New 60 Gallon Build with Model Ship Centerpiece

[Tigershark22]

Howdy everybody!

I am new to the hobby and am setting up my first reef tank.
All I knew before beginning is that I wanted a beautiful aquascape with a shipwreck as the centerpiece. And I don’t like to start small with anything that I do so follow along to see some pretty cool progress (and also to assist with some inevitable failures ).

I’ll be working on doing a sunken wooden model pirate ship as the centerpiece. I realize that this may be risky, but I noticed that everything manufactured for aquarium use looks exactly like something manufactured for aquarium use lol. I figured this would be about as real as it gets, so let’s see if this is one of those inevitable failures.

 

[Tigershark22]

I’ll start with the aquarium stand, I built it from scratch as well. I initially built the frame for an entertainment center and then didn’t need it. But it repurposed nicely 5 years later lol.
Added some 1/4” red oak plywood to the outside, stained and finished them as well as the red oak live edge top to match.

Unfortunate side story: The tank in the first photo is a 55 gallon that I got on FB marketplace. I purchased all of the supplies to do an external overflow for a sump before finding the sticker saying that all of the glass panels on the tank are tempered glass and couldn’t be drilled. So if anyone reading this is in the Houston, Tx area, it’s for sale and still in good condition lol.

 

[Tigershark22]

I ended up purchasing a 60 gallon tank that could be drilled as you can probably see from some of the previous photos. So I’ll discuss what I did with plumbing and sump.

I purchased the Modular Marine overflow, they definitely made the setup and drilling the glass go pretty smoothly. Plumbed the 3 drains behind the stand, with unions for disassembly, and through the back of the stand to the sump. Plumbing accessible via window if need be when the tank is filled.

I built the sump as well with the FijiCube baffle kit. I can’t lie, that was quite the task, but in the end I’d still say it was worth the savings on a premade sump. I purchased the IceCap K3-130 protein skimmer, and a Jebao return pump, will give a review on these once I get it up and running.
Returning the flow to the display tank, I opted not to do a check valve since I did a split 3/4” Loc Line at the top of the tank and it wouldn’t be able to siphon back enough water to overflow the sump.

 

[Tigershark22]

This next part was a lot of fun, regardless of whether the idea works out or not. But this is the process of the sunken ship centerpiece. I purchased a model of the Black Pearl on Amazon. You can also see the addition of a vinyl background. Shout out to aquariumvinyl.com.

Looks pretty good in the tank. But obviously, you wouldn’t find a perfectly intact ship at the bottom of the ocean. Soooo, it must be wrecked!

 

[Tigershark22]

Upon looking at the cannons mounted to the side of the model. It seemed a cannonball of that scale would have been about the size of a .22 caliber bullet. So I grabbed my Rossi .22 and proceeded to simulate a ship battle lol.

I really wish I would have video taped this because it looked pretty realistic. I could see smoke and gunpowder trails from the barrel to the impact of the ship. Followed by a pretty realistic representation of the impact of a cannon ball, complete with gunpowder residue on the ship impact sites as well as smoke rising from them from burning wood.
The final result turned out pretty cool looking. Even got a few shots that took out only a portion of the masts, just as a cannonball would.

 

[crazyfishmom]

Will follow along on this!

You’ve probably done this already but if it were me trying to do this I might check to see whether there’s a possibility of any chemicals leaching into the water from the model. Seems like it’ll be really neat to see when it’s fully grown in.

 

[Tigershark22]

Now, this is my current progress in set up. I’ll be doing a mix of dry rock and live rock in order to build the aquascape I want while still having the bacterial diversity. I purchased a mix of dry rock shapes from AquaForest, their AF rock. I’m not thrilled with the color of it but I realize it will grow over with various other life eventually. So for the structures, themselves, they seem like good rock.
Live rock will ship soon and I should be able to post a completed aquascape image in the next day or 2. Stay tuned

 

[Tigershark22]

Will follow along on this!

You’ve probably done this already but if it were me trying to do this I might check to see whether there’s a possibility of any chemicals leaching into the water from the model. Seems like it’ll be really neat to see when it’s fully grown in.

I did as much research as possible before considering going ahead with the idea, and leaching was the primary concern. But I believe it is still plausible. The model I purchased wasn’t expensive, so it wasn’t done with a treated wood and says the paint is regular acrylic, which should be aquarium safe. As a precaution, I have been periodically soaking the ship so that it may leach anything out a bit as well as soak up water to not be so buoyant when I fill the tank.
We shall see lol

 

[slingfox]

Really nice to see someone attempt something creative. I fear you may face a long and painful battle with the uglies since the ship has a lot of surfaces and potential chemicals which could make it harder to achieve stability and you are using mostly dry rock. Take it slow and hang in there!

Looking to forward to seeing the aquascape with the live rock. If I were you I would have with as mush live rock as possible since the model ship increases variability significantly.

 

[Tigershark22]

Really nice to see someone attempt something creative. I fear you may face a long and painful battle with the uglies since the ship has a lot of surfaces and potential chemicals which could make it harder to achieve stability and you are using mostly dry rock. Take it slow and hang in there!

I will be doing about 50/50 dry rock to live rock once the live rock arrives. I am hoping that will be a healthy balance to achieve a stability quickly enough to add some bottom feeder critters to combat any uglies. Fingers crossed

 

[Tigershark22]

Really nice to see someone attempt something creative. I fear you may face a long and painful battle with the uglies since the ship has a lot of surfaces and potential chemicals which could make it harder to achieve stability and you are using mostly dry rock. Take it slow and hang in there!

Looking to forward to seeing the aquascape with the live rock. If I were you I would have with as mush live rock as possible since the model ship increases variability significantly.

Will also be adding premium live rock once I know for sure the tank is stable

 

[teleportinghere]

I love the idea. Over time it will look awesome. You might want to glue the areas held together by the string if you want the masts to stay upright as the string breaks down from saltwater exposure.

Also, that wood is stained as you can see from the light wood underneath where the 'battle scars' are. So, you may want to look up if common types of wood stain can harm inverts/fish. Excited to see updates on this one!

 

[slingfox]

Will also be adding premium live rock once I know for sure the tank is stable

The point of adding live rock is to help the tank stabilize and thereby avoid or reduce the impact of the ugly stage.. Therefore, you should plan to add the live rock as early as possible.

 

[Gumbies R Us]

This is going to be one neat looking build!

 

[Tigershark22]

Big jump in progress! Live rock arrived and I got the aquascape all set up and tank filled. Big thanks to Phil at KP Aquatics for helping find specific shapes to make this design work. The live rock is beautiful and is absolutely teeming with life.

I did the pillars on the right side with a product called STAX by Two Little Fishies. Can make some really stable, tall, and natural looking structures with them and mortar.

I love how it has turned out. Should look really nice when it gets growth and corals.

Now to monitor the cycle and the effects of the wooden ship. Sea stars have made it a home in it for now inside the “cannonball holes” lol.
Couldn’t get videos to upload so here’s screenshots from videos with two different lightings

 

[Tigershark22]

UPDATE: Tank is now 2 weeks and 3 days old.
Everything seems to be going very well!

The cycle is seemingly complete now. Following is an explanation of the process I chose to do.
As previously mentioned, this was almost 50/50 dry rock and live rock, with perhaps a bit more dry than live.
Dry rock is Aquaforest AF rock. Still not a big fan of the color but it did end up making a good habitat.
Live rock is from KP aquatics and I cannot speak highly enough about it. Purchased the base rock and the amount of life and growth is astounding. I just imagine what the premium rock is like.

The ammonia levels in the tank had been suitable from the beginning with the life and die off on the live rock. They peaked between 1 and 2 ppm and stayed pretty consistently around 1 ppm for nearly 2 weeks.
I have kept my NooPsyche lights on for the entire cycle mostly, for the sake of the coralline. I have had some of the uglies creep in, but balance seems to have been achieved rather quickly.
Being a noob, I did have a short period of panic when they began, but I did my research and relaxed a bit. Obviously, I learned it’s just a part of most cycles, especially ones with dry rock for some of the uglies. But I did make some extra effort to achieve balance quicker.

First to creep in were chrysophytes. The ones that worried me, because IMO the least attractive of the uglies if it were to spread.
The second one seemed to be Dinos on the highest shelf that was getting the most light.
Followed by a very short period of diatoms.
And lastly cyano and green algae began making appearances at the same time. Cyano being far more prevalent.

All of the uglies. I’m guessing this may sound terrible to some that read this, but this all happened very quickly and balance seems to be achieved now. And none of them took over the tank.

Here is what I did. Again, total noob, but I do my best to educate myself and this is just what I chose to do. I chose to combat and overtaking of uglies by assisting the biofilm development. I initially wanted to use Fritz turbo start to further diversify and increase the bacteria, but couldn’t find any in stock nearby. So I opted for Microbacter instead.
I began dosing this 6 days ago, shortly after noticing the large ugly shelf of Dino’s. Shortly after that, I made the assumption that the parameters were in a suitable range for inverts, given the ones from the live rock we’re doing just fine. So I added 10 blue leg hermits, 2 scarlet hermits, 5 astrea snails, 3 bumblebee snails, a trochus snail, and a peppermint shrimp. They devoured the Dino’s on the shelf, and are doing a decent job of keeping cyano at bay. The blue leg hermits love the dry rock for their sleeping spots, perfect crevasses for them I guess.
They are all thriving, mostly lol. I say mostly because I have found 2 mantis shrimp in the tank since adding them. I knew of one upon inspection of the live rock, but chose not to remove him because I think there cool, and if it happened to survive I’d roll with it. Luckier than expected, they both are Wennerae and don’t have many worries about swimming livestock or the tank itself. I also think the bigger one will end up killing the smaller one. Hoping for that, because I do believe the big one is male and the other female.
Nonetheless, the male has been fascinating to watch. It’s like he came to life when I added the other inverts. I see him and hear him all the time now. He’s terrorized the scarlet hermits on 2 separate occasions but couldn’t successfully secure a meal with them. He seems capable of smashing the blue legs hermits shells, but they are all accounted for still. Evidence has been found of him eating the small snails and crabs in the live rock.

Currently we are on the 2nd day of 0 ammonia and zero nitrite, with nitrate having accumulated to 10 ppm.
I only did two 25% water changes during the cycle. Mainly for the sake of the model ship potentially causing issues. But none to report yet. The ship has accumulated some growth and the hermits enjoy climbing the masts. The holes in the hull have been visited by a few different inverts and it seems the mantis has dug under the ship once or twice to have a meal.

I am going to stock a single clownfish as the next step.

I’ll be back with future updates!

 

[Tigershark22]

Howdy everyone!
I’m sorry it’s been so long on an update, I honestly didn’t realize I have been slacking so much because I’ve posted some separate threads for questions along the way.
But all has still been going well!
And despite advice on pulling back the reigns and going slower and being less risky, I can’t necessarily say I’ve done so lol.
But I can still say that everything has been done from a somewhat educated approach.

Major happenings since last update:
-I stocked 2 clownfish initially. And it seems they bonded instantly.

-Shortly after, quite a bit of green hair algae began establishing. So I decided to stock some herbivore dominant fish. I started with a bicolor Blenny.
He’s a goofy little guy, funny to watch. He eats a fair amount of algae.

-I ended up doing some manual removal of ugly GHA. But afterwards, bryopsis began to grow very quickly. It didn’t look good on any of the rocks but I didn’t really mind it on the ship. Gave it a very ghostly, aged appearance.
Nonetheless, it needed to go.

-Added a Tomini Tang. He definitely ate a fair amount of the bryopsis, but in the 60gallon, he couldn’t keep up with the growth rate of it, even with me removing some manually.

-Added an Orange Spotted Rabbitfish and wow this guy is an eater. He ate every bit of bryopsis and most ugly algaes in the tank.

-Throughout this entire time, tests have been zero across the board for ammonia, nitrite, nitrate, and phosphate. Interesting, and unsure if it should be concerning yet for the nitrate and phosphate. I am sure the heavy amount of bryopsis was consuming both, but now with it gone, I am still getting what look like zero readings on API test kit. But I haven’t had to do any water changes since the tank cycled. More advanced test kit is on the list of needs.

-Thus, I have added a couple of corals to see how they do. A small LPS that I forgot to get the name of and a fair sized colony of Metallic Green Star Polyps.
I also added a Firefish Goby along with them.
Everything is doing very well!

-I have also added an auto top off system and Hydor Koralia powerheads. They were only about $30 each and they work great. Going on a month now.

Tank is almost 2 months old now.
-6 fish
-healthy stock and variety of cleanup crew
-a cleaner shrimp, as I wanted something in there known to eat parasites (also some bumblebee snails on the cleanup crew). And while I can’t confirm if he’s eating parasites, the fish all stop by for their own respective cleaning sessions. Pretty cool to watch.
-at least 3 small species mantis shrimp (may do some removal if they prove to be harmful. All is well for now)
-coralline algae and others are beginning to grow on the dry rock and they are looking better by the day.

Here is a video of the tank now, mostly featuring the corals and the mantis shrimp, who is cohabitating with the fish very well. A peppermint shrimp was not so lucky lol.



Will be back with future updates. Hopefully with less intermission than this last time!