xilni's 73 gallon reef tank

xilni · Jan 31, 2019

So after many years admiring a friend's reef tank and lurking reef tank forums since 2005 I finally feel like I'm in the right place in my life to commit to a reef tank financially and time wise. The goal is a softy/LPS tank but we'll see where it goes.

Decided to go with the Red Sea Reefer 350 all-in-one tank which covered the following:

73 gallon rimless display tank
Very nice looking black stand
18 gallon instand sump tank
2 x AI Hydra 26 HD lights
all the tubing you need

Topped it off with the following bits:

Eshopps X-120 AXIUM protein skimmer
Eheim JAGER TruTemp 200W heater
Neptune WAV powerhead
Neptune Apex controller
Rio 2500 return pump
40 lbs CaribSea Special Grade Arag-Alive! live reef sand
80 lbs of live rock chosen from the LFS
Instant Ocean sea salt mix
Far too many 5 gallon RO/DI water drums for my poor back

First step was getting an electrician to come install a proper outlet with a dedicated line and breaker to the breaker box.

Picking this thing up from my LFS was part of the battle as the box weighs 460 lbs. We decided to take all the parts out and then tackle the tank separately as alone it's only 140 lbs.

Then began the familiar Ikea game of putting together flat pack furniture. This experience single handedly made me promise myself I'd buy an electric drill in preparation of any future project.

And here it is fully built

Now before I filled it up I had to take care of that pesky closet that wouldn't open anymore, removing the door on this side and opening it up again from the bathroom who's door you can see on the right edge of the photo.

Got the lights up and running

Tentative live sand and live rock placement, I rearranged it so many times and finally settled on this knowing I'd change it again in the future

Initial fill with expected cloudiness

Sump all set up and filled, will probably install a switched LED strip here so I can stop bringing over my flashlight each time. The Apex controller was not as easy to get setup as I would have hoped but their help menus and tour mode were extremely helpful.

Tank cleared out by next morning and all that was left was to clean the bubbles off and let it cycle.

Given that it was live sand and that the live rock had been soaking for 8 weeks already, I expected an extremely quick cycle but was not prepared for it to cycle so quickly.

While there was a small bit of ammonia, likely from live rock die off during the one hour trip from the LFS to being fully submerged here at home, I seeded the tank with a raw table shrimp to really get it going. The smell was awful but it did the job and I was able to track the full cycle with twice daily water parameter checks over the course of the next few days along with steady temperature, pH and salinity.

It was finally time to put the tank's first inhabitants in, I went with a small school of 5 blue green chromis for their hardiness and their nice schooling behavior.

Four of the five seemed to immediately take to swimming around and feeding but one (unsuprisingly the same one who was never as close to the school at the LFS) has taken to hiding away from the pack. I'm going to keep track of him closely and decide in a day if any action is needed.

Next on my list is adding more fish and the clean up crew, then after another week or so of perfect water parameters, adding some softies and perhaps some of the hardier and easy going LPS.

Edit: Fixed photo order

Big G · Jan 31, 2019

Nice looking tank. Best of luck.

Are you quarantining your incoming fish, inverts, and corals?

xilni · Jan 31, 2019

Big G said:
Nice looking tank. Best of luck.
Are you quarantining your incoming fish, inverts, and corals?

Thank you very much!

No I didn’t.

I read differing opinions on the necessity of quarantine tanks. Also given that the live rock and the chromes came from the same tanks I didn’t feel it would accomplish much but trap them all in a smaller tank.

xilni · Feb 1, 2019

So woke up this morning to the little loner missing from his rock when I finally noticed he was schooling with the other four chromis. Was worried for a while that he’d be forever alone.

xilni · Feb 2, 2019

5th chromi went MIA again, I guess he’s exiled again. I’ve been thinking about getting a few more chromis as I hear it helps spread around the bullying in their tricky social structures.

Also ended up watching the rectangular tank aquascaping video from the aquascaping subforum, inspired me to change my rock layout a bit. I aimed to reduce the amount of “caves”, move the rock towards the back to reduce the amount of unviewable dead space behind it and move the rock away from the sides to make it feel less crowded.

I’m still new at this so feedback on the chromis, rock layout or anything else is always appreciated!

xilni · Feb 3, 2019

Added another 25 or so pounds of live sand, I really much prefer the heavier sand look. I’ll be sure to get enough Nasssarius snails to keep it clean.

xilni · Feb 3, 2019

There’s something interesting covering part of one of the rocks:

The phone doesn’t quite capture it but it looks quite red. At first I thought diatoms but it doesn’t quite look like the pictures I’ve seen of diatoms.

Thoughts anyone?

malacoda · Feb 3, 2019

Is it soft or hard? I've had coralines start out red, burgundy, and even such a dark purple they almost looked black. If it's hard/calcareous it could be the start of a coraline.

xilni · Feb 3, 2019

malacoda said:
Is it soft or hard? I've had coralines start out red, burgundy, and even such a dark purple they almost looked black. If it's hard/calcareous it could be the start of a coraline.

It feels a bit fuzzy, here’s a better all white picture:

xilni · Feb 4, 2019

Came back home today to find the (what I think is) cyanobacteria spreading quite a bit and it's a bit bubbly, looks very much like the cyanobacteria picture in the The Supreme Guide To Setting Up A Saltwater Reef Aquarium thread except it's red/brown color looks bleached out in all my pictures.

I've decided to be more careful with my feeding and I've stepped up my water changes. I'm already regretting not investing in a Neptune DOS (and perhaps a home RO/DI unit) for automatic water changes and am tempted to just go buy one tomorrow because all this bucket and 5 gallon RO/DI jug lifting is killing me.

xilni · Feb 5, 2019

My Cyano bloom seems to have peaked and is no longer going crazy. LFS guy told me not too worry just to wait it out but to be careful with the overfeeding.

At the same time, he gave me a beautiful blue/green Ricordea Florida about 1 cm diameter as a first coral/welcome to the hobby gift. It seems to be attached to some small gravel sized piece of live rock but I was able to just place it on a groove on one of my lower pieces of live rock where there’s enough flow but it’s not getting swept away.

I think I need to look into camera filters, the blue lights really bring out the colors in the coral but doesn’t make for good photography.

Thoughts on if I should glue it? He gave me a small tube of coral super glue in case I need it but I’ve also heard they like to move around to find their own comfy spots.

NY_Caveman · Feb 5, 2019

I never liked the idea of glueing mushrooms. They are anemones after all, but I get they are a bit different than what we generally think of as anemones. Unlike corals they will find a spot they love.

xilni · Feb 6, 2019

NY_Caveman said:
I never liked the idea of glueing mushrooms. They are anemones after all, but I get they are a bit different than what we generally think of as anemones. Unlike corals they will find a spot they love.

It moved about a cm over night (I suspect on its own).

While it’s not directly in the high flow I’m still worried it’ll get swept away into some nook in between the live rocks.

xilni · Feb 7, 2019

Today found the dead 5th chromi, I’ve been expecting this for days. He was being bullied at the LFS and while I thought this would stop in my tank, it did not.

In better news, the Ricordea Florida seems to be doing great and is more colorful and vibrant than before.

xilni · Feb 20, 2019

I apologize for the long absence if you were following along but work got in the way of updating this thread.

A lot has happened, the cyano disappeared and came back more mildly, a bunch of new fish additions and some coral additions!

First up is a three headed neon yellow hammer coral, this guy has amazing polyp extension during the day and looks so full.

Next up we have the red acan colony that looks so magnificent in person but I really haven’t been able to capture the reds in photos

Next we have an amazing neon green toadstool leather that is the tank centerpiece right now, so vibrant you always get a wow reaction from first time visitors.

Even at night from bed, it’s the only thing you can see as it doesn’t retract like the hammer:

Also thrown in as freebie because he’s already cleaning me out for my whole bank account is a little island of Palys and Xenias. While the Xenias seem like they’re on their way out compared to how active they were at the LFS, the Palys are budding like crazy, started with just two heads a week ago and now have nearly five. Will eventually find a variety pack of four or five zoas like the ultra chaos and throw them on the rock to the left.

xilni · Feb 20, 2019

Now onto the livestock side.

Two of the original blue/Green Chromis ended up dying, only one of which I found the body as I posted before, the other’s body is part of the tank now I suppose. Bought a few more blue Green Chromis to join the school and there hasn’t been any visible bullying since then, all eight seem to stick together quite happily.

Have a twospot hogfish that seems to love it here, he’s super chill except around feeding time where he easily eats more than the eight chromis combined but doesn’t attack anyone to do it so all is well.

Also added a Firefish (who likes to hide from photos), five Trochus and five Nassarius snails, the Trochus are insane rock cleaners, the spots they pass over look cleaner than when I got the rocks.

On the hardware front, I took the advice of Than Thein’s video and put some silicon mats underneath my pump and protein skimmer. While it’s definitely quieter, I’m seriously considering a DC pump since those are supposedly even quieter.

More importantly I ended up putting some LED strips in the in cabinet sump area for two purposes: to light up the area for work and to fuel the chaeto ball I bought. The LEDs run in a reverse cycle of the DT’s LEDs and can be manually turned on if I needed them during the day. I have more LED strip clips coming from Amazon Prime so don't mind the electrical tape.

xilni · Feb 22, 2019

First things first, the Firefish made an appearance turns out he's being crazily bullied by the Two Spotted hogfish, I've seen it and it scared me, need to figure out what to do about those two.

So in a kind of spur of the moment impulse decision, I decided to try a bunch of @Cultivated Reef frag packs as well as one of their Utter Chaos palys which I saw in someone's tank and have wanted ever since.

On the scheduled shipping day, Fedex issued a big storm warning for the East Coast so we both agreed to delay the shipment to prevent the corals from languishing in a shipping hub somewhere. Next day they were able to safely ship them Priority Overnight.

Now I let them acclimate on the sand for a two days and all seem to be extending properly so shipping didn't damage any of them, kudos to @Cultivated Reef for shipping them properly in an insulated container with heat packs and being cautious of potential weather delays.

Here's a picture from by dirty glass (Trochus snails need to step up their game, how do I guide them to a particular spot?):

From the LPS frag pack I ended up getting:

Lemon Lime favia

Candy Cane

Miami Hurricane chalice

From the soft coral pack:

Liams Clove polyps

Blue Solomon tree

Metallic Green Star polyps

From the zoa pack:

King Midas

Sunny Delight

Armor of Gods

And of course the Utter Chaos

xilni · Feb 23, 2019

Discovered something on my daily visual inspection, I'm afraid I know what this is but I don't want to say it:

EDIT: Ya it's confirmed aiptasia, making kalkwasser paste as we speak.

xilni · Feb 25, 2019

Added three peppermint shrimp into the tank to contain the aiptasia, one of them immediately stated attacking the aiptasia near where I dropped it before scurrying off into a crack in the rock with its friends.