My Build Thread 75 gallon SPS/40 Breeder Anemone System

[Lukas75]

Since my crash many moons ago I have been housing all of my fish, inverts and remaining corals in a Deep Blue 60 frag tank that will be retired to it's intended purpose eventually. Why a two tank system? Because bubble-tip. Anyone who has had a bubble-tip that refuses to stop splitting is probably enthusiastically nodding their heads. Why both on the same system? I had to be honest with myself, while the ideal would be to have each tank on it's own system I would have 3 tanks running at the same time (coral QT). I work full time and life.

The system was set up on 04/05/2019, and is on a long haul cycle. It will be dark cycled for two months with nothing added to it, but bacteria, table shrimp and top off water. The lights will be turned on at two months along with the refugium and fish will be slowly moved in. I do not anticipate adding coral or nems until at least four to six months. I will be transferring bristle worms, amphipods, copepods, snails, coraline algae and anything else I actually want to keep (no corals or nems) throughout the cycle

The anemone. This beast requires it's own back story. It has been sucked into an MP10 moved into a quarantine where it was left to die and bounced back. It has died back in a system that was run by biopellets (do not recommend with them) and bounced back. I have gone from one to seven, gave four away to a local school a few months back and am back up to six. This nem and I have quite the back story so it deserves to be enshrined in a tank dedicated to it.

I found it by chance at an LFS down the road from my house that is a full service pet store and has since gotten completely out of saltwater. It was in a tank that was ill suited to anemone in terms of lighting and flow and it was stretched out tot he surface trying to get light. I asked the owner about it and he told me it was a customer's that he brought in after it had split. It was a rose with purple tips and a green disc with white stripes around the mouth. He only wanted $50.00 for it so I jumped on it. Obviously this was the best purchase I have made in reef keeping!

The rock
The rock is a combination of Fiji rock and BRS Reef Saver. It was infested with vermatid snails, aptasia and bubble algae, so I took a scorched earth policy. All of the rock was bleached, soaked in RODI and dechlorinator and then soaked in RODI for a week. After this it was allowed to air dry for several weeks before the tank was set up.

Shared Sump
No pics
30 gallon simplicity (under the 75). It is30 gallon aqueon aquarium divided into two sections by hardware store glass. First section is a 15 gallon refugium that will be lit by a Kessil H160 (it is in position, but not on at this time). All of the drains empty into this chamber with no mechanical filtration. The second section is for all of the equipment. The level in this section is controlled by a Tunze ATO. The skimmer is a Reef Octopus 152-s 6". I have the room to upgrade to an 8" but I am intentionally keeping the size of the skimmer down to try to avoid chasing nutrient levels later on. I have two media bags full of seachem matrix in this chamber. I also have about 40 frag plugs curing in there. The return pump is a Sicce Syncra Pro 1000 GPH split to both tanks. There's a heater in there too.

40 Breeder (Rock position subject to change)

Lighting will be an ATI 36" 6-Bulb fixture that is currently over the 60. I will be lighting it with an old Maxspect Razor until it's time to transfer over the nems.

Flow will be from two Icecap 3k gyres that are currently running the 60 as well and will move over at the same time. Right now there is a mish mash of pumps in there just keeping the water moving.

75 SPS Dominant

The lighting for the SPS dominant system will be from two 48 inch 2-bulb Hamilton retrofit fixtures with ATI blue plus bulbs and two Kessil A360W controlled by a spectral controller.

The flow for this tank is one MP40 (reef crest master half power), one MP10 (slave, full power) sweeping the bottom inspired by the BRS WWC series and two Maxspect Gyre XF350s running on gradual pulsing mode reversed time delayed at 60% power. I figure this combination will last me through at least one upgrade just by turning them up!

Pardon our dust we are under contruction!

 

[Dominic Prezwanski]

Nice mate. What are your water parameters?

 

[Lukas75]

Nice mate. What are your water parameters?

To be honest besides to say salinity 1.026 and temp 78 degrees Fahrenheit I haven't started testing yet. I did send a test into ATI to get a starting pulse on it and here are the standout results. I'm not concerned with nitrate or phosphate since it is cycling.
Ca 454.7
Alk 9.46 dKH
Mg 1261
Manganese 60.46 seawater is .97 per the analysis

I was using Red Sea blue bucket so these results seemed more than a tiny bit curious to me. I looked back and realized that since I was starting with dry rock and nothing alive but bacteria I added RODI to the tank as my unit made it and mixed the salt in the tank after all was said and done. It took a couple of days to fill the tank and I think the low pH of RODI water dissolved some of the rock and this is why I have such high alkalinity and calcium. I would be fine with allowing this to fall on its own and start supplement around my target of 7.5-8.5 and Ca of 400-410, but the manganese is worrisome. I have no idea what having it that high will do and I'm not keen on finding out. I will be switching salts (for various reasons) and doing a few big water changes before adding fish to get everything in line then probably send another test before moving forward from there.

 

[Lukas75]

Regrettably I introduced dinos into the system with Chaeto. At this early of a stage I think it's just time to tear it down, bleach everything out and try again sans the dinos. The other system has chaeto with bubble algae and aiptasia in it, but you know what it doesn't have? Dinos. I'll clean it out with peppermint shrimp and vibrant and reboot with that. New build thread to come!

 

[Lukas75]

I made the decision to fight it out. So far no good, but the battle has just begun!

 

[LOVEROCK]

I made the decision to fight it out. So far no good, but the battle has just begun!

Does it come at light and disappear at night

 

[Lukas75]

Does it come at light and disappear at night

Amphidinium, verified under scope.

 

[Lukas75]

I did a 3-day black-out dosing hydrogen peroxide in the morning and at night at 1.2 ml/10 gallons. I ran 5 micron filter socks changed every morning. So far I'm clear at the 1 week point. I have a minor diatom bloom, but I'm to understand that, that may actually be a good sign. I will likely start my water change schedule again this weekend. Hopefully they stay gone.

Edit: I left my chaeto in and it did not appear to have any detrimental effect on it

 

[Lukas75]

After thinking about it further I shouldn't just leave the fight I had with dinos to the most recent battle without detailing what led to it. I'm under no illusions that the war is won.

I started the fight by adding 5280 pods and dosing phyto for a few weeks. During this time I was siphoning the rocks, glass and bottom off through a 100 micron filter sock daily. In addition to this I was changing 100 micron filter socks daily. I turned the light on my fuge down and initiated breaks two one hour breaks in the lighting (still reverse daylight) to bring PO4 and NO3 up. I'd like to tell you exact numbers because I'm awesome and tested daily through this ordeal, but I'd be lying. I know they came up, I just didn't pay attention to how much. No SPS = lazy.

At one point I decided to run the dino test again just allowing the filter sock I was siphoning into to drain a bit into the jar the pods came in. Sure enough within minutes they were forming back into a snot string. I knew that siphoning into a 100 micron sock wasn't removing as much as I would like, but the visual hammered home how ineffective it was.

I went onto Amazon to search for 10 micron socks on a 100 micron budget, I found 5s. I know 10 is the recommended, but I found a pack of ten 5 micron socks for relatively cheap. I replaced both the socks in the sump and the sock I was filtering through with the 5 micron socks. I continued to change them daily, bleaching them when not in use to kill anything in it. I assume that bleaching kills encysted dinos too. I stopped dosing phyto at this point because I figured the sock would just take them right back out.

While I was doing this I took some chaeto from a tank that has been up and running for around 3 years and has no dino issues despite my breaking protocol and moving a nepthea coral I had added to the 40 back into this tank. There were dinos on the coral when it was moved. I also took sand from an attached refugium, placed it in a glass baking dish to about two inches thick and put this on the bottom of my refugium, I have no substrate in the fuge otherwise. I tried to find Fiji Mud as I had seen recommended but it appears to be a discontinued product. I also added several rocks that were in the other tanks sump taking care to find rocks with significant sponge growth. I have no idea if pineapple sponges eat dinos, but it seemed like a good idea at the time.

So it would be remiss to state that the blackout and peroxide dosing alone did the trick and I would also be remiss in not stating that I am only dino free for nine days now.

 

[Lukas75]

The 40 seemed to be causing issues with the dinos recurring so I separated it off into its own tank. Even doing that the dinos returned about three weeks later in force. I knew they would always be present and would pop back up when given the right opportunity. I had to drain the tank down to move it right about three feet to get the lighting away from the thermostat (not well thought out on my part). I completely redid the rock work at this time since I had the perfect opportunity, but that's beside the point. In the process the "mini-sand bed" that I had in the refugium got blasted while refilling the tank and sump. I did not notice this until later, but I think this is likely the cause of their rapid return. I still haven't added corals as it just hasn't been right so peroxide, 5 micron socks and blackout it is again. I removed the "mini-sand bed" and siphoned the sand out of the refugium (it was everywhere). I figure the job of adding diversity has been done and it is now a risk. Hopefully they get knocked back again and I can keep it there.

 

[Lukas75]

RIP.

The fish and nems are in QT and not setting the joint system up again. Will probably start a new thread once the 75 cycles back through. I'm being more careful in what I transfer in from my old systems. It's a "I should have known better, but I did it anyways." scenario.