Ksfulk's 180 Penninsula

[ksfulk]

The drains are loud! After playing with it a bit, it quieted a little, but I think I'll need to fiddle with the air hole in the drain a bit to get it silent. Lots of flow from the returns

 

[ksfulk]

Ammonia 0.5
nitrate 25

Looks like I'm well into the cycle.

 

[ksfulk]

Another update. Been testing the tank everyday for Ammonia and Nitrate. Ammonia dropped to nothing in about a week, and nitrates have been spiking here and there, but have become comfortable around 25. I've spent some time getting the drains quieter (raising the standpipes up about eight inches helped quite a bit) and fixed some minor issues with the drainlines that were causing air to become trapped in them and consequently making a hilarious "plopping" sound that the kids found entertaining to no end.

I started cautiously moving some "tester" frags over to the new tank, moreso I can see what the lighting difference will be and so I can re-scape if necessary for flow patterns. To my great surprise, everything is doing magnificently in the tank. Great polyp extension, feeder tentacles extending, nice plump lps. After a week of watching the test frags do alright, I moved over a few of my corals from the sand bed that my melanurus wrasse liked to bury during the day while hunting for treats. They've been in there since sunday night and are doing fantastic! Im really excited to see positive movement on this new tank!

I also added about 40 lbs of Tonga rock that I thought I was just going to keep i nthe sump, but I really wanted the left island to be higher. And I also noted that with the porousity of the Marco rock, mounting SPS was going to be a pain, as there isnt my linear surface. It'll look awesome once encrusted, but for the initial frag, it might be a nightmare. The tonga is nice and smooth, so I have a cool place to start. I might end up doing some more scaping, but for now, I'm just going to let it soak in all the goodies it can from the other rock.

Im also going to buy a few new MH bulbs for this fixture. The bulbs that it came with claim to be 14k, but there is no way. They look like a sodium vapor lamp you would find outside of a warehouse. The color is dark yellow - likely closer to a 6.5k bulb - its so yellow it completely neutralizes the T5s and you can tell there's any blue supplementing at all. Luckily, I happen to have a hundred bucks credit at Aquacave, and they just got in the new "old" phoenix 14K 250w DE bulbs that everyone raved about. I'm going to get two of those and also a pair of xm 20K bulbs. I dont know if I really like the windex-y look of complete blues, but coming from LEDs, I know I dont like the stark yellow-white of 8-10ks either. I hope the new bulbs are more to my liking.

Im getting the general "start up" algaes that we all experience - some diatoms, little bits of green hair and the thick brown "glass" dusting algaes, but Im also getting some small purple, red and green coralline thats spotting some of the rocks and sprinkles of it on the overflow. I also bit the bullet and scooped up a cup of sand from the other tank and dumped a handful of hermits, snails and tube worms into the tank as well. They appear to be few and far between now, but without having any fish in there, I dont want to go nuts yet.

Enough text! On to pictures!

 

[ksfulk]

Moved corals from the old tank into the new tank! Everything's looking great so far. Dont mind the junky pics - the tank was covered in a thin coat of salt water because of me moving in and out of it.

 

[ksfulk]

Regular sized update:
The little tank is no more. *Sigh* I broke down and sold my old setup (for a steal - I should have asked for a bit more, but I didnt want to sit on this stuff forever). All the remaining coral, clams and the fish I decided I would keep made the move into the big tank (*gulp* - the ONLY tank!) on Tuesday. Three totes, seven buckets and a smattering of equipment later, the basement is mostly empty. Come to find out later that one of the fish I was planning on keeping (twin spot hogfish) made a break for it and smuggled his way into one of the buckets. I have to go and pick him back up this weekend - sneaky fish. I also forgot that my melaranus wrasse would bry itself in the sand once we started removing water and rock. So I got the priviledge of gently stirring up the sandbed with my hands in order to find the hiding little devil. Luckily, I was able to transfer him without much issue. The yellow tang and the chalk bass went mostly willingly as well. They've been in there for two days and they appear to be doing fine. Everyone's still a bit skittish, but being thrown from a 70 gallon to a 180 gallon can do that to you. At least Ive seen all of them eat, including the wrasse, so thats something.

So - I won a Reef2reef contest and with that, a smoking hot $100! So, why not invest it in some new livestock! I've been wanting a trio of butterfly fish in my reef since I first really started getting into the hobby. Ive not found a copperband that Ive seen eat yet, so thats still on the "want to have list", but I did find a place that had a few yellow pyramid butterflies in stock. Since budgets pretty tight this month, I didnt have an extra money to purchase the third fish in the trio, but for the prize money and a $10 out of my pocket, I purchased a pair of butterflies from Petsolutions.com which seems to have a decent reputation from what I've read on the forums and elsewhere on the net. I ordered them yesterday morning, and the FedEx man showed up a few hours ago with my prize. They warmed up in the sump for 20 minutes or so, then bucket acclimated for 45 minutes and then *PLOP* into the QT (or fish jail, as my son calls it) for the next 6-8 weeks. They've already picked at some NLS pellets and have been swimming around exploring since being placed in the jail. I'll watch them for a few days before deciding if I'll run Prazi or some other meds. Ich I can deal with, but I havent had to deal with flukes or the like yet, and I'd rather do it in the 40 gallon QT than in the big tank. We'll see how it goes.

I think next on the list will be a group of anthias and a pair of snowflake clowns. My wife and son really want a hippo tang, but Im not sure thats something I want in this tank. Time will tell I suppose.

Pictures!

Shame-less plug @revhtree

 

[ksfulk]

With seven fish in QT, I started some treatments this week in order to get that ball rolling. I picked up a yellow eyed kole tang from a local merchant and had another local shop place an order for a quartet of lyretail anthias. I picked them up from the shop Monday evening, where I was surprised to see that I ordered four females (smaller and a bit cheaper), but my guy had said that there wasnt another good looking female, so he picked up a male instead. Quite a beauty, as its the Indian Ocean variant on the male coloring, with the somewhat lighter body and different block pattern on the pectoral fins. And he sold it to me for the same price he quoted me for the four females! Bonus!

They've been in a small observation tank (10 gallon) since Monday night so I could watch them eat (and not have the butterflies and the tang snarf down all the grub) and they are taking pellets, flake, powdered and frozen food all very well. I'm likely going to move them over into the 40 gallon QT (with an eggcrate divider to keep the big kids out of the smaller kids area) so I can treat them all at the same time. Ive been watching the butterflies closely, and I was afraid that one of them had ich, but its localized to one area on a single pectoral fin, so Im not sure if the "white fuzz" thats on him is ich at all (its fuzzy or fluffy, not granular), and perhaps instead some sort of injury or bacterial infection. There's no scratching, flashing or white grains on this fish else where or on the tang (which I would expect right away if there was ich in the tank). Either way, I've started them on a round of PraziPro already (finishes this evening), so I'll run carbon tomorrow and then figure out if I need to see if I can finagle some chloroquine out of my vet, or if I need to get another sort of anti-biotic.

Saturday I'm headed across the state to attend the Marine Breeding Initiative Workshop to see what interesting things their speakers have to talk about (I'm a science guy, so I actually like these kind of talks!). Maybe I'll win something at one or the raffles, or see what some of the local stores have in stock while Im over there! Then its a big timeout until the August frag swap! Woohoo!

 

[ksfulk]

Quick update - I finally pulled down the lighting rig and replaced the stock 6.5ish K MH bulbs and replaced them with the new Phoenix 14k bulbs. Wow... what a difference even straight out of the box. Im so much happier with the color of these bulbs. Im glad I held off on ordering the 20K bulbs, as it would likely be too windex-y for me. Some video of the tank inhabitants. And some more pictures of the tank, including a FTS and some of the corals that have been epoxied down now. The pics look a bit bluer than normal, but the MH had just kicked off and so all the lighting is 4x ATI Blue+.

 

[ksfulk]

Had some irritating stuff happen outside of the reef hobby, so Im grumpy, but sometimes you do things and forget about them. As was what happened today when my paperback copy of Diseases of Marine Fishes showed up from @Saltwater Smarts. Great book, nicely bound and well illustrated too. Made me nice and calm afterwards between reading it and watching the tank.

 

[143MPCo]

Just found this thread, really liking what you have done so far, following!

 

[ksfulk]

Fish are out of quarantine! Woohoo! (Or some of them at least, dont tell the others!) Today the big four got released in the main tank - Two barred rabbitfish (Siganus virgatus), Yellow Eyed Kole Tang (Ctenochaetus strigosus), Goldrim Tang (Acanthurus nigricans), and Yellow Pyramid Butterflyfish (Hemitaurichthys polylepis). As you can see in the video, the tangs are still sparring with one another, even after most of yesterday in the acclimation box. But all in all the group seems to be doing well.

I had an issue with my GFO reactor, and somehow the media blew through the sponges within the reactor and dumped about 2 cups of GFO into the sump. I looked in there and it appeared that someone threw a handful of potting soil in the bottom there. I spent about two hours with a shop vac and some tubing to siphon all of the GFO out of there. I then put on some carbon to clear up the water, as it was really cloudy from all of the stirring around I did in the sump. I also ordered a few mesh filter socks that I can tie onto the drain, those should be coming next week sometime. Corals are also settling in well, so I lowered the lights so they are 10" off the water now - the clams are really stretching for the light, and they seem better with the halides close. I shortened the halide period from 7 to 4.5 hours. I'll bring it back up over the next few weeks as well. I'll put up some pictures tomorrow once my new zoas open up all pretty.

Looks like the focus will go back to cleaning up the sump room now, at least for a few more weeks.

 

[ksfulk]

Not really sure whats going on with the tank, but there's something thats causing some of my sps to go downhill in a hurry. Im guessing that it might be a combination of a bacterial bloom (from the heightened bioload from the new fish) and the light intensity. I saw a bit of RTN on a birdsnest and one of my CC Needle in a Haystack last night, so I figured I would move the light fixture back up to where it was. I loosened on of the screws, and the entire bracket pulled out of the wall and my light fell partially into the tank. Worse than that (well equally bad, at least) is that when it fell, the fixture knocked the lid off of my Neptune AFS and dumped about two cups of pellets into the tank!

I spent a few hours vacuuming out the pellets that I could get to and getting a filter sock in place on the drain line so I could catch some of the pellets that I missed vacuuming. Unfortunately, when I came home today, i lost several more acros. The tank remains cloudy. The fish are still active and picking at the rockwork, but about ten or more acros have lost all tissue, while others have polyps extended and look fine. The LPS seem unaffected, but some of the zoas are completely closed up and receding. My two derasa clams were also semi-closed up. I tested all my parameters, and then did a 20 gallon water change (thats what I had on hand) and started mixing up another 20 gallons for another change tomorrow. We'll see what happens, I guess.

Parameters
Alk: 9.408 DKh (higher than I like, but using RSCP as my salt it was up around 11 so Ive been letting it drop for the past few weeks)
Temp: 77.95F
Calc: 441 ppm
PO4: 0.1 ppm
NO3: 3ppm
Salinity: 1.025
Mag: 1450
pH: 8.0 +/- 0.4 depending on the time of day

 

[ksfulk]

Pulled out all of the dead sps from the tank, as the corals left in the tank appear to be immune to whatever caused the issue. There's still some damaged corals - namely a leptastrea, chalice and a lobo. I lost a derasa clam, and the other one is hanging in there. I think the cause of the cyano (aside from the influx of nutrients from the ATF spill) was a semi clogged inlet in the bottom of the sump, which was causing the pump output to be really lower than before. Ive also replaced the outputs of my pump from penductors to wide sweeps, which combined with the gyre is really making some nice chaotic flow throughout the tank. Only time will tell if the inhabitants enjoy it.

I was also talking to a local guy who has an amazing setup in his garage for breeding clownfish, and I figured I would cave into the pressure from my wife and kids to get a pair of clowns for the big tank. However, I wanted something more than just a standard occey or perc. With my recent ventures to the MBI conference, I also have a mild interest in breed clowns - moreso so I can say I that Ive done it, rather than anything else. So, I talked my wife into letting me purchase two pairs of clowns. Thursday I drove over to Battle Creek, and met with Jasen and picked out my new fish. I settled on a pair of snowflakes and a pair of picassos. While there, Jasen noted that I kept my eye on a little phantom that was in the mix with some standard percs - so he threw it in for free! Right now the little guys are about the size of a quarter, so they have their own little 10 gallon tank set up in the fish room while they get a bit bigger, then I'll figure out which two of these guys Im going to use for the breeding setup, and which three will end up in the display tank.

Parameters:
Alk: 9.576 DKh (higher than I like, but using RSCP as my salt it was up around 11 so Ive been letting it drop for the past few weeks)
Temp: 77.95F
Calc: 450 ppm
PO4: 0.04 ppm
NO3: 3ppm
Salinity: 1.025
Mag: 1600
pH: 8.0 +/- 0.3

 

[ksfulk]

Labor Day weekend saw some cleanup of the fish room and some less exciting but more useful updates to my utilities. I purchased some new shelving for the fish room, so I have more room for "stuff" and I dont have to have everything crammed onto my tiny plastic shelves. I also recieved another EB-8, so I can work on getting the entire system wired up to the Apex now, and can get rid of some of the extra cords that are hanging around. I also recieved a box from Triton-US containing my first set of Elements and my initial Triton Labs testing kit. Of course I managed to get it before a long weekend! Anyhow, the test vials went out in the mail this morning, so I should have a better idea of the water quality when it comes back in a week or two. Im hopeful it will guide me to determining what my problems are with the water, as all of my tests have come back well within defined parameters.

Cyano is still a problem, Im blasting it off the sand and rock work once a day and using a filter sock to catch all of it that does through the drain. I added two small milkcrates of rock rubble to the sump, so that I can work on increasing the biofilter - hopefully it will help. Im having a pretty hard time getting the Alkalinity to fall below 10dKH in the tank - but I think now that Ive exhausted the RSCP salt and gone back to plain Instant Ocean (purple box), it should start going down a bit. With the mass extiniction of my SPS, I cant imagine that it will go down quickly, but Im hoping a few 20 gallon daily water changes will knock it down some. Figure if I can get 7-10 days worth of water changes, then I should be looking at a significant turn over in old ==> new water.

And... I caught my wife staring at the fish tank! Its not happened in the past ten years, but I think she finally got curious about all the time I am spending in the basement. She pointed out that all the fish in the tank have some kind of yellow on them and that she really like the wellsophyllia and fungi that I have on the sand bed (because they look like hungry mouths from the underworld... in a demonic fab-glamous manner (her quote, not mine)). So I showed her the fish eating off of the algae clip and we talked about what else I would like to see in the tank. Whatever I did seemed to work, because I got the bosses approval to order some more livestock! I'm awaiting confirmation of shipping still, but I ordered a male and female pair of Swallowtail Angels and a Red Headed Solon Fairy Wrasse from LiveAquaria this weekend and picked up a few zoas and favias from Gonzo's livesale, all of which should be shipping today or tomorrow. I cleaned up and refilled the 40b on a new stand (closer to the sink, and not of the top of the sump) as prep for QT, and now its just a waiting game. I also picked up a Tunze Osmolater for the QT ATO (since this is the busy travel time of year for my family) and a few other minor pieces of equipment, as well as the Innovative Marine Algae Grazer - because my rabbitfish is a terror when it comes to the algae clip, and even my wife called him a jerk for tearing off the nori sheet and then letting it cruise into the overflow.

Thats it for now. Just gotta play the waiting game until all the new goodies arrive. Im also going to do a minor buffing of the front acrylic panel this week, as my son's playmates have scratched the acrylic with their Legos! :mad: Hooray for Novus!

 

[ksfulk]

So... LiveAquaria and Gonzo's boxes were on my porch when I got home from work today! I got right to work getting everybody acclimated and poking around the coral bags to view my goodies. I was really really happy with the way the corals were packed and that they were identical to the WYSIWYG pictures (as sometimes they arent). Very very cool. Also got a bonus frag of some nice key lime-y zoas that are a color that I dont have yet. Gotta love it when those things work out!

The shipment from LiveAquaria had three bags in it: two medium sized bags marked Female Swallowtail and Red Head Solon Wrasse - the other bag was nearly the size of a three gallon Ziploc bag and was marked Male Swallowtail. Now, when I ordered the fish, they were marked Female: 3-4", Male 4". So I was surprised to see the disparity in bag size out of the box. So, anyhow I opened the bags after temperature acclimating and HOLY CRAP! The male swallowtail is about 6.5" long with some nice streamers already... Im pretty excited, though the size difference between the male and female makes me a little nervous. The wrasse and the female angel immediately took to some PVC while the male cruised around the QT for a while and then they all seemed to bed down for the night.

 

[Jimbo662]

Following along!

Where do you have the 2nd gyre? I'm doing a peninsula tank with similar dimensions and still trying to figure out water flow. Right now I've just got two MP40s from my old tank but not sure those will do the trick.

 

[ksfulk]

Following along!

Where do you have the 2nd gyre? I'm doing a peninsula tank with similar dimensions and still trying to figure out water flow. Right now I've just got two MP40s from my old tank but not sure those will do the trick.

I dont have a 2nd gyre yet - I'm really trying to figure out if I need one or not. However, if I do end up with one, I would liekly mount it vertically on the "far" side of the overflow, so that it would run flow along the back wall of the tank, but in opposite path to the primary gyre. With the gyres setup to run at random intervals, I think I would get the best flow pattern that way - However, with the recent changes to my pump returns, I seem to be getting better flow (along with cleaning up the gyre), so I might just hold off until after things settle in a bit more. I'm also going to rework my rocks to get a more "air-y" setup down below so there is more flow along the sand bed, as the gyre gets diverted around the rock "wedge" on the left side of the tank, and the large cavern in the center is a very low flow area (and a detritus and algae breeding ground). Its still early on in this tank's life, so I'll tweak it a bit more and see if I can get better water movement.

I'll say this about the gyres - they have deceptive amounts of flow. It might look like the waters not moving much, until you come down the next morning and find a sand dune in the middle of your tank!

Good Luck with your build! Do you have a build thread yet on this forum?

 

[Jimbo662]

Thanks for the great reply. Here's my build thread. I actually picked up the 150 last night from a local reefer that bought it as a 2nd unit and decided not to use it...still shrink wrapped!

https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/dsa-175g-peninsula-build.212738/

 

[ksfulk]

Thanks for the great reply. Here's my build thread. I actually picked up the 150 last night from a local reefer that bought it as a 2nd unit and decided not to use it...still shrink wrapped!

https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/dsa-175g-peninsula-build.212738/

Awesome looking build so far. I've used some of the same equipment over the years on other tanks - I particularily love the Vertex Skimmer. That thing was dang near bullet proof once setup. Should be great in your setup.

I got a fun email today from Triton labs, letting me know my ICP analysis was complete. Looking over the numbers, nothing really stands out as a shock, with maybe the exception of the level of phosphate - but I had recorded my parameters before I sent in the water testing results, and Im going to compare them together tonight when I get home to see if there are any gross discrepencies (Magnesium looks off, from what I remember, but I did just order new reagents, because my old set was... well, old.). I'll post an update to that later. I also broke down and purchased some Chemiclean to get rid of the cyano. Adding that was a treat last night, as my skimmer started shooting foam into the air from the venting holes on the skimmer cup lid, which reached the ceiling! Having to explain to my wife why I was cleaning "water" off the ceiling late at night was comical. Luckily, there seems to be no ill effects so far, and Im hoping to see a difference when I get home tonight.

 

[ksfulk]

Broke out the camera and took some shots today. The sands cleared up nicely so the tank is looking pretty good.

 

[ksfulk]

More random shots from this weekend so far. I moved the juvenile clowns into the tank. A pair of snowflakes clowns, a phantom and a picasso clown. Should be fun watching them figure out who get to be the boys and who gets to be the girls! I also spent about an hour watching my QT and marveling at the small social hierarchy thats forming in there already between the wrasses (and how everyone already gets out of the way of the angels!) Assuming noting else pops up, these guys should be out around October 4th