Rimless 57 build

[Caseyoidae]

Hey, everyone at r2r! I'm new here and decided to start a build thread today. After looking at countless other threads on here for inspiration I decided to go with a 57 gallon deep blue tank and a 20 gallon sump. (Now that the tanks have arrived I realize I could have gone with a 30) decided to go mix reef and eventually head more towards an sps dominant tank once I can afford some new wattage. Please bear with me as I have yet to figure out uploading pictures via phone but my goodies have arrived!

 

[kschweer]

Welcome to R2R!!! The 57 is a great tank, I love mine. Best of luck with it!

 

[Caseyoidae]

Thanks!

 

[Caseyoidae]

The start of my journey!

 

[JMMJ13902]

Welcome. I have that size as well but recently upgraded to 120. 57gal is a perfect size for fish and corals.

Keep us posted with updates.

 

[Caseyoidae]

Upgrading from my 10 gallon nano to a larger system with a sump is quite a bit of fun! I made a silicone mess but lucky that won't be seen.( I don't see display sump building in my near future.)I decided to keep almost everything off the sand bed by using egg crates and pvc. this should help with detritus build up

 

[Salty1962]

Welcome to R2R! Nice setup for frags. I'm thinking about the same for my frag tank. What lights are you going to use?

 

[Caseyoidae]

Thanks salty1962. Today I set up a single ai prime with the hanging kit. I'll keep the light lovers directly under it until I upgrade. Also bought tonga shelf rock( basically tabling sps skeletons from the looks of them) and drilled holes to slip them over my stilts trying to keep the frag tank functionality without the look. This took quite a bit of playing around with epoxy and fitting. I guessed 25 lbs would do it along with some other larger rocks I already had to hide the stilts and I wasn't to far off.

 

[TheHarold]

Thats neat, where frag tank meets display!

 

[Salty1962]

Looks great!

 

[Caseyoidae]

Thanks! Started stocking it up! Also split my return in two because I had a few dead spots and the fish couldn't really swim against the single 2400 gph return pump line added a hydor 240 above the 800 and built a screen top to keep blen from attempting any carpet surfing.

 

[Caseyoidae]

Screen top

 

[Caseyoidae]

Had to build a little shelf for some neglected ( light starved) frags. All looking better except the digi in the back from left to right because they don't look to good right now but are making a comeback !! Green paralis, green digi, tabling red mili, Tri colored acro, Oregon tort. Any recommendations on anything would be awesome! Especially lighting! Like the new ap700 but I'm a little short on fishtank money after this new shelf and Mandarin working on the pod explosion

 

[Caseyoidae]

Traded a few rocks to a local reefer for a 6 bulb aquatic life t5. Any thoughts on this lighting? Opened up a ton of space in my tank and now I have very few dead spots. Sps frags looked happier almost immediately not to mention I can't afford more LEDs right now at the current price of about $300 a foot lol

 

[Caseyoidae]

Tank update. Got a little bit of a brown thing going on right now due to not being able to find a replacement filter cartridge for my DI unit. This is a good example of what not running DI will do lol. Tank back to about 80% DI now. Hung my t5's as having them rest on the the tank began driving me nuts. Also picked up this pair of clowns last week!

 

[kschweer]

I had the same issue in my 57 a little While back. With a new RO/di unit and a good amount of water changes its just about all cleared up. Best of luck!

 

[Caseyoidae]

Thanks! So much toothbrushing!

 

[kschweer]

Thanks! So much toothbrushing!

Another thing I did was right before water changes use a turkey baster to blow a lot of it off. Then did my Water change and put in a new filter sock.

 

[Caseyoidae]

Thanks, good idea! I've just been brushing like crazy lol. Then changing water, swapping socks and wet skimming for a few hours afterwards. Also cut my t5's back to 8hrs from 10 and the leds from 80% to 30. I think I may actually be bleaching my orange green polyped birdnest frags? The mother colony (the giant white one in the center of my picture) is super bleached! Hope it comes back! Can a 6 bulb t5 fixture put out enough light to bleach the frags on my highest shelves?

 

[reef EZ]

for sure its you using water with no DI hooked up. i have made this mistake in the past and your phosphate levels will rise to .16 PO4 if not using DI resin. this will for sure bleach hard corals from my understanding. i would deffentely check to see were you are in regards to the bleaching. i would say to buy distilled till you get youe DI resin back on your unit.