The Polyp Tank

flyyyguy

flyyyguy

King of the white corals
Premium Member
Just posting some progress of my polyp dominated tank I built a month or two ago......

Tank has been running for 6 weeks or soemthing........ For the entire time I have had temp PC lights over it as I needed the halides for another project, and when I finsihed that project I was shopping for new bulbs as I believe my 10k's that I have always used were too much.

Fish in this tank are a tomini, a niger, a yellow coris and two clowns hosted by a condy.

My whole goal with this tank was to build and run it with the polyps best interests in mind, and feed the absolute crap out of it. Ive always kept my polyps in sps dominated systems and while I feel my success was decent.....I felt I could get more growth and polyp size if the tank was truly set up just for them.

I feed the fish rods food 2-5 times a day. Pretty much all the fish can eat. Every few days I dose oyster eggs and dump enough phyto in to turn the water light green and leave the skimmer off for a few hours afterwards.

Flow in this 90 gallon barebottom tank is provided by a sequence hammerhead on a OM 8 way. No fuge nor do I run GFO. Just high flow, a coast to coast external overflow to the skimmer.

thats about it.......Im super pleased with my results so far. Besides losing a bunch of color due to the PC lighting for so long, all of my polyps I kept and moved over without exception are larger than they were in my other tank....and getting better by the day.

Just today I got the PC's off the tank and put up 2 250w reeflux 12k's along with 2- 48 supr actinic vho's. jury is still out whether I like the color or not.......it looks too blue for me to be honest....but im so used to 10k's........thats to be expected......we will see........

anyway.....some pics I took today.....:)

full901.jpg


90left.jpg


90left1.jpg


90left2.jpg
 
Nice photography, and even more beautiful tank. The colors are awesome!
So are you dumping in a cup of phyto? or how much? Do you see any probs from doing that?
 
Super cool. Love the aquascape. Great tank for someone with ADD like me. Keep us posted on the progress.
 
That is really nice....almost makes me want to make one. I was planning a 20L sps but now....i dunno hahaha
 
Thanks for the compliments :)

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=13203126#post13203126 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by seapug
Super cool. Love the aquascape. Great tank for someone with ADD like me. Keep us posted on the progress.
Click to expand...



ADD?? How about OCD?? You might appreciate this next part then.......

This BB tank is one that never needs anything siphoned out of it ever. My 240 sps tank is similar in the aquscaping and flow scheme, but I do it without spraybars in it. Its too big for spraybars to accomplish it. I manage to get everything in this tank suspended and to the coast to coast overflow with the flow scheme. Two spraybars across the bottom back wall, each hooked up to the om 8 way and Hammerhead.........holes going across the floor and at some of the rocks as well as under and behind.

None of the rocks are actually touching the floor of the tank allowing absolute free flow across the floor, nor are any of the rocks touching each other. each rock is 100% independent and suspended by a single 3/4" acrylic rod which is also of course drilled into the rock. I use a piece of 3/4" HDPE with holes drilled 1/2" deep into it to hold the rods, and not go through to the other side so crap cant get under the board.

I took great effort to ensure that none of these rods can be seen from a FTS.......from a couple different angles...the aquascaping isnt quite so attractive which I will show........but it is as functional as can be allowing absolute free flow to every single part of the tank, and gets any detritous flying around to settle nowhere

anyway...yadda, yadda, yadda

check it out :)

lift1.jpg


lift2.jpg


lift3.jpg


lift4.jpg


lift5.jpg


8way-90.jpg
 
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You might want to check but I think some robot from the future is attached to the back of your tank!


Seriously, awesome setup. I really think you hit things right on with allowing as much free flow as possible. It seems that lots of people are going for less live rock and more free flow as the keep to reefkeeping. I want to set up a polyp dominated tank for my 90 I am working on. What do you think the bare bottom and free flow is the best for these type of coral?

You will have great success with this tank.

Also, how much does it cost to set up and run that hammerhead thing on the back? That is super awesome, do you even need powerheads with that hooked up, I thought I saw a vortech?

Also, where do you get that many sweet zoos in 6 weeks?
 
Thanks all :)

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=13202659#post13202659 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by jmadison
Nice photography, and even more beautiful tank. The colors are awesome!
So are you dumping in a cup of phyto? or how much? Do you see any probs from doing that?
Click to expand...

1/2 that or so at a time.........problem?? Not yet, nor do I see it ever being. I coudl always add GFO if needed, but I feed my sps tank a ton as well and dont need gfo there to make it a LNS so I dont foresee it being an issue.........time will tell

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=13202666#post13202666 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by crsswift70
That is insane.. How many different corals do you have in there? Beautiful though :)
Click to expand...

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=13203838#post13203838 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by REEF-n-Chicago
Any idea around how many kinds of zoos are in there?
Beatiful :)
Click to expand...

thank you very much :)

How many corals? Not nearly enough yet....I need to grow these out so I can trade for more sweet ones...........

I want this tank to end up covered in so many different polyps that you could never even dream of accurately counting the types...........

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=13204905#post13204905 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by Logzor
You might want to check but I think some robot from the future is attached to the back of your tank!


Seriously, awesome setup. I really think you hit things right on with allowing as much free flow as possible. It seems that lots of people are going for less live rock and more free flow as the keep to reefkeeping. I want to set up a polyp dominated tank for my 90 I am working on. What do you think the bare bottom and free flow is the best for these type of coral?

You will have great success with this tank.

Also, how much does it cost to set up and run that hammerhead thing on the back? That is super awesome, do you even need powerheads with that hooked up, I thought I saw a vortech?

Also, where do you get that many sweet zoos in 6 weeks?
Click to expand...

Thanks....:)

ya...getting rid of the rock wall and ceasing to tell newer people that it is a good thing to choke thier tanks with a wall o rock is where its at ;)


Where did I buy so many nice corals in 6 weeks??

I didnt buy a thing. They all came out of my other sps dominated tank.......I got rid of a bunch and kept the ones I really wanted to move forward with the polyp tank

as far as why I think a barebottom tank is good for zoanthids??

Two reasons:

1. sand sucks

Ok...thats only one reason.............:p



Om 8 way and hammerhead- they are not exactly cheap, but i love them and woudlnt set up a tank without them. You are looking at about 1k if you go schedule 40 fittings and seperate unions and ball valves(like I do)...you could add a few hundred to that if you went schedule 80 and true and half unions everywhere......we dont even need schedule 80 for our low pressure application, so I dont use it. There isnt a powerhead in this tank...nto needed.

I run a similar set up on my big tank as well.........but run 4 tunze along with it. I get to put all life support in the garage for this tank......here is a pic of some of it...

8way.jpg
 
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What is on the bottom of your tank? It does not look like just glass, starboard?

Also, what is this stuff?
 
its HDPE. it doesnt really matter, but I only know of a cou0ple of people who have actually used true starboard. Starboard is just hdpe that is treated with UV resistance, is available in many colors and costs about 3-4 times as much as sheets of hdpe.

i use a 3/4" thick piece of it so I can drill 1/2" deep holes into it to hold my acrylic rods


What is what stuff?? :)
 
Well I know starboard is something but I did not know exactly what the stuff was. As in, what is it made of!
 
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