Our aquaforest cube

[GraffitiSpotCorals]

So I found a new fish that lives in my rockwork. It's a orchid dottyback and I have no clue when it was added. First time seeing it

I also picked up three more convict tangs so I have 4 total for the coral tank upstairs. Also added an ebli angel which I want to add to my display tank to go with my ebli tang but I have no idea how that will work out. Especially with a flame angel who likes to give chase now and then. I added two 6 lines one upstairs and another to my display, forgot how much I love these guys.

The convict tangs went to schooling right away. Very happy with them and I hope they keep the tank clean.

 

I have a lot of work to do on the whole system and we might need help to tell the truth. Here is everything that needs to be done.

 

Find a new big home for our large emperator angel

Frag all larger zoanthid colonies

Cut frags from grown out colonies in my display to keep things growing in the right direction.

Frag and mount all the acros upstairs that didn't do well on a shipment so they can grow out on fresh surfaces.

Rewire the soligfoi halide fixtures to replace one of the atis on the tank upstairs.

Clean all corals, algae and detritus upstairs.

Mount reefbrite on the wife's tank.

Plumb the bead filter into the system.

Send in a number of pieces of equipment to get fixed or refurbished.

 

And many more things that never end. Large systems take time and energy that's for sure. I honestly can't wait to begin to downsize and move so I can set something up right from the start.

 

I really want to take some macro pictures to post for everyone to see but I am lazy and need motivation...

[GraffitiSpotCorals]

So I am very happy with how the tanks running right now. Corals are starting to look nice and showing good signs. I will try to get a final picture of how the display looks and take some macro shots of some stuff as well.

 

So far I added more leds over the display. I am extremely happy with the color they are putting out and the shine they give the acros even with both halides on I can see a huge difference. I still have them on every side of the tank facing in and the two new 3' strips are mounted on the side of the halide reflectors more over the "center" of the tank. So far I have the following...

4 - 2' reefbrites

1 - 3' reefbrite which didn't put it on the wife's tank, I stole it :p

1 - 3' reef bar pro with no lenses

That's 102 blue LEDs I am supplimenting the halides with. Thats close two the same output as two and a half led fixtures. Some people only run one single led fixture over this size tank. I think having no lenses really helps spread the light out over the tank well, if I had lenses things would probably be affected badly especially given the distance from the tank. The LEDs are mounted 5" off the water surface and the two radium's are 6" off the surface. I am very excited to see how things grow. I hope I can keep the tank up long enough to be satisfied with all the work I have put into it.

[sethsolomon]

That emperor angel is a total beefcake  :P

[GraffitiSpotCorals]

Yea I should figure out how to post videos and post one of him grunting. He vibrates the tank and is very loud. Best fish we ever had too. I have some pictures of him when he was a baby the size of a quarter in Amanda's shallow zoanthid tank somewhere, I gotta find them.

[Origami]

Yea I should figure out how to post videos and post one of him grunting. He vibrates the tank and is very loud. Best fish we ever had too. I have some pictures of him when he was a baby the size of a quarter in Amanda's shallow zoanthid tank somewhere, I gotta find them.

Post the video to YouTube and copy the link to the page where the video is. It'll look something like www.youtube.com/watch? =nnnnnnnn. Post that like (with the http prefix) and the forum should recognize it and embed the video.

 

All's looking well in your tank, though!

 

Sent from my phone

[GraffitiSpotCorals]

I also finally hooked up a kalk reactor so I can start introducing kalk slowly to the tank. I am starting by turning it on once or twice a day to stir the kalk and keep upping it as my alkalinity lets me. Until I am ready to use a kalk stirrer which keeps it saturated at all times.

I plan to make my own stirrer which can hold a large amount of kalk and will have multiple blades on angles to stir. The angled blade should help turn the kalk over instead of just pushing through it. I am not sure of the size I am going to make it just yet. Probably a 6" chamber 2' or 30" tall. I have a lot of evaporation from having so much surface area on the system and am hoping once the new stirrer is made and running things will really kick off. It was almost to the day that I turned on the kalk reactor and saw growth and color in corals I haven't seen it in. People sometimes underestimate kalk and the good benifits it has or its ability to run a system.

[GraffitiSpotCorals]

Thanks Tom I will try and play around and see how I do with taking a decent video.

[GraffitiSpotCorals]

Here is some front tank shots with the tank fully stocked. Hopefully an update later on will show decent growth.

 

 

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[monkiboy]

jammed packed full of a variety, holy cow! thanks for sharing!

[sigel7]

Wow that's packed. Any frags available?

 

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[GraffitiSpotCorals]

Yea it's definatly packed, though I am sure a few won't be what I thought and I will have more space at some point. I think it's obvious I definatly love acropora

 

Sigel7 I sent you a pm. I will cut frags at some point soon but not til things are aclimated to the tank well. A lot of the acros i have left that I put in my tank went through a lot of stress getting here and looked very bad when they got here.

 

On another note I just wanted to share a picture of a mat of sponge growing outside on one of the display tanks overflows, in the tank. There is so much sponge in this system it's really fun to watch them process water while they open and close their tubes. This sponge is about 5x3".

You can see the amount of particulate in the water column in the picture as well. It's an eyesore even though I know it's a good thing that feeds smaller life forms in the tank.

 

 

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[swizz]

Beautiful tank...Wow

 

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[Sharkey18]

wow. Sweet. 

[s2nhle]

awesome. tagging along.

[GraffitiSpotCorals]

Thanks guys, hopefully I can update soon. I made a big kalk stirrer to take advantage of my evaporation rate. I have always had the best success with kalk and a calcium reactor.

 

I also made a way to run the kalk stirrer, with the fresh water input at the bottom pushing through the kalk, with NO check valve. I hate how they clog up constantly and need attention. I am going to glue it up today and test it out. I am very excited because I can see it working very well.

 

Crazy part is I am keeping my alk at 9 now. I am very surprised I have not had any issues with burnt tips. I am still dosing 50ml of vinegar and 50ml of vodka a day to keep nutrients unreadable on test kits and I have yet to find anyone having success running a bacterial driven system with alk this high and nutrients that low. Only thing that bothers me is I am not sure if things would do better with alk at a lower number like 7 or not. But as long as things are growing and healthy I am going to keep things where they fall and not mess with anything.

[GraffitiSpotCorals]

Finally ready to run the big kalk stirrer and just finished making the anti syphon part. I hate using check valves because they always fail and the only way to get kalk at a good saturation with a stirrer is to run your supply feed into the kalk on the bottom.

The whole thing is kind of bulky and I could have done it on one inch but the 1.5" pipe makes it even less likely to create a syphon if the auto vent fails in the closed position for some odd reason. If I used 1" all the way up water could rise up to the auto vent easier and kalk water would ruin it. I also made a stirrer bar with 5 bars and a waffle section towards the bottom to really move the kalk around and let me fill it with a lot of kalk. It will stir about a quarter of the chamber. I still have to make a bracket I can glue to the side of the stirrer to hold the riser since it is just a unideal at the bottom, that's why the zip ties are there.

 

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[John Ford]

That looks nice!

 

Did you ever get your MH up and running upstairs?

[GraffitiSpotCorals]

Yea but I don't have any corals in there really. I am preparing it for frags soon, hopefully today. Needs to be cleaned extremely bad, I can't even see into it.

[GraffitiSpotCorals]

Well bubble algae invaded to many corals so I cut everything affected up and moved everything upstairs. I have a couple of my best conies going up there today to finish. Then I am selling off most of all the fish in the tank. I will break down everything downstairs and finish the flooring and kitchen. Finally! After than I will put up a display tank that is easier to maintain and try and avoid introducing any pest algaes. We have had the same rocks and such for 10+ years so I am looking forward to starting over.

[GraffitiSpotCorals]

Well I lost a lot of stuff to the bubble algae and some stupid moves but saved a few corals. Most of what I have left is all new frags and mini colonies that I am growing out although a small percent of the frags and colonies made it through the hard time.

I still have the 8 foot frag tank and the 100 gallon rubbermaid which is filled with live rock and drag racks on top and the dump is filled with live rock as well. I am using a Reef octopus 6000ext thanks to rob for trading with me! Love those bubble blaster pumps. Its ran off the 100 gallon rubbermaid with a jeabo 12000 supplying it at about 50 percent.

I am still using aquaforest and vodka and vinegar but just had a nutrient spike for a few weeks because of a dose issue. Still haven't hooked up my darn apex either. Colors saturated for a few weeks but things are looking better and more like I like it now. I like a more daylight light colored coral with very bright bold neon coloration. I am dosing kalk from the reactor I made using all my top off water which is about 3 or 4 gallons a day from what I would guess. I have to start dosing or finish making my new calcium reactor. So dosing will probably happen for a while because things are busy here.

Once I sell all my doubles and colonies I dont want I will catch up on late bills and hopefully be able to setup the 10' by 2' fiberglass frag tank which is 15" compared to the 10 I have of water now. This should help because my stags are close and some have already needed a clipping. Hopefully on this system I can have a cube display the 10' frag tank and the 8' frag tank all in the same area with the two long tanks stacked and the cube on the end on a new stand with my old sump underneath it. My only issues will be venting the whole area outside because of humidity and heat. I will hope to have it all closed in when it's all finished. We were hoping to move but things didn't work out how I thought they would and it seems we are stuck here until something changes. I will try to update how things are going as much as I can. I still plan to try and collect some more nice pieces but the situation for the mariculture sites isn't good. No ones really getting much stuff either so whatever they get is basically being cut up right away or stored for when prices jump. Which they seem to be already. I will probably get a box or two from the site that's open if is even still open I haven't been keeping up.

 

Ok done rambling, I will try and get some pictures up as soon as I can.

[GraffitiSpotCorals]

Wow so it's been basically a year since I lost most of the acros. I haven't bought anything but a ton wild and maricultured fragments and a couple choice named frags from copps and my favorite vendor for acros will at squad. I cant wait to get a display tank up for my favorite corals, it will mainly be a staghorn dominated tank hopefully. Mainly because I finally found a red and also a blue staghorn, took forever but I really hope I can keep them for a long time. My main focus for now will be to try and supply nice fragments of all the nice acros I have found to the area because it has always been the same corals floating around here. The corals change over time but still I always see the same ones in everyone's tanks. And recently it is a lot of nice cool new stuff but still not a large variety to choose from anywhere I know of

[GraffitiSpotCorals]

I cleaned the glass for a change so here is what the tank looks like now. You can see the birdsnest is what warned me nutrients were back to the way I like it, but I forgot to test as I was dropping them so it started to rtn. Threw out a big chunk and hopefully it looks the same and doesnt have more death when I get home. I dumped some nitrate powder in the tank so things would level out so I am thinking it should be fine. I dont like keeping them under t5 though, metal halide keeps the center of the colony with more light and it doesnt die off in the center as badly as t5 does.

 

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[YHSublime]

Nice looking stags. 

 

Were you talking about the MH being better for birdsnest vs T5, or SPS in general? I've had several birdsnest colonies die inside out with LED, that's an interesting observation. 

[GraffitiSpotCorals]

Yea metal halide keeps the center of the colony alive, much better, t5s for some reason only keep a few inches of the outside of the colony alive. Mine grow very densely because of flow though so it makes the difference a little more dramatic.