New here and likely in over my head

[gt44ever]

Suggest a LOT of reading. Here, Wet Web Media, anything by Sprung, Fenner, Michael, Calfo, Schmoyer; to name a few.

I've done some reading, but could likely use more. Are any of them particularly good for large tanks? That's probably the area I've had the hardest time finding much info. There's plenty of X, Y and Z are great for doing A, B and C, but when I go to look into them for my tank, I find out that X, Y and Z cost several hundred or even a thousand dollars to setup each unit which is designed for tanks up to say 150g or so or else need way more space than I can realistically give. Definitely seems like some things that work great don't scale well.

 

[gfox]

don't think I've talked with him yet but it's possible I've just forgotten. I don't get there as often as I probably should.
I'm likely going to be stopping in tonight though to see about getting something to hopefully help my lionfish pull through while I sort the water quality issues so if he's in, I might try to make a point to talk with him.

Tom has his head shaved,another good person to talk to would be Luke or Barbie.Been dealing with them for years.

 

[Katrina71]

I think it might be wise to have a professional come in and take a look. Just see what needs to be done asap. Maybe find one willing to teach you along the way. Be honest about the situation and your budget.

 

[gt44ever]

Tom has his head shaved,another good person to talk to would be Luke or Barbie.Been dealing with them for years.

Thanks, I'll see if I can talk with one of them. I think I may have worked with Barbie possibly before. Last time I was in I talked with a little bit older lady that the other employees seemed to defer to

 

[gt44ever]

I think it might be wise to have a professional come in and take a look. Just see what needs to be done asap. Maybe find one willing to teach you along the way. Be honest about the situation and your budget.

I can't say I disagree. Might try to see if I can get a better employee at the LFS to come out to the house. We had one come out shortly after we moved in who I now believe was not very knowledgeable. Had another come out to care for the fish while we were out of town for about 10 days almost a year ago who either didn't notice any glaring issues or didn't say anything.

I also have some contact information for a couple of aquarists at a smallish zoo that I'll be reaching out to (might even start by just pointing them here for basic info on the tank). Not sure if they'll be able to make the trip up, but apparently they're excited about the tank and helping us with our aquascaping.

 

[Oldreefer44]

You are correct that once you start in it can become a sinkhole for $ as you move from ABC to XYZ. Best, IMO, prepare yourself that you have a setup that is going to require $$$$$$$ ESPECIALLY if you go down the "I want coral road" as that potentially requires a hole new list of equipment to "do it the right way". I have a 135g setup and have several thousand invested in it. Is it worth it? For me, yes. For others no. IMO, would be worth a consultation just to get a realistic estimate of the cost to "fix" it and then to maintain it. Don't want to discourage you but think it is important to get a holistic view of things.

 

[Gareth elliott]

Welcome to r2r!
Following along

Not that this would be the easiest endeavor but a rather cost effective way to get nutrients lower in larger aquaria is removing the sand, ditch the undergravel filter. Go bare bottom and increase the flow to keep everything suspended, allow your protein skimmer to do more of the work for you.

Makes aquarium maintenance on that scale 10x easier.

 

[gt44ever]

You are correct that once you start in it can become a sinkhole for $ as you move from ABC to XYZ. Best, IMO, prepare yourself that you have a setup that is going to require $$$$$$$ ESPECIALLY if you go down the "I want coral road" as that potentially requires a hole new list of equipment to "do it the right way". I have a 135g setup and have several thousand invested in it. Is it worth it? For me, yes. For others no. IMO, would be worth a consultation just to get a realistic estimate of the cost to "fix" it and then to maintain it. Don't want to discourage you but think it is important to get a holistic view of things.

O I totally understand and agree. At this point, I'm just in the mind of correct the issues, find ways to hopefully improve the setup incrementally so I can at least hit the point where I can maintain it as it stands and hopefully not lose anymore fish. If corals ever happen, that'll be way way waaaaaaaaay down the road and likely after the natural lifetime of most if not all of the current residents (especially since I don't believe some of them are especially coral friendly).

I'd say the main thing I'm looking for right now is:
1. help figuring out what's wrong and how to best fix it
2. Are there any glaring issues with my setup and/or how might I be able to improve things so I can spend more time enjoying the tank and less time working on it

Welcome to r2r!
Following along

Not that this would be the easiest endeavor but a rather cost effective way to get nutrients lower in larger aquaria is removing the sand, ditch the undergravel filter. Go bare bottom and increase the flow to keep everything suspended, allow your protein skimmer to do more of the work for you.

Makes aquarium maintenance on that scale 10x easier.

I've been wondering about the undergravel setup. Here's a basic rundown of what it looks like (since pics won't be especially helpful for this anyway):
First, the filter is in the middle of the sump tank. It's about 24" across and maybe 48" long. Sand is currently a couple inches deep (and in need of a gravel vac, but that's another issue).
Cue the crude diagram!
________________________
| ==================x=== |
| |
| <- |
| ====================== |
|________________________|

(Edit: that went poorly... Ill try to show it better in the pics to come)

There's a single powerhead in location (x) and flow goes right to left (this is how I usually see the sump)
There's a little chaeto under a lamp basically all the way left and a mechanical filter here before it goes to the return zone
the undergravel is setup with some 2" PVC pipe laid down (====) and some screen material laid across. Kinda just looked like window screen last I saw it. I might be missing a support in there, but that's the basic setup.
I also tried adding a Brightwell NO3 brick at the far right to hopefully create an anoxic zone for nitrate removal. I don't think it's working

Powerhead is currently dead and would need to be replaced for me to keep running it
I feel like I would need to add some sort of mechanical filtration and maybe some additional bio filtration somewhere to account for the loss of the undergravel setup.

I'm also married to basically 0% of this setup and would be willing to consider changing just about anything if it would help.

 

[Lovemyreef2015]

 

[gt44ever]

Pics! This'll be a fairly quick rundown for now
main tank overall

Residents:
Soldier, Angel, horned shark and the catfish is hiding behind the sharks tail

Toad

Bamboo

Miniatus grouper (sp? Cant check right now bc phone)... He thought he could hide

Blue line grouper is hiding tok well right now

Behind the curtain:
Skimmer

Sump in from side

Upstream refugium/undergravel w/ powerhead (follow the cord)

Closeup of sump in

Downstream sump overall (theres a phosphate removal reator there thats not hooked up. It needs a cleaning and never seemed to do much)

Return area


Thats the quick rundown. I might upload more later. Only had a few minutes home before I had to leave again

 

[chefjpaul]

Wow.
You came to the right place to help you in this situation.

I'm nowhere near qualified to comment on a tank this size, but I'd personally get a much larger sump area with a ton of live rock.

That sump now would make a good refugium.


Welcome to R2R.

 

[gt44ever]

Wow.
You came to the right place to help you in this situation.

I'm nowhere near qualified to comment on a tank this size, but I'd personally get a much larger sump area with a ton of live rock.

That sump now would make a good refugium.


Welcome to R2R.

Ya it's supposed to be a refugium... Theres a little wad of chaeto on the downstream side thats losing the fight against chaeto and other nuisance algae like things

 

[Stanzo13]

I feel bad for you but Im so jealous. I am just curious how often are you doing water changes I usually read and hear something like 10-20÷ a week is fine. As for your algea issue I'm pretty sure chemiclean would do the trick in the short run, definitely not a long term solution. I'm interested to read responses to me mentioning chemiclean as I don't know how all your fish would take it

 

[Stanzo13]

You can measure the tank sizes and find a tank volume calculator online to get some pretty accurate numbers. Personally I would just call it HUGE

 

[Gareth elliott]

I would avoid chemiclean without knowing your skimmer more.
This treatment reduces O2 and also as soon as the treatment is done the algae will have the same conditions that allowed it to thrive. There is decaying material in your sand and not enough flow. Short of removing the sand from the dt some ideas that are not super expensive, other than powerhead replacement and cost of salt.

-up the flow, get a new set of powerheads to replace the dead one.

-reduce lighting intensity in the display.

-gravel vac vigorously while doing water changes.
-feed less, @dsc reef reef should be able to help here with how much sharks need a day.

-and @Paul B has a skimmer similar to yours should be able to help you tune it.

-and media bags of purigen and phosgaurd could also help get your nitrates and phosphates back in line.

 

[Mark]

The chaeto is losing to cyano because of flow and light. Increasing the light would be easy, but increasing flow means increasing flow in your sump. If it were me, I would upgrade the skimmer, and definitely look at a standalone algae filter like a turf scrubber. A stand-alone algae filter would allow you to increase the flow and light to the algae without impacting the flow in the sump. Then put an in-sump skimmer where the refugium was.

I would pull the under gravel filter and associated substrate. For nitrifying and denitrifying bacteria, just have a basket or bag full of spirorax or seachem denitrate as a medium.

I know you have a lot of costs with the new house, but I think an investment up front in a independent algae filter and better skimmer will alleviate a lot of frustration.

Also, I know it’s a big tank, but I’d consider reducing your bio load. You have some pretty big waste producers in there.

 

[reef lover]

Welcome to r2r !!
We dont have any members in se michigan that could swing over and help out???

 

[GrizFyrFyter]

I am not going to tell you what to do with your tank and your fish. If it was mine, I would start talking to public aquariums about finding a new home for the sharks. They seems pretty cramped in the tank, especially if they are destroying the rock scape.

Ask yourself if these are the livestock you want to keep. The success of this tank is going to boil down to your passion to keep it going. If you're keeping fish because they came with the tank, that has the potential to dim that passion. However, if you're keeping your dream fish and working towards a goal (like some anthia harem, clusters of anemones and clownfish, schooling chromis, several tangs racing across the tank) you are more likely to succeed.

You can go lights out for a few days to combat the cyano. It's going to break down and dissolve temporarily. This gives you a chance to export more of it via water changes and can give your macro algae in the fuge a fighting chance.

Check out this led for your fuge. Low power and a good spectrum. I only have a 20g fuge on a 200g system and I throw away half a gallon of algae a week. It says 200w but the two 100w pucks are only driven at 50%.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0776R69WH?ref=ppx_pop_mob_ap_share

Your "undergravel" crushed coral bed is likely packed with detritus that breaking down and doing more harm than good. Taking that rock out, putting it in bins of clean saltwater while you clean out any remaining detritus in the chamber will help. You can put it all back in and keep using it. The surface area is great for processing ammonia and nitrites but fish poop and uneaten food are going to keep getting trapped in there and require cleaning occasionally.

 

[4FordFamily]

Welcome home, you will love it here!

Nice tank, thanks for sharing!

 

[Chiefmaster30]

Hoping someone else with more experience can chime in. I have no experience with a tank this size and I’ve only been reefing for 4 yrs. My two cents: First, i would add a ton more live rock. It doesn’t look like much rock at all in this tank. Second, do as big of water changes as you can which if I read correctly, you can do 88 gallons at a time correct? I would do 88 gallon water changes once a week and work on getting capable of doing bigger water changes. I think you should be doing 20% water changes at the least or at least with all the nutrients. 650 gallon system you should do at least 130 gallon water changes maybe more. I can’t offer much on the diseases. Hope that helps! Nice tank!