40gal Humble Reef

[wpeterson]

Yes, I got a cheap 46 bowfront stand that fit the display tank well enough. It turns out that the supports intruded inside the stand just a bit too much - such that for 2" across on each side, the depth of the stand interior is about 1/2" smaller than the depth of the sump I began removing material from the cheap stand to try and fit it and a bunch of cheaply glued joints came apart. On the plus side, the stand construction was poor so better I found that out now than later (cheap AGA pine stand, I believe).

I'm working with someone to build a custom stand with nicer materials now, so hopefully I can get that done ASAP but blocked until then.

 

[wpeterson]

Despite a lot of delays, the tank has been cycling for over a week now. I replaced the pine 46 bowfront stand with a simple steel 40BR stand, which fits the PM R30 sump (just barely). We've got sand and dry rock in the display and live rock and chaeto in the refugium. Thanks to my wife for the initial aquascape with the BRS Fiji dry rock.

Full tank shot tonight:

Sump/Refugium has a Bubble Magus Curve 5 and Kessil A350:

I'm hoping this humble chaeto and live rock here will grow to fill the refugium, I also added some pods/phytoplankton from AlgaeBarn today.

Current setbacks/frustrations:
I bought two used Kessil A350W lights and new goosenecks for them, but it turns out the main mounting bolts/screws are missing on the lamps. I tried buying replacements at a hardware store, but the #4 bolts in imperial size didn't quite fit - so I suspect I need something metric or proprietary to mount the main lights on the display. I don't need the lights yet, but it's disappointing to find something I should have vetted when I bought the lights used since I can't attach the goosenecks to the lights without the mounting bolts.

 

[flagg37]

Are the 350's controllable?

 

[wpeterson]

Are the 350's controllable?

Nope. You can manually adjust the spectrum and turn them on or off I bought the pair for $300.

 

[wpeterson]

Hooray! Kessil support saved my bacon - I bought used A350Ws which came without the bolts holding them together, used to mount to the goosenecks. They mailed me two sets of screws for free, post-haste and saved our tank build. I finally got the lights mounted tonight for the first time. Cycling is almost complete and should be done tomorrow or Weds. Probably add our first, small fish this weekend.

 

[flagg37]

What are you plans for livestock?

 

[wpeterson]

Tank is fully cycled as of last night, though there's still a lot of Nitrate to export. I also noticed an outbreak of cyano on the rocks/chaeto in the sump which is probably directly related to the nutrient buildup during the cycle. I've been running a dose of chemiclean through the system for 24 hours now and planning a big water change once the chemiclean hits 48 hours dosed.

The chaetomorpha population has about tripled in the sump - glad to see it growing well under the intense light/flow and excess nutrients from the cycle.

I picked up two 10gal tanks to use at fish QT for a 12-14 day tank transfer quarantine before we pick up our first fish.

 

[freakit]

Excellent! Following along...

 

[wpeterson]

I finally cleaned and re-calibrated the pH and ORP probes on our Apex, since they've been in use almost two years and were packed away for a month during the move out here between tanks. It'll be interesting to see how the readings differ once they settle in. First glance shows pH was lower than previously measured and ORP appears higher than previous.

We added our first fish to the display after a long QT, a Rainford's Goby. He's a little shy/cryptic right now, hiding out in the back of the rockwork but I hope he'll be more social once there are other fish in the tank.

 

[wpeterson]

Our rose bubble-tip anemone has just begun hosting our two new clowns, they're all out of QT and in the tank as of tonight.

 

[revhtree Verified Admin]

Sweet BTA!

 

[wpeterson]

We've been slowly adding coral and other inverts: a small red acan colony, hammer corals, some SPS, and a tridacna maxima.

This will be our first clam, which I've been reading about and preparing for quite some time. I found a healthy adult (6") maxima in a local hobbyists tank and picked him up today. I did a much more slow/carefull drip acclimation over 2-3 hours, even though the source water params were close to mine. He opened up almost completely within 15-20 minutes of being introduced to our tank (since the lights were on).

Top down, with the returns off:

Front of the tank:

 

[wpeterson]

The Rainford's goby has been coming out during feeding time now, though he seems happier hunting pods and sand sifting than eating frozen. I was lucky to finally capture a few pictures of him tonight:

We bought a small red acan colony with 2 heads with the Clownfish a few weeks ago, they're doing well and showing a strong feeding response to cyclopeeze:

RBTA is doing well and seems to have grown about 50% over the last few weeks since we picked him up:

Small two-headed hammer coral colony is doing great this week after a fragging accident (small trip down the sink drain when he flex off an algae encrusted frag plug I clipped him off of):

... and finally the maxima clam seems pretty happy, though I'm probably going to need to hook up our dosing pump this weekend to keep him in carbonate:

 

[wpeterson]

Slowly adding more corals, found a nice alien-eye favia colony today I'm excited about (slightly larger than baseball size):

 

[wpeterson]

I finally took some time today to split the large green slimer frag and mount it, the confusa, and the stylophora and other recent coral acquisitions. There's still a lot of bare rock, but I'm slowly filling in small frags so there will be room for a year or two of growth as these grow out into larger colonies. The Maxima has been my greatest concern, but the dosing pump seems to have stabilized Alk/Calc at high levels (9dkh/450pm) and he's been coloring up a bit.

Full-tank shots for posterity (slowly planting frags to fill this in):

6" Maxima is doing well:

 

[wpeterson]

Clam and corals are all doing well. We're almost at capacity for this tank with our last fish in QT finishing up a full tank transfer regimen.

* ORA Yellow Assessor - super shy, but a cool and interesting fish
* Pair or ORA Green Mandarins - didn't think they sold these, but apparently gave a pair to Love the Reef directly
* Juvenile Yellow Tang (in QT)

Thankfully, our refugium is chalk-full of chaetomorpha and live copepods (via Algae Barn) which are reproducing enough to cover the display with live phytoplankton feeding triggering pod blooms from the refugium. I was nervous about taking on a pair of mandarins, but wasn't willing to break up the pair and they were aquacultured and already eating frozen food from ORA. They've got a large population of pods growing from the refugium and being supplemented with more live pod additions every 2-3 weeks. I've also been feeding the LRS fish eggs, which should be good nutrition for the mandarins and other picky eaters. Kind of a pain to prepare, but the nutritional benefits seem worth it. I won't consider this job done until the Mandarins are spawning, like our last tank.

I'm currently focusing on feeding our fish and getting them acclimated to the new system over nutrient export right now. This has led to some macro-algae growth in our display, mostly caulerpa from the refugium rock our Maxima clam is attached to. My hope is that the extra algae in the display will be a starter buffet for the Tang, though I plan to supplement with Nori sheets (Tang has been eating both dried nori and macro-algae from the display in QT).

All of the automation and levels are stable - dosing system is using two part to keep the Alk/Calc stable and ATO is rock solid. I'm surprised there hasn't been much coraline growth, but I may need to manually introduce a large colony to the tank or provide some better low-light environs for coraline to spread. Corals and clam are using over 100ml/day of Alk/Calc two part solution, but I imagine most of that is the Maxima clam.

More pictures to follow once everyone is more settled into the tank.

 

[wpeterson]

Well, I explicitly chose a 40breeder for this tank to be smaller and easier to move, but we still had a near disaster moving this tank.

The good news is that my family bought a home for the first time and I moved this tank from the house we were renting into the new place over Thanksgiving weekend. It was a slog and a bit of a disaster.

I did a decent job plumbing the original tank, but relied too much on flexible tubing and didn't install enough unions or other disconnects to make breaking the tank down easy. Several pieces of plumbing had to be cut, bulkheads didn't seem safe to re-use even after 6 months. I had setup a stock tank with minimal heat/flow for 24-48 hours, but with the plumbing problems we had a tough move.

I was able to get the tank re-plumbed (after tracking down bulkheads from several LFS and redoing the plumbing with hard-line PVC and unions everywhere) but it took me a week (busy with the new job during the days).

All of the fish and LPS survived with some stress, but manual dosing wasn't able to keep our beautiful tridacna maxmima alive which died on day 2-3, setting off a cascade of stress in the stock tank. I bought an emergency second 40 breeder and got a proper tank up and running on day 2 (with real lighting, heat, and vortechs) but it was too late to save the clam. The secondary damage from the clam death did for most of the SPS (some of the hardier ones held on, but have bleached in the display tank).

It was a horrendous amount of labor and stress over the long day of the first move, the week of life-support and re-plumbing but everyone has been in the new display since the first weekend in December. Thankfully, we were lightly stocked with SPS and only hardy/inexpensive colonies - but the clam is a real tragedy and a tough loss for our family.

 

[flagg37]

That's really too bad. It was such a cool clam. Do you think you'll get another one?

 

[wpeterson]

I hope to have a clam again. Having an experience like this gives me pause, however.

I should have realized our holding tank needed a dosing pump to support a creature who uses up so much carbonate and calcium.

 

[reefsahoy]

How do you like the Eshopps Eclipse overflow? Is it really quiet? I bought one for a tank and I'm concerned that it may be too noisy so I haven't drilled the tank yet. Glad to have found your build so I can actually ask someone who's using one. What's your experience with the noise level? Can you also tell me how high up the water is above the bottom of the teeths so I can judge how high to install the overflow and What is the size of your return pump in gallons/hr. There is very little reviews on this overflow. Thx