Mr. Z's EXT 50

[Mr.Z]

Updated my plumbing today to:

1. Support the drain and return lines so they don’t put unnecessary stress on the bulkheads
2. Swap in a section of soft plumbing for the return line to reduce noise/vibration

I am very pleased with the results of the soft plumbing. Previously, with all hard plumbing, any speed above 33% on my Sicce SDC 6.0 would cause a humming noise. Now I’ve got it about as high as the drain can handle (~60%) and there is zero humming noise anymore.

Doing my best to keep things kind of tidy...

 

[Mr.Z]

First fish inhabitants added after 76 days fallow.

Also, picked up three new fish and added to QT. The midas blenny, flame hawkfish, and royal gramma will be joining the clowns in the DT in ~30 days. They’re all a bit shy as they were just added, but started to come out more once I fed them. And fortunately, they’re all getting along well.

 

[Mr.Z]

Quite bummed.

The three new fish were just about done with QT, but all ended up dying within about 10 days of each other. Having trouble figuring out what the cause of death was. Each fish first started showing signs of shyness/sluggishness, then wouldn’t eat, and on their respective last days, exhibited heavy breathing.

They made it through the first 3.5 weeks fine. Started with two weeks of metroplex, and also dosed cupramine to 0.5. After about the third week, the hawkfish died first, so I did a near 100% water change, in case there were issues with the copper.

Immediately followed with two rounds of Prazipro and heavy aeration. Midas blenny died next.

Then tried a round of kanaplex and the royal gramma died a few days later.

Given ammonia was tested at 0 and I went though pretty much all basic medications, having trouble figuring out the issue. One guess is the two weeks of metroplex wasn’t enough and once I stopped supplementing their food with it, an internal parasite took hold and brought them all down.

Another guess is the copper was too high prior to the water change. Have now ordered copper power and the Hanna copper checker to hopefully eliminate this as an uncertainty going forward.

One sliver of good news is I witnessed my nem split in two.

 

[KWT]

Hello, looks like you are getting a handle on things

 

[Mr.Z]

Biggest change to the tank recently is adding additional lighting. I had started off with the Kessil A360x which has spread that is entirely sufficient, but the shadowing resulted in too much coral tissue being blocked from the light. I was able to add two 24" 50/50 Reefbrite XHOs without cluttering the top of the tank too much. The photos below show how I used the mounting legs to sit the lights on top of the tank.

Have still been struggling with my fish QT. After losing a round of fish (flame hawkfish, royal gramma, and midas blenny), I got three more fish -- a trio of banggai cardinals. These fish seemed to follow the same pattern as the other three: started off fine, eating well, but began to slow down a bit, and eat less. At this point I've lost two of the cardinals and the third seems to be relatively healthy still although barely eating. It's almost done with it's QT cycle and will hopefully manage the DT just fine.

I'm thinking the QT method is just too aggressive, even for healthy fish to handle. My protocol is fairly standard: acclimate the fish, feed metroplex/focus, copper for 30 days, then prazipro. For the next batch, I'm planning to reduce the time in copper, by getting praziquantel dose out of the way upon arrival, then two weeks of copper and then straight into the display tank.

Lastly, the DT is facing significant brown algae issues at the moment. Nitrates and phosphates are very low. I have been feeding the clownfish residents as much as they can handle, have no filter sock, no skimmer, and have the refugium light on for <2 hours per day, but still need to dose phosphates and nitrates to stay above 0.00. Hopefully getting more fish in the tank will alleviate the low nutrient problem.

 

[rioreef]

Any updates? Did you get your quarantine figured out?

 

[Mr.Z]

I ended up dialing back the aggressiveness of my fish QT. I lost the third Banggai that I thought was going to make it. I also eliminated my coral and invert QT because I was having too many coral mortalities in that system as well.

My new QT process has been to bring the fish in and immediately do two rounds of General Cure (instead of Prazipro). Then I do 2 weeks (instead of 4 weeks of copper), while simultaneously feeding freeze dried mysis soaked in focus/and Metroplex. Without lowering the copper dose, I transfer the fish directly into the display tank.

Using that revised protocol, I got through three rounds of QT with no issues; including two Banggais, a yellow watchman goby (which immediately paired with a pistol shrimp), and a flame hawkfish.

I've supplemented this revised QT approach with a UV as well (will provide more details in my next post)

The Banggais (only residents not yet named)


Robin (the pistol shrimp is Batman)


Bruce


The tank is chugging along fairly well with just a couple unhappy corals. Can't get my orange plate or elegance to recover.

Front


Right Side


Left Side

 

[Mr.Z]

The latest piece of equipment I added was a UV sterilizer. My primary goal was to protect my fish from parasites, but intentionally oversized the UV to provide clearer water and to resolve a dinoflagellates issue. Since my tank is only 50 gallons, it wasn't too hard / expensive to find a UV large enough that could straddle both tasks.

I got a 25 watt Aqua Ultraviolet UV paired with a Sicce 1.0. Based on my math, this system would indeed protect my fish from parasites as well as reduce bacteria / dino / algae issues.

I had a strong preference for keeping the UV system out of view of the rest of the room, so I sacrificed room under my stand to plumb it into my sump. It is fully secure and can not be accidentally knocked over, but does not have any hard fittings to the rest of my system, so it will be easy to remove / service.

I was fighting (what I believe was) dinoflagellates for a few months and the day after installing the UV, I saw improvement. The dinos were completely gone in less than a week.

 

[rioreef]

Having an AquaUV 25w myself, you have to have more than equal height above it free to service bulb or quartz sleeve. That is unless you plan on taking it all out when you do service.

 

[Mr.Z]

Having an AquaUV 25w myself, you have to have more than equal height above it free to service bulb or quartz sleeve. That is unless you plan on taking it all out when you do service.

Although the UV is secure because the plumbing hooks over the lip of the sump, I can just peel the suction cups of the Sicce off the bottom of the sump then lean the whole thing back and lift it out.

It’ll be easy, in theory...

 

[Mr.Z]

Over the past few weeks, the tank has taken a very bad turn. Dinoflagellates started creeping in. I tried to ignore them and just made sure my nitrates/phosphates stayed above 0.0, but the dinos kept getting worse.

Eventually all the coral started to look unhappy, so I needed to take more aggressive action. I dosed up nitrates/phosphates to 10/0.10, did a three day blackout out, increased activated carbon filtration, and focused on manual removal.

It’s been almost two weeks since the three day blackout. I think I might’ve beaten the dinos, but have lost a bunch of coral and everything still looks terrible.

I now have a forest of green and brown hair algae and it seems like just a matter of time before I lose even more coral that had been thriving just a few weeks ago.

The only good news is the fish all seem healthy/happy.

I don’t know what else I can do now, but just focusing on keeping parameters stable and bringing nitrates/phosphates lower to help with the algae issue.

It’s always hard to diagnose what caused these types of issues, but I do regret starting the tank with dead/dry rock rather than well established live rock. Although no proof, I do think live rock would have helped create a more stable system and prevent a massive dino issue like this coming out of nowhere.

I had been increasing dosing of Red Sea AB+ in the weeks leading up to the issue. Just a hunch that it might have fueled the dino outbreak.

 

[Aldrinlights]

This is disappointing news my friend. Sorry to see your struggle playing out. I'm wondering though, is your UV set up as a closed loop system? It appears in your photo that the UV is set up as a second pump still allowing your refugium to flow into the return pump chamber separately.

 

[Mr.Z]

Having an AquaUV 25w myself, you have to have more than equal height above it free to service bulb or quartz sleeve. That is unless you plan on taking it all out when you do service.

Thanks for sharing your perspective. However, since I set up the plumbing with flexible tubing at the ends and it’s essentially disconnected from the rest of the system, I’m actually able to relatively easily lean the UV plumbing back slightly to lift it out.

I’ve already been able to test this when I cleaned the bulb a month ago while trying to diagnose the dino issue. Fortunately, was able to pull the bulb out easily.

It’s been a great balance between ease of access, but secure placement.

As a side note, I found that the first pump I had was too slow of flow for the UV. Although mathematically sufficient for my system sizing, it caused the UV casing to get warm and I developed VERY substantial precipitation on the quartz sleeve over a short period of time. This precipitation issue shows up in ever increasing 2-part dosing demands for this tank. Notably, this precipitation didn’t even show up on my heater during the same period. I’ve since upgraded from ~200gph to ~400gph for the UV.

What gph pump do you use for your 25w bulb?

 

[Mr.Z]

This is disappointing news my friend. Sorry to see your struggle playing out. I'm wondering though, is your UV set up as a closed loop system? It appears in your photo that the UV is set up as a second pump still allowing your refugium to flow into the return pump chamber separately.

I’m not sure if it would be classified as closed (or open?) loop That’s correct that there is a separate pump for the UV. So the water to the UV comes after the refugium then goes to the separate section for the return pump.

Do you see any issue with this setup?

I had done the math to make sure it was processing a sufficient turnover for the tank. And given my return pump has higher flow than my UV pump, I haven’t identified any issue with how I plumbed it. Since the UV pulls from one chamber in the sump then dumps into the next chamber downstream, it ensures no water is “backwashed” into the UV flow.

 

[Aldrinlights]

I’m not sure if it would be classified as closed (or open?) loop That’s correct that there is a separate pump for the UV. So the water to the UV comes after the refugium then goes to the separate section for the return pump.

Do you see any issue with this setup?

I had done the math to make sure it was processing a sufficient turnover for the tank. And given my return pump has higher flow than my UV pump, I haven’t identified any issue with how I plumbed it. Since the UV pulls from one chamber in the sump then dumps into the next chamber downstream, it ensures no water is “backwashed” into the UV flow.

As long as there is no water bypassing the UV and going into your return pump chamber then it is closed loop. If, however you have water that can get past the UV and carry on its little way through the sump and into the return pump chamber IN ANY WAY then you do not have a closed loop system and the UV is doing no good. Thats why they say you want ALL of the water to go through the UV on the return pump line before entering your tank in a closed loop system.

 

[Mr.Z]

As long as there is no water bypassing the UV and going into your return pump chamber then it is closed loop. If, however you have water that can get past the UV and carry on its little way through the sump and into the return pump chamber IN ANY WAY then you do not have a closed loop system and the UV is doing no good. Thats why they say you want ALL of the water to go through the UV on the return pump line before entering your tank in a closed loop system.

If the UV is processing the appropriate GPH and none of the water is being re-processed through the UV without first going to the return pump, into the tank and returning back to the sump, what is the difference between how my UV is setup and if you did a true closed loop plumbed directly into the tank at the same GPH?

 

[Aldrinlights]

If the UV is processing the appropriate GPH and none of the water is being re-processed through the UV without first going to the return pump, into the tank and returning back to the sump, what is the difference between how my UV is setup and if you did a true closed loop plumbed directly into the tank at the same GPH?

Because you are not completely eradicating all water flow A lot of your algae and your single-celled organisms are simply bypassing and it will continue to proliferate no matter how much you run through the uv

 

[Mr.Z]

Because you are not completely eradicating all water flow A lot of your algae and your single-celled organisms are simply bypassing and it will continue to proliferate no matter how much you run through the uv

Mathematically (and practically) I don’t understand the difference you’re trying to explain. Doing a closed loop would process the same amount of water in the same way that I am doing. The fact that this process happens in the sump doesn’t change that.

 

[rural-reefer]

First off, thank you for documenting your IM 50 EXT build; there doesn't seem to be many build threads for this tank. I have the same tank on order and have found your thread very helpful for planning the equipment to purchase. I have a question, for the DD Jump Guard, did you get the 29.5 x 29.5 or the 47.25 x 29.5?

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[Mr.Z]

First off, thank you for documenting your IM 50 EXT build; there doesn't seem to be many build threads for this tank. I have the same tank on order and have found your thread very helpful for planning the equipment to purchase. I have a question, for the DD Jump Guard, did you get the 29.5 x 29.5 or the 47.25 x 29.5?

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Glad this has been helpful!

I remember not being totally sure what would work. I just checked my past orders — I got the 29.5 x 29.5 and had no issues spanning the full length of the rim.