hazymranch

Thanks all. I'm still working on it and will post updates.

Well, it is a year later and I think it is time for an update. Once I got things somewhat sorted, I came down with a case of MTS and now have 3 marine tanks going. First, I'll pick up where the thread left off last. My parents were visiting from the US last April so I went on ebay and bought a 6-stage 100 GPD RODI system for $100 US and had my parents mule it here to save on the shipping (insert jokes about swallowing massive baloons filled with filters here). I installed it with a splitter so one goes to the kitchen sink for drinking water and the other line goes under the house right to the tank in the lounge. Once I get it together I will sort out an auto top-off but for now, I just manually do it. I add Kalk to it every other day. The 34L nano in my son's room is doing brilliantly. I fashioned his name out of paua chips glued to a glass pipet that I melted to form. Technically, this tank is the oldest of the three tanks through several incarnations. The rock, substrate, and fish (Krusty the Klowfish) are the oldest anyway. Coralline covers almost every surface, there is almost no nuisance algae (or wasn't until I let a friend with no experience and fat fingers mind my tanks for 2 weeks) and the rock seems to spout another group of xenia or worm every week. I have a Weipro 4xT5 2ft. fixture over it with 2 actinic blues and 2x15,000K that are on for 11 hours. Some pics from about a month ago (as good as a hack like me can do with a Sony Cybershot): Last May, my wife noticed that water was pooling under the tank in the lounge. I thought that the tank had cracked somewhere as I could not find a leak elsewhere. So, I took the tank down and as it turns out water was leaking over the top of the glass and under the plastic rim. Another quality Jebo product. The water was getting underneath the tank because the stand was beginning to bow (also jebo) so it was only a matter of time before the whole thing ended up on the lounge floor. Fortunately, the folks from the LFS were taking a marine tank from their house down at the same time and they just gave me the tank, substrate and rock for getting it out of their house. I bought the arcadia 250W MH, prizm skimmer, and eheim professional wet/dry they were running on it for $200. So, I moved everything from the lounge tank into the new tank that I placed in the kitchen. Several 4am nights later I managed to fit all of the rock, corals, and fish in the new tank without a single loss. here is what it looked like after I was done. I realize it is a giant wall of rock, but I had to fit the lounge rock (darker rocks) as well as the new rock in there. I also bought a few fish from a local guy who took his tank down so the extra rock gave the overcrowded fish plenty of places to hide. Here are some of the critters I had in there at the time: In september I finally finished building a new stand and canopy for the lounge tank so I moved most of the original rock, all corals that weren't stuck to the remaining rock, and 4 of the fish back to the lounge. This is what the tank in the kitchen looks like now: Since reducing the bioload and the amount of rock it has really settled down and I am finally on top of the nuisance algae in it. the previous owners had the tank up for at least a year before I got it so the rock is well and truly alive by now. Decent coralline growth and there are scattered mushrooms, zoanthids, colts, star polyps, and xenia flourishing. I am also using it as a frag tank for assorted soft corals and I think I will keep it simple with a few low-light soft corals and mostly fish. The lounge tank is going to be the real show. Here's a link to the DIY stand and canopy build. Plenty of step-by pics. http://www.hazymranch.com/theshrimpsons/diystandandcanopy.html here is what the tank looked like after the rebuild. Again, no losses: I have a pair of Banggai Cardinals, a Flame Angel, and a Green Mandarin in here. I want a shrimp in there ASAP and I think a dottyback or gramma after that will do it. I have one SPS in there now, and it is doing well so I am going to try a few more. I also built and added a closed loop for this tank. It runs on a Laguna 6 and I had it running through a SCWD for a wee while. I have since seen the error of my ways and it is going through a 25mm "T" now. HEAPS of flow in there now as the main CL outlet points right at the sump return and creates a lot of turbulence. I also added baffles to the sump to reduce the microbubbles and it worked out pretty well. I need to get the refugium up and running again but I need to sort the lighting out. Any recommendations for cheap lighting that macroalgae will love? That's it for now. I'll get some pics of the closed loop setup as well as how the tank looks now (a month on from the posted photos) as there has been all sorts of new growth as things settle in a spread out a bit. I'm currently battling the hair algae as the tank settles down but it already looks to be receeding. I still feel like a newbie but at the same time I have learned a lot in the last year and feel like I have it somewhat sorted for now. Thanks again to everyone for their help.

I'm updating my original thread about my tank build with FTS of all 3 tanks. Should be up in a few.

I just realized that I posted the thumbnails rather than the full-sized pics. If anyone wants to see larger ones you can see them at the link in my signature. They are in the Springfield Heights gallery.

OK, I finally have pics. Sorry for the wait. Because their shells are covered in coralline they can be really hard to see sometimes, but those massive antennae give them away every time.

This is how cycling started. Nobody is calling this guy a cheater. Maybe it's the difference between Italians and the French? Vive le difference!

You would think that DOC would be pleased that I have started a breeding program. However, that assumes that they are reasonable... I may try to get a few of them out of the 40L and spread them to the other 2, larger tanks. I let the algae grow in my FOWL (not that I am all that effective in stopping algae growth in the other two) so it may be a better environment for them. They seem to be most active at dusk so I will try to get some photos soon.

When I started my first tank around 18 months ago, I placed a relatively fresh Paua shell into it. I took it out 6 months later, and have since broken that tank down and reincarnated it as 2 separate tanks: a 40L that is the most direct descendent of the original as far as the inhabitants and rock goes, and the original tank itself that has been broken down and restarted twice since then for various reasons. Thus, the 40L is the most mature tank and it is by far the biggest joy for me as it is very stable. There is almost no algae (or at least wsn't until I went away on holiday and left it in the care of someone with no aquarium experience and very large fingers), plenty of coralline encrustation on everything, great and steady growth of the soft and LPS corals, and things are popping out of the rock almost daily with sporadic xenia growth the most current. About a month ago, I started seeing what appeared to be tiny snails crawling around. They were more pale than the cats eyes I have in there, but since some of the cats eyes are 18-months in the tank, I assumed they had bred. Well, now that these new mollusks are a bit bigger, the irridescent paua shell on them is unmistakable. Unknowingly I have bred paua in my tank. Now that my other tank is up and running full-stop, I think it is only a matter of time before they start appearing in there as well. SO, now that I am over the "whoa, that is so cool" stage, I am wondering if this will be a problem. Any ideas?

Thanks Greg. I can believe it. My wife must have considered it once or twice, but then probably realized that I would have to spend twice as much time to get it back up and running :roll:

Did he ever find out what happened to cause the crash? I stopped following the thread right after the police visited his house.

I have access to absolute ethanol and would prefer to use that over vodka, but does anyone have a recommended dosage for that?

I just run a bit of hot water in the bath tub and then sit the 20L Jerry cans in there while I vacume/remove the old water.

2 x 150W DE and 1 x 250W DE

I monitor salinity daily with a floating gauge (simple ones with thermometer) in the sump and I alternate Kalkwasser and Reef Success Ca in my top-off water every evening. I probably need to back off on my Ca supplementation but I was working under the assumption that Ca between 400 and 500 was desirable. I didn't know that you could have too much Ca and I thought that if the water became supersaturated that the Ca would simply precipitate out until equilibrium was reached. This is all so odd because everything else in my tank is doing so well and the growth on my clam and LPS have been phenomenal, which is why I have kept my Ca so high. Being that my whole system is <200L and I lose 3L/day to evaporation, the salinity can fluctuate slightly from morning to night, but it has never caused a problem before and I never saw the need for a refractometer as I use NSW and keep the top-up volume constant. I have a multi-meter with a salinity function on the way from the States so I will have a better handle on it going forward. My best guess right now is that I simply hit them with too much light too soon. My inexperience with SPS being the culprit. The only other SPS in my tank is on the substrate and hass been doing well enough in the few weeks that I have had it. I'll give it another go in a few months when the weather is better for shipping and I will have done a bit more reading on SPS in the meantime. Probably not a bad thing since I have only been into Marine for less than a year and my tank is still evolving (and probably always will be). My 40L nano is doing brilliantly and I am just about to start a 300L FOWL that may evolve into something more as I have a 250W MH for it so we will see... Thanks to everyone for all of your input. Hey Cookie- That bit about boxes from overseas was really tempting, but I think any response I had in mind to it would have been moderated out.

Salinity is 1.023 ( I use NSW) and Ca is 480-500 (tested with 2 different kits). The frags are already glued to small rocks and I placed them on the substrate last night. They are all completely white, as they have been since 5 minutes after I placed them into my tank. I also tested my water again last night and everything is looking good. pH is 8.3, Alk is 9, Nitrates 0, Phosphates 0. Maybe the shipping in cold weather buggered them.

I have them up top. Do I move them now or would I only be making matters worse?

150MH and 150MH. Most likely different color bulbs though. I'm really hoping that it is just expulsion of the zoox adapted to the former light and they will be re-colonised by new ones. However, white usually spells death for SPS, doesn't it? Do SPS ever come back from being totally bleached?

Yep, Ca would be a big one. If the shell growth can't keep up with the mantle, it will be unhappy. If you don't add Ca in any form, that could be the ticket.

I read that a young clam's mantle is not large enough to satisfy all of its energy requirements through photosynthesis so they rely heavily on particulate feeding. If your tank is sterile (as most of us strive to achieve) and your clam is young, it may be starving. Could also be parasites if it is placed on the substrate rather than a rock bed. Apparently parasites enter from underneath. Just a few guesses based on Borneman's book.

Hey PB, I hope I'm not hijacking your thread but I have just added a few SPS frags to my tank and I have the same questions. My frags bleached as soon as I placed them into my tank (after acclimating) and I am hoping that this is normal and they need to be re-colonised by zooxanthellae that are adapted to my tank's conditions. My nitrate and phosphates are 0, pH is 8.2 and Alk is 9.

Sweet. That is along the lines of what I was thinking. I have been looking at this design pretty seriously http://www.melevsreef.com/closedloop.html as I already have a SCWD with plumbing in place. All I will have to do is assemble the intake and hook it up to the pump (King 4). The intake will all be 25mm but the scwd and plumbing into the tank are all at 20mm. Not ideal, but already in place so good enough. How do you all prime your loops?

Nope. No room for streams in the tank or my budget. All that defines a closed loop is that water comes out of the tank and then right back in, redirected to create movement. Many closed loops are externally run.

I have been mulling over designs for a closed loop and would be interested to see what some of yours look like. Please post any pics or schematics of your closed loops, especially what you use as an intake filter/screen. This will be retrofit so drilling is not an option. Cheers.

I'm with TM. I feed a small pinch of flake (varying the type of flake) 2-3 times a day and then each night I shut all of the pumps and drop in a bit of frozen. 20 minutes later I turn the pumps on again and the food that settled gets stirred, triggering feeding frenzy #2, in which the shy fish get their share too. I do this right around lights off so the night feeders (fish and corals) get their share. I vary the frozen between mysis, bought marine tucker, and home-made cubes (various mollusks and shellfish, flake, spirulina, nori, and carrots. Very little gets stuck in the tank this way, which seems to keep nitrates in check.

I have also been battling cyano. Based on the article in the sticky post, I am going to change my bulbs. Also, beware of anything that claims overnight effect. Guys like Fenner and Calfo say that nothing good ever happens quickly in a reef tank. Good luck and let me know what works for you.