I am starting to make progress with my largest setup thus far so I wanted to document my progress. I have had saltwater reefs for about 10 years now but have always had nano setups, my largest being a BioCube 29g and my smallest a 7g rimless. I have always loved nano tanks as we were living in an apartment and it was simple and cheaper. We bought a house now and I have been working at home for 3 years so it is past time to get a decent sized setup in my office. My office is right next to the mechanical room in our basement so I will have the sump in there. I am planning on drilling the tank peninsula style but it will set up along the wall as my desk in the middle of the room and I don't have room for the footprint of the tank, but I want to have that option in the future and I love the look of peninsula tanks. I will at least be using "furniture grade" PVC so the plumbing isn't such an eyesore. I have started the cycle in the sump since I have not built the stand for the display yet. Will be using 3/4" plywood for that. Also a lot of the basement and house is going through renovations so progress is a little slow.
Some of the equipment:
- 40B sump
- Fiji Cube Triton DIY sump kit
- Fiji Cube overflow
- 36" AquaticLife Hybrid with 3 AI Primes
- Probably MP10s for flow, have one currently
- Tunze 3155 ATO
- Reef Octopus 150sss
- AI Prime Fuge
Some pics of where I am so far as well as my current nano (Fluval Evo) and my prior setup (Mr. Aqua 22g):
Made good progress on the stand these past two days. Still considering adding a few more horizontal braces and need to build the face frame and doors. Working with plywood is much easier than fighting warped 2x4s, to me at least.
Have made a lot more progress on the setup. Stand is finished enough structurally for testing. Drilled yesterday water testing overnight. Have a 1/16th bow on the glass but doesn’t look concerning. Level throughout and no twisting. Joists in the ceiling lined up perfectly for the light, good thing because I did not plan for that before filling up and leveling everything. Need a GFCI for that outlet, it’s up high because I’m in the basement. Will not normally have anything plugged in there. All wiring and plumbing will run through the wall into the mechanical room. Standing is sitting on some leveling feet (9) rated at 700 lbs each super easy to level with. Getting closer
Everything is fully up and running finally! Plumbing went well and no leaks from the start. The sump had almost finished the cycle so I hope this carries over fast. Will be adding more bacteria and ammonia today to see how it processes.
I have all 3 Primes up and running and I transferred over everything from the smaller tank. I think everything will be okay cycle-wise since the sump was already cycled with sand and Matrix in there and the rock from the nano is about 20lbs worth established for 2 years so it should handle the ammonia from these three small fish which mile everything establishes. Right now there is only a tailspot blenny and the two clowns in there now and they are all very small. So far the clowns haven’t left their corner and the blenny is hiding behind the overflow, but they are eating well just unsure of the new digs.
It’s been a while since my last update. Everything is progressing and the system is currently in the algae uglies and pod explosion stage. I have dinos on my sand bed that re-surged after the transfer. I had them in my nano and ended up siphoning out the sand. They apparently hung around despite no sand and came back once they had sand and my nitrate and phosphate were bottomed out after the transfer. I have been dosing N and P and also SpongExcel for diatoms to compete and it seems to be working. Sand bed is getting better. I ordered some aquacultured live rock to help load up diversity, which I should have done from the beginning. I switched the T5s to all Blue Plus from 50/50 Blue/Coral and like it much better. I can fine tune the white balance with the Primes. My established rock hasn’t broken a sweat with everything going on. Looking great and what algae it had is receding. Amazing to how established rock handles it all while the new rock looks so bad.
Things have been limping along here. Tank is maturing fast but dinos have been keeping up. I have what seems to be Acoel flatworms now too, but they don’t seem to be bothering coral yet. Might look at getting a target mandarin once I feel like they would do well on pods/supplemental pods. I finally crossed the phosphate deficit threshold and have consistent phosphates around .7ppm and nitrate around 3-5ppm. Keeping those there while I continue dosing silica and bacteria. Will probably just have to let the tank mature before dinos will recede. The refugium has been the most entertaining part of all this. No dinos down there, pods everywhere, cheato and ulva growing well, feather dusters, hitchhiker limpets and stomatella snails. I even got a tiny mantis shrimp hitchhiker on my aquacultured rock.
It’s been a while since an update. I have been waiting out these dinos and I think I am almost there. Dino growth slowed down significantly about a month ago and my nutrients skyrocketed which really ticked off my LPS corals and I’m not sure if they will make it. My blasto and small scan frag have been receding for a few weeks and are starting to show skeleton. Peak daylight hours there is just a hint of brown on the sand now. I’ve also had an explosion of acoel flatworms which is starting to go away on its own. I did pick up a springer’s damsel today in hopes of finishing them off and keeping flatworms away. Coraline algae is really starting to take off now so I am working on getting my N and P ratios back to normal and hopefully I can finally start adding coral, nearly 6 months after the transfer to this new setup.
Dinos are showing up on just a few spots around the sand now. I was able to do a 20% WC two weeks ago with only slight resurgence. Still dosing phyto and pods and have to dose phosphate daily to keep it above 0. Everything looks much more stable. My acan and blasto bounced back well after the WC and I have started dosing alk and cal to raise my levels. Calcium was down to 350 after six months of not testing or doing water changes. I picked up a green slimer and a red cap to test out readiness for SPS.
Overall, everything is going great. After the amphidinium dinos finally gave up I was dosing vibrant for bubble algae that was spreading and that killed my nitrates and I got an outbreak of coolia dinos and cyano. I stopped the vibrant, dosed more silica and got a UV because coolia is more likely to leave the sand. After a three day blackout with UV on and then a large water change I am yet to find a dino under the microscope. I do have some cyano patches still around but I am just seeing cyano “spaghetti” under the microscope now. The corals are MUCH happier now that dinos are diminished but I am having trouble keeping phosphates down. I need a long term solution besides water changes. I tried Phosphate-E with a 10 micron sock and saw negligible impact on phosphate even using the calculators available. I think I may go to GFO.
Tanks looking great. You can tell it's grown a lot since you pictures in April. I also currently have my UV hanging over the side of my tank, It's unattractive but gets the job done. lol
Tanks looking great. You can tell it's grown a lot since you pictures in April. I also currently have my UV hanging over the side of my tank, It's unattractive but gets the job done. lol
It's been a long time since I've updated this thread. Dinos are still clinging to life, but the last two weeks I have really upped my silicate dosing, using an actual doser and dosing 40ml per day which is kind of a crazy amount I think, but I am definitely getting a sustained diatom bloom and the corals look good overall. It is dropping my nitrates so I am keeping those up and phosphate has been skyrocketing which I think is a good thing because they had always been low. I am guessing they are releasing after being sequestered for so long. I have been using A LOT of GFO and Phosphate-E to keep them below .3. It is seriously a struggle right now. Hoping to get on top of it soon. Bubble algae has crept back in but that is the least of my concerns lately...
