225g CDA SPS dream build

[AaronFReef]

Thanks @Smoke-Town ! I’d guess the coral you’re talking about might be AquaSD Rainbow Mille. Shown in last pic below. I may try the zip ties. I have some IO epoxy coming today now which I’ll try shortly as well and zip ties can help secure it at least until it dries

Last night I attached a few more and got some more pics

 

[AaronFReef]

Thanks for the tips. I used boatloads of Instant Ocean putty and superglue and my Bill Murray colony is still stuck to the rock this morning where I held it for fifteen minutes last night! Hah! Just got to be really patient as it cures but it can hold stuff for sure! That’s good because I still have five more large colonies to attach.

PO4 was zero again this morning! It’s amazing. I dosed 50 mL of Neophos to raise it to 0.05 two days ago so I dosed another 50 and put the rest of the bottle in my ATO to slowly dose and ordered a 2 L bottle. Suddenly my tank is drinking up phosphate even with no skimmer and month old filter socks holding tons of fish poo and uneaten food. Hungry hungry rocks and algae I guess.

 

[Betex]

Thanks for the tips. I used boatloads of Instant Ocean putty and superglue and my Bill Murray colony is still stuck to the rock this morning where I held it for fifteen minutes last night! Hah! Just got to be really patient as it cures but it can hold stuff for sure! That’s good because I still have five more large colonies to attach.

PO4 was zero again this morning! It’s amazing. I dosed 50 mL of Neophos to raise it to 0.05 two days ago so I dosed another 50 and put the rest of the bottle in my ATO to slowly dose and ordered a 2 L bottle. Suddenly my tank is drinking up phosphate even with no skimmer and month old filter socks holding tons of fish poo and uneaten food. Hungry hungry rocks and algae I guess.

The trick with it as well is to let is sit after being mixed a few min to start hardening so when it goes on water it did some pre-curing outside so not as soft and won't fall apart. That has been my experience with IO putty.

 

[AaronFReef]

The trick with it as well is to let is sit after being mixed a few min to start hardening so when it goes on water it did some pre-curing outside so not as soft and won't fall apart. That has been my experience with IO putty.

For sure! I tried that and it makes a big difference, you’re right. I may give it even longer to cure before use next try.

 

[AaronFReef]

As you can see I’ve placed a lot of the colonies from the lagoon today. My wife and I sat on the floor with a Rubbermaid lid and used a hacksaw and a crowbar to break lots of colonies off as whole as we could from the rocks and I brought many of them over and epoxied and glued them down. The tank is looking much fuller and I can’t wait for growth and coloration to come if all goes well.

Four of my frags were ready to come out of quarantine and go into here and as I did my final dip on them I noticed a flatworm come off one. I had been a bad boy and hadn’t been dipping them regularly. Just once on arrival. It is most likely a leopard polyclad worm which I read eats snails and clams. Only one in that tank so hopefully they don’t continue now that I’ve killed one. I put them back in quarantine and dipped all my stony corals. Thirty more days plus dipping it is!

 

[AaronFReef]

I took advantage of the flash sale after sale at TCK corals and picked up a JF jolt and Pikachu to add some more yellow and blue to the tank as I found those were my most limited color that’s when I sorted that corals by color. Excited for those to come!

 

[AaronFReef]

All inhabitants from the 24g lagoon are now in this tank. It’s amazing to look at it and think all that coral and whatnot had fit inside the little 24” square space of that lagoon. It doesn’t look possible.

But I glued down the last colonies last night. I had to cut my prized Walt Disney colony up at least in half to make it look okay where I was going to place it. I also had to cut three branches of perhaps 30 of a large green and blue tortuosa (maybe cali tort) to fit them where I wanted. So at least I have some very large colonies to trade or sell. It was amazing how much glue and epoxy I had to use for the coral. I went through perhaps 50 tubes of super glue and two entire sticks of instant ocean epoxy. Stock up when you’re doing a tank transfer!


Corralline is beginning to grow so I know I’m on the right track. I still want to get kalkwasser dosing set up but am tight on budget to buy a quality continuous dosing pump. The phosphates are more regular now since I’m dosing them through top off water. Time to stop putting my hands in the tank for a little.

I may have introduced acropora eating flatworms into the tank unfortunately with my last quarantine batch which had one worm on it that I thought was a leopard polyclad worm and so did insufficient treatment to prevent. I pulled the frags in question back out and hopefully didn’t infest my tank but it’s a wait and see approach now….

 

[AaronFReef]

Quarantine finished up last night for my last inhabitants of the batch and so through a series of blunders with my planned “critter keeper” acclimation box, I unintentionally released all the inhabitants at once. Luckily all the fish adjusted pretty quickly. They’re becoming fat and happy quickly!

Also my wife pulled the trigger on four bar stools for the tank today and set them up. They look pretty good to me!

 

[AaronFReef]

One problem I’ve struggled with that hopefully an observer out there can help with is I haven’t been able to come up with a good way to cool the canopy without cutting holes in the sides and putting in CPU type fans. Has anyone found a good solution for an open-back canopy (it has a two inch high back board but mostly open) cooling? I was thinking I could hang a GHL PropellerBreeze or something but that’s pricy.

The canopy is currently just left with the doors cracked open to try and cool it and I put some round table fans in the sump blowing over the sump on a cooling Apex profile.

 

[Betex]

One problem I’ve struggled with that hopefully an observer out there can help with is I haven’t been able to come up with a good way to cool the canopy without cutting holes in the sides and putting in CPU type fans. Has anyone found a good solution for an open-back canopy (it has a two inch high back board but mostly open) cooling? I was thinking I could hang a GHL PropellerBreeze or something but that’s pricy.

The canopy is currently just left with the doors cracked open to try and cool it and I put some round table fans in the sump blowing over the sump on a cooling Apex profile.

Having a similar canopy I just got some straight brackets and screwed the PC fans, I requested my canopy to be semi closed so I was able to screw the fans directly to backside of canopy.

Below are the fans I used.


They are amazing fans and you can get the control module to adjust speeds as needed and chain up to x3 to 1 controller. I set them them with x2 intake and 1 exhaust.

I also use SS-316 so I don't have to deal with potential rusting so quickly.

 

[AaronFReef]

Having a similar canopy I just got some straight brackets and screwed the PC fans, I requested my canopy to be semi closed so I was able to screw the fans directly to backside of canopy.

Below are the fans I used.


They are amazing fans and you can get the control module to adjust speeds as needed and chain up to x3 to 1 controller. I set them them with x2 intake and 1 exhaust.

I also use SS-316 so I don't have to deal with potential rusting so quickly.

You rock @Betex ! Glad to have you following along! What controller do you use yourself? Anything that works particularly well with Apex? Could imagine doing 10v control or something.

 

[Betex]

So I use their controller to allow the adjusting of the speeds I then have the power plugged into apex to simply control the on/off but I actually removed it from apex and have it straight to the wall as you can adjust the speed to pretty much make it silent so I always leave mine on now


you will need this power connector since we arent using it on PCs:


I also used these to extend the fan cables and I used heat shrink wrap to seal all connections to try and make it as waterproof as I could:


Hope this helps and glad to be following along!

 

[AaronFReef]

So I use their controller to allow the adjusting of the speeds I then have the power plugged into apex to simply control the on/off but I actually removed it from apex and have it straight to the wall as you can adjust the speed to pretty much make it silent so I always leave mine on now


you will need this power connector since we arent using it on PCs:


I also used these to extend the fan cables and I used heat shrink wrap to seal all connections to try and make it as waterproof as I could:


Hope this helps and glad to be following along!

Thanks for the walkthrough!!

 

[AaronFReef]

Just shot a little video of where it’s at:

 

[AaronFReef]

Glued down most of the remaining frags including strawberry shortcake from Unique Corals, an unnamed Hulk look alike from UC, an orange monti setosa and another unnamed orange oddball acro from GSC. Glued down the JF beach bum look alike as well.

 

[DCMW1]

One problem I’ve struggled with that hopefully an observer out there can help with is I haven’t been able to come up with a good way to cool the canopy without cutting holes in the sides and putting in CPU type fans. Has anyone found a good solution for an open-back canopy (it has a two inch high back board but mostly open) cooling? I was thinking I could hang a GHL PropellerBreeze or something but that’s pricy.

The canopy is currently just left with the doors cracked open to try and cool it and I put some round table fans in the sump blowing over the sump on a cooling Apex profile.

For my peninsula canopy the builder put holes in the top of the canopy. I think the holes are about 5 inches in diameter. They work well for keep it cool and I haven't had to add any fans. I have 4 holes in the canopy. I would take some pictures and show you, but I recently sold the tank and I don't have any. Either way, consider placing holes on the top of the canopy to let the heat naturally rise out of the tank.

 

[AaronFReef]

For my peninsula canopy the builder put holes in the top of the canopy. I think the holes are about 5 inches in diameter. They work well for keep it cool and I haven't had to add any fans. I have 4 holes in the canopy. I would take some pictures and show you, but I recently sold the tank and I don't have any. Either way, consider placing holes on the top of the canopy to let the heat naturally rise out of the tank.

Thanks! In the end I went with @Betex suggestion and thus far it seems to be working well! Here’s some pics of the not quite finished product.

I have another fan but I can’t mount it without taking the canopy down again. Also I have to heat shrink the wires which I had to track down some proper diameter heat shrink for.

 

[AaronFReef]

I can’t believe I haven’t updated in two months! Let’s start with some somewhat recent shots from Thanksgiving.

Things are beginning to diverge where some coral are stagnating and some are really taking off. Parameters are a bit off at times due to me being a little overwhelmed lately with the amount of work plus still getting things set up such as the second return pump that is now online and putting effort into the electrical cabinet (though that’s still a mess). I’ve been continuing to introduce and quarantine lots of fish. The desjardini tang (try 2) went into a newly built DIY acclimation box this morning along with try 2 of about forty banded trochus and indo turbo snails. I learned an expensive lesson about how to quarantine snails. They need to be fed a lot and that’s awful hard to do in a newly setup tank. So now I did it in my coral QT and they made it fine when fed zucchini slices. Lost about $200 worth of snails on try one in a Rubbermaid with sand from my old display.

Today, right after I pulled the desjardini out of QT I ran up to Violet Sea Fish and Coral and bought my wife’s dream fish as well as my own. Hers was a Regal angel. I got a beautiful yellow belly one from the Maldives with a n unusual misbar pattern. Pics tomorrow if it survives its first night in QT. It came straight to Violet in an airline shipment and I took it off their hands before they even had a chance to open it. Along with that I got my favorite fish, copperband butterflyfish. I bought live black worms to get these two feeding along with clams on the half shell. Hopefully this will be sufficient. Lastly along with these two I got an Exquisite fairy wrasse (Cirrhilabrus exquisitis) to join my pintail fairy wrasse and hopefully not break the peace.

There’s still tons to do in getting a permanent setup going. I’m still hauling out my RODI every couple weeks to make water in my mixing station since I haven’t mounted it. Also over Black Friday I bought a Kamoer STP continuous duty doser to dose kalkwasser from the shed with and hope to get that set up next so I can stop dosing half a liter a day of salts!! I’m up to about 600 mL of combined soda ash, calcium chloride and part C balling tropic marin solution. The pH boost won’t hurt either though this rides between 8.1-8.5 daily.

Only new coral is JF Jolt, and a TCK Pikachu I believe. I’ve, since the last post probably, mounted my orange monti setosa, a fine branching orange montipora sp. , UC Reign of Fire as I learned my new bright green UC frag is called, and UC strawberry shortcake.

UC strawberry shortcake

UC reign of fire

JF jolt

happy low light TSA bill Murray on the left and ARC fireworks on the right. Need more light at the edge here. Thinking of buying two or more XR15s and doubling up. Hard to hit these angles.

Very happy RRC goldenrod anacropora. I just had to disassemble this colony and remount it because I found an aiptasia growing in the middle of it. Removed it to get at it.

Here’s the desjardini in his penthouse suite getting constantly harassed by the yellow tang today (day 1).

Here’s the box as I built it

Learned that two part epoxy can get pretty slippery. Enough to let the magnets attach each other from 4” away

 

[AaronFReef]

And I promise as off as those colors look I didn’t edit lol. I just suck with my old iPhone and can’t find a good color setting on the Radion for pics.

 

[Steven Garland]

Just use a brown 52mm dslr filter. You'll thank me later.