Spcaeheater's 30 gallon parallel fuge build

I blew off the rocks again tonight and while I was at it I cleaned the skimmer cup. I'm pretty sure I now know what Satan's outhouse smells like on a hot day after a week-long TacoBell binge. It was right up there with dog farts.

Otherwise the tank is doing well. I will replace the filter floss after the water clears from the diatom/sand dust mess. I'm measuring the top-offs and I'll keep measuring Ca/CO2 3-/Mg levels over the next couple weeks so that I can come up with a dosing regime. Currently I have an air-driven ATO that I'm operating manually, and I plan on doping the top-off to achieve my dosing. I'm also building 4 extra outlets and BNC sensor inputs into my controller and power brick for dosing pumps, but that's a someday type project when I have the money for the pumps and sensors.
 
Small update tonight. I tested and nitrate is now 0, the chaeto is going nuts, and the diatoms seem to be subsiding a bit.

Alk and Ca are falling, Mg is creeping down. I am going to start dosing my top-off next week after I have a few more datapoints to calculate the appropriate amounts from.

I was going to do a waterchange tonight but my mixing pump died right before I added the salt. I'm going to swing by PetCo tomorrow and get another one. I've gotten about 6 months of service out of it, but I paid well under $10, so I guess I can't be too unhappy. I might buck up for a slightly better one this time.
 
WunderWagen said:
Nicely done project!
Click to expand...

Thank you! I've been meaning to post an update, but science has been getting in the way lately.

Here's a FTS, again, sorry about the poor quality phone pics


And here's the fuge


The SPS are doing really well, with great color and growth


Parameters are also looking really good.
0 ammonia
0 nitrite
0 nitrate
0 phosphate
420 ppm Ca
9.75 dKH (a bit high, but I'm still figuring out the dosing)
1360 Mg
8.0 pH (this was after lights out, it's about 8.2-8.4 during the day)

The pictures make the algae look a lot worse than it is. The snails and fish are very happy, however...

In the last 4 day's I've lost 2 of the bigger blue leg hermits and the Halloween hermit. I found all 3 of them dead and ripped out of their shells by the entrances to the Goby/Pistol Shrimp lair. I'm pretty sure the shrimp isn't happy about sharing his space. I've been running CemiPure, so I doubt it's a trace problem.

The really bad news is I'm losing my hammer coral. It hasn't fully opened since moving into the new tank. At first I had it in a moderate flow area, so I moved it to a low flow high light area after about a week, but this just made it worse. After that I moved it to the corner in a low flow/low light area and it still refuses to open. The bases of all 4 heads are pulling away from the skeleton. I'm our of ideas on how to rescue it. My galexea is doing great near the top of the tank right below a power head.

the Hammer


The galexea (top of the picture, about 1/3 of the way in from the left)


Hopefully sometime soon I'll get a little time to work on the controller. Right now I've got the power brick done and the ATO, but I still need to clean up the code, add the heater control, dosing, etc, then write the GUI, add the LCD and button pad...
 
I know it's only been a month and a half, but here's an update: :D

The tank is doing great, with a couple exceptions. The green-tipped bird's nest is growing like a weed, so is the green cat's paw. Unfortunately the blue staghorn STN'd on me and is now just a skeleton. Mushrooms, rics and candy cane's are great. My radioactive green zoas are growing great, but the orange skirted zoas next to them refuse to fully open. This is weird because that colony went from one to 3 heads, and a fourth is starting to grow now. I just can't figure out why they would be growing if they won't open all the way.

Here's a fun one, my GSP is actually dying. It's at the same level, light, flow as the zoas, but slowly shrinking and only opens about once every 3 days. There's nothing that could be stinging it, so I'm at a loss.

All the fish and crustaceans are great. My scooter dragonette is fatter than ever, and the clowns have fully paired. I'm thinking that in a month or two I'll try adding an anemone for them, but I'm still undecided on that one.

Unfortunately maintenance has been lax. Other than water changes and cleaning the glass I haven't been doing much. The good news is that the DT remains algae free, with the exception of a lot of green tinge on the rocks, but the CUC keeps up with it well enough that if I take a toothbrush to them it doesn't make a noticeable difference.

The not so bad news is that the fuge is turning into an algae farm. Commence operation rescue the fuge. I am currently making 15 gallons of fresh SW. The plan is to drain the tank so I can fix an annoying little leak on one of the bulkheads that's growing quite a bit of salt creep. At the same time I'll take the rocks out of the fuge one at a time and scrub the GHA and red and brown slime off them. While I'm at it I have to vacuum the sand behind the rocks in the fuge to get rid of a layer of detritus. When they go back in I'm going to separate them a bit so that the flow from the PH can get behind the rocks and keep the buildup down.

I'm also going to add a nassaurius to the fuge, and one more to the DT. Also on the addition list is an emerald crab for the fuge, a couple of astrea, and a couple of nerites. In the DT I'm going to add a couple nerites.

Finally, I'm seriously thinking about my final fish addition. I really want a lawnmower blenny, but I'm also thinking about something fast and bright, like a purple firefish. Either way, it'll be a while before I make a decision. I'm giving the tank a little while longer to mature before doing anything.
 
So...

I did the big wc on Tuesday. In the process I dismantled the leaking bulkhead, and after cleaning everything I went hunting for my roll of teflon tape. In the 30 s it took me to find it the return hose (with the street elbow on) fell behind the tank. This created a siphon at an otherwise unachievable output angle that shot water into the cabinet that houses the "waterproof" power strip. As soon as I heard/saw this happen I grabbed the hose, broke the siphon, and ran into the other room and flipped off the breaker, then proceeded to clean up the quart or so of water that had spilled. With everything dry I turned the breaker back on to the hot sizzling crackle of arcing electricity.

A sane person would have flipped the breaker back off. Me, not so much. I reached in and hit the switch on the power strip, and was rewarded with fireworks in my right arm. Now this isn't my first rodeo with AC, but everytime I swear it's my last.

I used drip loops, a GFCI power center, and even ran a bead of silicone across the back of that particular cabinet to prevent this sort of accident in the case of a leak. The only thing I didn't count on was a hose directed straight into it through the hole that the cords pass through. I have since remedied this by removing the offending power strip and plugging the power center directly into the wall. I meant to do this all along, but never got around to it.

After all the excitement I did manage to do the big wc without further incident, and removed about 95% of the hair algae and pretty much all of the slime algae. The tank looks great, but with everything that happened it took me about 4 hours to re-fill, and the tips of my SPS that were at the top of the tank died. The corals seem fine other than having a couple mm of die off. Other than that everything else seems very happy.
 
Didn't really think I'd like this but it all canme together. Over unique. Do you plan on adding any other fish?
 
Well, right now I'm at 2 clowns, a clown goby, a orange spot goby and a scooter dragonette. Given how stable it's been over it's short life so far I'm considering one more, but I'm also nervous as I don't want to upset the balance.

If I do add anything it's most likely going to be a lawnmower blennie. I can't help staring at them every time I go to the LFS. However I'm going to wait for a couple months at least before I really consider adding one. Right now I'm working on figuring out why my sps and some softies are thriving while my LPS and orange zoas are not.

I've been watching and maintaining all my parameters and have 0 ammonia, nitrite, nitrate and phosphate, 420 ca, 8.5 dkh and ~1350 mg. Because I'm growing hair algae and some slime (only in the fuge, thankfully), I'm working on reducing sources of phos and nitrate, which I believe is mostly coming from this being a new tank. I admit that I need to be more dilligent about detritus removal, and now that I'm pretty much through with classes I hope to be able to adhere to my maintenance schedule more rigidly.

I am probably going to add a BRS media reactor and run a GFO/GAC mix rather than the chemipure/purigen bags that I have been using. I just don't think there's enough flow through the bags with my configuration and I could use the space for a filter sock or additional floss plus the MJ pump for the reactor. Other than that I'm just going to vacuum the fuge 2x weekly and do 5 gal wc with each vacuuming.

Once the algae is gone and the tank has a couple more months I'll think about more corals and possibly another fish.
 
I had to cancel my christmas plans for a myriad of reasons, basically life hit my in the back of the head with a shovel, but now everything is back on track.

I ended up doing a 5 gal w/c on Christmas day so that I could vacuum the skimmer compartment. Then I did a 10 gallon w/c this evening with a turkey baster and toothbrush to remove as much algae and detritus as I could from the fuge, sump, and display. I used a chunk of airline tubing to get behind and between all the rockwork. The tank looks beautiful now. There's coraline starting on all the rocks, and they have taken on a dark green color from the algae, but it won't scrub off. I'm operating on the assumption that this is a good thing, since it's feeding the snails and pods, but not really growing anything significant.

On another note, the manual dosing is causing me a headache. Alk, Ca, and Mg have been swinging up and down over the last couple weeks. I believe that my Christmas cash will go toward the BRS two-part dosing setup with pumps and the single GFO/GAC reactor. I'm going to ditch the media rack I built and modify it to hold a filter sock and the MJ pump for the reactor. I'm also ditching the air pump ato and getting an aqualifter. With the Arduino controller I built I should be able to easily integrate the dosing pumps, and the ato pump is just a plug in. Hopefully with these mods the tank will be even more stable.

FTS:


Green tip birdsnest. You can see the frag on top had the tips die when I was fixing the leaky bulkhead, but it's making a nice recovery.


Galaxia, BN, zoas, and GSP that's dying. Luckily there are 2 beautiful feather dusters that are growing from the GSP frag, which I consider a trade-up.


Double trouble. My two favorite fish.
 
Small update.
I think that my current algae issues and lack of chaeto growth are due to detritus buildup, and lack of flow.

No matter what I do I cannot get enough flow from the 2 Koralia 425's. The SmartWave controller is a massive pain and the controller has a very loud click every time it turns on the right side pump, quieter click when it turns on the left. The pumps themselves have an even louder cluck when they go on. For now I've taken them off the controller and just have them both running on the far side of the tank, which gives me ok but not good enough flow across the front of the rockwork.

I ordered 2 Jebao RW4's last night, and will be putting those in as soon as they get here. I'm going to put one of the 425's in the fuge behind the rocks to keep everything in there stirred, then put the other 425 and the 240 currently in the fuge behind the rockwork in the DT to prevent detritus buildup back there. I was thinking the 425 in the back left corner and the 240 about midway across the tank, with both about 2/3 of the way down the back glass and pointed directly to the right toward the return. With this and both of the RW's on the right side facing the overflow on wave or random I should hopefully have very good flow through the tank and no dead spots behind or in the rockwork.
 
I re-arranged my rocks a couple days ago to accommodate the hydor's, and it made a huge difference. The scape is similar to what I had before, but at feeding I can literally watch anything that goes uneaten get sucked into the rockwork and then ejected upward to the surface about 1 second later! I'm very happy about this. When I pulled the rocks I found probably 2 mm of sediment on the sand behind them, which is only 4 months worth!

Today I got my 2 RW4's and installed them as soon as I got home from work. They look great, surprisingly good build quality considering the price and very low profile. When I plugged them both in at ~50% on W1 they had a serious surge going through the tank, too much for the clowns. I turned them down to the lowest speed and started playing with the period. I happened to find a harmonic for my tank that was truly frightening. With both on minimum power the light was swinging wildly and there was a surface wave that crested the rim!



Not wanting to collapse my stand and destroy the tank I turned the period way up so now there's an awesome surge effect but no apartment destroying standing waves. I can actually see all the crud that's been settling on the sand since the last water change 5 days ago getting picked up and resuspended.



Again, sorry about the horrible iPhone picture. I'll try to get a better one with the daylights on soon. I've been doing 5 gallon wc's about every 4 days, and all of my corals have responded well. I'm going to keep this up, since it's easier on me than 10 gallons at a time, and the tank looks better in just a couple weeks.
 
Since my last post I've done 2 5 gallon wc's. I've also been brushing by rocks with a toothbrush daily and squirting them with a turkey baster to blow off gunk. Almost all of the filamentous algae is gone now.

I've also lowered the collection cup in my skimmer even farther, and it gets about 1/2 full after 3 days with green swamp water. I'm hoping that the wetter skimming and increased flow will keep the algae to a minimum in the future.

I also re-stocked my fuge with a decent chunk of chaeto, however the emerald crab in there decided it tastes better than the hair algae, so the ball is actually shrinking.

One thing I've noticed is that the pump compartment is the biggest detritus trap in my system, and the source of this is the overflow from my fuge. When I designed the system I knew that I wanted to keep a scooter in the tank, so I purposefully didn't include any filtration between the fuge and pump in the hopes of maintaining a healthy pod-replenishing mechanism. This seems to be working, as both my fuge and display are crawling with them (pun intended). It's not all bad, though, because the pump compartment is the easiest to vacuum out, and if I can keep the detritus accumulation in there than I'm very happy.

I also made a couple of new additions this weekend. I picked up a chalk bass and GBTA at the LFS. The 'nem is looking great, I put him in a recess in the top left of the tank where the clowns tend to hang out. At first they ignored him, but tonight they were both nuzzling and fanning him, so things look promising. The chalk bass has decided that darting in and out of the rocks is really fun. I'm constantly catching flashes of him all over the tank, then he'll pause right in the center, like he's daring me to chase him.

All things considered this tank is doing amazingly well. I'm still thinking that I'll add the BRS double reactor to it.

I, unexpectedly, have to go out of town next week for a couple days. I'm thinking that I'll set the controller for a 3 day blackout while I'm gone, then a one week ramp back to the normal lighting. Hopefully this will kill off the last of the hair algae. Of course I'll leave the fuge light on 24 hrs/day while the display is BO. When I get back I'll do a large scrub and wc. Hopefully this will at least put the algae far enough behind that regular maintenance will keep it at bay.
 
Been a while since I updated, so here it is:

I didn't end up doing the blackout, but I kept up with the 5 gallon water changes every 3 days for most of January and February. I thought I was winning the hair algae battle but around the middle of last month I realized that I was brushing the same amount off the rocks every time I did a water change. About 6 weeks ago I added a BRS single reactor running 1/2 cup GAC and 1/4 cup GFO. Since then my skimmer has been producing almost nothing even with the air turned way up and the cup all the way down. I've been pulling/scrubbing/blowing the hair algae off the rocks a couple times a week which keeps the algae down, but it keeps coming back. Tests still read 0 nitrates/phosphates.

Last week I made 2 changes at once, which I know is a bad idea. I blocked off the overflow to the fuge and added a pump below the filter floss into the fuge so that only skimmed, filtered water enters. Hopefully this will decrease detritus buildup in there. I also began dosing API AlgaeFix. I was really torn about this, and actually waited a week after buying the bottle to start dosing. I'm hoping that it will kill off the hair algae currently in the tank and the combination of GFO, decreased fuge detritus, and increased waterchanges will keep it from coming back.

FTS:


New corals:




And my collection of BN frags, these were all little bits that I broke off while scrubbing, and you can see that some have become quite nice frags:
 
Here's a couple shots of the new rat's nest of plumbing,

BRS reactor with GFO/GAC. I didn't want to mount it below the tank due to the flood risk, so it's sitting in the corner where it's out of view from the room.


Top view of the sump. The black tube on the left is the reactor input, white is the reactor outflow, and the black tube on the right is the newly installed fuge return pump.


Here's a shot of the return pipe into the fuge. It's kind of an eyesore right now, but you can see that the hair algae is essentially gone from the fuge thanks to the emerald crab, however the chaeto is also gone. I'm going to try to catch him and toss him into the display so I can actually grow macro in the fuge. I'd really like to get some decorative macros in there, but I want to at least grow chaeto first. If I can get it growing, and once the algaefix dosing is through I'll try some pretty stuff.


One other thing. In the last couple months I've lost all of my rics, two shrooms, and a colony of zoas. My favia looks great, but my last remaining shroom is on it's way out. One colony of trumpet is slowly dying, and the other isn't growing but looks OK. Every SPS that I've added (red planet, two different acros, mille, monti cap, mint pavona and others) are growing like weeds. Finally my GBTA ate my yellow clown goby, crawled behind the rocks and died. At this point I feel like the tank is destined to become a SPS tank, regardless of what I want it to be.
 
Update time I guess.

The tank has been through some ups and downs but for the last couple months it's been getting better and better. I figured out that I was running way too much GFO, which was killing my skimmer, corals, and generally making the tank suck. I turned it off about two weeks ago and literally everything has gotten better, corals have amazing color, snails, crabs, fish are all way more active and I have coraline growing everywhere. If algae issues come back I'll slowly add GFO to control them.

Over the last couple months I've decided to make this mainly and SPS tank. I still have a couple LPS in there and zoas, but I'm no longer attempting a mixed reef. I've had better success with SPS than other corals or the couple nems I've tried, so I'm not going to fight it.




 
Really nice looking tank! I really love the split design like that. If you want to see some experience with SPS in a nano, you can check out my thread. I've been mostly doing SPS with my tank, also because I've largely had the most success with it, and I've always been an acrohead.

I definitely understand on the GFO. With having a ball of cheato like that, I'm surprised you were running any GFO. The cheato with good lighting should out compete other nuisance algaes for nutrients. I guess you had a bigger algae problem for you to need both GFO and a fuge. Some people are finding the best way to combat algae like that is hydrogen peroxide dosing and heavy skimming. I guess you ultimately figured it out though, so that's good.

Anyway, can't wait to see the progress!
 
Following along. Worry about the stand though. The top panel does not run over the side edges and all the weight are on the braces.
 
Very cool idea. I love the side by side fuge/display. Some different macros would look really cool in there. Basically a second display tank of mostly macros.
 
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