WAMAS Tank of the Month
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What an honor to be selected for TOTM! I kept freshwater aquariums as a child, and it wasn’t until 2011 that I dipped my toes into saltwater with a Biocube 14. From there, I quickly got fascinated by the hobby, and knew I would outgrow the Biocube, and went to a 90 gallon reef ready tank. In 2015, I moved to a new home, and got rid of my livestock and tank, and started grand plans for a new build.
After many iterations of location and size, my wife and I decided to put the main aquarium in the small home office. This way it would be partially viewable from the kitchen area. I sourced a 220 gallon custom built aquarium from Crystal Dynamic Aquariums. As most reefers will attest to, the journey can be long and slow, and filled with bumps, and mine is no different. I’m happy where the tank is now, but I admit to being a tinkerer. My display tank is a custom size, 84”wx28”dx22”h with eurobracing on the top and bottom, and a wide internal overflow in a Bean Animal configuration. I picked the size specifically to fit my small office. I wanted to be able to reach the very back of the aquarium, so I kept the height relatively short, and the internal overflow was a compromise because the back of the aquarium is up against the wall to the garage. As much as I like aquariums, I like cars and garages just as much, so there’s no way I’m reducing garage space! The cabinetry is custom, and is framed around a steel stand. The cabinet above the aquarium isn’t a cabinet at all. It’s just a U shaped facade attached to the ceiling and back wall. There’s no real structure to it. I tried to think of all the things I could want above and below the aquarium, and between the office and the basement where I filter and mix saltwater. If I had to do it again, I would make a few changes, but I got pretty close. I can change water without buckets by turning a few valves and using my Neptune Apex and Sicce apps on my phone, and I never have to fill my ATO, as it comes from my RODI reservoir using a Spectrapure ATO, which has a speed adjustable peristaltic pump. I tuned the pump speed so that it can’t easily overflow the tank, even if it was stuck in the on position. As a safety, my Apex lets me know if the sump level is high. I’m a big believer in using my Apex to monitor. At first, I tried to automate various proactive actions, like turning off ATO based on salinity, or alarming on flow meters. I found that as the tank settled in, these monitors weren’t reliable enough to make potentially disastrous changes, but the Apex as a monitoring and data trending system has been excellent! I love my Trident; it’s one of my favorite pieces of equipment that I have. Knowing that humidity and heat are a problem above a tank, I installed a radon fan in the attic, which runs 24/7. It works great to manage humidity, but it isn’t enough to keep the heat down. To combat high water temperatures, I have fans of different sizes staged to turn on at different temperatures. The rock structures stay relatively low in the tank, to create the illusion of a taller tank, and because I like a clear top half to give room for corals to grow in, and a large swimming space for my dozens of fish. I’m sure I’ll get quite the reaction here. I have 7 GHL Mitra 7206s and 6 Kessil A360x above the aquarium. I got 5 of the Mitras during 2017 MACNA for a good deal. They don’t exhibit the typical color separation of most LEDs, and are really incredibly well built. I added 2 more that I found used, and started adding Kessils for additional shimmer and punch to some areas of the aquarium. As a technologist, LEDs were more interesting to me. I’ve also had T5s before, and knew how much heat they would put out. Also, blue T5 tubes have a lot of green, a spectrum that human eyes are sensitive to, and I really dislike the green from blue plus T5 bulbs. Metal halides are wonderful, if you have the room for large reflectors, and can handle the heat. Much to the dismay of my corals, I’ve fiddled with the lights quite a bit. I finally settled in around 350-500 par for most of the aquarium. It’s a bit high, but I think some of the nicer colors don’t appear until you really hit 400+ par. With oodles and noodles of fish, you need strong filtration. I have a really large 70 gallon Precision Marine R48 Pro Plus sump. So large that it almost didn’t fit! I had to cut some tabs off my steel stand to slide the sump in. The tabs were for securing the cabinet siding, so it wasn’t a structural compromise to remove a few of them. The heart of the sump is a Bubble King Double Cone 200. Because I acknowledge my laziness, I have it hooked up to a large Avast waste collector. Acknowledging laziness in reefing is important! It drives me to automate as much as I can, and make tasks easier too. This is a theme that comes up over and over, and influences how I set things up. I have a refugium section that is 24”x12”. Enough to hold a ridiculous amount of chaeto. I made the mistake of overlighting it at one point, which helped strip the nutrients too much, and started me down a frustrating path of dealing with ostreopsis dinos. They are also the reason why I have both a strong UV sterilizer standing straight up in the skimmer section of my sump, an unusual location, and an ozone generator. Turns out the ozone generator doesn’t help the fight against dinos, but running it for a minute per hour overnight really produces nice clear water by morning, and keeps me from having to run carbon. I vodka dose to keep nutrients at bay. I believe the bacteria created by carbon dosing also helps feed corals. I dose the combination of KZ Flatworm Stop and Coral Booster, ever since I had an initial outbreak of acro eating flatworms. That combo doesn’t kill AEFW, but it does help defend against them. What actually got rid of the AEFW was removing each frag every few days and dipping in Melafix, my preferred coral dip of choice. The KZ combo supposedly helps color, and I definitely see acro bases spread rapidly, so I keep dosing it. I recently started dosing Brightwell amino acids too. It’s a bit too early for me to say if they’re effective. You can see from my fish list that I love a lot of fish in the tank. They bring a much needed contrast to my mostly static coral. My favorite fish is my copperband butterfly fish. They are incredibly challenging to acclimate to captivity, and Reef eScape found me one that is a pig! It’s so aggressive at eating that it will fight for food, and attacks it so vigorously that its beak makes clicking noises. I’m most proud of my fish collection. There’s very few fish left that I really want, which is good, because I don’t think I can add any more at this point. Each fish I add now creates a fair bit of chaos with the existing fish in ways that is sometimes highly unexpected. When it comes to corals, there’s nothing like an acropora for me. I prefer well-known acros that have been in captivity for some time, because the result is more predictable than something like a mariculture, which I just don’t have the time, energy, or space to care for. A close second to acros comes goniopora. They serve 2 purposes. To display the flow in the tank, and my clownfish really enjoy hosting in them. They primarily host a large red goniopora, but during the day, they move to other gonis as well. Who doesn’t love having multiple homes? I feed only frozen food. Everyday, I break chunks of LRS Chunky, LRS Fish Frenzy, Rod’s original (for the astaxanthin), and either Hikari mysis or PE mysis. I put all of this in a cup, which I then feed a little to my frag tank, which only has 3 fish, and the rest gets split into 2 meals for the display tank. I’ve tried pellets and powdered foods, but have never been happy with the results. Some of my fish don’t like pellet food, and powdered food should also be called phosphate powder! I’ve run the gamut when it comes to challenges! I’ve faced many of the common problems that reefers have, even though I had intentions to prevent them. The first few fishes I got were from a local reefer, and they brought with them ich, even though he said they were disease free. Since the tank was new and no inverts were in it, I dosed chloroquine phosphate in the display, knowing that it’s relatively easy to remove through carbon and bacterial breakdown. Ever since then, my quarantine tanks have been running where I proactively treat fish with copper, and inverts were quarantined, until aiptaisia broke out in the invert tank, and also a fish suddenly appeared in the invert tank! Someone identified it as a rainwater killifish (Lucania parva). It must have hatched from an egg. I kept it in the invert tank for nearly a year. Treating fish with copper and using a Hanna copper tester were a complete game changer when it came to bringing in and keeping fish healthy. I’ve battled back all sorts of weird algaes, including turf, red ones, hair, and bryopsis. The two pests that still exist in careful balance are bryopsis and aiptasia. Bryopsis is held in check using fluconazole once every few months, which strangely causes a short term dino bloom. I’ve found that fluconazole doesn’t completely eradicate bryopsis, but gets rid of it from all surfaces that have strong lighting. Aiptasia in the display are countered by my copperband, and by peppermints in the sump. I’m scared to look in the overflow, and would rather pretend they don’t live in there. Some of my acros color shifted strongly to green. I have a few theories here, one of which includes a nutrient spike, and the other stronger suspect is my over abundance of blue/uv LEDs. At one point, I had actually increased the intensities of blue after the 7 hours of whites. This had some strange effects that I think I’m still recovering from. I recently rebooted my frag tank, and am considering replacing it. It’s a well made tank, but there are a few things I dislike. The main issues are that I designed it as a rimless tank, which I really don’t like. It’s just too easy to splash outside of the tank. The other thing is that I hate that it’s an AIO. I wanted 2 quarantine tanks below the frag tank, but in retrospect, I should have just kept 1, and made one of them my sump. I’m still debating if I should just replace the frag tank with a new design. I love my Maxspect Gyre 280 pumps, except for one thing. They clog quickly, and lose power fast after about 30-45 days. Cleaning them is challenging too since they’re so big, and difficult to disassemble. I may swap these for more Reef Octopus Pulse pumps as soon as I can figure out a good way to provide power failure backups to them. It may involve investing in a CoralVue Hydros system, which would be great to reduce power supplies above the tank. It hasn’t been easy, nor do I expect it to be, but this is a greatly fulfilling hobby. My son enjoys hanging out with me and talking about the livestock, and my wife appreciates the ecosystem within as well. It’s been especially appreciated as I’ve transitioned to full time work from home due to Covid-19, and being able to turn around to enjoy the view brings peace in a time of chaos. This is a hobby that combines my love for engineering, chemistry, and biology all into one, and to be successful, you need to be a bit of an artist too. I’m still working on that last one! Share your stories, and find someone that has results you want to emulate, and pick their brain. There are some great resources online too, like Bulk Reef Supply’s! Have fun, learn from each other, and stay safe. |
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