66G Soft Coral Dominant Tank

[BaraCats]

My partner and I are currently building our second reef tank and we've decided to go for a soft-coral dominated tank with some LPS in there. Our current tank, a smaller 100L/26Gal, is mostly a zoa garden tank with a couple LPS and a few other softies in between. With this new set-up we definitely want more soft coral species and a large space for my zoanthids. I want more room for morphs/mushrooms, and my partner wants a Euphyllia and Torch garden on the tallest rock.

The tank is 120cm long x 45cm wide x 45cm high, or 4ft x 16inch x 16inch. It has a sump underneath it in the stand.

Here’s the list of everything we’ve purchased so far, including a running cost. Everything is in AUD, and the prices are rounded to the nearest dollar.

Tank w/ stand & sump - $500
2x 150w heaters - free with tank
Aqua One G220 Skimmer - free with tank
Return pump - free with tank
Dry Rock (mix of Carib Sea, Marco Rock and South Seas) ~20kg - $200
15kg/33lbs Blue Treasure size #2 sand - $45
Aquaforest Stonefix - $28
Reef safe superglue - $12
Hot glue gun & glue - $14

Total as of July 2022 = $752AUD

The tank after building the rockwork. This was our final design, and I'm really happy with how the rock sits together. I've built it fairly low so the taller softies have room to grow.

Adding sand:

Sand is all added, and Holly, our inspector, approves of the setup. We'll probably be removing some of the sand because it is a bit too thick:

Our plans for the coral placement, but I'm sure these will change somewhat as things start to go into the tank:

 

[glb]

Very nice! (And love the cockatiel)

 

[BaraCats]

Very nice! (And love the cockatiel)

Thank you! I’m hoping to fill it up in the next few days!

 

[BaraCats]

Yesterday we worked on finalising some things with the sump before filling (which will hopefully happen tomorrow), and I am so happy with how this stand has turned out. Since it's a second-hand tank there were a few pieces missing here and there, but luckily we were able to fix everything.

First task of the day was to clean out the sump. It had been used in a freshwater setup, where the previous owner clearly had a snail problem. There were a bunch of snail shells and lots of muck in the bottom.

 

[BaraCats]

I accidentally posted that previous message a bit early, so onto some photos and a better explanation of what we achieved yesterday! Our goal was to clean out the sump, plumb up the tank, add a missing support to the front, add the doors back on and generally prep it for filling.

First task of the day was to clean out the sump. It had been used in a freshwater setup, where the previous owner clearly had a snail problem. There were a bunch of snail shells and lots of muck in the bottom.

With the sump fairly clean, we set about adding the support to the front. The tank is an Aqua One MiniReef 215, and was missing the front support piece that sits just behind the doors. We were lucky that we had a bit of spare structural timber in our storage, and we cut it down to size. It took some sanding to get it just right, but eventually it fit perfectly. I'll be painting it black to match the rest of the stand later on when the tank is cycling and I have some more free time.
In the hardware store we found a pair of matte black braces, and we picked up some cheaper steel ones as a backup. We drilled the black braces on the bottom, and I really liked how clean they looked. Instead of following the original support's blueprints, we decided to add braces to the top of the wood as well to keep it a bit sturdier.

After finishing the sump's supports, we moved onto plumbing the return pump and drainage pipes back into the tank. We were missing 2 O-Rings, and thankfully we were able to find some replacements at our hardware store, otherwise it would have been a minimum 2 week wait for them to be ordered in! After getting through the plumbing, we finished the day up by putting the doors back on. I think I'll put on some small matching black handles on the doors, and my partner wants to put something on to make them automatically close at a certain angle. These are things we can always tinker with and change going forward, so I have plenty of time to decide what to do.

Overall we are so happy and proud of this tank, and we are very excited to be filling it up tomorrow!

 

[glb]

I accidentally posted that previous message a bit early, so onto some photos and a better explanation of what we achieved yesterday! Our goal was to clean out the sump, plumb up the tank, add a missing support to the front, add the doors back on and generally prep it for filling.


With the sump fairly clean, we set about adding the support to the front. The tank is an Aqua One MiniReef 215, and was missing the front support piece that sits just behind the doors. We were lucky that we had a bit of spare structural timber in our storage, and we cut it down to size. It took some sanding to get it just right, but eventually it fit perfectly. I'll be painting it black to match the rest of the stand later on when the tank is cycling and I have some more free time.
In the hardware store we found a pair of matte black braces, and we picked up some cheaper steel ones as a backup. We drilled the black braces on the bottom, and I really liked how clean they looked. Instead of following the original support's blueprints, we decided to add braces to the top of the wood as well to keep it a bit sturdier.

After finishing the sump's supports, we moved onto plumbing the return pump and drainage pipes back into the tank. We were missing 2 O-Rings, and thankfully we were able to find some replacements at our hardware store, otherwise it would have been a minimum 2 week wait for them to be ordered in! After getting through the plumbing, we finished the day up by putting the doors back on. I think I'll put on some small matching black handles on the doors, and my partner wants to put something on to make them automatically close at a certain angle. These are things we can always tinker with and change going forward, so I have plenty of time to decide what to do.

Overall we are so happy and proud of this tank, and we are very excited to be filling it up tomorrow!

Looks great! Keep us posted on the build!

 

[BaraCats]

An exciting update!

We filled the tank! We ran the return pump, but its fairly noisy due to poor design. I'll be looking into fixing the noise when I start running the tank properly sometime this week, but for now it's off. Then it'll be onto cycling the tank! I'm keen to move my corals out of my smaller DIY setup and into something that won't swing so dramatically. I'm hoping the cycling process will take a couple weeks, but if need be I've got some rock that I can transfer in.

Now onto some pics.

The tank filled, with a temp lid to reduce water loss:

Our goofy 'tiel, Sol, is very spooked by the tank's water (not a bad thing!) She was only put on the lid for a quick photo, but look at those legs!

 

[prodbot7]

Looking great!

 

[BaraCats]

So some exciting updates. The tank has cycled successfully. We used a couple of prawns and Continuum’s Bacter product. I found it to be excellent in providing healthy bacteria to the tank. Currently the skimmer is off and still not set up, we’ll only use that when we begin to put fish or many corals in the tank. We are now starting to add things very, very slowly.

I also got time to paint the sump’s DIY support! It looks really nice - it’s much better than the crappy paint that was there before:

Our first and smaller saltwater tank (100L/26G) is currently holding all of our corals and our two fish (clownfish & bicolour blenny). We’ve had a lot of trouble keeping the smaller tank’s levels balanced, so we will be moving our tougher corals over to this 66G tank to see if it’s ‘really’ ready. We started the process last night, and we’ve moved over some pieces we don’t mind losing if anything happens, though we will be keeping an eye on all of the levels very closely. Having an ATO will also help keep everything in check, unlike in the smaller tank. Everything’s looking fine in the first 24hrs however.

Hopefully this weekend we can do a ‘big’ move of almost everything out of the little tank and into the 66G - though it’s not actually very much to move. Just a dozen zoas, some morphs/mushrooms and some other miscellaneous softies.

Technically, our first inhabitants in the 66G were a couple of tiny brittle stars that fell off some rock I was moving. I love these guys:

We havent gone and purchased anything new yet, though I did see an adorable baby clownfish that I wanted the other day. We’ve decided on a rough stocking guide for the tank - we’re going to go for a number of smaller fish that we know will be reef safe for what we want. That includes coral gobies, firefish, a dragonette down the line, some chromis and a few others. I might list them in here so when I look back on this thread I can laugh at how off track I got.

Hopefully by the next big update we’ll have a fish-proof mesh lid on the tank, and we’ll have moved our livestock out of the smaller tank. This weekend coming up will be a busy one for the tank, and I’m hoping we can get a lot of smaller chores done with it! I should also have some more photos for the next update.

 

[BaraCats]

This was a big weekend. I was lucky enough to have 3 days off this week, and my tax return came in - a dangerous combination.

I’m going to split this update into 3 parts on their own replies. So they’ll be split into Friday, Saturday & Sunday.

FRIDAY

Friday was a fairly chilled-out start to the weekend for the tank. We went to an LFS we havent been to yet, then popped home to acclimate the 3 new corals we got. We picked up an almost neon green leather, a zoa and a wild colony of star polyps that have a brownish body with interesting greenish polyp patterning (still looking different than standard GSP). We then drove down to a friend’s LFS that he manages to sort out one of our new lights. We chatted there for a fair while and I’ll definitely be going back when I’m ready to stock the tank with some nicer corals - he’s lining me up with a nice yellow leather, so I’m going to chase that. He had an absolutely massive cowrie in stock - look at this beast! If only I had the room!

After heading home we decided to start on our DIY light fittings. We had to pop into Bunnings (Aussie version of Home Depot) and we picked up some PVC conduit piping - it’s hard to find metal conduit here but we figured we’d try find something that could work. We didn’t like the look of standard PVC pipe either. After we got home from Bunnings we prepped our workspace, drilled the supports for the conduit in, and left building the rest of the frame ‘till the next day.

We finished our work for the night by drilling some holes into our light’s casings, and we managed to rig up a hanging bracket safely in the top using chain, eye bolts and some very precise measurements. By the time we were done, we were exhausted.

 

[BaraCats]

SATURDAY

Saturday was a busy day. We drove off to a different LFS to get a nice, professional-looking lid for the tank, and some extra supplies we needed. Their website said they had some wavemakers in stock, but upon arrival they were sold out, so we grabbed our items and left. We decided we had to get the wavemakers on Saturday, as Sunday was to be the busiest day yet and we didnt have the spare time, so we drove all the way across the city. We got the pair of wavemakers and my partner got some tasty lunch, so it was a win-win.

We got home, and set up our new equipment, though we didn’t assemble the lid. Everything looked really fantastic and it was awesome seeing our tank come to life with proper flow.


Since we got home later than we wanted, we quickly started to set up the rest of our conduit piping frame. We were really happy with the results… until we realised that over 5 minutes it had slowly started to sag under the weight of the lights. We tried re-bending and reinforcing it, but it just looked terrible, so we had to go back to the drawing board. After much debate, we decided on a different material for the light fittings, but we were 30mins too late: Bunnings had just closed. We didnt realise, but they close a bit earlier on the weekend. Much to my annoyance, it would be another job for Sunday, and another trip to Bunnings.


Note: As I’m writing this I realised that we took no photos of our Saturday. There will be some nice pics in the next reply!

 

[BaraCats]

SUNDAY

Sunday was by far the busiest day for us.

We had ordered a small couch off of Ikea for our apartment, so my second-half had to stay home to get the delivery. While he stayed at home, I attended my local Aquarium Club’s freshwater fish-fair sale, which was a fantastic start to my morning. I picked up some amazing deals.

By the time I got home, the couch had been delivered, so my partner and I went to Bunnings together to pick up our next reef light fitting attempt: Galvanised Plumber’s Piping. We picked up some lengths and join pieces, and some brackets for them. After some elbow grease and careful manoeuvring we got it built, and thankfully it looked fantastic and did the job.

By midday we had finished the light fitting (at last!!), and we got started on making the lid. It’s a Red Sea Reefer lid kit, but the mesh they provided was terrible - it kept snapping under the spline with a small amount of pressure. I was very lucky that I had some old clear mesh spare from another Red Sea kit that I had bought a few years prior. It was slightly more durable and seemed to be a bit thicker. I spent over an hour carefully and painstakingly rolling the spline into place without snapping the meshing. I would not recommend that process, and I’d rather find an alternative product to purchasing a lid from red sea again, which is a pity as I like their profession look. Their lids used to be so much easier to make - they seem to use very cheap materials now. After I finally finished the lid, my partner started building the couch, while I began tearing down the old tank.


That was a PROCESS. The old marine tank is low to the ground and isn’t very easy to access, and by the end of it my back was incredibly sore from all the bending. I started by removing the least-glued frags and corals and slowly worked through the tank to get the more difficult ones. The clownfish did try bite me a few times, however I couldnt feel her through the gloves I wore. Bit by bit I removed the corals, and it took a long time, plus some chiseling, but I managed to finally remove some of the better-glued plugs. After I got the corals out I started on drip acclimation (just to be safe), and then I dipped them all. The old tank had some weird critters as I had used live rock to scape it, so I’m very glad I dipped. I saved some more brittle stars and tossed them in - I really love those little guys.


Once the corals were in the tank, we caught the clownfish with ease (she isn’t the brightest fish) and then we had the monster task of finding the blenny. My other half spotted him in a hole in a rock, and we expected him to rush out of it when we move the rock, but to our delight he stayed put. We blocked the hole’s exits with our fingers and pulled the rock above our net, and eventually the blenny made his grand escape right into our trap. Both of us couldn’t believe how easy it was to catch him - we were expecting to have to remove all the rock first. So into the acclimation bucket went the blenny, the clown and our old cleanup crew. We had to hunt down the last hermit crab who did a fantastic job of hiding from us. When we did catch ‘em, it got so spooked that it ditched it’s shell and tried making a run for it. We put them in a seperate cup with their old shell and a few new options, and let them be, and eventually (after some coaxing) they returned home.

Finally, after drip acclimating for about 45 minutes while we finished shuffling our new couch around, we let everyone into their new home. The clownfish sulked for a while, but is back to her bitey-self, and our blenny has now found a perfect hidey-hole in our leftmost rock.