500k daylight. It just looked too blue. I've got some 14k Ushios that I will try but for now the MH is just fine.
Sump: About 30 gal made by the tank man.
Skimmer: Bubble Magus Curve 7. I know this is Chinese but I was really impressed with the build quality. It's easy to clean and setup and started making some really nice dry skimmate almost immediatly. I think it's one of their newer models, the body is shaped like the bottom half of an hourglass. The instructions were in Chinese but it wasn't to hard to figure out. I had to search around quite a bit on the internet to find out the correct water depth it should sit in. Turns out it's 9 to 11 inches. I have to say so far I'm pretty happy with it.
Retun pump: Hailea 6840, seems to do the job.
Powerhead: 1 in tank 1 standing by, WP400m Super Wave Maker. Again Chinese it has alot of power though, that's why Im just using the one for the time being. I'ts on the back glass blowing against the front to diffuse the flow. I had it on the side but unrestricted the flow was just ripping way to hard for Softies and Shrooms. I still need to play around with this.
Chiller: 1/2hp commercial unit with titanium fins. This may heve been a mistake. The temp is close to 33c or about 90f almost everyday of the year so a chiller is almost required. The problem is that this thing is too big. I have it set to 27 degrees celcius. because of it's size it can pull the water temp in the tank down so quickly it doesn't register on the probe to shut down. When I first set up the tank with just rock I had the temp go from 82 degress to around 60 overnight. I thought the glass was dirty but when I got closer it was dripping condensate! Oh dear! I have played around with it and changed the setpoints and I think I have it dialed in, but you really have to watch this mother!
That's about it for the gear. No reactors, no dosing pump, no controllers. It's all manual for the time being. I will add stuff as I go along but I wan't to get a feel for what's going on with this thing first.
The tank was supposed to take a week. When the guys came to deliver the equipment it wasn't exactly what I had ordered. They did a nice job on the stand, solid East Indian Mahogany but they had framed out the corners of the tank with the same wood. It doesn't look bad I just wasn't expecting it. The top is supposed to slide over and rest on the tank frame so that it looks like it is captured in one frame. They hadn't taken into account that the wiring on the light fixture comes out the end so the top doesn't fit. I am just running with top off for now and it doesn't look bad at all except for the corner pieces siliconed to the tank. The tank is heavy duty though. 18mm thick (about 3/4"). He also braced the top because he said that he was afraid that rimless wouldn't be strong enough? The silicone was a little sloppy also (I think he expected the frame to cover it up)? Nothing that a razor blade won't fix. I can't really complain though. The tank, stand top and sump came in at around $450 US. The stand ended up getting a couple of scratches during the install but I will touch that up myself.
I got the live rock from Son Ha (guy who knows what he is doing), sight unseen. I really wasn't sure what to expect so I ordered 60kg, not knowing if that would be enough, as it turns out I had to send about 30% of it back after I loaded up the tank and put some in the sump. Vietnamese rock is very nice stuff. Very light with good shapes, alot of coraline and very few round boulders. I actually took a bit more out since, because I didn't want a huge rockpile sitting in there. The rockscape is a work in progress so we will see what happens. I like ther look of the left side except for one rock that doesn't seem to belong. Too bad it's holding everything up. The right side I am less happy with but it has alot of good coral placing spots. Time will tell.
The day the rock arrived I was also supposed to get a batch of natural seawater. It hadn't shown up with the truck so an emergency call went in. If any of you have ever been to Vietnam, you would be aware that they can do amazing things with motorbikes. A skillful driver can deliver a full sized fridge standing upright on the back of a Vespa. That is not an exageration. The guy showed up with 300 liters on a motorbike! It was a little short so the balance was made up with Red Sea Reef salt.
That was the basic setup a little over a month ago. Still to early to tell what will tranpire. So far I have only been testing for N2,N3,N4, salinity and PH. Pretty crap test kits (sera), but OK for this stage in the game.
I never saw much of a cycle, small ammonia spike and some nitrite that only lasted a few days. Not really much die off on the rock except for some macro algae and 4 or five small shrimp that I could see. To date I have added a few small fish, 3 Yellowtailed Damsels, 2 Dotty Backs and 2 Clownfish (Clarks Anemone fish). I know all can be pretty aggresive but so far so good. My wife took a trip down to Fish street and picked up a few corals. I should have gone along, her selection wasn't bad but to many and too big. We made a second trip to take some stuff back but the Giant Goniopora stayed, along with a Torch, Wall Hammer and a Frogspawn.
The corals have only been in a couple days the three Euphillias are opening op but the Goni doesn't do much. He is sort of in and out and seems to open more when the blue moon lights are on. I keep playing around with the lighting moving him around to try and find a good spot.
Part of the problem may be with the shops on Fish street. There are about thirty places selling live product. Most are churn and burn kind of places with high turnover. The tanks are usually illuminated with 40w fixtures with a couple actinics. If things aren't doing well they throw animals out and replace with a new one. Not all the shops are like this but many. More like a flower shop than a place selling animals. I hope this changes. It's nice to see someone like Son Ha who is actually propegating.
That's where I am at for now. I will post a few pics as things progress. I don't know if there are any other reefers from Vietnam here at RC, but I would love to here from anyone. Still a long way to go but the journey is always the best part.
Regards
Neil
At any rate enough of the history. I started planning a tank about three years ago at the same time we were making some home renovations. The renovations took longer than expected due to some zoning issues and the house just got put back together (rebuilt from the inside out as a matter of fact). Actually there is an entire top floor to go but thats another story. I've had a Reef on my mind for some time now and my wife is onboard with it so I started to put the plan into action.
Aquarium supplies lighting etc are not as straightforward as in many parts of the world. Almost all the aquariums are one off affairs. The guys that make them typically are involved in building holding tanks for the live seafood trade so I tried to seek out a shop to put together a tank for me. I thought my Vietnamese had progressed pretty nicely until I suddenly had to learn a new vocabulary. How do you say Protien Skimmer in Vietnamese? I originally had plans for a 60 gallon rimless cube but my wife thought something bigger vwould be nice. I talked to the guy over the phone and settled on a size of roughly a 120 gal. I went to a different shop to pick up the remainder of my supplies. After doing alot of searching on foot in the old Saigon area of town I'll call Fish Street, I found a guy that actually seemed to know what he is doing. Quite a bit of gear and I was surprised to see he had quite a nice little frag tank going. I explained to him what I was doing and got a list of equipment together. Most of the stuff here comes from China, I don't think that there is a huge market just yet but I tried to get the best stuff that I could. I am also starting out pretty basic until everything gets settled down. Here is a list of the things I got at Son Ha's shop:
Lighting: Odyssea 48" 2x150w 15000k MH, 5xT5 Blue
I know it's kind of a budget affair but for around here it's Cadillac! I swapped out the t5's for ATI's and replaced one of the blues with a 6500k daylight. It just looked too blue. I've got some 14k Ushios that I will try but for now the MH is just fine.
Sump: About 30 gal made by the tank man.
Skimmer: Bubble Magus Curve 7. I know this is Chinese but I was really impressed with the build quality. It's easy to clean and setup and started making some really nice dry skimmate almost immediatly. I think it's one of their newer models, the body is shaped like the bottom half of an hourglass. The instructions were in Chinese but it wasn't to hard to figure out. I had to search around quite a bit on the internet to find out the correct water depth it should sit in. Turns out it's 9 to 11 inches. I have to say so far I'm pretty happy with it.
Retun pump: Hailea 6840, seems to do the job.
Powerhead: 1 in tank 1 standing by, WP400m Super Wave Maker. Again Chinese it has alot of power though, that's why Im just using the one for the time being. I'ts on the back glass blowing against the front to diffuse the flow. I had it on the side but unrestricted the flow was just ripping way to hard for Softies and Shrooms. I still need to play around with this.
Chiller: 1/2hp commercial unit with titanium fins. This may heve been a mistake. The temp is close to 33c or about 90f almost everyday of the year so a chiller is almost required. The problem is that this thing is too big. I have it set to 27 degrees celcius. because of it's size it can pull the water temp in the tank down so quickly it doesn't register on the probe to shut down. When I first set up the tank with just rock I had the temp go from 82 degress to around 60 overnight. I thought the glass was dirty but when I got closer it was dripping condensate! Oh dear! I have played around with it and changed the setpoints and I think I have it dialed in, but you really have to watch this mother!
That's about it for the gear. No reactors, no dosing pump, no controllers. It's all manual for the time being. I will add stuff as I go along but I wan't to get a feel for what's going on with this thing first.
The tank was supposed to take a week. When the guys came to deliver the equipment it wasn't exactly what I had ordered. They did a nice job on the stand, solid East Indian Mahogany but they had framed out the corners of the tank with the same wood. It doesn't look bad I just wasn't expecting it. The top is supposed to slide over and rest on the tank frame so that it looks like it is captured in one frame. They hadn't taken into account that the wiring on the light fixture comes out the end so the top doesn't fit. I am just running with top off for now and it doesn't look bad at all except for the corner pieces siliconed to the tank. The tank is heavy duty though. 18mm thick (about 3/4"). He also braced the top because he said that he was afraid that rimless wouldn't be strong enough? The silicone was a little sloppy also (I think he expected the frame to cover it up)? Nothing that a razor blade won't fix. I can't really complain though. The tank, stand top and sump came in at around $450 US. The stand ended up getting a couple of scratches during the install but I will touch that up myself.
I got the live rock from Son Ha (guy who knows what he is doing), sight unseen. I really wasn't sure what to expect so I ordered 60kg, not knowing if that would be enough, as it turns out I had to send about 30% of it back after I loaded up the tank and put some in the sump. Vietnamese rock is very nice stuff. Very light with good shapes, alot of coraline and very few round boulders. I actually took a bit more out since, because I didn't want a huge rockpile sitting in there. The rockscape is a work in progress so we will see what happens. I like ther look of the left side except for one rock that doesn't seem to belong. Too bad it's holding everything up. The right side I am less happy with but it has alot of good coral placing spots. Time will tell.
The day the rock arrived I was also supposed to get a batch of natural seawater. It hadn't shown up with the truck so an emergency call went in. If any of you have ever been to Vietnam, you would be aware that they can do amazing things with motorbikes. A skillful driver can deliver a full sized fridge standing upright on the back of a Vespa. That is not an exageration. The guy showed up with 300 liters on a motorbike! It was a little short so the balance was made up with Red Sea Reef salt.
That was the basic setup a little over a month ago. Still to early to tell what will tranpire. So far I have only been testing for N2,N3,N4, salinity and PH. Pretty crap test kits (sera), but OK for this stage in the game.
I never saw much of a cycle, small ammonia spike and some nitrite that only lasted a few days. Not really much die off on the rock except for some macro algae and 4 or five small shrimp that I could see. To date I have added a few small fish, 3 Yellowtailed Damsels, 2 Dotty Backs and 2 Clownfish (Clarks Anemone fish). I know all can be pretty aggresive but so far so good. My wife took a trip down to Fish street and picked up a few corals. I should have gone along, her selection wasn't bad but to many and too big. We made a second trip to take some stuff back but the Giant Goniopora stayed, along with a Torch, Wall Hammer and a Frogspawn.
The corals have only been in a couple days the three Euphillias are opening op but the Goni doesn't do much. He is sort of in and out and seems to open more when the blue moon lights are on. I keep playing around with the lighting moving him around to try and find a good spot.
Part of the problem may be with the shops on Fish street. There are about thirty places selling live product. Most are churn and burn kind of places with high turnover. The tanks are usually illuminated with 40w fixtures with a couple actinics. If things aren't doing well they throw animals out and replace with a new one. Not all the shops are like this but many. More like a flower shop than a place selling animals. I hope this changes. It's nice to see someone like Son Ha who is actually propegating.
That's where I am at for now. I will post a few pics as things progress. I don't know if there are any other reefers from Vietnam here at RC, but I would love to here from anyone. Still a long way to go but the journey is always the best part.
Regards
Neil
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