Waterbox 270 LX

[roni]

We'll see how diligent I am about updating this but here goes nothing.

 

Tank: Waterbox 270 LX (72x30x24) with stock stand and sump

Lights: 60" ATI LED/T5 hybrid fixture

Water Motion: 1 MP 60, 3 MP40, Tunze wavebox, Vectra L2 return x 2

Skimmer: Bubbleking SuperMarin 250

Replenishment: Deltec Automatic Calcium Reactor, Litermeter Auto Water Change, Litermeter kalkwasser topoff fed into an Avast kalkstirrer

Fuge with Chaeto, lit by tunze ecochic and a kessil 80.

57 W Aqua UV sterilizers fed off manifold

Neptune controller

[roni]

Hung the ATI hybrid (love these lights), put in a dedicated 20A circuit and ran tubing from remote water supply

 

 

Sump prior to water

 

 

Tank in place.  Ordered from NOVA tropicals, who did a fantastic job coordinating with FedEx (still terrible) and getting everything into place as well as with initial setup.  Can't say enough good things about Dave and the team. 

 

 

Filling with water, took almost 3 days.   New rock structures that I built using marco cement/epoxy and gluesavers thin glue.

 

 

Water in, moved some stuff over.

 

 

Sump plumbed, have since installed the apex, the sterilizer and plumbed the kalkreactor

 

Prior to screen, most of the corals moved over.

 

 

Fish mainly moved over.  A purple tang is in my old system but waiting for a large order of fish to finish qt before they are all put in.

Edited October 29, 2021 by roni

[DaJMasta]

Very nice!  How long has it been up for?

[roni]

4 minutes ago, DaJMasta said:

Very nice!  How long has it been up for?

 

thanks!  about 6 weeks now from water to now.  Though much of the rock/corals/fish are coming from my 2 existing systems, which are slowly being taken down.  I've also gone on a little coral buying spree so I'll be basically done for the foreseeable future after this Saturday.  

[thakki]

Nice setup!

[YHSublime]

Beautiful. This is the same tank you've had, right? You're just getting around to updating it now?

[roni]

1 hour ago, thakki said:

Nice setup!

Thanks!  And thanks for the snails/frags 

This guy eats well

 

1 minute ago, YHSublime said:

Beautiful. This is the same tank you've had, right? You're just getting around to updating it now?

 

Thanks!  Nope, new system.  Consolidated the 100 reef savvy (which will be up for sale soon if anyone is interested) and a nuvo 24.  

[YHSublime]

7 minutes ago, roni said:

Thanks!  Nope, new system.  Consolidated the 100 reef savvy (which will be up for sale soon if anyone is interested) and a nuvo 24.  

 

Ah, it's been a minute, and by minute, I mean years. Well, it looks awesome, I always think about going bigger, and then I think "but why?" 

[roni]

17 hours ago, YHSublime said:

 

Ah, it's been a minute, and by minute, I mean years. Well, it looks awesome, I always think about going bigger, and then I think "but why?" 

Haha, too true.  I spent a little time really trying to organize and automate this system a little more.  Time will tell.  

 

Your nano is perfect.  It would be hard to justify changing other then to have more fish.  My 100 just started to get incredibly crowded after 4 years and I missed having more fish.  I also needed more space for the anemones.  

 

[roni]

 

Picked up this bright orange hammer (brighter in person then my pic) @novatropicals.  They had some other nice euphyllia in and it's been nice to have another lfs around with quantum no longer open.

 

 

 

[howaboutme]

Nice! That's a huge waterbox. How do you like their new aluminum stands? Aren't just 80/20?

[roni]

1 hour ago, howaboutme said:

Nice! That's a huge waterbox. How do you like their new aluminum stands? Aren't just 80/20?

Thanks! Yeah, second biggest.  I was going to go with the 320 but my preferred lighting solution wasn't available and there was a huge wait on the tank due to supply chain issues.  I think it's 80/20 as the frame with treated plywood doors.  Decent quality and thankfully came preassembled.

[roni]

Got in this pair from biota.  I knew going captive bred they would be small but I had no sense of how small.  For reference that's 2" pvc next to them.  The acclimation container will be their home for a while!

 

[DaJMasta]

Awwww, tiny little things.  Do you have plans for training them to eat frozen or just let them graze?

[roni]

31 minutes ago, DaJMasta said:

Awwww, tiny little things.  Do you have plans for training them to eat frozen or just let them graze?

Supposedly they eat frozen baby brine and calcanus but haven't been able to find either. I have tdo b1 coming tomorrow from brs and they are eating that at biota so fingers crossed. I put some chaeto from the fuge in there and they started picking so will also rotate that out

[DaJMasta]

Ah, very nice, the benefits of captive bred!  My local shops have had PE Calanus pretty regularly, but cyclops seems to be a little more intermittent - haven't seen calanus at a petco or similar, but I'm sure they are around somewhere.  If they go for the B1, it's probably a good bet, but my larger ones always go for frozen over pellets every time.  I haven't had luck getting mine to eat fish eggs (capelin roe), but that may be around the right size too.

Something you could try if others aren't working/available: Hikari frozen bloodworms.  They're smaller worms than other brands (at least than PE, haven't tried too many), and both of mine like bloodworms pretty well.  Not only that, they don't seem to have too much problem swallowing a worm at least a third their length, provided they have a couple chances to slurp at it.

Edited November 3, 2021 by DaJMasta

[roni]

18 hours ago, DaJMasta said:

Ah, very nice, the benefits of captive bred!  My local shops have had PE Calanus pretty regularly, but cyclops seems to be a little more intermittent - haven't seen calanus at a petco or similar, but I'm sure they are around somewhere.  If they go for the B1, it's probably a good bet, but my larger ones always go for frozen over pellets every time.  I haven't had luck getting mine to eat fish eggs (capelin roe), but that may be around the right size too.

Something you could try if others aren't working/available: Hikari frozen bloodworms.  They're smaller worms than other brands (at least than PE, haven't tried too many), and both of mine like bloodworms pretty well.  Not only that, they don't seem to have too much problem swallowing a worm at least a third their length, provided they have a couple chances to slurp at it.

Thanks for the suggestions! I was going to grab some but when I checked today, only one mandarin was in the container.  As I looked, I watched the other one get right up to the slit in the container and then jump through.  My heart skipped a beat watching it float over the large blue carpet before landing near the rock, where the other mandarin greeted it.  Saw them both picking at rock so there must be food.  Was hoping to fatten them up but I guess we'll see.  Hopefully I see them again...

[YHSublime]

Sent you a text, Roni. Also, have you tried LRS? I use it exclusively, and soaking in shave tank water and a shot glass, get really nice sized pieces, are they mandarins, dragonetts?

[DaJMasta]

Most fish seem to ignore them, and I've seen fish try to hassle my mandarins and the mandarin just sits there until they are done and goes on pecking, so they will probably be fine!  They seem to be easily startled, but they also will probably tour around the tank looking for food and sleep out on the sand or rockwork - they don't seem to sleep in caves much.

[roni]

4 hours ago, YHSublime said:

Sent you a text, Roni. Also, have you tried LRS? I use it exclusively, and soaking in shave tank water and a shot glass, get really nice sized pieces, are they mandarins, dragonetts?

 

They ignore lrs but the tdo b1, which is basically the size of reef roids did the trick.  They have decided on a small area to make the home base so flooded the tank in that area.

3 hours ago, DaJMasta said:

Most fish seem to ignore them, and I've seen fish try to hassle my mandarins and the mandarin just sits there until they are done and goes on pecking, so they will probably be fine!  They seem to be easily startled, but they also will probably tour around the tank looking for food and sleep out on the sand or rockwork - they don't seem to sleep in caves much.

Yeah, the other fish aren't as issue.  My biggest fear is they will blunder into the gigantea or the ritteri, or get stung by euphyllia.  I moved most of my lps away from the main structure so hopefully things will be good. 

 

On another note, fired this guy up tonight.  

 

[Apcoleman]

15 hours ago, roni said:

 

They ignore lrs but the tdo b1, which is basically the size of reef roids did the trick.  They have decided on a small area to make the home base so flooded the tank in that area.

Yeah, the other fish aren't as issue.  My biggest fear is they will blunder into the gigantea or the ritteri, or get stung by euphyllia.  I moved most of my lps away from the main structure so hopefully things will be good. 

 

On another note, fired this guy up tonight.  

 

What made you go with the Deltec? I have started looking that these. I know @epleeds is running a DeStaco and Im between the two. Great looking tank and cant wait to see this grow in.

[roni]

40 minutes ago, Apcoleman said:

What made you go with the Deltec? I have started looking that these. I know @epleeds is running a DeStaco and Im between the two. Great looking tank and cant wait to see this grow in.

Thanks Tony!  To be honest, I was looking at the DaStaco off of Eric's recommendation and this came up for sale from a member who was getting out of corals.  So basically I took advantage of a great deal on a new unit.  There is a guy on r2r who reviewed both.  Here's a link to his thread

 

https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/deltec-cr-twintech-1500-thoughts-and-review.802244/

 

However, I think both work well and you really can't go wrong.  The DastaCo has been around longer so better track record.  I like the ease of the deltec in setup but we'll see how it works long term.  This is the first calcium reactor I've actually fired up.  I had one with all the valves but never actually got it going and relied on kalkwasser and tropic marin.  I'm hoping this will add some much needed stability and I really liked that there were not as many points of failure as traditional ca reactor setups.  

[Apcoleman]

10 minutes ago, roni said:

Thanks Tony!  To be honest, I was looking at the DaStaco off of Eric's recommendation and this came up for sale from a member who was getting out of corals.  So basically I took advantage of a great deal on a new unit.  There is a guy on r2r who reviewed both.  Here's a link to his thread

 

https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/deltec-cr-twintech-1500-thoughts-and-review.802244/

 

However, I think both work well and you really can't go wrong.  The DastaCo has been around longer so better track record.  I like the ease of the deltec in setup but we'll see how it works long term.  This is the first calcium reactor I've actually fired up.  I had one with all the valves but never actually got it going and relied on kalkwasser and tropic marin.  I'm hoping this will add some much needed stability and I really liked that there were not as many points of failure as traditional ca reactor setups.  

That is awesome and I remember that FS thread. Nice snag indeed! Ill have to go through that thread. There is another ACR from a small USA shop but the only thing I have read is good luck if you have a problem because the guy never responds so that one is out even with a much lower price point. 

 

You nailed it, I am trying to remove a few variables from my setup (CArX and Kalk) so these really have me leaning the automatic reactor direction.

[roni]

Yeah, the aquatic engineering guy is quite the story (self made multimillionaire right out of high school, invented some industrial tools) but not the greatest in terms of product support.  @Namreefs had one on his tank before shutting down.  

 

To illustrate the risk these mandarins took getting to their spot.  You can just see one of the pair near the flame angels mouth.  Floated over this huge gig and now are hanging out in that little area.

Edited November 4, 2021 by roni

[roni]

Nearing the 2 month mark.  A big batch of fish finishes qt in the middle of December and then I'll be watching things grow and sitting tight for a while.

 

In the meantime, my girls got upset about losing their bubbletip anemones, I'm weak and one thing led to another and I decided to keep the reef savvy up as a mixed reef mainly focused on anemones and soft corals.

 

On the plus side, it allows me to shift my zoas and some of the meatier lps into that tank so might get angels again.  Still not sure how much the second tank will stand the test of adolescent resolve so I'll hold off on big changes...

 

A few quick non filtered pics: