40gal SPS breeder

[Pedro]

Hi WAMAS,

 

I just put together this rockscape for a 40gal tank that will be an SPS tank. It will be a really slow build, but was motivated to get the rock work done by a fellow WAMAS member lending me some of his Marco rock epoxy, which I did not end up using. I went ahead and put things together with just gel super glue, then crushed some old dead coral I had laying around and put it on the glue. The rock structure has two positions that I would use it in. Both positions have a stable three point contact with the bottom of the tank.

 

I am curious what your thoughts are! This was while putting it together.

 

 

This is the orientation I was originally going for. I believe it provides me ample surface area and it is a little lower allowing for the sticks to grow.

 

Orientation 1

 

Front view

 

Top view

 

 

But then I rotated it around and thought this might be a more attractive scape. It does go higher up the tank though.

 

 

Orientation 2

 

Front view

 

Top view

 

 

I am planning to go bare bottom, with sand and rocks in the sump for added biology/microbiology. It will be another 40gal breeder. I don't trust my current setups biology to seed the new tank. I will be trying to keep pest out of this new setup.

 

This is my current tank, it is a 75gal SCA, with a custom stand I had from a previous lagoon style setup. This will stay and probably become a soft/LPS tank.

 

Do you have any recommendations? Anyone with similar rockwork please give me pros and cons, and critiques.

[ReefAddict]

I like orientation #2, but you have to look at it everyday so whatever makes you happy, go with it.   

[Pedro]

I like orientation #2, but you have to look at it everyday so whatever makes you happy, go with it.   

Thanks, just curious if it's too high up the tank and enough surface area.

[ReefAddict]

It’s hard to tell from the picture how high it is, but looks like enough space to me.  Looks like plenty of surface area for corals.  You may want to have additional rock in the sump for bio filtration.  Are you drilling the tank?

[Pedro]

It’s hard to tell from the picture how high it is, but looks like enough space to me.  Looks like plenty of surface area for corals.  You may want to have additional rock in the sump for bio filtration.  Are you drilling the tank?

Thank you, the tank in the pictures will be the sump, the other tank is drilled with a 16" Shadow Overflow - Synergy Reef Systems installed. On the left panel.

[tpallas]

Any updates on this one? Sweet scape

[Pedro]

Thanks! Yeah there has been done work to the system. I was able to make lids for the tank and sump an got the plumbing done this past weekend.



Went with a solid lid for the main tank with a corner cut out for the return to come in and did three lids for the sump. This allows the over flow pipes to be plumbed into one lid, and the return into another, and then I still have the middle section for the skimmer and calc reactor. I made the lids out of polycarbonate sheets, it was not bad to cut them at all. The system will be running off a Sicce sdc to vary the flow rates, paired with a shadow overflow. When I did a wet test, with tap water, all the plumbing was fine but, the overflow had a tiny leak from both of the bulkheads. Took that down, cleaned all the faces and gaskets well went looking for gasket material at home Depot and some plumbing stores with little luck. I think I'm going to use silicone grease between the gaskets to see if that helps. Any other recommendations are welcome!



I went a little over kill with the whole system, in case I end up liking the zeovit system, and I was able to pick an avast Zeovit reactor on WAMAS.

[Pedro]

Last night I grabbed some rock rubble, put it into a bucket and threw in some microbacter xlm. The purpose of this is to start cycling some bio media, this rock rubble will go into the first section of the sump inside a chum bag, so that I could easily remove the rubble if needed to clean the sump.

I also silicone greased the gaskets on the shadow overflow box and found a way of securing the pipes to the shelf structure vs just hanging off the overflow box. I used some PVC clips to suspend them from the underside of the shelf.

[Pedro]

Here is a pic of how the drain pipes are supported.



Drilled the holes in the Lexan for the zeovit reactor lines, after doing it I regretted not thinking about where the dosing lines, and calc reactor lines will be going through, i would have moved the input line to the zeovit reactor down a little, but it will be fine.



Cleaning up my old ASM skimmer to put it into the system. It's currently running in a vinegar bath.


Still have to cut a hole for where the skimmer will stick out of the Lexan cover, and think of a way to make sure it doesn't overflow and stink up the basement. Might just create a baffle to get it to go back in through the lid, or add an overflow container, that floats inside and displaces the water volume that overflows into it, to minimize salinity changes. If anyone has created a system like this I would be interested in seeing it or hearing how it worked out.

I also have to figure out where all the hoses and cables will be going out through and I am glad I didn't start the electronics board before I started down the journey of setting up this system. My cables would have been short.

Placed an order for rock rubble from aquabiomics, for "clean" live rock introduction to the system. It comes in on the 30th. If the system is not running by then, it will seed the other rock rubble I have going in the bucket.

Question: Have any of you dealt with gas exchange issues with lidded systems before, how did you resolve it? Can't really have excess moisture down in the basement. I have a dehumidifier down there but... rather not temp the mold.

Also, any recommendations and questions are welcome.

[cpeguero]

You may want to consider splitting your lid around the skimmer cutout (and any other cutouts you plan). It will make it easier to remove the lids for maintenance. I’ve seen that on a couple of sumps.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[Pedro]

Thank you! It's a great idea. I'll see how difficult it is to get in and out of that section.

[Pedro]

Charles's suggestion was a good one, that I have not done yet, but will eventually get it done when I get tired of taking the skimmer cup off to get into the sump area. I'm going to leave it like this for now because it might make me clean out the skimmer cup more often.



Skimmer and calc reactor have been placed in the Middle section of the sump towards the back. A hole has been cut out for the skimmer cup to come out through, and another for it's airline.

The zeovit reactor pulls water from the first section and exhausts water in the third section. The reactor had to be re-sealed and a three day cure and now it's holding water!

During that time. The tank was stated and run for a few days with no rock, i did connect a media reactor with carbon and floated some filter floss.

Some aquamesh was used between the skimmer section and the front to compartmentalize things but allow for water flow. Aquamesh was also used in the buble trap to keep larger items from getting to the return pump section.



Rock rubble was placed in a bucket and run with microbacter xlm for two weeks before getting placed into the first and middle section of the sump. The rubble in the first section was placed into a chum bag for easier removal and cleaning when necessary. The rubble is just for added biological filtration surface area.

Added some ammonia to the tank, enough to get the system to 0.025 ppm. Started the zeovit system, by manually dosing zeobac, Zeo food and zeostart, as recommended. Ammonia levels dropped to un detectable. The pump to the zeovit reactor is on a 3hr cycle, getting shaken up twice a day. The skimmer turns off when water goes through the Zeovit reactor, and 10min after the reactor stops the skimmer turns back on.

Things are being controlled using an apex. The image below shows the need for one of my next tasks, cable management.



.

The rock structure was not added until the ammonia levels went back down. Rock rubble from aquabiomics was also added at that point, along with rotifers and copepods, to seed the tank with micro fauna. The skimmer was turned off during these additions and they were stepped accordingly. Started with bacteria gave it some time, added lights, then rotifers and phytoplankton, then pods. Still dosing phyto. Starting to see stuff grow on the glass.



Flow in the display needed some umph, so I added a nanostream to help out with that.

Checked water parameters.

Salinity: 35.6
Temp: 77.8 F
Alk: 7.7
Cal: 476
PO4: 0.05
NO3: 0.3

Added test coral, a green slimmer frag. Still looking good a few days after adding.



Now we wait, make sure parameters are kept steady and that we could keep the green slimmer alive.

[DaJMasta]

It's a lonely looking coral but congrats on getting it started!  Is there a whole startup method for the zeovit system?  Does it involve livestock as well?  I sort of expected the media and stuff would only really get going when there was a regular source of ammonia and nutrients from fish or regular feeding or both.

[Pedro]

There is a method, i am deviating a little. I have tried setting up bare bottoms in the past and it just takes so long to get things going, trying to see if I could set up a pest free system, by purchasing micro fauna from reputable sources. Testing out the frag to see if this works.

[YHSublime]

If you’re not just a glutton for punishment ?

[Pedro]

55 minutes ago, YHSublime said:

If you’re not just a glutton for punishment ?

Hopefully it works. I'm sure someone has tried something similar.

[Pedro]

Update: tank is doing well. I'll take water parameters tomorrow, but alkalinity had been stable around 8 dkh, with little to no coral, no surprise here.

It did go through it's first ugly stage,


Took some filter floss and a toothbrush and put some filter floss in the sump cleaned as much as I could until I could not see through the water.

Left the filter floss in the sump for a few hours after that.



Also switched the protein skimmer to not turn off when the Zeovit reactor had flow through it. Stopped dosing for a zeofood and start for a few day, and reduced the dose after that.

After doing this the green slimmer quickly lost its tissue.



A few days later added some mollies and a sixline to the tank, everyone is doing well and out and about.

After that picked up test frags of sps from a fellow wamas member, frags are looking good still.

I'll post more pics soon.

[tpallas]

What do the numbers on the front glass signify?

[Pedro]

13 hours ago, tpallas said:

What do the numbers on the front glass signify?

That was me just trying to keep track of the corals through pictures, but the tank is not ready yet. The second green slimmer is quickly losing tissue from the base. The other ones are looking okay. Both the phosphates and the calcium where high, and alkalinity has been stable and nitrates are at zero.

 

Salinity: 34.6 (brought this down a little on purpose)

Temp: 77.6 F

Alk: 7.8

Cal: 521

PO4: 1.77 (through the roof, tested rodi at 0, has to be the food, the salt, or overdosing of zeofood, or all three.)

NO3: 0.0 (not great either)

 

Did a 20% water change, and will be reducing the zeofood a bit.

 

 

[tpallas]

Any updates on this one?

[Pedro]

Hi Everyone,

 

I have fallen off from updating you all on every detail, things were not working out for a while and I just needed to figure out why. I know the community is there to help but I didn't want to just ask and wanted to learn things the hard way! I am back and open to any and all suggestions (for the time being!). Thank you.

 

I will post pictures soon, nothing crazy going on with the tank, but it is looking cleaner than before.

 

So, after those weird phosphate readings, still not sure what was going on there. Is there a phosphate cycle for new tanks? Or was I just not cleaning the vials before hand and getting a misread? My phosphates leveled out to 0 after that last crazy reading. I put in another test coral (another green slimmer frag) and it too died. I was not sure what was going on, all the levels I was testing for were coming in fine. Three major cleanings, full toothbrush rock scrubs and all, the algae kept on taking over even with, the parameters I was checking looking fine. I left for vacation and the fish I had in there started dieing off little by little and when the last one moved on I didn't know what else to do. I asked a WAMAS member with a  good record of keeping pestless nice looking tanks for a larger rock, to see if I could seed the tank with beneficial bacteria. That rock came with a bunch bristle stars amphipods and other critters. I didn't care at that point. Slowly they too died off though. During that time another WAMAS member recommended I reduce my photo period to just 6 hrs, so I did. This curbed the algae growth a little but did not stop it by any means. Ammonia was not detectable at all at this point.

 

I decide to send out some ICP tests. I had 3 laying around from my birthday 2 years ago. I used them all. My 75g wasn't looking too good either(it is still not looking that great, thankfully all the fish are fine though). I sent out samples of the 40g sps system, the 75g, and my RO. The two reef tanks came back with high lithium, tin, and Sulfur, and Barium. RO came back fine as it should have. Since there was nothing "alive" left in there I purchased new salt (went with tropic marin) and did 3x 50+% water changes as quick as I could make the water up (I believe this was the turning point, I hope things stay on an uptrend). A few weeks past and I finally started seeing life in the tank (aside from the crazy algae growing all over the display), there were actually pods (amphipods and copepods) I went ahead and added another container of pods to the tank. I kept on seeing life, so I added in a sixline and lawnmower blenny. Then I purchased a clean up crew from reeftopia, the astra snails(also purchased some peppermint shrimp and blue leg hermits and an urchin) devoured all the algae in the tank. I thought I had done a great job with the 3 algae scrubs I carried out in the tank but they put me to shame. During that time I did one 50% water change to the 75g and started putting the excess snails into that tank, they are sadly not doing very well in that tank. I have increased my photo period in the 40g system back to 12 hrs to promote algae growth and food for the algae eaters. I have continued to add fish into the system, they are doing well thankfully (a tomini tang, and some bangaii cardinals). And the parameters I am checking are at:

 

Salinity: 34.9
Temp: 79.9 deg F
Alk: 8.6 dkH
Cal: 414 ppm
PO4: 0 ppm
NO3: 2.4 ppm

 

I've been keeping up with the zeovit dosing, and have started feeding a good amount more, trying to get the nitrates and phosphates to detectable levels, and have some algae for the clean up crew. ( I know that the zeovit system will pull lots of the nutrients out)

 

[Pedro]

Here is a picture from when the last post posted. Wanted to take a less blue picture but did not get around to it before I left for the holidays. 

 

[Pedro]

Here is a picture today. Pictures up some corals recently. Was very pleasantly surprised with the free green slimmer "frag"! Thank you WAMAS. 

[Pedro]

This was about half the frag. The other half was lanky do it easy glued to the back so that it had space to sprawl out as needed.

[YHSublime]

Nice! I love the concept of the tonga, load this up with acro and get on with it!