Brandon's 65

[bwoodward0012]

Been a member on here for a while and had a thread for my biocube but that's been long gone so it's time for a new one. I started in the hobby with a 3 gallon jbj picotope, crammed it full of softies and moved up to a 10. Then i got into sps and bought a house so I upgraded to a 40 breeder. From there I downgraded to a biocube 29 and a gla 30c at the same time. I decided to redo the floors in my living room and wanted to upgrade to 1 larger tank so i broke those down and moved everything into a "temporary" 30 long set up. After buying and selling a few tanks i was going to use (custom rimless 30x18x12 28 gallon, deep blue rimless 30 mini frag rr, a standard 36x18x18 50 drilled to run it peninsula style), I finally settled on a 65 gallon. So here are my past tanks and my new tank with the specs, enjoy!

Deep Blue 65 gallon reef ready tank (36x18x24, think 40 breeder but taller)
metal and wood stand with floating hood for the light
2 mp10wes
2 pharos wireless led fixtures ( may add diy 12 x 3w leds containing red green and uv for color supplementation)
next reef 12 gallon sump
mag 9.5 return pump
t in return dumping back into sump to help regulate the return flow into the display
aquamaxx nano star calc reactor, 5 lb CO2 bottle, reg with bubble counter and solenoid, milwaukee sms-122 ph controller
2 american dj 8 channel power strips to power everything (if i can find a place to fit them, otherwise i'll use something else)
currently using a via aqua 250w heater that will transfer assuming it is enough (may buy another if needed)
tunze osmolator ato with an aga 5 gallon reservoir

I'll be running chemi-pure elite somwhere in the sump, A.R.M. hi mag coarse aragonite reactor media, a filter sock and sponge or floss in between the sump baffles.

60 lbs Carib-Sea Hawaiian black live sand
60 to 80 lbs of dry and live rock

as for livestock everything will transfer from my 30 gallon (see my most recent other tank thread) and will be mostly sps with some choice lps and zoas and maybe a few other random softies. i will also add another maxi mini or 2 to the 2 i currently have and maybe another anemone of some sort.

any other coral i add will be nice stuff that i really want (high end sps, scolies, etc.) and I'll probably be weeding out the current stuff i don't really care for. I may add a wrasse or 2 of some, some anthias, a goby or pair with a pistol shrimp, or some other fish but I havent quite decided exactly what i want.

 

[bwoodward0012]

Past Tanks-
Picotope:

Various iterations of the 10:

40 breeder:

Biocube 29:

GLA 30c:

"temporary" ghetto 30:

 

[revsgirl]

Nice setup!


Chasing the Dream Giver, not the dream! Tonya

 

[bwoodward0012]

Thanks!

 

[revhtree Verified Admin]

Great job and wow you have had quite a few tanks.

 

[bwoodward0012]

scape in progress



the tank shortly after i transferred the livestock

 

[Flameback Pair]

Have you considered a controller? I was reluctant to get one at first and a friend talked me into it and wow the capabilities. I just wish it was easier to program.

 

[bwoodward0012]

Haven't updated in a long time. This system is no longer running. I transferred everything to a 75 gallon in January of 2015. It had become very fully stocked at that point and I wanted a little more room to grow without going too much larger. I had a problem with flat worms (not the acro eating type, just plane brown annoying flat worms) that persisted into the 75 after the transfer for some time. Things didn't do that great for the first couple of months, it probably didn't help that I went from the it2080 fixture that was over the tank to 2 vertex lights. The vertex were okay, but I lost some led colors and they had no optics so finding the right amount of light with them was difficult. It also didn't help that we sold our house in May and moved into a temporary house for 3 months before moving into our newly purchased home the end of August. The tank moves took their toll and a mass flat worm die off during the final move to its current location wiped out many of my colonies and frags. I went from 8 or so medium SPS colonies and even more small ones to a single colony of tri color valida and a hand full of frags left from some other colonies. Luckily my chalice collection survived as did most of my zoas, my war coral and my frogspawn. I lost a couple other euphylias and several other random corals. I also lost most of my fish, yellow tang, tomini tang, 4 blue-green chromis, strawberry basslet, goby, bi color blenny, and a fox face.

I spent the next 5 weeks resurrecting my once beautiful reef. The first 3 were spent treating for flat worms. I would do a 5 gallon change to siphon out as many as possible, then treat for flat worms, then run carbon after 5-10 minutes, then do a 20 gallon water change after an hour, and all of this happened every 3 to 4 days. After that I got my dosed set back up and stabilized parameters, and completely cleaned my bio reactor and replaced the pellets. I also hung a pair of 1st gen radions over the tank for some much needed proper lighting. The system is currently pretty healthy with a slight bubble algae problem. I will start a new thread for the current system.