Show your frag tanks!

d.grcich · Dec 14, 2006

Ok after a little tweaking of my design I came up with a much simpler way of doing it if anybody checked out my original. Now the rack slides on fixed bracket rods. No more clearance issues for lighting. Hope this may give people some ideas and learn from my mistakes. I will update later with what I hope to be a nice collection of frags. Still working on it.

If anybody wants to share some info on their frag tanks construction, filtration, flow, lighting that would be great and maybe help out the next guy building!

d.grcich · Dec 15, 2006

Organiism suggested useing larger pieces of liverock and that sounded pretty good to me. Plus I was going to run a canister filter or maybe protein skimmer. People have different views on water quality and filtration with zoa's prop. If you or anyone else has experience please inform. Allways great to learn from someone else before I get "why did you do it that way?" afterwards!

Lighting----From looking up zoanthid propagation through a search engine I found quite a few articles how VHO specifically 4' tritons seem to work the best. These may be outdated articles?

MarvinsReef · Jan 10, 2007

I'm bumping this to see other people's frag tanks...

I'll take a pic of my office nano frag tank / holding tank in the next couple of days..

plaz · Jan 24, 2007

Nice d.grcich!

Does the pvc pipe slide all the way through the T? Just can't quite tell how you are getting it to slide up or down and stay in place.

d.grcich · Jan 24, 2007

The shelf slides on the rods hanging down in the tank. This is a bit tricky but here is how it is done. Build the shelf with CPVC and the support side brackets out of PVC. The CPVC "T's" are a different diameter so you will have to use a roto zip or file to open up the CPVC diameter untill the pvc side supports will slide through with very slight or no friction. When all assembeled it will take some force to move the shelf so no locking devices are needed. If shelf seems to easy to slide which is actually hard to acomplish then just turn a couple t's a hair to cause a tighter hold.

Did i make that too confusing? Hope that helps

d.grcich · Jan 24, 2007

Allso a trick I found to hold eggcrate in place but still make them removable was useing clear small zipties on the shelf cross rods every 4 or 5 inches. Do not actually atach the eggcrate to the shelf. Zip tie around the shelf rod only leaving the fingers of the ziptie standing up. Then when you set the eggcrate down the fingers slide through the holes keeping them from getting blown around and moving. The small clear zip ties become invisible in the tank.

fishes2889 · Jan 25, 2007

MarvinsReef said:
I'll take a pic of my office nano frag tank / holding tank in the next couple of days..

Hey Marv, i'm interested in seeing your frag tank....

Steve

plaz · Jan 28, 2007

Thanks Dgrcich!
That makes sense and helps!
Nice job on it!!!

vetteman · Jan 28, 2007

finnex

Smarsh · Jan 28, 2007

vetteman, is your frag tank plumbed into your main tank?

Mr. Ugly · Jan 29, 2007

fishes2889 · Jan 29, 2007

Nice frag tank Ugly! Looks like a 30g breeder, right?

Oh and any specs on filtration light etc?

Steve

coralfarm123 · Jan 30, 2007

Very nice. Great idea, I like the layers.

vetteman · Feb 2, 2007

Smarsh said:
vetteman, is your frag tank plumbed into your main tank?

no it's on it's own......... I was using my 29 for frags but it got crowded. I have a pair of clowns hosting in a plate coral and I couldn't use the whole tank and I was using small pieces of live rock to grow frags on..... I did add an eggcrate shelf to one side and was using frag plugs but it filled up fast... I also added some eggcrate to my 125 but it is in the dining room and the boss didn't like to explain why it was in there when we had visitors... because then she would have to show them the tanks in my office.... then they wanted to know why there were all the razor blades, super glue, hammers, chisels, trash cans filled with water, pickling lime and on and on :scratch:

vetteman · Feb 2, 2007

fishes2889 said:
Nice frag tank Ugly! Looks like a 30g breeder, right?

Oh and any specs on filtration light etc?

Steve

I agree...... looks like you have 10lbs of **** in a 5lbs tank... great use of space :notworthy:

Mr. Ugly · Feb 3, 2007

Hehe.... yah, trying to maximize the use there.

It's a 36x18x16 40 breeder with a 60 gallon acrylic tank down below for a sump. Running a 250w Radium 20k on magnetic ballast. Euro Reef CS6-2 skimmer. Mag5 return pump. MJ1200 for circulation in the 40. Need to set up a couple MJmods some time.

Just put an hqi pendant over the sump last night. Moved a bunch of the softies down there today.

I'll use the breeder itself for sps/lps/zoas, with the various frags at an appropriate level/position according to lighting requirements.

Here's a thread about the setup on my club forum:

http://www.bareefers.org/discussion/index.php?topic=1599.0

JGoslee · Feb 3, 2007

Mr Ugly your frag tank is very nice. I like the way you angled the glass for your overflow. Thats a great idea. I think I might copy your system for my 20gal prop. Great Job!