My lil reef

[ReefSlice]

Thank you, it’s become far more than I could have imagined when I started it.

So this is a fairly simple methodology, I’m old school so it’s heavy on rock, there’s probably 160lbs of pukani. A big protein skimmer, 200 micron mesh filter sock, and daily carbon dosing via NoPOx. I use activated carbon (about 500ml) in a bag tossed in a high flow area of the sump. I generally use it for a month, pull the bag for a month then the next month I’ll replace it with new carbon. (So there’s a month with no carbon). I notice the corals grow better without the carbon in the system.

I practice a philosophy of high input in and high output out. But they have to be balanced and that’s the real trick in this. I’ve personally found in this tank that it florishes with 5-15ppm NO3 and phosphates around 0.12ppm. I feed HEAVY, and even then sometimes it’s not enough. I’ve been dosing NO3 and PO4 to keep up. I feed LRS Reef Frenzy, LRS Fish Frenzy, LRS Herbivore Frenzy, Mysis, brine shrimp, nutrimar ova. (Not all at once, but I switch it up everytime). I generally feed twice a day. I also mix a couple powdered Tropic Marin coral foods in with the tank water that I defrost the frozen foods in before i dump them in the tank. (I only broadcast feed). I personally love the Tropic Marin Pro Coral Zooton, and Tropic Marin Pro Coral Phyton I will mix equal parts (three scoops of each). I generally feed twice a day. So the high output is every two weeks I add Prodibio bio digest, and daily the tank receives 6ml of NOPOx, this seems to keep the nutrients stable if I keep up with my feedings.

Stocking list as of now is probably pretty light for a tank this size. I’ve got a lubocks wrasse, 15 lyretail anthias, a scribbled rabbitfish, 3 gold assesors, 3 pajamma cardinals, 2 Mocha Vinci clowns, and a cleaner shrimp. There’s a whole clean up crew of various species of snails, scarlet hermits, blue leg hermits, emerald crabs, 8 brittle stars, I’m sure I am forgetting a bunch of stuff. I could use a few more fish!

I hope this helps, when you think of anything else ask away!

Awesome write up and exactly what I was looking for, thank you! As for cycling the tank, which route did you take from filling to adding first corals? Do you have any aggression with the large school of lyretails? I plan on going with at least 5 or 6 in a 150. And to clarify, you feed the coral foods 2x a day as well with the fish food? Thanks, tank looks great under that new geisemann layout.

 

[Rick.45cal]

Awesome write up and exactly what I was looking for, thank you! As for cycling the tank, which route did you take from filling to adding first corals? Do you have any aggression with the large school of lyretails? I plan on going with at least 5 or 6 in a 150. And to clarify, you feed the coral foods 2x a day as well with the fish food? Thanks, tank looks great under that new geisemann layout.

I generally feed the corals at least once a day, but sometimes twice a day. If my nutrients are sinking low I’ll feed the corals twice a day. I kind of play that by ear. If I miss a feeding here or there, it’s no big deal and nothing to worry about. Sometimes I skip a day or two without feeding the corals. life gets busy, I forget, I get lazy. Etc. No real hard and fast rules here. Clearly you don’t want to feed to the point you are polluting the system, rotting food in the system isn’t good.

As for the anthias, having a large group has probably minimized the agression at least on an individual basis. I started with 15 females and now have 13 females a dominant male, who has a harem and a sub dominant male with his own harem. The males battle on occasion, they interlock jaws and wrestle, they also push around and display for the females. But, it seems to mostly be all show with no actual harm/intended harm to the females. The anthias are also all to busy trying to figure out their place within their own ranks they completely ignore all the other fish in the tank. It’s been fun watching them, and I’m glad I got them, they are great fish.

I started this tank in the beginning running zeovit, and I think that held me back for awhile. I wanted to try it and decided about 8 -10 months in it wasn’t giving me the results I knew I could get on my own. I probably put sticks in to this tank too early before things were 100% stable and it was also a mistake. It was very stressful at times thinking everyday I may wake up and everything would be bleached or worse... gone. If I had to do it over I would start with Prodibio Bio Digest and build up a bioload with fish, and process it the nutrients with NOPOx, once the tank settled and became stable nutrient wise I would add my SPS frags. The real trick to all of this is being patient to bring the probiotic population up and keep them happy, without overdoing the NOPOx, it’s a balancing act that takes some time to learn, it also changes with adding corals/fish.

The thing that has really helped me the most with this tank is I have largely kept my hands out of the tank, I stopped adding corals a couple years ago, the tank is 27” deep so I mostly use long grabber tools to do anything inside the tank. I mostly just let the corals and everything do what it wants, I try not to intervene and move things around if I can avoid it. (That being said, you have to get to a point where you can go hands off, no tank is hands off in the beginning).

When you look at this tank, there are lots of things that you don’t see. You don’t see the bleaching event that some of the corals went through when I changed my lights to the ATI powermodule and my nutrients were too low. You also don’t see the months of brown slimey gunk that was all over the sandbed and rocks from dosing zeostart and zeo bak without a full bioload, you also don’t see the hours and hours of pulling and plucking bryopsis brought in with some snails that I orginally ordered as a clean up crew. In other words this tank went through a lot of ugly stages for a long time.

Go slow, be patient, be dilligent, and formulate a routine that the tank responds positively to is the most important advice I can give. It’s all a process of looking and learning to see what your tank is telling you.

 

[drawman]

Picture of the day!

That coralline growth is awesome Rick.

 

[drawman]

I generally feed the corals at least once a day, but sometimes twice a day. If my nutrients are sinking low I’ll feed the corals twice a day. I kind of play that by ear. If I miss a feeding here or there, it’s no big deal and nothing to worry about. Sometimes I skip a day or two without feeding the corals. life gets busy, I forget, I get lazy. Etc. No real hard and fast rules here. Clearly you don’t want to feed to the point you are polluting the system, rotting food in the system isn’t good.

As for the anthias, having a large group has probably minimized the agression at least on an individual basis. I started with 15 females and now have 13 females a dominant male, who has a harem and a sub dominant male with his own harem. The males battle on occasion, they interlock jaws and wrestle, they also push around and display for the females. But, it seems to mostly be all show with no actual harm/intended harm to the females. The anthias are also all to busy trying to figure out their place within their own ranks they completely ignore all the other fish in the tank. It’s been fun watching them, and I’m glad I got them, they are great fish.

I started this tank in the beginning running zeovit, and I think that held me back for awhile. I wanted to try it and decided about 8 -10 months in it wasn’t giving me the results I knew I could get on my own. I probably put sticks in to this tank too early before things were 100% stable and it was also a mistake. It was very stressful at times thinking everyday I may wake up and everything would be bleached or worse... gone. If I had to do it over I would start with Prodibio Bio Digest and build up a bioload with fish, and process it the nutrients with NOPOx, once the tank settled and became stable nutrient wise I would add my SPS frags. The real trick to all of this is being patient to bring the probiotic population up and keep them happy, without overdoing the NOPOx, it’s a balancing act that takes some time to learn, it also changes with adding corals/fish.

The thing that has really helped me the most with this tank is I have largely kept my hands out of the tank, I stopped adding corals a couple years ago, the tank is 27” deep so I mostly use long grabber tools to do anything inside the tank. I mostly just let the corals and everything do what it wants, I try not to intervene and move things around if I can avoid it. (That being said, you have to get to a point where you can go hands off, no tank is hands off in the beginning).

When you look at this tank, there are lots of things that you don’t see. You don’t see the bleaching event that some of the corals went through when I changed my lights to the ATI powermodule and my nutrients were too low. You also don’t see the months of brown slimey gunk that was all over the sandbed and rocks from dosing zeostart and zeo bak without a full bioload, you also don’t see the hours and hours of pulling and plucking bryopsis brought in with some snails that I orginally ordered as a clean up crew. In other words this tank went through a lot of ugly stages for a long time.

Go slow, be patient, be dilligent, and formulate a routine that the tank responds positively to is the most important advice I can give. It’s all a process of looking and learning to see what your tank is telling you.

I'm curious what did you use for the bryopsis?

 

[Rick.45cal]

I'm curious what did you use for the bryopsis?

Fluconazole

 

[Rick.45cal]

I know there are lots of people out there that rinse all their frozen food, meanwhile this is what I dump in my aquarium daily

 

[Rick.45cal]

 

[Rick.45cal]

WWC space monkey favia has gone full tilt boogie . Me thinks it likes the new bulbs, it’s florescing much more electrically in the Blue LED’s as the lights ramp down (when this was taken). Tested my Nitrates and Phosphates tonight. NO3 10ppm PO4 0.25ppm 9.6 dKh things are looking really fantastic all over, nutrients are good! ;Woot

 

[Rick.45cal]

Some more “blue LED” photos

 

[JDnKY]

Some more “blue LED” photos

Incredible success! I hope my tank looks this good one day. Thanks for sharing.

 

[Rick.45cal]

Incredible success! I hope my tank looks this good one day. Thanks for sharing.

Thank you for looking and commenting! I’m hoping I can keep it up!

 

[Smite]

Tank looks extremely happy! Very nice work.

 

[Rick.45cal]

Tank looks extremely happy! Very nice work.

Thank you! It’s definitely in a good place right now, hopefully I can keep it there. It was looking pretty dull and sad a couple months ago when the phosphate level dropped, it’s amazing how it’s bounced back and now exceeding where I have ever seen it before. I’ve been glued too it for a couple weeks staring into it now, I can’t get anthing done LOL

 

[TMB]

Awesome reef man!! Great job!
When I switched to a calcium reactor I also had issued with pushing or pulling.
When pulling it seemed to put the reactor into a low pressure and I think air was leaking in making the pump loud. And when I was just pushing, there was also not really any pressure in the reactor and seemed to cause CO2 to collect at the top.
Now I plumbed the input to my manifold to supply the reactor with pressure, and pulling with masterflex. I like this setup the best. I also think the reactor benefits from some pressure by helping the CO2 stay dissolved.
I might be wrong but I think of it like taking the top of off a soda bottle, release the pressure and the gas wants to get out of the liquid.
Great tank, I’ll be following.

 

[Smite]

Awesome reef man!! Great job!
When I switched to a calcium reactor I also had issued with pushing or pulling.
When pulling it seemed to put the reactor into a low pressure and I think air was leaking in making the pump loud. And when I was just pushing, there was also not really any pressure in the reactor and seemed to cause CO2 to collect at the top.
Now I plumbed the input to my manifold to supply the reactor with pressure, and pulling with masterflex. I like this setup the best. I also think the reactor benefits from some pressure by helping the CO2 stay dissolved.
I might be wrong but I think of it like taking the top of off a soda bottle, release the pressure and the gas wants to get out of the liquid.
Great tank, I’ll be following.

I may give this a go. I've noticed something similar since installing my Kamoer pump. Co2 sitting at the top.

 

[Rick.45cal]

Awesome reef man!! Great job!
When I switched to a calcium reactor I also had issued with pushing or pulling.
When pulling it seemed to put the reactor into a low pressure and I think air was leaking in making the pump loud. And when I was just pushing, there was also not really any pressure in the reactor and seemed to cause CO2 to collect at the top.
Now I plumbed the input to my manifold to supply the reactor with pressure, and pulling with masterflex. I like this setup the best. I also think the reactor benefits from some pressure by helping the CO2 stay dissolved.
I might be wrong but I think of it like taking the top of off a soda bottle, release the pressure and the gas wants to get out of the liquid.
Great tank, I’ll be following.

I’ve come to the same conclusion, I think the reactor really needs a source of positive pressure. I may attempt to put a slight restriction on the output line to help add some, if that doesn’t help I will likely try something similar to what you have suggested. I appreciate the input, it’s good food for thought!

 

[Rick.45cal]

 

[ReefSlice]

Just got my box of Biodigest today! Will be using it from the get go on my new 150. How much do you dose every 2 weeks?
Tanks looking great.

 

[Hemmdog]

Tank looks amazing man! Loved that monologue a few posts up to. One of my biggest problems is hands in the tank... I feel like I try not to so hard but once every other day I feel like I’m getting in for something or another... also that purple favia is so cool! How did you get it to mound up so vertically? I would love to be able to do that with a few of my favias!

 

[Rick.45cal]

Just got my box of Biodigest today! Will be using it from the get go on my new 150. How much do you dose every 2 weeks?
Tanks looking great.

Just one vial every 2 weeks!