100G/400L build between two walls

[monfilsi]

Hi from New Zealand!

Got into the hobby about two years and found this site to be HUGE help in all the research that comes with owning a living reef. Figured it was time to share my journey and tank.

Little bit about myself, I'm an engineer with Ph.D. specializing in laser physics... so I really enjoy the research and the diversity of knowledge you end up building.

This project started out with idea that my son had during lockdowns that we could put a hole in a wall a install a fish tank that we would see from both side in different rooms. This meant I had to make everything custom to fit the location, but that was the part I was looking forward to anyways!

March 2022: working on walls and cabinet

Equipment List:
400L custom tank with euro brace and custom sump.
Lights: Kessel x360 + some other lights I regret. What to move over to Radions some time soon when wallet says ok.
Tunze ATO
Daily water automatic water with Kamoer pumps changes of ~1.5% per day
Salt: Aquaforest Reef salt... not thrilled with this salt. It constantly reads very Magnesium and doesn't match my desired parameters.
Return pump: reef octopus varios-2
Skimmer: bubble magnus
Doser: Kamoer
Heater: 2xWeipro MX-1021B with 300W Titanium Heater
Return was setup in bean animal configuration
Reactor with GFO to keep phosphate in check
Wavemakers: Jabeo
Microscope: Swift SW380T

Feeding/dosing
Dosing All-for-reef (without magnesium)
Feed 3 types of fish pellets/flakes
Mysis shrimp 2 cubes a week
Broadcast feed coral one a week reef roids/reef chilly
Target Feed coral once a week reef roids/reef chilly
Add 300ml of live phytoplankton everyday that I culture myself

My target parameters:
Salinity: 1.025
Alk: 9.5 dKH
Nitrate: 10 ppm
Phosphate: 0.06ppm
Calcium: 450 ppm
Magnesium: 1300pm

June 2022: Aquascaping and plumbing done!

January 2023: 100% LPS at this point, adding coral slowly.

April 2023: Added SPS

Shortly after I got a bad case of toxic dinos and lost all my snails and SPS corals and a few LPS and half my beautiful elegance. Battled the dinos for 11months, but winning in the end. Started adding in SPS again about 4months ago gradually. Everyone seems happy.

Today: Can still see the closed loop UV I installed. UV coming out at the end of the month!!! Would like to find a way to install UV on my return, but I'm out of space.

I'll post again soon with some reflections on challenges and plans on where to go from here.

 

[saltcats]

Beautiful scape!

I'm in my own fight with dinos so I know the pain of having UV plumbed into the display Can't wait to see it with the UV removed.

 

[Gumbies R Us]

Great looking tank!

 

[Siberwulf]

Do you ever get to take the UV out? I've been with UV for about a year now, and battled dinos even longer. Any time my UV inlet gets restricted (like bubble algae) then I start to see Dinos pop up near instantly.

 

[monfilsi]

Do you ever get to take the UV out? I've been with UV for about a year now, and battled dinos even longer. Any time my UV inlet gets restricted (like bubble algae) then I start to see Dinos pop up near instantly.

I had UV out for about a month around Xmas time and Dino’s started coming back. Last time I checked under the microscope I could only find signs of LCA that live in sand bed and don’t go into water column. I rinsed out my sand and only put back a light dusting deep enough for wrasses to sleep in at night. Now that sand is looking good for past month, I’ll take UV out again this weekend and see how things go.

Do you know what time of Dino’s you have? I dosed silicates and ran uv for long time until the toxic variant that I had died off and I was left with LCA and lots of diatoms.

 

[Siberwulf]

My tank is full of Ostreopsis, so right now I'm in a lights out phase to get them back into the column. Crossing fingers this is enough to get em.

 

[monfilsi]

Promised that I would post about challenges that I'm working through.

Lets start with the bigger ones that I have overcome...
1. Magnesium in the 1800ppm. I was rarely/almost never testing magnesium. But once my snails started dying off I realized I had a problem. The salt that I use always seems to run high on mag and I had been using all-for-reef which also doses mag. Have since changed to mixing my own all-for-reef without the mag and now running stable around 1400ppm.
2. Dinos... lots of threads on this, so don't need to go into it. But I think I got it under control now. One positive thing that came out of it is that I really enjoy looking at all organism under the microscope, taking pictures of them and identifying them.

Challenges:
1. Living in New Zealand I don't have access to a lot gear, corals etc that the US or Europe market has. For example, I can't get copepods here at all or macroalgae for refugiums. I'm working on trying to culture copepods from the few I have found in my tank. I'll get eventually....
2. Lighting. I started with some cheaper lights that I though were good enough at least on the PAR side. But was seeing slow coral growth. Added Apex light and that made a huge difference to my SPS. Will switch out my cheaper lights for some radions once I win the lottery .
3. Vermetid snails. Man I hate those guys. They are just ugly. Go through periods where they seem to die back then others where they seem to thrive. I use a high power laser to zap them when I can, usually if get to it if I notice an aptasia pop up. Don't know of anyone that has eliminated them, so I guess it is just part of the hobby I need to accept.

Improvements that I'm working on:
1. Culturing Phyto and copepods. Phyto is turning out to be very easy. Hoping I get my pods to take off. Would like to keep madarin gobys.
2. I mentioned light already.
3. If dinos come back, I'll open up the wall that my return runs through and find a way to put UV in permanently.

I'll take out the closed loop UV for the main display this weekend and I'll post some pics of the tank.

 

[monfilsi]

Took some PAR reading across the tank today.

Lost my elegance. Real sad about that. He had been struggling for ~8 weeks. Tried giving regular iodine dips but wasn't successful. He had been so beautiful and thriving for over a year.

Still a few LCA Dinos under the microscope but have to really look around for them, so looks like I'm most of the way through the dinos. Would love to get some bumblebee snails to deal with the vermetid snails. They have really taken off since I have been adding live phyto regularly... but the coral are loving the phyto, so thats what matters. Just need to keep zapping the vermetids with laser weekly.

Decided to upgrade my lights. Currently have one kessil A360x and a light bar from LICAH. The LICAH I got before I knew what I was doing and man it doesn't have much light output. Just purchased two UNI v2 pros from reefi. Excited to see how they perform.

 

[monfilsi]

Received my new reefi uno v2pro. I mounted two light about 25cm from water, this gave me the least shadowing around the rock scape.

Overall these lights are fantastic. Quite impressed with overall quality and the support.

I'm running them at 40%. If I go anywhere near 80% I see over 1000 par 1/3 of the way down the tank... ouch.

Here is the light profile I'm using:

And the par reading accross the tank at my peak of 116W (40% of what light can do):

Going to acclimitimize to this level over the next 30days.

Hoping this make a big difference to the growth rate of my coral and I don't lose anything along the way

 

[mythesis]

Thanks for stopping by my build thread, yours is gorgeous! How's the Dino battle & lighting acclimation going?

 

[monfilsi]

Thanks for stopping by my build thread, yours is gorgeous! How's the Dino battle & lighting acclimation going?

On the other side of the battle with Dinos. They are gone or more accurately under control. Lost one acro at the very top when I changed the lights, but I consider that a success. Everything seems pretty happy at the moment. Trying to hold back from changing anything... hard not to tinker with it!

Wish I could get bumble bee snails here. Vermitids are driving me crazy!