gastone February 7 February 7 Upon re-entering the hobby exactly two years ago I snowballed with nano tanks. This biome, that critter, mushrooms, clams, aggressive clowns (ask me if I even like clowns). I ended up with 15 or 16 tanks between 2g and 40g. I can't begin to explain the expense or the maintenance of up keeping 15 nano tanks. @ReeferMan convinced me to buy a 90g cube that he had in his garage. My wife agreed to it on one condition...I had to get rid of 4 nano tanks. The build: Chris sold me the tank with a stand (still unfinished like most things in my life). I starting piecing together other components, drilled some (more) holes, had an overflow box built, picked up a sump, etc, etc. Once my wife got tired of the tank and stand sitting on the front porch I move it inside and filled it with water. This was roughly in September 2025. I'd been cooking/bleaching/acid bathing some live rock that was ready for aqua scaping, and I had about ten pounds of ceramic media that I'd been housing in my school sump for the past year. That system was started with rock from TBS in addition to a stupid amount of PNS probio and copepod addition that I'd cultured. So I expect/hope that the bacterial load is fairly substantial and will help me long term. We did the uglies, and eventually I added a neon green sinularia brassica. I did install a dedicated 20amp gfci breaker to run all of the electrical for the tank. The system: 90g cube 30"x 30" x 24" drilled for a bean animal overflow with two returns. Sump: Trigger Systems Emerald 39 Mechanical Filtration: Bubble King 180 mini VS12 - being my first ever large(ish) tank, I knew I was going to overstock so I wanted a substantial skimmer. No filter roller. I use a fair amount of filter floss and change it out every week or two. Biological filtration: the sump has a refugium section which I've added chaeto to. It's lit by a grow light opposite photoperiod from the main tank. I feed heavily and can throw out a gallon or two of dense chaeto whenever I think about it. No caulerpa for me. I've got it in my school tanks from the TBS rock and I hate it. Probably 50lbs of lr and the 10lbs of ceramic media. Lighting: AI hydra 64HD with two 24" Quanta Helix bars for supplementation. The AI are neat in that you can find presets on their homepage to utilize with images included. I'm using David Saxby's programming for the AI. The light cycle basically runs from 8am - 8pm. Circulation: two returns. One for each return hole in the tank. One is a DC Hygger that is rated at 56w and about 1600gph. The other is a DC AQQA rated at 25w and 800gph. I opted for redundancy and a healthy amount of water through the sump. I wanted to keep debris and detritus in suspension and down into the sump so the mechanic filtration could do its thing. Two hygger power heads and one hygger gyre for additional circulation. I also have an additional power head in the skimmer section of the sump to keep detritus in circulation. This does a good job of keeping the sump clean. Top off: tunze osmomolator tapped into a 14 gallon tote that is housed in an adjacent cabinet. Heating: inkbird temp controller with an 800w hygger heater. I've got another heater on order that should be here today or tomorrow. Again, for redundancy sake. Monitoring: I've got a little kactoily that gives me some basic readings and I've added an Aquawiz alk monitor that I will run kalkwasser though once my alk/calcium consumption picks up. I've got an avast K1 reactor to use for the kalk. I'll feed it directly from my ATO reservoir. Stocking: oh boy. Never had a big tank. I got my first aquarium in 1993, my first SW in 1996. I've never owned a tang. Well, we are going to change that. Fish were either purchased qt'ed (thanks Reef Escape) or qt'ed by me using TTM. Fish in order of addition: Scopas tang (zebrasoma scopas) from ReefEscapes - scopas have always been my favorite tang CB marine Betta (calloplesiops altivelis)from Biota. Tiny little baby was probably 1" upon arrival and has doubled in size in 4 months. I never see it. Never. I have to come out at night with a flashlight if I want to sneak a peak. Magnificent Foxface (Siganus magnificus) - immediately paired up with the scopas. Of all my fish, he seems the least settled upon later additions. Flame hawk fish (Neocirrhites armatus) was added at the same time as the mag. Fun little guy. I ended up adding another, smaller, one about a month or so later so now there are a pair of them. Not going to say they've paired up, but there's no aggression either. Whitetail bristetooth tang (Ctenochaetus flavicauda) the prettiest (and largest at 3.5-4") fish in the tank. Wow are they stunning. Pair of ocellaris from one of my school tanks. Clowns aren't my favorite (other than maroons...love gsms, but that kinda bully I just don't need here), but I'm also a believer that every tank should have clowns. Goldrim/powder black tang/white cheek (Acanthurus nigricans) - pretty fish. Dynamics didn't change much when I added him. Copperband butterfly (Chelmon rostratus) who doesn't love a copperband? I definitely took my time with this guy, and he's only been in the tank for two weeks now. Eating, right? Ugg. We did the gammut in qt. BBS, black worms (started a culture), white worms (grindal...another culture started), blood worms, and yes clams. Clams he was happy to eat. But long term that still wasn't a solution. I would take an opened clam and jam some masstick in there. Then I would take some masstick and mysis and coat it inside a clam shell. Eventually he started picking at it. I had to release him into the tank shortly after as I thought I was going to need my qt system for another fish. He's gone into the display and still loves his daily clam (he and everybody else), but he's also eating mysis out of the water column. So that's a win. Along with the assorted cleanup crew, there's a cleaner shrimp (presumably the hawks and betta haven't devoured him), a sand sitting starfish and a spider conch. And whatever assortment of hermits and snails I've added. Corals: I've never kept much sps. I plan on it this time. In time. In no particular order I've got 3 elegances (including @YHSublime's beauty that I picked up when he was downsizing systems), a nice acanthophyllia, some frogspawn, a fairly large duncan, hg micromussa, favias, goniopora, a scolymia, rfa's, pectinia, an assortment of softies - mushrooms and toadstools and Koji wada. And some other stuff. Elegance HGM with the mag in the background Some rfa's, and maxi mini carpets Koji wada - blue here. I'll get a pic under daylighting. Very nice, dark pink Isaac's elegance in a cove. Inflated it's close to 12" long I'd say A few shrooms and another rfa. Scoly off to the side. Torches with a maxi mini I think I've got 7 different toadstools in here. For the most part I don't know the cute little names for stuff. Copperband, goni in the background and acantho upset with all the flow. Love this rock flower. My photography sucks. This guy is a stunner in person. I feed pretty heavily. Everytime I walk by the tank I throw something in. Freeze dried pe mysis or tdo. I probably feed a cube or two of mysis each day. Some mermaid's delight on occasion. Pinch off some nori once a day. They like green. They tolerate purple. They don't like the red macro. I also throw in one clam per day. The clams are purchased live, scrubbed, and frozen. Rinsed and dropped in. 4
YHSublime February 8 February 8 Elegance is looking super happy, glad you've still got it going strong! I'd love to see some full tank shots from other angles. Do you have this setup with the overflow box on the side, or did you take the photo from the side of the tank for the FTS? One thing I'd be concerned about is that those toadstools (mostly located at the top of your scape) will grow incredibly fast, and big. They will quickly shade out portions of your tank, and will require constant trimming.
gastone February 9 Author February 9 Isaac, I'll get some pics from the other side. Our house was built in 1924 and is rather small and has an odd layout. The cube was placed in the only available space we had, which is in a corner so it's only viewable on two sides. It also had to be on an exterior wall to take advantage of the load taking advantage of the foundation wall underneath. The floor joists are 2x8, and the spacing is.... not 16". Currently everything is a mess. I avoided including pics of the severely unfinished stand, as well as the adjacent side as I'm currently, and to the dismay of my wife, storing a bunch of aquarium stuff on the ato cabinet. The toadstools were brought over from my school tank to fill things in a bit for the time being. The current long term plan it to bring them back to school once I feel everything is settled and we are ready for SPS here. They are pretty all bunched together, and truth be told, if I was ever smart about it, I'd keep them small via fragging to help offset some of my financial investment.
gastone February 24 Author February 24 So I'm full of bad ideas. What's better than an overstocked tank? A more overstocked tank, of course. @monstamich, @ReeferMan and I were chatting and looking for pyramid butterflyfish (Hemitaurichthys polylepis). Well, Mike came across some and grabbed two for me with the stipulation that I'd pick them up this past weekend. When I got to his house he either talked me into taking a third, or I convinced him that I needed a third. It's all very blurry to me. They were going through his copper QT at the time. I've never successfully used copper and decided that I would switch to my tried and true TTM qt (very much hybridized for this go round). He gave them a prazipro bath upon purchase and then a few more days of copper. I took them home and gave them 30 minutes in H2O2 and then into my ten gallon qt setup. Here they are in their peroxide bath. Not quite a day at at the spa.... So here's the overall QT from start to finish: 2/18 - 6 hr prazipro bath at 7.5mg/L then moved into at tank. Copper Power at therapeutic level (2.2-2.3ppm) Fish are also being treated with medicated food to help with internal parasites. 2/22 - I picked up fish. 30 min peroxide bath and into my ttm set-up at approximately 2:30pm. 2/25 - my plan is to bring them to school in the morning and then around 11am add prazipro for their second 6 hr bath. This will also give me the opportunity to reset the < 72 hour transfer cycle to a bit later in the day so I can take care of the transfers when I'm home from work. 2/28 - 2nd peroxide bath @20ml/g for 30 minutes and then transfer 3/3 - transfer 3/6 - transfer into a fresh qt for observation. They are eating great. Little piggies love pellets already which is fantastic. I haven't introduced medicated food yet at my house as I wanted them to settle in for a day or two. Medicated food recipe as taken from Humblefish: 1 TBSP frozen 1 scoop General Cure 1 scoop Focus 1 pinch Epsom salts to help expel dead worms/parasites A few drops of Selcon to help soften everything up and add some vitamins Feed once or twice per day. Mike had them eating medicated food and they didn't seem to care. Most fish that I've run through QT don't care for the taste of it, but these guys didn't seem to mind. I'm hoping that will continue under my care. Edit: I'm almost at the end of my stocking list. Almost.
Recommended Posts
Create an account or sign in to comment
You need to be a member in order to leave a comment
Create an account
Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!
Register a new accountSign in
Already have an account? Sign in here.
Sign In Now