Taqpol's 220 gallon custom Miracles tank!

[Taqpol]

Than you for the condolences everyone. Its so frustrating because my previous tank was much smaller, less fancy, and way more overstocked, yet the corals grew like gangbusters and looked absolutely gorgeous, even though the tank did start reaching 15 ppm Nitrates near the end due to my slacking on water changes and overfeeding. As of now I'm just trying to return to simplicity. I might even try and do a major 50 gallon water change in the next few weeks to really just kick these nitrates in the shorts.

I'm very sorry, Alex. But let me understand something..

I though that you quarantine your new fish before putting them in the display tank?

How the Blonde Naso cut himself? against rocks?

All of my past fish purchases have been from a single fish store that buys all of his fish straight from the collectors, not wholesalers. Because of this, his fish are truly more healthy then any other fish store fish I've ever seen and as such I've been adding them straight to the tank in the thought that not stressing them out with QT would keep them healthy. Obviously in this case that was a HORRIBLE mistake. I have a 38 gallon QT tank constantly setup for just this reason, and its about time I make use of it.

I have no idea how the Naso cut his lips. A rock is quite likely, but the tangs were doing a little bit of scuffling due to the new additions.

Alex,
Sorry to hear about your losses! Don't get discouraged by this. I'm confident that your tank will bounce back and it will be gorgeous again! Are you going to MACNA this year? If so, I'd like to finally meet you,

Rob

Thanks Rob,

Unfortunately I won't be able to make it to MACNA this year so you'll have to tell me how it went!

 

[prop-frags]

Alex, this is terrible news.
We are troubled to hear of this bad fortune. Please let us know if there's anything we can do to help out! Hang in there and don't give up. The community is behind you and we need your wonderful participation!

 

[canyousee]

Alex keeping a reef tank at times feels like pushing on a string you try and fix on part and it makes another part worse. The problems never seem to me, to be one dimensional there's always multiple concerns. Having followed you for some time I know you can get your tank back on an even keel. I like your approach of water changes and maybe simplifying some aspects of the set up, good luck in the coming weeks.

 

[salali]

Are there any new pics for the amazing corals?

 

[darkdrako]

So sorry to hear about your recent events. I love looking at this tank and using it as inspiration for my own.

 

[looneytunes]

Sorry to hear about the problems your having. Now to be a little selfish I am waiting for my custom miracles tank and was wondering if they gave you the warranty with your stand. I have been in contact with Derek and told him my plans based on Rocketengineers plan. Sorry to ask at this time and I hope this ? doesn't bother you too much. I am sorry for your loss but thank you for sharing. It is good for a newbie like me to know what we're in for reading the experiences you guys have had.
thank you,
christine

 

[jjstecchino]

Alex I haven't been on the forums for a while and one of the first threads I usually catch up with is yours. I am very sorry for the losses you are having. It looks like that sick fish introduced an infection that then affected the other fish. You must feel boomed at this time but keep your wits together fix all the basics and hopefully the tank will turn around.
Sorry again for the losses.

Claudio

 

[Taqpol]

I'm scared to use a phrase like "things are starting to look good", so instead I'll say "There is a chance that my corals are potentially starting to recover". Still, to try and speed up this process and keep the corals healthy I decided that I might not be giving my SPS the flow they need due to my pump situation in my tanks footprint. To rectify this I purchased two more (four total) Vortech MP40w's, but now I need help deciding how to position them. I posted a thread over in the SPS Keepers forum for their expertise, but here is the gist of my conundrum:

After having trouble keeping SPS in my tank I finally broke down and thought that maybe having only two Vortech MP40W's in my 6ft x 2.5 ft footprint 220 gallon might not be cutting it. To rectify this situation I bought two more MP40w's to stir things up a bit. Since we all know how important flow is for SPS corals in particular, I thought I would post in this forum to see if any one here had some opinions on the best way to sync four MP40w's in a system such as mine.

Currently I've been trying to get a gyre type flow so I've kept the pumps unsynced and on lagoon flow to give the gyre enough time to build up. Here is the current pump layout:

One thought was to continue to have a gyre flow, and I thought this setup might work the best (using sync and anti-sync modes in lagoon):

With four pumps I could also try and do a standing wave in my tank. It is a custom Miracles and could probably withstand the stress, but besides aesthetics would a wave type flow really help coral growth?:

I could also try and put the vortechs on the back to get a slightly my random/even flow:

Let me know what you guys think! If you would personally do something different, just let me know. A picture is worth a thousand words, so feel free to use my template.

Template:

Thank you!

 

[prop-frags]

I like setup #2, Alex.
But no matter how you choose to go about it, the important thing is to generate turbulent flow around all your rock and corals. We are seeing really nice results with the closed loop outlets (lower third of the height) pointing at the backside of the 'scape towards the front of the tank, and along the mid-front pointing at the sides of the tank and inwards. Then, we have our four stream pumps (upper third of the height) providing flow from the four corners pointing inwards.

A picture would be better. I used my awesome drawing skills to show the closed loop flow in red, with the tunze streams in green:

<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/terryl93/6183176084/" title="Alex TankFlowDiagram by terryl93, on Flickr"><img src="http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6172/6183176084_8d0be0b17c_z.jpg" width="640" height="323" alt="Alex TankFlowDiagram"></a>

 

[Padrino]

I have both the vortech mp40W and the tunze nanostream 6055 both of which are controlable. The vortech is nice however it is only capable of linear flow which can be a major downfall. Tunze stream pumps allow you to rotate and better direct the flow where you want it.

If it was me, I might try and set up all the vortechs on one side and create a true gyre instead of having pumps on both sides. I foresee flow patterns colliding in the center and creating issues such as sandstorms, ect.

Using a wave is cool however, how would your overflow do with that? I guess it depends on the size of the wave, but potentially you could see an increase in gurgling from your overflows.
play around with it and see what works best for your corals, you may need to relocate some of them as you experiment with flows.

Cheers
Rob

 

[bruce 1]

I love this set up.

 

[Sardaukar]

Wow nice tank! Looking at your setup, I'm starting to think I'm doing Grad School wrong haha.

 

[ReefEnabler]

Hey Alex long time no see.


Read back a few pages and your tank was lookin NICE!.

Sorry to hear about your recent troubles though with the corals. I'd be surprised if lack of light was directly responsible for coral STN from the base, although I guess it's possible. You definitely make a good point that LED setups with efficient optics do have some drawbacks, namely their lack of ability to penetrade deep into complex branching corals. You get top lighting that's it. I bet light movers would really help, combined wit medium optics (light movers with tight optics seems somewhat pointless to me, not totally pointless but you'd never get any fresh angles).


I'm actually in the process of selling my tank right now (it's already sold, waiting on buyer to get it next month) since I am moving to a new house in Raleigh. I will likely be tankless for a few years, but I'm not giving up the hobby, perhaps shifting focus over to Hydroponic veggie gardening with LEDs for a while


I also lost a good number of my SPS corals (aka most), earlier this year. Mine was from working too many hours, then being lazy at home and not refilling my 2part dosers. So my alk was dosing empty air, and alk was getting into the low 4 zone for too long and one day things rapidly fell apart Since then all the LPS look great but I've been battling cyano ever since. I've been selling a few LPS here and there. Strangely, even when my tank is at its worst, I've never ever gotten above 0 on a nitrate test. Very strange to me! I've tried two kits also, Salifert and API.

 

[Bigjoe2531]

.........

 

[prop-frags]

Hi Alex, haven't heard from you in a while... How are things going?

 

[salali]

Dear Alex we need an update.

 

[Taqpol]

I'm going to come out and say it and hope that karma/murphy doesn't rebound and kick me in the hiney: I think that the tank has rounded the corner!

Coral colors are completely back, polyp extension is up, I can see visible growth tips on the SPS, and the sand bed is no longer completely covered in algae! My Nitrates are still much higher then I would ever want them to be, but since the corals look good I'm not letting it stress me out too much. This is good because I am about to inherit a small school of four Anthias from a friend and ReefSMART is just around the corner on November 12th! I'm definitely looking to pick up some more corals at an acceptable price soon to "Officially" test the waters.

Theres a small chance I will take some pictures this weekend, but I will most likely be preparing for a scientific conference in DC the following Monday and Tuesday.

 

[Taqpol]

Wow nice tank! Looking at your setup, I'm starting to think I'm doing Grad School wrong haha.

Sorry for the late reply. I think what it boils down to is that the cost of living in North Carolina is MUCH lower than in Cali. If I went to any of the UC schools I would probably have to live inside the tank with my fish.

That being said, grad school is really tough on a tank and it is probably smart not to have anything too complex. I've been in lab from 9:00 am to midnight for the past two days in a row, and without my auto feeder the fishies just would not have gotten fed.

 

[Taqpol]

Hey Alex long time no see.


Read back a few pages and your tank was lookin NICE!.

Sorry to hear about your recent troubles though with the corals. I'd be surprised if lack of light was directly responsible for coral STN from the base, although I guess it's possible. You definitely make a good point that LED setups with efficient optics do have some drawbacks, namely their lack of ability to penetrade deep into complex branching corals. You get top lighting that's it. I bet light movers would really help, combined wit medium optics (light movers with tight optics seems somewhat pointless to me, not totally pointless but you'd never get any fresh angles).


I'm actually in the process of selling my tank right now (it's already sold, waiting on buyer to get it next month) since I am moving to a new house in Raleigh. I will likely be tankless for a few years, but I'm not giving up the hobby, perhaps shifting focus over to Hydroponic veggie gardening with LEDs for a while


I also lost a good number of my SPS corals (aka most), earlier this year. Mine was from working too many hours, then being lazy at home and not refilling my 2part dosers. So my alk was dosing empty air, and alk was getting into the low 4 zone for too long and one day things rapidly fell apart Since then all the LPS look great but I've been battling cyano ever since. I've been selling a few LPS here and there. Strangely, even when my tank is at its worst, I've never ever gotten above 0 on a nitrate test. Very strange to me! I've tried two kits also, Salifert and API.

Sorry to hear about your tank! I imagine that a break will be nice, especially while moving. Your last tank was so well designed and thought out I'm sure when you come back it will only be better. Let me know if you need any help storing equipment or whatnot.

Also sad that you had to leave the gorgeous house behind, but I assume that if you're moving its because you found an even better house with more expansion room!

 

[Megabite]

Hey man, read back a few pages and the tank is/ was looking GREAT! I'm sorry to hear about some of the problems you are/ were having. It's tough putting that much time in school and trying to take care of a large tank. I put off a tank when I moved due to time and now starting off with a smaller one for now trying to avoid problems. Goos luck mand and I know your tank will be looking great soon!