Back to the hobby with a 230 gal system (Build thread)

[MikeTheNewbie]

Intro -
After 13 years of missing the hobby, I'm back with a plan to geek out with a large peninsula mixed reef tank.
I live in Michigan and have different hobbies like electronics, software, radio control, 3D design, and printing, woodworking, etc. It is a long and ever changing list. I consider myself a newbie in all of them.
I love how new technology is making reefing more accessible and I really like the sense of community within Reef2Ref. I'm a private person but after spending several nights reading through the forums I decided to follow other members' example and start my build thread. I plan to load my plans, bills of materials and share my opinions on the products I use and decisions I make. Hopefully this info will be helpful to others and serve as a log to see what decisions caused success and which ones didn't.

My first upload is a video of my first attempt to aquascape, using CaribSea LifeRock Regular, Arches and Shapes.
Aquascaping v0.1 @ Youtube
Inspired by BRS videos, R2R, and multiple pictures from google search. Constructive feedback will be greatly appreciated!

 

[One Reefing Boi]

welcome! love the aquascape -- what fish/coral are you considering?

 

[Kryptonian]

Welcome back!!! Great scape. The arches definitely make it!

 

[MikeTheNewbie]

welcome! love the aquascape -- what fish/coral are you considering?

Thanks! I'm still undecided. I think I will be happy with LPS, I like the hammerheads a lot.
I have a long list of fish I like but I still need to analyze it to make sure they are compatible and define the order in which I will introduce them.
Most likely:

• Black Storm Clownfish
• Yellow Tang
• Blue Tang
• Orchid Dottyback
• Royal Gramma Basslet
• Blue Black-axil Chromis

I would love to have livestock that interact between them like schooling fish, pistol shrimp+goby, clowns + anemone, etc. But I still need to do more research. As always, suggestions are welcome.

 

[Two Tides Aquarium Supply]

Glad to have you back with us, and killer scape. I agree with @Kryptonian, great arches make for a sense of visual space through the rock, and the separation between the 3 sections will leave plenty of room for coral in the long run.

I’d call it a great start!

 

[JCTReefer]

Love the scape!!! You see, you never really quit the hobby. You just take an extended break sometimes. Welcome back!

 

[MikeTheNewbie]

And here is the actual tank in the process of cycling.

You can also see the smaller brother I'm planning to use for quarantining. I know it is too close to the main display tank but I don't have a lot of space left for tanks.
I'll share videos of the water mixing station and the sump soon. I have many DIY projects in mind and too little time. Acrylic/mesh top, lightweight canopy, etc.

 

[jstephens24]

hows your tank going? saw your aquascape pic so found your thread

 

[MikeTheNewbie]

Hi, things are going well. Thanks for asking. Many upgrades made to the system so far. A couple of weeks ago I got dinos on my sand but with help of the community I reacted fast and they have already started receding.
As part of the dino counterattack I stopped doing water changes cleaning the glass.
I hope to be able to take and upload a few nice pictures later in the week.
I'm happy with the aquascape as it has tons of crevices for my 9 Anthias. They cam dissappear in an instant. No coral so far, just 3 small anemones.

 

[MikeTheNewbie]

It's been a while since I saw my build thread and it was nice to remember the beginning of the journey. Here is an update of the current state.

• Dealing with some spirulina and porocentrum dinos
• One of my male anthias got popeye but he is recovering
• I recently added some LPS and a couple of SPS. Unfortunately I'm still too newbie for SPS.
• Bubble tip anemones are growing and splitting. They haven't left their rock yet so I'm not too worried.
• I have a few trochus snail youngsters spread across the tank. I saw them spawning and didn't think they were actually going to survive.

I've been busy with DIY stuff, I'll start uploading some of the projects soon.
Pics and video below

 

[Two Tides Aquarium Supply]

Beautiful. Love how the scape is shaping the tank, mix of activity with fish choice, and that custom canopy you made for the lights is sick!

To Your Success,
- Tyler Moon
Two Tides Aquarium Supply

 

[kstripp]

Hey, I have a question for you. In your thread about spirulina (which I found because I'm fighting as well), you posted a screenshot of what looked like Grafana for your parameters log. What database did you use for that, and what are you using for manual entry?

I brought this over here because I didn't want to sidetrack that thread...

And by the way, beautiful tank!

 

[MikeTheNewbie]

Oh thank you very much! It is getting better now that the porocentrum and spirulina are gone.
I'm using InfluxDB2 on a Synology Docker container. I've thought about doing a tutorial to install it on a raspberry pi but I haven't seen a simple/affordable solution for media that supports constant read/writes on the PI.
For manual entries I developed a simple HTML that posts the metrics to InfluxDB2 but I found a way to automagically push the results from the Alkatronic and Mastertronic to the database.
Hope this helps!

 

[MikeTheNewbie]

Tank update for October 2021: No more spirulina or dinos. Aluminum levels back to normal.