16 Gallon Alberta coat closet DIY special! New FTS

[Koleswrath]

I decided to post the history of my nano since I've been active on R2R more often lately.

Here's the timeline with notable events, good or bad:

Dec 15, 2022
Decided to jump back in to reefing after 6 or 7 years and a house move. I gotta admit my main motivation was the popularity of the various BRS series' making it look easier than my previous experience. My wife also enjoys saltwater more than the freshwater tanks or Hogg Island Boa I keep so that part was easy.

I had a leftover 8.8 gallon cube that wasn't being used so I started planning and designing everything on the cheap. Spoiler alert: everything was eventually replaced or upgraded so the "cheap" actually ended up costing more.

Leftover tank, rock from my tank 6 years prior, an awesome tidal 35 filter and a 50w heater. Off to the races!


Feb 9, 2023
Tank cycled, a couple clownfish added, some canary corals added. Got a couple Jebao SW2 powerheads for random flow.

The rock is still very white from my bleach bath and vinegar soak prior to setting up the tank ( had quite a bit of algae from the last tank on it).


Feb 18, 2023 - DINO's
After a week away for work without testing parameters, some possible missed feedings by my wife (yes I'm passing the blame ) and a bottomed out phosphate and nitrate level we have a wonderful mix of Cyano and Dinoflagellates!! DUN-DUN-DUUUUN!!!

Pretty awful but I was expecting some uglies to appear. I got a little worried after discovering they were dinos.


March 11, 2023 - Dino's on the run
After some thorough research on Mack's Dino FB page I picked up a microscope, ID'd the little suckers that were causing me grief and started the recommended nutrient dosing, UV, and manual removal (siphoning and changing filter floss daily). Also stopped water changes and by mid March the Dinos were no more.

Amazingly, my snails, fish and coral all powered through unscathed by the dreaded Ostreopsis ovata.


April 7, 2023 - Rip Clean'd
All was not hunky dory after the eradication of the Dino's unfortunately. The removal of such a large mass of organisms just left a gaping hole in the trophic web and various algaes were happy to fill it. I tried picking off the rocks as it grew but soon got overwhelmed and decided to play my hail-mary card with a "rip clean". Seeing the results of a few other nano tanks on various forums convinced me that this could be my way out of the algae woes.

After a full day of sand bed rinsing (way more crap came out than expected - must have been all the dead dino's) and bunch of knifing off the algae that covered my rocks the tank looked great and I was able to maintain it for quite a few months.


May 20, 2023 - Hitting its stride
Tank did amazingly well after the rip clean and coralline was blooming everywhere. I had to start manual dosing of 2 part to keep up with the Ca/Alk demands. To this point I had been using Kalkwasser as the majority of my top off water.

Coralline growth a month after rip clean.


Summer, 2023 - BRYOPSIS
At some point in the summer I added a coral that must have had some Bryopsis on it. I was peroxide dipping but it obviously got through the dip. After a few week long camping trips in July, August and September it got away from me. My daily tweezing again wasn't cutting it. It was around this time I started to seriously think about upgrading the little cube to something I could run dosing pumps on and have more breathing room for my work trips, camping trips and ski trips that my family and I regularly take. I started designing each component of the new tank to reduce everyday maintenance and reliance on manual work so that I could leave with some confidence in my tank stability.

Final 8.8 cube FTS after another few rock rasping sessions. Started Fluconazole around this time to hopefully eradicate the Bryopsis before transferring livestock to the new tank.




Next post I'll share the designs for the new system, how it progressed and how the Fluconazole worked out....
Thanks for stopping by!

 

[Katrina71]

That is a heck of a ride! Great looking tank, even in the uglies!

 

[Gumbies R Us]

I decided to post the history of my nano since I've been active on R2R more often lately.

Here's the timeline with notable events, good or bad:

Dec 15, 2022
Decided to jump back in to reefing after 6 or 7 years and a house move. I gotta admit my main motivation was the popularity of the various BRS series' making it look easier than my previous experience. My wife also enjoys saltwater more than the freshwater tanks or Hogg Island Boa I keep so that part was easy.

I had a leftover 8.8 gallon cube that wasn't being used so I started planning and designing everything on the cheap. Spoiler alert: everything was eventually replaced or upgraded so the "cheap" actually ended up costing more.

Leftover tank, rock from my tank 6 years prior, an awesome tidal 35 filter and a 50w heater. Off to the races!


Feb 9, 2023
Tank cycled, a couple clownfish added, some canary corals added. Got a couple Jebao SW2 powerheads for random flow.

The rock is still very white from my bleach bath and vinegar soak prior to setting up the tank ( had quite a bit of algae from the last tank on it).


Feb 18, 2023 - DINO's
After a week away for work without testing parameters, some possible missed feedings by my wife (yes I'm passing the blame ) and a bottomed out phosphate and nitrate level we have a wonderful mix of Cyano and Dinoflagellates!! DUN-DUN-DUUUUN!!!

Pretty awful but I was expecting some uglies to appear. I got a little worried after discovering they were dinos.


March 11, 2023 - Dino's on the run
After some thorough research on Mack's Dino FB page I picked up a microscope, ID'd the little suckers that were causing me grief and started the recommended nutrient dosing, UV, and manual removal (siphoning and changing filter floss daily). Also stopped water changes and by mid March the Dinos were no more.

Amazingly, my snails, fish and coral all powered through unscathed by the dreaded Ostreopsis ovata.


April 7, 2023 - Rip Clean'd
All was not hunky dory after the eradication of the Dino's unfortunately. The removal of such a large mass of organisms just left a gaping hole in the trophic web and various algaes were happy to fill it. I tried picking off the rocks as it grew but soon got overwhelmed and decided to play my hail-mary card with a "rip clean". Seeing the results of a few other nano tanks on various forums convinced me that this could be my way out of the algae woes.

After a full day of sand bed rinsing (way more crap came out than expected - must have been all the dead dino's) and bunch of knifing off the algae that covered my rocks the tank looked great and I was able to maintain it for quite a few months.


May 20, 2023 - Hitting its stride
Tank did amazingly well after the rip clean and coralline was blooming everywhere. I had to start manual dosing of 2 part to keep up with the Ca/Alk demands. To this point I had been using Kalkwasser as the majority of my top off water.

Coralline growth a month after rip clean.


Summer, 2023 - BRYOPSIS
At some point in the summer I added a coral that must have had some Bryopsis on it. I was peroxide dipping but it obviously got through the dip. After a few week long camping trips in July, August and September it got away from me. My daily tweezing again wasn't cutting it. It was around this time I started to seriously think about upgrading the little cube to something I could run dosing pumps on and have more breathing room for my work trips, camping trips and ski trips that my family and I regularly take. I started designing each component of the new tank to reduce everyday maintenance and reliance on manual work so that I could leave with some confidence in my tank stability.

Final 8.8 cube FTS after another few rock rasping sessions. Started Fluconazole around this time to hopefully eradicate the Bryopsis before transferring livestock to the new tank.




Next post I'll share the designs for the new system, how it progressed and how the Fluconazole worked out....
Thanks for stopping by!

Great looking tank!

 

[Koleswrath]

Meanwhile....

Summer 2023
While the little tank was going through various stages of maturation and trials and tribulations, I realized I needed some automation if I was going to try and maintain stability while I was travelling. The thought of adding temp probes, dosing lines, etc. to this already crowded little cube was off-putting to say the least.
Enter - Super tank: Months long sketchup designing of tank dimensions, overflows, sump configurations, you name it!
This is the final layout I settled on:.

As a woodworker and dabbler in welding I would build the stand, weld up the light mounts, learn acrylic manufacturing and build my own ghost overflow.




After measuring out most of the main floor of my house and drawing it in Sketchup I designed the system to complement the size of the room and utilize a coat closet on the other side of the living room wall for the sump room. Laying out the plumbing was a fun adventure in futility.


My first foray into acrylic manufacturing was building this manual roller mat filter (which is ironically built out of polycarbonate but whatever...).



In July I started playing...
The roller mat went pretty good. At this point I was still using a wood blade on my table saw and the capillary method to weld most of my seams but I was finishing the edges on my router table which uses the table saw fence so I was ahead of the curve there.

Not bad for my first attempt eh? This thing works amazingly well still.


I learned some important acrylic mfg methods over on @Turbo's Aquatics acrylic thread with input from the big boys over there like @Troylee , @cromag27 , @Lowell Lemon and of course @Turbo's Aquatics. With the help of those fine gentlemen I felt up to the task of diving in and getting the overflow done.

Internal overflow box was up first. Had to reinforce a few of the seams with Weld on 16...lol. It's internal to the tank so less critical but still holds water.

This one had me nervous. The first acrylic box I've made that MUST hold water. After the practice on the other two it went great though! Look at those seams!


With these projects under my belt I held my breath and started the sump. Again, I lucked out and each seam was bubble free and beautiful.

Pretty sure I just stared at this thing lost in amazement.


By this time I had changed my plans slightly and decided to order a standard Waterbox mini 16 tank instead of a custom tank. This tank would fit my existing stand perfectly. To accommodate using my existing "not engineered to be an aquarium stand" stand, I had to reinforce it and bolt it to the wall for stability.

Some nifty modding of a cheap piece of "furniture" my wife likes and this thing will support my truck...


With all the foundation pieces in place I could get it all together and fill it up.

Wet testing while little brother looks on awestruck...


This was a fun day...

Everything in place in the coat closet...


Next post transferring livestock and hitting the road running.....
Thanks for checking this out.

 

[Troylee]

Clean build! I like the closet! Wish I could do that with my tank! It’s not a option as my tank sits against a load bearing wall to the outside and not much room on that side of my house to build a room..

 

[Koleswrath]

Jan 29, 2024

After months of design, planning and many stages of fabrication and construction it was finally time to transfer everything in the little 8.8 to this new and massively OP 16 gallon dream tank!! .
I used @brandon429 's method of transferring which involves removing livestock and live rock into separate containers with heat and flow while a thorough sand rinse is completed, any needed live rock cleaning is done, then everything goes in the new tank with 100% new water.

Since I've done a rip clean or two in the past this was no sweat. I also rinsed to "snowglobe like cleanliness" some new sand that was added in along with the sand from the 8.8.
A few new pieces of dry rock was added and was glaringly white compared to the year old rock which has a very mature cacophony of different colors. I had this dry rock curing with some bacteria for a few months prior to adding it.
Little brother looking justifiably sad...fear not...you will be repurposed!


1st FTS of the new tank after the 2nd AI Prime was moved over.


The transfer went without incident and the tank has been surprisingly easy to maintain even with a few ski trips and work trips sprinkled in during the last month and a half. The new dry rock didn't explode with algae as I had expected and is now already a matching matured color with coralline starting to grow on it here and there.

Overview of the tank and stand in the living room. If you'd like to know why my wife keeps pillows in a basket I can ask her.


I didn't go much into lighting but the custom mount above is just bar stock cut and welded with rotating mounts and primed and painted with acrylic latex paint. If anyone is interested in more detailed pics feel free to reach out.

Nighttime is my favorite tank time...



Recent additions coming up.......

 

[Koleswrath]

Clean build! I like the closet! Wish I could do that with my tank! It’s not a option as my tank sits against a load bearing wall to the outside and not much room on that side of my house to build a room..

Thanks man, appreciate it! Meh, you've got so much room under that public aquarium in your house that you probably don't even notice it..

 

[Koleswrath]

The tank has been balancing precariously on the edge of existence as most reef tanks do but is balancing quite well.
Over the last month and a half the lights have been ramping up about 5% a week and we're now in the realm of "enough PAR to color up Montipora digitata" and approaching "enough PAR to color up a Cali Tort" so we of course have to push our luck and add some Millepora.
Water parameters are stable enough that quantity of light and potential shadowing are my only real concerns.
Here's some coral pics:

If it starts to darken from this glorious pink I'll know to keep moving up by 5% increments.


This Calastrea was my canary coral and started with 2 heads a year and a half ago.
I call him WOEWNMACC (Who On Earth Would Name Me a CandyCane?)


Some likely ridiculously named Zoanthids that recently started growing.
Proposed better name: "Sunshine where the sun don't shine because its an artificial reef tank Zoa's"...(trademark pending)


Cali Tort added in February which has been turning a little more blue in the last week or so.
I've been told this isn't actually A tortuosa


Nothing wrong with classics eh?
Don't look at the tiny little bubble algae. I said don't look! Stop looking!


I couldn't dig up a duncan or digi picture at work. I guess they didn't up their game to stand out and put the effort in to make me notice them and say "wow, that deserves a picture"......shame on them. Shame.

Fish coming next....

 

[Koleswrath]

I started with 2 captive bred little baby clowns back in the first tank a week or two after cycling in Dec 2022. I didn't realize how much they've grown until I added the new fish in February. The clowns DWARF everything!
Picked up a cleaner shrimp with the new fish as well. Love these guys!
Baby moma and scarlet (I literally just pulled that out of my a#$)


"Lenny"....fitting name for a lady. Biota must be a magical wonderland if it's filled with these little beauties.


"Grumpy".....again, fitting name for a lady....lol...J/K I have no idea if its a lady.


Missing from class photo:
- "Male Clownfish" (that's his name) - Male Clownfish
- "Super Trooper Dave Osbourne" - Astrea snail that survived ingesting copious amounts of Dinoflagellates
- "Super Trooper Evel Knievel" - Astrea snail that ingested even more copious amounts of Dinoflagellates and lived to tell the tale.

Luckily I haven't lost any fish or inverts to this point *Knock on wood*. I attribute this more to the fact that my LFS, which is 3 minutes from my house, is an aquaculture specialized shop, than any suggestion of my mastery of the aquatic arts.
Shout out to New Dawn Aquaculture! They don't bring in wild caught fish or coral (and hopefully snails?) so my success rate handicap is high (or low? - I don't golf)...

Current FTS to bring this thread to modern times coming up....

 

[Lowell Lemon]

What a great job on the fabrication. Aquarium looks great!

 

[Koleswrath]

March 10, 2024

1 year anniversary of defeating Ostreopsis Dinoflagellates, beating them back and casting them into the fiery chasm from whence they came!!

Here's a FTS to celebrate...

 

[cromag27]

watch that wo 16, it has a tendency to get brittle and break up.

Meanwhile....

Summer 2023
While the little tank was going through various stages of maturation and trials and tribulations, I realized I needed some automation if I was going to try and maintain stability while I was travelling. The thought of adding temp probes, dosing lines, etc. to this already crowded little cube was off-putting to say the least.
Enter - Super tank: Months long sketchup designing of tank dimensions, overflows, sump configurations, you name it!
This is the final layout I settled on:.

As a woodworker and dabbler in welding I would build the stand, weld up the light mounts, learn acrylic manufacturing and build my own ghost overflow.




After measuring out most of the main floor of my house and drawing it in Sketchup I designed the system to complement the size of the room and utilize a coat closet on the other side of the living room wall for the sump room. Laying out the plumbing was a fun adventure in futility.


My first foray into acrylic manufacturing was building this manual roller mat filter (which is ironically built out of polycarbonate but whatever...).



In July I started playing...
The roller mat went pretty good. At this point I was still using a wood blade on my table saw and the capillary method to weld most of my seams but I was finishing the edges on my router table which uses the table saw fence so I was ahead of the curve there.

Not bad for my first attempt eh? This thing works amazingly well still.


I learned some important acrylic mfg methods over on @Turbo's Aquatics acrylic thread with input from the big boys over there like @Troylee , @cromag27 , @Lowell Lemon and of course @Turbo's Aquatics. With the help of those fine gentlemen I felt up to the task of diving in and getting the overflow done.

Internal overflow box was up first. Had to reinforce a few of the seams with Weld on 16...lol. It's internal to the tank so less critical but still holds water.

This one had me nervous. The first acrylic box I've made that MUST hold water. After the practice on the other two it went great though! Look at those seams!


With these projects under my belt I held my breath and started the sump. Again, I lucked out and each seam was bubble free and beautiful.

Pretty sure I just stared at this thing lost in amazement.


By this time I had changed my plans slightly and decided to order a standard Waterbox mini 16 tank instead of a custom tank. This tank would fit my existing stand perfectly. To accommodate using my existing "not engineered to be an aquarium stand" stand, I had to reinforce it and bolt it to the wall for stability.

Some nifty modding of a cheap piece of "furniture" my wife likes and this thing will support my truck...


With all the foundation pieces in place I could get it all together and fill it up.

Wet testing while little brother looks on awestruck...


This was a fun day...

Everything in place in the coat closet...


Next post transferring livestock and hitting the road running.....
Thanks for checking this out.

 

[Koleswrath]

watch that wo 16, it has a tendency to get brittle and break up.

Copy that, I’ll keep an eye on it.

 

[Koleswrath]

What a great job on the fabrication. Aquarium looks great!

Thanks! Really appreciate all the help and inspiration!

 

[Koleswrath]

That is a heck of a ride! Great looking tank, even in the uglies!

Thanks! (Disclaimer: I may not have taken pics when the tank was at it's worst )

 

[Koleswrath]

Great looking tank!

Thanks!

 

[Katrina71]

Thanks! (Disclaimer: I may not have taken pics when the tank was at it's worst )

No need to explain. Most people don't.

 

[Koleswrath]

My favorite time of the tank lighting ramp down. Very calming and relaxing before bed.
Funny side note: If you zoom into the mirror in the top right you can see @Thales on the Beef!….episode 54…..lol.