Wetsleeves' 210 thread.

[WDLV]

I think I started a thread on this site some time ago but I can't find it. So all apologies if this is redundant.

I'll just cut to the chase here since someone asked me to do this. If there are questions I'll be happy to answer them.

I started this reef prematurely in my basement in mid december 2005 during basement reconstruct that is yet to be complete. I had a bunch of frags that were dieing and I figured the best thing I could do to save them was to get this thing up and running. While I had contimplated everything under the sun to do with this system, the perfect plan was never realized before construction and thus my signature says what it does....
DAY 1

I had a major mishap with about a pound of kalkwasser that even after 450 gallons worth of water changes in one day I still lost about two thirds of my corals and one third of my fish.
FEBRUARY

I had another mishap with food and poorly trained relatives last month while I was in Australia where (to make a long story short) I lost 6 Lyretail anthias, a copperband butterfly, and a triangle butterfly.
My light timer also malfunctioned about a week before I returned home and because the first and second couples that were watching my house and tank switched about that time the second group thought nothing of the fact that only the actinics were coming on. This resulted in a slight bleaching of all my corals and the RTN of a PM frag, Blue Tort frag and one wannabe blue tort that I never really identified. Everything has recovered and I have added 11 new corals to the tank in the last couple weeks. Here's the tank before I went on my honeymoon to Australia.

Lighting - 3x250W 14KK MH, with 2x6' VHO actinics.
Circulation - Sequence reeflo barracudas on the closed loops and two Mag12s on the returns.
Skimming - None
Mechanical filtration - None
Supplements - Reeftec Kalk reactor fed by a Litermeter III (added after kalk incident)
Substrate - Bare bottom
Water changes - about 30% - 40% per month with tap water.
Salt - Instant Ocean
Prefilter - None.... Baltimore city tap.

CURRENT PIC

 

[WDLV]

Here's a few more shots from the last couple of months.

 

[Avast Marine]

Man, I really dig this look. I found your thread on CMAS and was checking it out, good work man! Can you give a little more detail on the flow, like which bulkheads are for what? I really like that you have everything running from the sides, very clean.
Whats the TDS of good old Baltimore H2O? They use a ton of chloramines here in NOVA.

 

[WDLV]

Current fish include:
Hippo Tang
Purple Tang
Powder Brown Tang
Kole Tang
2 Engineering Gobies
Yellow Watchman Goby
2 Percula clowns (10 yr olds)
2 Green black and white damsels
White cap clown (A.leucokranos)

Clean up crew
100+ tiny snails raised from two plumb sized parents
100+ tiny chitons
Mini brittle stars

 

[Avast Marine]

How are the engineers doing in BB?

 

[WDLV]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=8383221#post8383221 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by dandy7200
Man, I really dig this look. I found your thread on CMAS and was checking it out, good work man! Can you give a little more detail on the flow, like which bulkheads are for what? I really like that you have everything running from the sides, very clean.
Whats the TDS of good old Baltimore H2O? They use a ton of chloramines here in NOVA.

Thanks for the praise!
TDS is probably pretty high.... but despite popular practice it hasn't killed anything yet.
If you're looking at the bulkheads the one at the top rear is a 2" overflow drain.
The three that are in a row are the 1" outputs from the CL.
The one lower one in the center with the screen is the 2" CL intake. Both sides are drilled the same way.

Disclaimer - I know I do things in a pretty unorthodox fashion, but it's my system. I wouldn't ask anyone else to do things the way I do. I have been practicing my chaotic method for a long time and I have made and will continue to make detrimental mistakes. All of which i have learned from. For the most part I understand my system and what needs to happen when. I would hate to see a beginner try to do what I do only to fail at it and quit the hobby. So please... if you're a newbie get the skimmer, use RODI water, Test your perameters and do whatever else the masses are doing because that way is far more likely to work for you than than what I'm doing. Consider this system the outlier in a bell shaped curve.

 

[WDLV]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=8383386#post8383386 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by dandy7200
How are the engineers doing in BB?

They've been in my possession for about a year and a half. In that time they've never had any sand substrate. They do however have a nice network of liverock caves to hide in and nobody has ever picked on them to my knowledge.
Here's a shot of one from the first week that the system was set up.
They're very elusive and hard to photograph.

 

[gman0526]

Beautiful looking sytem. I know all about relatives tank-sitting lost my regal angel like that. Good luck in the future with this beautiful tank, the aquascape is great and unique, good job.

 

[Avast Marine]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=8383753#post8383753 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by gman0526
the aquascape is great and unique, good job.

That's what caught my eye, it's almost like you just dropped a bunch of rock in the tank and just let it be. Not at all a bad thing, very natural looking but, not something you see everyday.

 

[Papajin]

Nice tank!

I love the engineer gobies... about the closest thing you can have to an eel without actually having an eel! I have one that was perhaps 3 inches long when I bought him... now.... 8+ years later, he's around 10-12 inches. Hard to tell as he doesn't come out of the rocks all the way that often.

 

[xinumaster]

excellent aquascaping. tell us more about your equipments.

 

[exoticaquatix]

very cool man, i love the aquascape, very natural yet original idea. i have tried using baltimore tap and i got a diatom bloom the next day. my Apt has the rustiest pipes/boiler i have ever seen so i use RO but everyone else i know gets away with the tap. Phil at EA has great luck with tap and so it seems with you. when i move ill give it a shot.
any chance i know you through EA? my screen name is less than creative, i used to work thurs all day, my name is nick. i figure you shop there cause i think i recognize some of those corals
anyway, looks great, sorry about the rough start. Ends justifies the crappy luck in the beginning i guess.
-nick

 

[WDLV]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=8383753#post8383753 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by gman0526
Beautiful looking sytem. I know all about relatives tank-sitting lost my regal angel like that. Good luck in the future with this beautiful tank, the aquascape is great and unique, good job.

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=8384216#post8384216 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by dandy7200
That's what caught my eye, it's almost like you just dropped a bunch of rock in the tank and just let it be. Not at all a bad thing, very natural looking but, not something you see everyday.

Thanks for the Kudos! It's actually got two baserock sculptures under the liverock that make the core more or less hollow so the fish can retreat when desired. The sculpture on the left looks like this. The one on the right was never photographed.

 

[WDLV]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=8384426#post8384426 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by Papajin
Nice tank!

I love the engineer gobies... about the closest thing you can have to an eel without actually having an eel! I have one that was perhaps 3 inches long when I bought him... now.... 8+ years later, he's around 10-12 inches. Hard to tell as he doesn't come out of the rocks all the way that often.

Yeah, even if they keep the tip of theit tails in the rock work, they still never come out fully. Mine are 8"-10" and were acquired about a year and a half ago when a guy was breaking his tank down. I did see some once that were 1" thick and several feet long! They were at a LFS called SeaSave but had come out of an aquarium exhibit.

 

[WDLV]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=8384446#post8384446 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by xinumaster
excellent aquascaping. tell us more about your equipments.

Ah yes. The engineer wants to know more about the equipment....
I'm sorry to have to tell you there's really not much to it and frankly the wiring is so frightening that I really don't want to show it off but here's my lighting rig, and the CL pumps. The lighting is three 250W Icecap Ballasts running EVC 14KK bulbs with Mini Lumenarc III reflectors. The Actinics are run on an Icecap660 ballast.

These are a story in themselves. I ordered these through a friend who owns his own business. The vendor knew they were for one person's system and still sent two pumps that looked totally different. I asked them to exchange the oddball one and they sent me another oddball. I just gave up and kept it. So, i have two mis-matched pumps.

 

[WDLV]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=8384500#post8384500 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by exoticaquatix
very cool man, i love the aquascape, very natural yet original idea. i have tried using baltimore tap and i got a diatom bloom the next day. my Apt has the rustiest pipes/boiler i have ever seen so i use RO but everyone else i know gets away with the tap. Phil at EA has great luck with tap and so it seems with you. when i move ill give it a shot.
any chance i know you through EA? my screen name is less than creative, i used to work thurs all day, my name is nick. i figure you shop there cause i think i recognize some of those corals
anyway, looks great, sorry about the rough start. Ends justifies the crappy luck in the beginning i guess.
-nick

It's possible that we've met Nick... but there's only one coral in that tank that was bought at EA. It's a yellow Acropora frag from the one in the store's front display tank. You can see it in the middle of the 7th picture in the second post. Aside from that all my corals were frags or home grown colonies that were collected from other reefers in CMAS. My handle there is WDLV. I have bought quite a few fish at EA and I buy a 200 gallon box of salt there every couple of weeks not to mention most of my other needs like food and other odds and ends. When I lived in Whitemarsh (2 years ago) I was there several times a week.

 

[Alphabet]

Nice tank, ditto on the aquascaping!

 

[Avast Marine]

Did you use a type of cement to build those rock sculptures? Also to follow up on the circulation, I see 6 bulkheads for returns each barracuda outputs 2 and each mag outputs 1? No elbows, no OM, sucess with complete laminar flow....interesting.

 

[WDLV]

Thanks Alphabet!

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=8385127#post8385127 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by dandy7200
Did you use a type of cement to build those rock sculptures? Also to follow up on the circulation, I see 6 bulkheads for returns each barracuda outputs 2 and each mag outputs 1? No elbows, no OM, sucess with complete laminar flow....interesting.

Here's a link to an old sculpture thread that I put together on the topic.

As for the barracudas, there are three outputs for each barracuda and there is currently no Oceansmotions or anything like that. I am running one barracuda from 0300 to 1700 and the other from 1500 to 0500 so there is an overlap where both pumps are on. I was running both constantly. Trust me there is nothing in that tank that's not moving when both pumps are on. I change my mind about every three months as to whether to use timers or to just let them run balls out.
The return lines just come in over the top behind the right overflow. That way if for some reason I should ever loose both return pumps, the syphon would break at the surface of the water.

Here's the tank room side of the plumbing. Did I mention this was an in wall???

 

[Avast Marine]

The reason I keep proding is I am about to do a 280 inwall that will have no back access, just from front and sides. I like what I am seeing here . Yeah 2 cudas on a wave timer......dang! lol