150 Gal Reef Tank

Stasisgate · Jan 3, 2015

My dad and I have been trying with reef tanks for a couple of years now and after much experimentation (not to mention loss of livestock), trials and errors I decided to upgrade from a 100 gal to a 150 gal tank. I basically tried with a couple of zoas to start with waaaaaay back when and realized lighting was pretty important to keep corals coloured and healthy. So here's a brief set of photos to show what I've done. Started to build everything from scratch.

Decided to use a matte black finish.

If I could fit in there there'll sure be a lot of space for rocks and coral.

Stasisgate · Jan 3, 2015

Once everything checked out I decided to start with the rock work.

The corals and critters were patiently waiting in their holding "barrel" watching as everything came together.

Didn't realize how deep the tank was until I started putting the sand and rocks in.
(It didn't help that that I was a lil vertically challenged myself :tongue

Here it is... finally done with the rock work and with the corals and critters back inside.
Unfortunately, I had to keep the Yellow Tang in the sump. He's the tank bully :squigglemouth:

I'll post up some pic of the corals and stuff when I get a chance.

Stasisgate · Jan 3, 2015

The two lights on the ends are some generic LEDs I bought about a year now and the central one is an Aquamana 100 LED fixture. I really like it.
I've heard all about the MH and T5s, and read about colours and stuff, but this was pretty affordable and as I'm on a budget to do all this I'm really happy with it.
I get great shimmer and the corals love it so far. I've gotten great polyp extension from all of the corals, especially from a green P. porites SPS that was not responding so well before. In all of that it seemed the hermits moved the tiny frag of red mushroom and I lost it in the sand.... sigh... cursed with growing red mushroom.

I wanted to keep a DSB so I added some more sand, which I realized I didn't wash properly when after two days the entire tank was covered in brown stuff.
I had a huge diatom outbreak as I was expecting, but I wasn't expecting it to be this extreme. Pity I didn't take a pic.
It was probably due to all the new plastic stuff, like nozzles and powerheads, I added as well... all the silicates that went in to the water.
To combat it I kept the light off for four days, after which the mass of diatoms declined significantly.
You can still see a little on the powerheads and the sand tho but it's been only 2 weeks since I put everything back in, so that's expected.

Stasisgate · Jan 23, 2017

So this is just over a year and this is the progress we've made since November 2015 when I made this new aquarium for my dad for Christmas. We did our measurements, set up dosing schedule, introduced a chiller (which helped trememdously in this hot country) and started using RODI water. The results are fantastic. Corals are now growing, coralline is spreading everywhere and the fish are loving it. I'm using my phone to take the pictures so forgive the quality.

mckinleyw · Jan 23, 2017

mallorieGgator · Jan 23, 2017

Great progress! Corals look happy and healthy. Great job!

Stasisgate · Jan 23, 2017

Tried to upload some better pics...

And from the side.

I'll upload a video soon.

Stasisgate · Jan 23, 2017

SO far these are the livestock in the tank:

Fish:
1 Flame Angel
2 Ocellaris Clownfish
1 Doctorfish Tang
1 Blue Hippo Tang
1 Six-lined Wrasse
1 Royal Gramma
1 Spotted Mandarin
1 Striped Sleeper Blenny
3 Spinyhead Blennies
1 Arrow Blenny
2 Unknown Blennies

Inverts:
3 Scarlet Hermit Crabs
3 Miscellaneous Hermit Crabs
2 Porcelain Crabs
10 Turbo Snails
3 Featherduster Worms
1 Crinoid
6 Bumblebee Snails
12 Nassarius Snails
2 Peppermint Shrimp
1 Skunk Cleaner Shrimp

Corals:
Green Star Polyps
Galaxea sp.
Green Montipora
Orange Montipora
Green undata
Green Lightning Stag
Blue Tip Stag
Blue Tip Green Slimer
Meteor Shower Cyphastrea
Jingle Bells Cyphastrea
Purple Stylo
Bird of Paradise Birdnest
Orange Digi
Purple Digi
Green Torch
Green and Purple Frogspawn
Yellow Hammer
Red Mushrooms
Chocolate Mint Mushrooms
Aqua SD Fallen Lord Milli
Order of the Phoenix Acro
Purple Garf Bonsai
Hidden Cup Corals
Slimeball Anacropora
Scolymia cubensis
Green Porites
Purple Gorgonian
Random unnamed Zoas and Palythoas

Hope I didn't leave out any

mckinleyw · Jan 23, 2017

B.E.A.U. tiful, looks amazing.

Leaellynasaura · Jan 23, 2017

That is quite the collection! It is nice to be able to know what you have on hand

It is easy t0 lose track if you don't keep good notes!

Stasisgate · Jan 24, 2017

Leaellynasaura said:
That is quite the collection! It is nice to be able to know what you have on hand It is easy t0 lose track if you don't keep good notes!

Thanx. It wasn't until I was doing this list yesterday that I realised how many corals there were in the tank. It doesn't look like much though and there's much more real estate to place some new corals, especially on the back glass. I purposefully let coralline grow on the back glass so I could add some more corals there.

I keep a journal of everything that happens to the tank and all the paramaters are measured weekly. I haven't done any water changes since it was set up; I just dose. With the increase in coral growth I tend to have to increase calcium/magnesium/alkalinity dosing but to me that's a good sign

.

It's good to keep track in truth.