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davelin315's 300 Gallon In Wall Reef Tank


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About 24 hours into the RDSB I'm gearing up for a water change of about 120 gallons with RO/DI that is 0 TDS and Instant Ocean salt mix. I tested Nitrates and they are still over 50 (somewhere between 50-100 on the Salifert test). My plan of attack is to measure Nitrates about 1-2 times per week and also before and after any water changes as well as the day following a water change. My feeling is that by doing this I'll more accurately measure Nitrate levels based upon where it was before a water change, after a water change, and then a day after the water change has been thoroughly mixed in. This will help me to determine what effect, if any, the RDSB is having on the Nitrates in the system.

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Hey Dave, how about some full tank shots of aquascaping and livstock? It must look amazing!

Hey Jan, not much to show right now and I'm letting the algae grow a bit on the glass to help be an indicator of nitrates. There are some old full tank shots further back, though, as I'm not shy about using up bandwith and posting most or all of the pictures I take. :biggrin:

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Okay.

LOL, shy and Dave Lin? NEVER!

 

Hey Jan, not much to show right now and I'm letting the algae grow a bit on the glass to help be an indicator of nitrates. There are some old full tank shots further back, though, as I'm not shy about using up bandwith and posting most or all of the pictures I take. :biggrin:
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What puts the sand all over the clams like that?

Recycled sand... the tangs love to eat food off the sand bed and then as they swim around they poop it out. You'd be amazed at how much sand these guys will ingest in a day. One of these days I'll get a shot of it happening...

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Recycled sand... the tangs love to eat food off the sand bed and then as they swim around they poop it out. You'd be amazed at how much sand these guys will ingest in a day. One of these days I'll get a shot of it happening...

 

 

LMAO!!!! I have never heard of that! Now that is funny - even better would be to catch it on film :)

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I was wondering what you were planning to do with all that sand! That's exactly what I was going to do with it. Sorry to hear about your spike, I hope this works out for you. I love the idea of organic nitrate reduction.

The next thing I did was to add a Remote Deep Sand Bed (RDSB).
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Very nice clams. Is that a conch shell next to them? Is there a live conch in there? What kind of anemone is that? It has great color!

 

For reference, the squamosa clam is about 6.5" from end to end, that gives you some relative sizes of the fish.

 

The black teardrop maxima is the one I just picked up from Russell Wiley (thanks, it looks great in there!).

 

TopDown_12_1595.jpg

 

TopDown_12_1596.jpg

 

TopDown_12_1599.jpg

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Very nice clams. Is that a conch shell next to them? Is there a live conch in there? What kind of anemone is that? It has great color!

I have 2 queen conchs in the tank along with a fighting conch which I have not seen in about 3 months (didn't see it for a year before that) and a couple of sand conchs from F&F... tiger sand conchs I believe? They do a great job of cleaning up my sand bed. Both started out about the 3/4" long and are probably 3-4" each now. The anemone is a green bubble tip. They faded from having green all up and down to having green tips now.

 

Update on RDSB day 5.

 

I have noticed that there is GFO dust settling in various places in the tank so turned it down so that it's not turning over as much. There is quite a bit of this dust settling in the RDSB so I believe that this stuff is too heavy to get flushed out by the skimmer. Anyway, I cleared this out by brushing my hand over it and may add a powerhead to increase the flow in the RDSB to keep things out of it like this, either that or place a finer micron filter bag on the output of the skimmer.

 

Nitrates are still high, look somewhere between 50-100ppm, according to my wife they look like they're closer to 100 (she says I am really color blind). Again, this is with the Salifert test kit. I have not done the 2nd water change yet but the water is ready to go. I have to decide if I'll clean out my 2 frag trays or do a straight up water change. Both have substrate in them and the top one has crushed coral in it so I'm wondering if that's a big culprit in my high nitrates. It'll be an interesting clean if I do it - there's tons of pods, softies, crabs, mini carpets, etc. in there. I could also remove the padding and insulation around that part, too (aka 1" thick coating of bubble algae). Will do another nitrate test prior to water change and then one right after and one about 24 hours after to see what impact this has.

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  • 3 weeks later...

Nitrates still at between 50-100ppm. Seems like it might be closer to 50 than to 100, but may just be wishful thinking. Also did a water change of about 50 gallons last week at which point nitrates were the same before and after. I also took out some of the substrate from one of the tanks to put into a mantis tank and did some serious washing of the stuff I took out. I am contemplating removing the rest of the substrate in that tray as it's really a detritus trap as it's crushed coral. Not sure what I'll do with that stuff, although one option is to remove it and wash it out and then add some of it as a top layer to the RDSB so that I can increase the flow in there.

 

Anyway, it's day 20 of the RDSB, and my thoughts are that there are still no noticeable changes in nitrate levels. Generally speaking the trend is that at about a month it starts to kick in, anticipating the arrival of that day to see what impact this has on my system.

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  • 2 weeks later...
  • 2 months later...

116 days into the Remote Deep Sand Bed with additional denitrating blocks from Sean at Fins and Feathers and I think things are finally starting to work... I haven't tested lately and have a vat of 120 gallons of water for a water change but while I was poking around tonight I noticed that my Valonia farm had gone down quite a bit. The sides, which used to have 1"+ thick coatings of Valonia were becoming bare and there was less and less of it in the system (this is one of my Rubbermaid 50 gal stock tanks). Anyway, when I saw that there was probably 75% less of it than there was previously, I decided to test again. My nitrates appear to be between 25-50ppm now, closer to the higher side, but definitely nowhere near where they were before. My caulerpa has also started to grow a bit better and seems to be rebounding and outcompeting the Valonia now, whereas before it was the opposite. I will see if my chaeto makes a comeback as well, although there's not more than a golfball total of it in there I would guess. I'm going to hold off on the water change to see if this continues with the downward spiral and then if it does, I'll do a full change (120 gallons) and see where this leaves me. Exciting progress at last, only 4x longer than what most report as the "break in" period for RDSBs!

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  • 4 months later...

Long time since I've posted an update, essentially because nothing has changed in the tank. I did lose a couple of clams to an outbreak of whelks (can't figure out why I suddenly have so many of them, I pull 2-3 small ones out of the filter socks every few days), my male mandarin after many years, and also a big Queen Conch that got stuck in the rocks where I couldn't reach it to help it out, but otherwise the nitrates are holding steady and nothing seems to help.

 

With that in mind, I have modified my approach a bit. After speaking with Tom/origami about how his chaeto has stopped growing, possibly due to the lack of phosphates which is inhibiting the growth of the macro, we came up with the possibility that my nitrate problem was due to a lack of phosphates for the denitrifying bacteria to actually denitrify with. So, I pulled my GFO and am in the process of replacing it with bio-pellets. I also decided after having the same bed in one of my sumps since before I first set up the tank that I'd pull it and chuck it. Tonight I spent a couple of hours removing any last school corals from the sump along with whatever macro I wanted to salvage and then began the process of digging out the sand bed. It was a mix of crushed coral and reef grade aragonite sand, layered about 2-3" deep, so I have been thinking that it has become a huge source of nitrates due to all of the built up junk in there. Anyway, I removed a little over 5 gallons of this stuff that was filled with detritus and was a huge nutrient sink and then removed the entire sump and washed it out. In the process I think that I also may have helped to almost fully eradicate my bubble algae as this was pretty much the only place where it lived and then also removed 99% of my caulerpa.

 

I also had tested the nitrates yesterday and the result was still somewhere between 50-100ppm, probably closer to 100ppm, and so the next step is to remove the rest of the sand that has settled into one of my other sumps and then vacuum out the other sump and see where that leaves me. I still have the bed in the main tank, but that one is turned over quite often by the fish and when stirred up releases no visible organics. I have to reculture the biopellets due to a mishap with the first round of colonizing them, but hopefully the removal of the GFO and the addition of the biopellets will help to reduce my nitrates at long last and then I can add back sps again, the whole purpose of this tank!

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  • 2 weeks later...

Well, the nitrates are still booming and I do think that it's caused by the lack of phosphates in the system. I have not had any bacterial bloom with the addition of the biopellets so I'm guessing that my bacteria is in need of a boost. I'm going to reseed the biopellets and then introduce it again.

 

On a happier note, for the first time ever I saw what appeared to be a spawning dance between my 2 regals (blue belly and yellow belly). On the side of the tank where the light was turned off already I saw them swimming up and down with each other. Once they noticed me they stopped and headed back into the rocks. Wouldn't that be cool to have a green belly regal...

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  • 10 months later...

Almost a year since I've posted anything. Still battling nitrates but bit the bullet on cleaning the tank - used some paint sanding material that took the coralline off in just a few minutes time (also hazed the acrylic a tiny bit but nothing that some finer grit sandpaper won't fix). Anyway, took a video of the tank and the inhabitants.

 

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Looks good, Dave. Is that a skunk clown pair?

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Yeah, the skunks are going to be evicted as soon as I can safely scoop them up. I have caught them in clear tubes while they sit in the anemones but missed the scoop out of there with the net. They'll move to a sump as they are too aggressive and I'd like to form a black clown pair again. Right now I've got the pair of juvenile perculas and a single mature male black ocellaris (lost the female 2 FFE ago when I tried to hammer on the rocks to get anemones off and gave her a heart attack or something).

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  • 4 weeks later...

Ha ha, definitely! I just need to get another size lower grit and that will do the trick. Actually, the more I polish it with the same one, the duller it gets and hence the finer the grit seems to be.

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