Hi, I'm Giacomo from Italy.
This is my tank last week.
I'm quite new to reefing, it'll be a year and a half or so, so any advice or suggestion is greatly appreciated.
I’ve been some years into fresh previously, owned more than 10 aquariums in the past, thought as anyone does that salty isn’t for me, and as everyone here I am.
As you may expect from reading the title, I do embrace a (nearly) full DIY philosophy. At first it was an attempt to save money on a quite expensive hobby, but then I quickly realized that cheap and quality don't get along so well, and less is never more when it comes to materials. So month by month I started upgrading from G1 to G2, G3 .. every piece of equipment built by me, guided by experience gained and acquired awareness on the real needs of an artificial reef ecosystem. Now the saving mentality has evolved to a true DIY philosophy, as I believe that building intrinsically require deep understanding (and who isn’t desiring understanding?), plus I find truly fascinating the process of engineering the biological processes of nature (which is, in fact, what our equipment exactly does). And yeah, developing and quality building cost, so in the end I would have better bought high end equipment maybe LOL.
Anyway, let's start. My current tank is my second reef tank ever, after a tank upgrade a few months in. I wasn't expecting to get the UTS (upgrade tank syndrome) so quickly, and I start feeling it coming back I’m afraid.
It is 80x35x40h centimeters, or 31x14x16h inches, approx. 110L/30g.
I bought the tank and stand separately, both coming from freshwater world, so I had to adopt an overflow box (later described), add some doors and modify a bit the stand (doors still to be done). I used an old aquarium to build the sump, it's smaller than what I'd prefer but that's all I could do due to space limitations.
The setup with tank, stand,
sump and overflow
September 2023
Today's, Feb 21th, 2024, equipment:
- 30g tank, glass 6mm
- Wooden stand with extra protective layer
- DIY 4g sump
- DIY lighting, 4 channels, 6 wavelenghts LEDs
- DIY dosing pump, 2 channels
- DIY ATO
- 150w heater
- Blau 1500 overflow box
- 750g/h AC return pump, regulated to 250g/h
- Sicce voyager nano 2000 AC wavemaker (500 g/h)
- Tunze 6025 wavemaker no mod (625 g/h)
Filtration:
- Filter sock 200nm, swapped every 3 to 5 days
- 3 liters (nearly 1g) of biomedia, including Sera siporax and others
- Refugium with chaeto (DIY fuge light)
- Phosphate media
Fish and inverts:
- Pair of regular ocellaris clowns (Amphiprion ocellaris)
- 3 green chromis (Chromis viridis)
- 1 algae blenny (Salarias fasciatus)
- quite basic CuC with few snails and hermits, I'll probably add a few critters in the near future
- 1 skunk cleaner shrimp (Lysmata amboinensis)
- 1 Lysmata seticaudata
Nutrition:
- Mainly frozen artemia for fish, rarely (twice a week) I feed Hikari marine s. My blenny feeds mostly on the algae in the system
- AF aminos for corals, but a very low dose (like 1/3 of the advised dose)
- Hikari coralific delite once a week, spot fed for LPS and broadcasted
Parameters:
Salinity: 35ppt, 1.026sg
dKH: 8° to 8,5°
Cal: 440
Mag: 1350
Temp: 25/25,6 °C or 77 to 78F
PO4: 0,03
NO3: 0 (I'd like to increase, but I'll explain later why I didn't yet)
All tested with Salifert.
I dose 2 parts, AF products, via the DIY doser for alk and Cal, plus seachem Mag mixed with ATO osmosis.
Weekly water changes 10 to 20% usual, 30% when an occasional siphoning of sand is performed.
From the previous tank I adopted all the already established rocks, part were dry and part fiji live rock; the sand, which was calcium reactor media (now it's not visible because I buried it under the new finer sand); biomedia from the filter and the chaeto.
My first ever reef tank.
I was so bad at building lighting that even by the eye
you can tell the horrible spread. But anyway, it worked
decently growing very easy SPSs like Montis and Stylos in
the central hotspot. At least I got an usable spectrum..
This picture was taken 9 months after dry setup (just 2 pounds
of fiji live rock to seed the biome), a few days before upgrading
I'd like to introduce at this point the app which is the heart of my whole DIY system. Every piece of equipment I built contains an Arduino board and a wifi receiver. I've built my app using the Blynk platform.
This is a screenshot directly from my android phone.
Well, clearly most of it is labeled in Italian, but TBH the aesthetics at the moment isn't my primary concern, since I'm still working on
implementing some functions.
The pic here shows the main page, displaying:
- on top: current lighting brightness of the 4 channels (whites are 10k 3w CREE chip, blues are CREE chip, UVs are 410, 420 nm semiLEDs)
- middle section: dosing pump setting, values are milliseconds per each dose (soon translated to mL), another page allows to set hour and
frequency of dosing for each pump. The OFF button when pressed is used to perform a manual extra dose.
- bottom section: real time temp in the middle, a dot on the right indicating whether the fuge light is on or off.
- every other control tells me info about the connection stability of the devices or allows me to adjust the RTC of the system.
Furthermore, in case of heater failure, it sends me a push notification telling me to go check (based on abnormal temp lectures).
The other pages of the app allow the setting of each lighting channel, of the dosing pumps, and refugium on/off.
Next upgrades soon operational will be: ability to shut down the heater even far from home (right now I have to manually unplug it) and
more control over the ATO, with an automatic system that prevents overflows or running the pump with empty reservoir (and a correlated push notification)
Here is an example of a setting page,
445nm Royal Blues in this case
Right now I'm facing two challenges in my reef.
As you can see some corals are not in great shape because I ran into quite bad chemical issues lately, I suspect metals, and skin started peeling off/receding. I solved it with a couple of large volume water changes + activated carbon, and changed my RO carbon block and resins. Tbh I still haven't managed to identify the root of the issue, I'm searching for rusting equipment or something like that but I've had no luck addressing the cause yet. All my basic parameters were in check and stable. Anyway, all the corals are showing signs of great improvement, even though quite scarred.
I've also developed quite a problem with bryopsis (I think that's what it is), due to my laziness to be proactive and face the issue. Finally 3 days ago I started Flux RX after reading some good feedbacks about this product related to my issue. I'll maybe post afterwards my experience with it in a related thread... And, as I mentioned earlier, I'm running very low nutrients trying to avoid fueling my algae problem. As soon as I'll have it solved, I plan for 5 to 10 nitrates.
It's a fairly new setup (Semptember 2023), and all corals are more or less frags, I hope for decent growth and eventual takeoff during 2024.
To conclude, I'd like to hear your opinion about my stock list. I'd like to add something like a 6 line wrasse, or 2 more chromis to bring up the school to 5, or maybe a sand sifting goby. But I'm aware that my tank it's already quite populated, even though I have never ever had ammonia or NO2 related issues (even when I once fed more than 2 frozen cubes for a couple of days for error), and my nitrates are currently reading 0. So I really don't know. What do you suggest?
I'll post as soon as possible some detailed pics of the reef and the DIY equipment, at most during the weekend when I'll be back home. Meanwhile any suggestion/question is highly appreciated!!
This is my tank last week.
I'm quite new to reefing, it'll be a year and a half or so, so any advice or suggestion is greatly appreciated.
I’ve been some years into fresh previously, owned more than 10 aquariums in the past, thought as anyone does that salty isn’t for me, and as everyone here I am.
As you may expect from reading the title, I do embrace a (nearly) full DIY philosophy. At first it was an attempt to save money on a quite expensive hobby, but then I quickly realized that cheap and quality don't get along so well, and less is never more when it comes to materials. So month by month I started upgrading from G1 to G2, G3 .. every piece of equipment built by me, guided by experience gained and acquired awareness on the real needs of an artificial reef ecosystem. Now the saving mentality has evolved to a true DIY philosophy, as I believe that building intrinsically require deep understanding (and who isn’t desiring understanding?), plus I find truly fascinating the process of engineering the biological processes of nature (which is, in fact, what our equipment exactly does). And yeah, developing and quality building cost, so in the end I would have better bought high end equipment maybe LOL.
Anyway, let's start. My current tank is my second reef tank ever, after a tank upgrade a few months in. I wasn't expecting to get the UTS (upgrade tank syndrome) so quickly, and I start feeling it coming back I’m afraid.
It is 80x35x40h centimeters, or 31x14x16h inches, approx. 110L/30g.
I bought the tank and stand separately, both coming from freshwater world, so I had to adopt an overflow box (later described), add some doors and modify a bit the stand (doors still to be done). I used an old aquarium to build the sump, it's smaller than what I'd prefer but that's all I could do due to space limitations.
The setup with tank, stand,
sump and overflow
September 2023
Today's, Feb 21th, 2024, equipment:
- 30g tank, glass 6mm
- Wooden stand with extra protective layer
- DIY 4g sump
- DIY lighting, 4 channels, 6 wavelenghts LEDs
- DIY dosing pump, 2 channels
- DIY ATO
- 150w heater
- Blau 1500 overflow box
- 750g/h AC return pump, regulated to 250g/h
- Sicce voyager nano 2000 AC wavemaker (500 g/h)
- Tunze 6025 wavemaker no mod (625 g/h)
Filtration:
- Filter sock 200nm, swapped every 3 to 5 days
- 3 liters (nearly 1g) of biomedia, including Sera siporax and others
- Refugium with chaeto (DIY fuge light)
- Phosphate media
Fish and inverts:
- Pair of regular ocellaris clowns (Amphiprion ocellaris)
- 3 green chromis (Chromis viridis)
- 1 algae blenny (Salarias fasciatus)
- quite basic CuC with few snails and hermits, I'll probably add a few critters in the near future
- 1 skunk cleaner shrimp (Lysmata amboinensis)
- 1 Lysmata seticaudata
Nutrition:
- Mainly frozen artemia for fish, rarely (twice a week) I feed Hikari marine s. My blenny feeds mostly on the algae in the system
- AF aminos for corals, but a very low dose (like 1/3 of the advised dose)
- Hikari coralific delite once a week, spot fed for LPS and broadcasted
Parameters:
Salinity: 35ppt, 1.026sg
dKH: 8° to 8,5°
Cal: 440
Mag: 1350
Temp: 25/25,6 °C or 77 to 78F
PO4: 0,03
NO3: 0 (I'd like to increase, but I'll explain later why I didn't yet)
All tested with Salifert.
I dose 2 parts, AF products, via the DIY doser for alk and Cal, plus seachem Mag mixed with ATO osmosis.
Weekly water changes 10 to 20% usual, 30% when an occasional siphoning of sand is performed.
From the previous tank I adopted all the already established rocks, part were dry and part fiji live rock; the sand, which was calcium reactor media (now it's not visible because I buried it under the new finer sand); biomedia from the filter and the chaeto.
My first ever reef tank.
I was so bad at building lighting that even by the eye
you can tell the horrible spread. But anyway, it worked
decently growing very easy SPSs like Montis and Stylos in
the central hotspot. At least I got an usable spectrum..
This picture was taken 9 months after dry setup (just 2 pounds
of fiji live rock to seed the biome), a few days before upgrading
I'd like to introduce at this point the app which is the heart of my whole DIY system. Every piece of equipment I built contains an Arduino board and a wifi receiver. I've built my app using the Blynk platform.
This is a screenshot directly from my android phone.
Well, clearly most of it is labeled in Italian, but TBH the aesthetics at the moment isn't my primary concern, since I'm still working on
implementing some functions.
The pic here shows the main page, displaying:
- on top: current lighting brightness of the 4 channels (whites are 10k 3w CREE chip, blues are CREE chip, UVs are 410, 420 nm semiLEDs)
- middle section: dosing pump setting, values are milliseconds per each dose (soon translated to mL), another page allows to set hour and
frequency of dosing for each pump. The OFF button when pressed is used to perform a manual extra dose.
- bottom section: real time temp in the middle, a dot on the right indicating whether the fuge light is on or off.
- every other control tells me info about the connection stability of the devices or allows me to adjust the RTC of the system.
Furthermore, in case of heater failure, it sends me a push notification telling me to go check (based on abnormal temp lectures).
The other pages of the app allow the setting of each lighting channel, of the dosing pumps, and refugium on/off.
Next upgrades soon operational will be: ability to shut down the heater even far from home (right now I have to manually unplug it) and
more control over the ATO, with an automatic system that prevents overflows or running the pump with empty reservoir (and a correlated push notification)
Here is an example of a setting page,
445nm Royal Blues in this case
Right now I'm facing two challenges in my reef.
As you can see some corals are not in great shape because I ran into quite bad chemical issues lately, I suspect metals, and skin started peeling off/receding. I solved it with a couple of large volume water changes + activated carbon, and changed my RO carbon block and resins. Tbh I still haven't managed to identify the root of the issue, I'm searching for rusting equipment or something like that but I've had no luck addressing the cause yet. All my basic parameters were in check and stable. Anyway, all the corals are showing signs of great improvement, even though quite scarred.
I've also developed quite a problem with bryopsis (I think that's what it is), due to my laziness to be proactive and face the issue. Finally 3 days ago I started Flux RX after reading some good feedbacks about this product related to my issue. I'll maybe post afterwards my experience with it in a related thread... And, as I mentioned earlier, I'm running very low nutrients trying to avoid fueling my algae problem. As soon as I'll have it solved, I plan for 5 to 10 nitrates.
It's a fairly new setup (Semptember 2023), and all corals are more or less frags, I hope for decent growth and eventual takeoff during 2024.
To conclude, I'd like to hear your opinion about my stock list. I'd like to add something like a 6 line wrasse, or 2 more chromis to bring up the school to 5, or maybe a sand sifting goby. But I'm aware that my tank it's already quite populated, even though I have never ever had ammonia or NO2 related issues (even when I once fed more than 2 frozen cubes for a couple of days for error), and my nitrates are currently reading 0. So I really don't know. What do you suggest?
I'll post as soon as possible some detailed pics of the reef and the DIY equipment, at most during the weekend when I'll be back home. Meanwhile any suggestion/question is highly appreciated!!
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