Nice! Here's a headboard I built for my bed, other room from the brick wall:
90 gallon SPS display with 125 gallon trizonal sump
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Nice! Here's a headboard I built for my bed, other room from the brick wall:
Funny, we've got similar taste. Too bad you weren't a hot single lady that lived close to me who was really into frumpy 40 year old divorced guys that drive crappy cars...
I like the plants and the lights. I think you just gave me some ideas.
Somehow, I was typing an update and it posted it a whole bunch of times while I was still working on it.
I haven't figured out how to delete posts, otherwise I would.
Update on tank coming soon.
I haven't figured out how to delete posts, otherwise I would.
Update on tank coming soon.
Last edited:
Funny, we've got similar taste. Too bad you weren't a hot single lady that lived close to me who was really into frumpy 40 year old divorced guys that drive crappy cars...
I like the plants and the lights. I think you just gave me some ideas.
Gave me a huge LOL!
The vines came down not long after, but the vases got filled. I originally wanted to do ivy over it, but it grew fast, and very quickly became to difficult to water over the bed. If I could do it all over again I'd use fake plants, nobody will know.
Its been a little bit of work, but I finished my project with the wood paneled accent wall and got my display tank up and running.
The tank is a little cloudy from me messing with the sandbed while aquascaping. It’s cleared up significantly since I put water in the tank on Saturday.
I was able to place the tank to within about an inch from the wall. Before I installed the tank, I cut a 24" x 26" hole in the wall so that I can access the back of the tank from the closet that my sump is placed in. My plan was to have it flush to the wall, but I neglected to get the tank drilled for return lines. I will place a few pieces of trim to fill the gap and it will make a mostly clean installation. From a seated position, the return lines aren't that distracting - especially once I paint them black and trim them down a little.
Above, you can kind of see the return line, the pipe connecting the front and rear portions of my overflow. In case anybody is interested...
Overflow Box
I bought and had my tank drilled to install an Eshopps Eclipse L overflow (linked below)
www.eshopps.com
Unlike a normal installation of an overflow box where the wet-side and dry side of the box are installed flush to the tank, I needed to use a 4.5" thick piece of PVC pipe to extend the dry-side enough to install it on the wall of the closet where my sump is.
You kinda can see the back portion. The shelf I have above my sump tank got in the way, but I was able to make things work. I can access the inside of the box from above.
That is if I can get around the disaster of cords and controllers...
Getting the overflow to run silently was a major pain. I ended up going with a Bean Animal sort of setup, with two dorso drains. With the drains being silent, a distracting trickling noise coming from the wet-side of the overflow was still present. I determined that the noise was coming from water draining through the two bulkheads that connected the two sides of the overflow. When bulkhead is completely submerged, the overflow becomes silent. However, the exterior portion of the overflow is significantly shorter than the internal portion. To completely submerge the two connecting bulkeads, the water level must be set to be within less than an inch from the top of the backside box. (you set the water height by replacing the red pipe for the emergency drain that came with the system with another one that is 1/2" - 1" taller). Even though everything is running fine now, I'm not comfortable having the height of the water as high as it is. I see myself building a new external part of the overflow box with taller walls to make myself more comfortable with this setup.
When I build a new external portion of the overflow box, I’ll have to add more drains. The internal portion of the overflow can easily handle 2,800 GPH. I ran both of my 1,400 GPH returns at 100%, the only part that struggled to keep up were the three drains in the back. Even the emergency drain was taking water to keep up.
However, the fish were not happy with the additional flow in the tank when I cranked everything up. They just hid in the rocks.
Lighting
For lighting I used an 8-bulb ATI Sunpower dimmable T5 fixture. I forget what the names of the bulbs I'm using are, but I'm using 4x 10,000 K, 2x 14,000 K, and 2x 20,000 K bulbs. This is the color combinate in the past that I found that I liked. It's not too blue, but just blue enough to make things look good.
Ive been tweaking the lighting period to suite my life as I spend a lot of time home in my apartment (especially with social distancing and COVID-19) and I prefer to have my aquarium lit for all of the hours that I'm typically awake. Right now, I have it start to ramp up the 20,000 k bulbs from 1-100% from 6:00-10:00 a.m. The rest of the bulbs kick on at 8:00 and ramp up to 100% at 10:00 a.m. as well. All the lights start dimming at 4:00 p.m. The main light (all but the 20,000 k) shut off when they reach 1% at 9:00 p.m. and the blue 20,000 k bulbs continue to dim until 10:00 p.m., when the shut off. So I’ve got the tank out for 16 hours per day, with max intensity for 6 hours.
I really like how the display lights can mimic a sunrise and sunset with their dimming capability. It makes it really pleasant to view the tank both when I’m waking up and getting ready for bed.
The two lighted sections of my sump are lit on a 12-hour alternating lighting scheme. Light-1 comes on at 6:00 and goes off at 18:00 while light-2 turns on at 18:00 and goes off at 6:00. This ensures that a portion macro algae in the sump will be performing photosynthesis 24-hours per day.
This should help stabilize PH and consume excess CO2, as I’m not running a skimmer that would remove it via excessive gas exchange.
Flow
Flow is very straight forward. I'm using 2x Ecotech Vortech MP40's in my display tank, which provide more than enough flow. I have them set to somewhere around 30-40% on reef crest mode and junk is always being blown around in the display. When I finally do add SPS to my system and they start to grow, I'll be able to add substantially more flow by simply adjusting my powerheads without having to dump more money into my system for more powerhead.
The last MP40 I owned was a first generation one I bought in 2006 or 2007, when they first came out. They’ve sure come a long way since then. There’s way more flow produced and they are drastically quieter and easy to position so the run quite without constant tweaking.
For return pumps, I'm running 2x Ecotech Vectra S2 return pumps. I like the idea of building in redundancy with return pumps and I really appreciate the adjustable flow of a DC pump. When I built my sump, I only built it expecting to run a single return pump externally and plumbed my sump accordingly. To add my second pump, I simple submerged it into my return section. It's not as sexy as an externally installed pump (and you do get some added heat to the system with it installed in the water), but it works. I'm currently running these pumps both at about 30%. I'd turn it up higher, but with the situation of the overflow box mentioned above, I'm not comfortable forcing that much flow through it at the moment.
Above, you can see the black return lines and the externally plumbed pump. Off the external pump, I made a ‘T’ so that I could easily pull water out of the sump with the pump if the need ever arises.
Sump
In an earlier post, I mentioned that I had about 200 pounds of live rock cycling since the beginning of February. Because of this, I simply pulled whatever I needed for my display tank out of the sump. I'm guessing I have about 75 pounds of rock in the display at the moment and 125 pounds of rock in the sump.
Upon removing rock from my sump, I noticed that the piece of wood that I was using as a divider wasn't sealed properly with pond shield and had began to rot. The edge of the plywood was the weak spot, where the leak was. I pulled the piece of wood out and it smelled worse than anything I've smelled since I was in Iraq, in 2004. Nothing smells as bad as a rotting body in the heat of summer...
So, a picture of 24 year 1st Lieutenant Victor is needed here. I was an Infantry Platoon Leader of a mechanized platoon. Here I am in my Bradley Fighting Vehicle in 2004. Eh, I have to show off
Since building the sump tank, I have discovered that you can buy 4' x 8' sheets of 1/2 PVC for about $75 from Lowes/Home Depot. I will use this material in the future to construct dividers, baffles, and anything else that will go into my plywood sumps.
Without the floor divider and now with only 125 pounds of rock, the sump looks very empty. I'm going to add at least another 100 pounds of rock, but I realize just how much of the sump is empty space. I could reduce the volume of my sump quite a bit and still be able to support the trizonal sump that I envision. I'm going to rebuild the sump, but it might be a few months. As the sump currently stands, it works and I’m satisfied enough with it to leave it alone for the time being.
Aquascape
For my aquascape, I have it setup with two rock islands. I'm pretty happy with the aquascaping I did, It will fit my corals as I have envision; staghorn corals on the top and bush and tabling corals on the sides and lower sections. with 28" of height, I have plenty of vertical space for staghorns to grow.
My plans for corals are to go with fewer species and grow larger colonies, but we'll see how that turns out. I do believe that if you buy 4 frags of the same coral and space them apart and they eventually grow together, that they'll form a single colony and not fight eachother. So that is how I'm planning on getting larger colonies in a shorter time. Perhaps in 2-3 years instead of 4-5 years to reach the size I want. Coral colors will generally be on the green and blue side of the spectrum, with the intent that most fish won’t be those colors and really pop in contrast.
Pictures of the three sides that are viewable:
There’s a little bit of hair algae in there, but the tang and blenny I have are making quick work of it.
It’s my opinion that people spend too much time and effort in aquascaping. It’s just going to get covered with coral growth and you won’t hardly be able to tell how the underlying rock structure looks. With that in mind, I just did mine in about 20-30 minutes while keeping in mind the placement of what will eventually be large colonies of SPS in a few years.
Fish stocking
Based on other people's systems of similar size to mine, I believe I can support 18-21 smaller fish in my aquarium. Most of the fish that I want will be 3-4" in size with two fish being larger than that.
Currently, I have the following fish:
2x ocellaris clownfish
1x bicollor blenny
1x gramma loretto
1x hippo tang (small guy in the 4” range")
Fish I want to add:
1x wrasse of some kind, to eat nusicance pests. Probably a six-line
1-2 sand sifting fish. I really like twin-spot gobies, but I've never had a sand bed before so I'm not sure what's required to keep them looking clean
9-11 flame anthias
1x chaetodon tinkeri
Controller
I've been using a Neptune Apex controller for the last 2-3 months and I've really fallen in love with it. I do have a Trident, but I'm not going to do anything with it until I get corals.
———————————————————
Overall, I'm quite satisfied with my system and how it is coming together. I was a little bit concerned about putting 240 gallons of tanks in a second floor apartment, but the floors are doing just fine. I watched a level while the tank was filling and I check the floors around both tanks periodically to see if they are sagging. To my satisfaction, the floors aren’t budging. I got lucky - a load baring wall separates my living room and the bedroom closet on the other side. The building I live in was build and expanded many times during the 150 years its been standing.
Just for the sake of it, here's the front of my building. I live above the kitchen, in the back.
It's a beautiful setting in a vibrant downtown area. I absolutely love where I'm living. The aquarium is really making my apartment feel like a home to me. It’s also motivating me to finally go out and buy nice furniture and even curtains!
I've spent too much time writing this post. I'll mention my future plans in a later post.
Thanks for reading and any feedback is more than welcome. I've been in the hobby for quite a while, but there is always more to learn.
The tank is a little cloudy from me messing with the sandbed while aquascaping. It’s cleared up significantly since I put water in the tank on Saturday.
I was able to place the tank to within about an inch from the wall. Before I installed the tank, I cut a 24" x 26" hole in the wall so that I can access the back of the tank from the closet that my sump is placed in. My plan was to have it flush to the wall, but I neglected to get the tank drilled for return lines. I will place a few pieces of trim to fill the gap and it will make a mostly clean installation. From a seated position, the return lines aren't that distracting - especially once I paint them black and trim them down a little.
Above, you can kind of see the return line, the pipe connecting the front and rear portions of my overflow. In case anybody is interested...
Overflow Box
I bought and had my tank drilled to install an Eshopps Eclipse L overflow (linked below)
Eclipse L - ESHOPPS
FEATURES New slim design Template & Holesaw included Red PVC Pipe included SPECIFICATIONS Item# Dimensions 12" x 3" x 6" Black Box 12" x 1.25" x 6" Tank Usage 100-150g
www.eshopps.com
Unlike a normal installation of an overflow box where the wet-side and dry side of the box are installed flush to the tank, I needed to use a 4.5" thick piece of PVC pipe to extend the dry-side enough to install it on the wall of the closet where my sump is.
You kinda can see the back portion. The shelf I have above my sump tank got in the way, but I was able to make things work. I can access the inside of the box from above.
That is if I can get around the disaster of cords and controllers...
Getting the overflow to run silently was a major pain. I ended up going with a Bean Animal sort of setup, with two dorso drains. With the drains being silent, a distracting trickling noise coming from the wet-side of the overflow was still present. I determined that the noise was coming from water draining through the two bulkheads that connected the two sides of the overflow. When bulkhead is completely submerged, the overflow becomes silent. However, the exterior portion of the overflow is significantly shorter than the internal portion. To completely submerge the two connecting bulkeads, the water level must be set to be within less than an inch from the top of the backside box. (you set the water height by replacing the red pipe for the emergency drain that came with the system with another one that is 1/2" - 1" taller). Even though everything is running fine now, I'm not comfortable having the height of the water as high as it is. I see myself building a new external part of the overflow box with taller walls to make myself more comfortable with this setup.
When I build a new external portion of the overflow box, I’ll have to add more drains. The internal portion of the overflow can easily handle 2,800 GPH. I ran both of my 1,400 GPH returns at 100%, the only part that struggled to keep up were the three drains in the back. Even the emergency drain was taking water to keep up.
However, the fish were not happy with the additional flow in the tank when I cranked everything up. They just hid in the rocks.
Lighting
For lighting I used an 8-bulb ATI Sunpower dimmable T5 fixture. I forget what the names of the bulbs I'm using are, but I'm using 4x 10,000 K, 2x 14,000 K, and 2x 20,000 K bulbs. This is the color combinate in the past that I found that I liked. It's not too blue, but just blue enough to make things look good.
Ive been tweaking the lighting period to suite my life as I spend a lot of time home in my apartment (especially with social distancing and COVID-19) and I prefer to have my aquarium lit for all of the hours that I'm typically awake. Right now, I have it start to ramp up the 20,000 k bulbs from 1-100% from 6:00-10:00 a.m. The rest of the bulbs kick on at 8:00 and ramp up to 100% at 10:00 a.m. as well. All the lights start dimming at 4:00 p.m. The main light (all but the 20,000 k) shut off when they reach 1% at 9:00 p.m. and the blue 20,000 k bulbs continue to dim until 10:00 p.m., when the shut off. So I’ve got the tank out for 16 hours per day, with max intensity for 6 hours.
I really like how the display lights can mimic a sunrise and sunset with their dimming capability. It makes it really pleasant to view the tank both when I’m waking up and getting ready for bed.
The two lighted sections of my sump are lit on a 12-hour alternating lighting scheme. Light-1 comes on at 6:00 and goes off at 18:00 while light-2 turns on at 18:00 and goes off at 6:00. This ensures that a portion macro algae in the sump will be performing photosynthesis 24-hours per day.
This should help stabilize PH and consume excess CO2, as I’m not running a skimmer that would remove it via excessive gas exchange.
Flow
Flow is very straight forward. I'm using 2x Ecotech Vortech MP40's in my display tank, which provide more than enough flow. I have them set to somewhere around 30-40% on reef crest mode and junk is always being blown around in the display. When I finally do add SPS to my system and they start to grow, I'll be able to add substantially more flow by simply adjusting my powerheads without having to dump more money into my system for more powerhead.
The last MP40 I owned was a first generation one I bought in 2006 or 2007, when they first came out. They’ve sure come a long way since then. There’s way more flow produced and they are drastically quieter and easy to position so the run quite without constant tweaking.
For return pumps, I'm running 2x Ecotech Vectra S2 return pumps. I like the idea of building in redundancy with return pumps and I really appreciate the adjustable flow of a DC pump. When I built my sump, I only built it expecting to run a single return pump externally and plumbed my sump accordingly. To add my second pump, I simple submerged it into my return section. It's not as sexy as an externally installed pump (and you do get some added heat to the system with it installed in the water), but it works. I'm currently running these pumps both at about 30%. I'd turn it up higher, but with the situation of the overflow box mentioned above, I'm not comfortable forcing that much flow through it at the moment.
Above, you can see the black return lines and the externally plumbed pump. Off the external pump, I made a ‘T’ so that I could easily pull water out of the sump with the pump if the need ever arises.
Sump
In an earlier post, I mentioned that I had about 200 pounds of live rock cycling since the beginning of February. Because of this, I simply pulled whatever I needed for my display tank out of the sump. I'm guessing I have about 75 pounds of rock in the display at the moment and 125 pounds of rock in the sump.
Upon removing rock from my sump, I noticed that the piece of wood that I was using as a divider wasn't sealed properly with pond shield and had began to rot. The edge of the plywood was the weak spot, where the leak was. I pulled the piece of wood out and it smelled worse than anything I've smelled since I was in Iraq, in 2004. Nothing smells as bad as a rotting body in the heat of summer...
So, a picture of 24 year 1st Lieutenant Victor is needed here. I was an Infantry Platoon Leader of a mechanized platoon. Here I am in my Bradley Fighting Vehicle in 2004. Eh, I have to show off
Since building the sump tank, I have discovered that you can buy 4' x 8' sheets of 1/2 PVC for about $75 from Lowes/Home Depot. I will use this material in the future to construct dividers, baffles, and anything else that will go into my plywood sumps.
Without the floor divider and now with only 125 pounds of rock, the sump looks very empty. I'm going to add at least another 100 pounds of rock, but I realize just how much of the sump is empty space. I could reduce the volume of my sump quite a bit and still be able to support the trizonal sump that I envision. I'm going to rebuild the sump, but it might be a few months. As the sump currently stands, it works and I’m satisfied enough with it to leave it alone for the time being.
Aquascape
For my aquascape, I have it setup with two rock islands. I'm pretty happy with the aquascaping I did, It will fit my corals as I have envision; staghorn corals on the top and bush and tabling corals on the sides and lower sections. with 28" of height, I have plenty of vertical space for staghorns to grow.
My plans for corals are to go with fewer species and grow larger colonies, but we'll see how that turns out. I do believe that if you buy 4 frags of the same coral and space them apart and they eventually grow together, that they'll form a single colony and not fight eachother. So that is how I'm planning on getting larger colonies in a shorter time. Perhaps in 2-3 years instead of 4-5 years to reach the size I want. Coral colors will generally be on the green and blue side of the spectrum, with the intent that most fish won’t be those colors and really pop in contrast.
Pictures of the three sides that are viewable:
There’s a little bit of hair algae in there, but the tang and blenny I have are making quick work of it.
It’s my opinion that people spend too much time and effort in aquascaping. It’s just going to get covered with coral growth and you won’t hardly be able to tell how the underlying rock structure looks. With that in mind, I just did mine in about 20-30 minutes while keeping in mind the placement of what will eventually be large colonies of SPS in a few years.
Fish stocking
Based on other people's systems of similar size to mine, I believe I can support 18-21 smaller fish in my aquarium. Most of the fish that I want will be 3-4" in size with two fish being larger than that.
Currently, I have the following fish:
2x ocellaris clownfish
1x bicollor blenny
1x gramma loretto
1x hippo tang (small guy in the 4” range")
Fish I want to add:
1x wrasse of some kind, to eat nusicance pests. Probably a six-line
1-2 sand sifting fish. I really like twin-spot gobies, but I've never had a sand bed before so I'm not sure what's required to keep them looking clean
9-11 flame anthias
1x chaetodon tinkeri
Controller
I've been using a Neptune Apex controller for the last 2-3 months and I've really fallen in love with it. I do have a Trident, but I'm not going to do anything with it until I get corals.
———————————————————
Overall, I'm quite satisfied with my system and how it is coming together. I was a little bit concerned about putting 240 gallons of tanks in a second floor apartment, but the floors are doing just fine. I watched a level while the tank was filling and I check the floors around both tanks periodically to see if they are sagging. To my satisfaction, the floors aren’t budging. I got lucky - a load baring wall separates my living room and the bedroom closet on the other side. The building I live in was build and expanded many times during the 150 years its been standing.
Just for the sake of it, here's the front of my building. I live above the kitchen, in the back.
It's a beautiful setting in a vibrant downtown area. I absolutely love where I'm living. The aquarium is really making my apartment feel like a home to me. It’s also motivating me to finally go out and buy nice furniture and even curtains!
I've spent too much time writing this post. I'll mention my future plans in a later post.
Thanks for reading and any feedback is more than welcome. I've been in the hobby for quite a while, but there is always more to learn.
Last edited:
I have, just the other day when I took rock out of there to put in my display.
As of right now there isn’t any noticeable growth of sponges or other benthic life. The dead rock I placed in there with live rock looks just as white and barren as it did when I put it in there. However, the system is still very immature. I’ve only had it running since February. I’d expect to see something c about the same time I’ll see growth in my SPS corals - that aren’t even in the tank yet. But that’s just a guess, I have no experience with a cryptic sump.
I also have macroalgae growing in the sump. Macroalgae competes for the same nutrients as cryptic sponges and such.
Hmmmm...
With that in mind maybe I should reconsider having my macroalgae lit on an alternating 12 hour schedule, so the sponges get 12 hours of no competition for nutrients with the algae and vice-versa.
Woohoo! I’m getting a nice algae bloom!
I’m not really that excited about it. I thought most of my initial hair algae bloom got itself worked out while my rock was cycling in my sump.
No worries, I’m sure it’ll work itself out as I add more cleaning crew to my display and let the system mature over the next few months.
I’m not really that excited about it. I thought most of my initial hair algae bloom got itself worked out while my rock was cycling in my sump.
No worries, I’m sure it’ll work itself out as I add more cleaning crew to my display and let the system mature over the next few months.
Well, along with a nice algae bloom, it seems I have a nice copepod bloom as well.
There is no way I can get pictures of these guys, but a population of tiny white copepods have blown up on my aquarium over the last few days. This certainly make my fish happy (and I’m pretty happy about it too).
I’ve added 4 turbo snails to the display and relocated an emerald crab from my sump to the display to help conquer the hair algae in my display. I’ll give it a week and if I don’t see a noticeable improvement, I’ll add some more cleaning crew.
Today, I’ve also tried to reintroduce tigger pods for probably the 3rd time in the last 3 months. The first time I added them, I believe my system was too immature. I was only a week into my cycle and they all died off. The second time I added them, they all scattered throughout my sump and I believe they were so spread out that they didn’t bump into each other enough to reproduce enough and they slowly died off. This time, I’ve poured the container of tigger pods into a smaller plastic container with live rock and macro algae and then submerged the container into my sump. The top has been removed so as the population increases and pods get more adventurous, they’ll get sucked off to the rest of the system. I also dropped a few pellets of food in there too.
Hopefully, I’ll be able to get a population of tigger pods that’ll sustain itself this time.
I haven’t reprogrammed my Apex since I installed the display tank about a week ago. I’m off to spend some time this afternoon doing that and wrangling my cord mess.
There is no way I can get pictures of these guys, but a population of tiny white copepods have blown up on my aquarium over the last few days. This certainly make my fish happy (and I’m pretty happy about it too).
I’ve added 4 turbo snails to the display and relocated an emerald crab from my sump to the display to help conquer the hair algae in my display. I’ll give it a week and if I don’t see a noticeable improvement, I’ll add some more cleaning crew.
Today, I’ve also tried to reintroduce tigger pods for probably the 3rd time in the last 3 months. The first time I added them, I believe my system was too immature. I was only a week into my cycle and they all died off. The second time I added them, they all scattered throughout my sump and I believe they were so spread out that they didn’t bump into each other enough to reproduce enough and they slowly died off. This time, I’ve poured the container of tigger pods into a smaller plastic container with live rock and macro algae and then submerged the container into my sump. The top has been removed so as the population increases and pods get more adventurous, they’ll get sucked off to the rest of the system. I also dropped a few pellets of food in there too.
Hopefully, I’ll be able to get a population of tigger pods that’ll sustain itself this time.
I haven’t reprogrammed my Apex since I installed the display tank about a week ago. I’m off to spend some time this afternoon doing that and wrangling my cord mess.
I inadvertently moved a bunch of my rocks while I was scrubbing some of the hair algae off, forcing me to reaquascape.
The more I looked at my scape, the more I saw issues with my desired coral placement. (Stag horn corals on top of the rocks and bushy / tabling corals on the middle and lower levels.) My aquascape isn’t too different from what it was before, but it is using a little bit less rock now.
So, here’s where what I have in my tank.
The white basket in front of my overflow is being used to grow chaetomorphia while the lights are on in my display. I’m trying to determine why I can’t grow chaetomorphia in my sump while I’m able to grow two other varieties just fine in my sump. I’m not sure if it’s the close proximity of the different varieties of macro algae I have growing causing them to stunt the other’s growth or if the lights in my sump are too weak. However, a piece of chaeto that was slowly dying in my sump has now doubled in size in the last two days since placing it in my display.
I straightened up the mess of wires in my sump a bit and got my Apex in order since I installed my display tank, but that’s not really interesting.
I’m waiting until I get paid next week before I do anything else significant to my system. Without getting into an unnecessarily long post here, I’m going to increase the biodiversity in my tank by purchasing several things from Indo Pacific Sea Farms or https://www.ipsf.com/.
The more I looked at my scape, the more I saw issues with my desired coral placement. (Stag horn corals on top of the rocks and bushy / tabling corals on the middle and lower levels.) My aquascape isn’t too different from what it was before, but it is using a little bit less rock now.
So, here’s where what I have in my tank.
The white basket in front of my overflow is being used to grow chaetomorphia while the lights are on in my display. I’m trying to determine why I can’t grow chaetomorphia in my sump while I’m able to grow two other varieties just fine in my sump. I’m not sure if it’s the close proximity of the different varieties of macro algae I have growing causing them to stunt the other’s growth or if the lights in my sump are too weak. However, a piece of chaeto that was slowly dying in my sump has now doubled in size in the last two days since placing it in my display.
I straightened up the mess of wires in my sump a bit and got my Apex in order since I installed my display tank, but that’s not really interesting.
I’m waiting until I get paid next week before I do anything else significant to my system. Without getting into an unnecessarily long post here, I’m going to increase the biodiversity in my tank by purchasing several things from Indo Pacific Sea Farms or https://www.ipsf.com/.
I’ve never been able to grow macros in any of my dumps, but when I move them to the display, they take off. I suspect it’s gotta be lighting in my case.
So, my system hadn’t really changed too much in the last few weeks, but I continue to slowly make progress.
As I mentioned that I was going to do above, I purchased a large variety of products from Indo Pacific Sea Farms (ipsf.com) and added it to my tank. I bought nearly everything they had to offer and I ended up with quite a variety of worms, micro starfish, amphipods, copepods, snails, etc.
There isn’t really much to show pictures of, but that won’t stop me from posting some.
Within just 48-72 hours, I noticed a huge improvement in my hair algae situation. Speaking of hair algae, it has steadily decreased over the last few weeks. I added two more emerald crabs (I have 3 total) and a single Sally Light Foot crab. Other than fighting amongst themselves and occasionally ripping another’s claw off, the crabs don’t appear to harass anything else in my tank.
The above picture was taken at about 6:00 this morning, when my 20,000 K bulbs turned on.
I doubt anyone is following my build this closely, but you might notice that I added a Copper Band Butterfly (CBB). I was with my youngest daughter at my LFS and we both thought we needed to come home with this guy.
He was at the LFS for about two weeks and eating frozen brine before I bought him. He’s been in my tank for about three weeks now and is vibrant and bold in his demeanor. In the past, I’ve attempted to keep two other CBB’s, but neither of them would eat and the both starved and died over the course of two weeks.
I was concerned about that my newest CBB would die the same way, but I had a plan. I made a feeder out of PVC board I purchased from Lowe’s/Home Depot by drilling a series of small holes on one side and a larger connecting hole on the other side of a piece of PVC. I used a second piece of PVC as a back. By using plastic bolts and wing nuts, I’m able to hold the hole thing together.
Picture A (above): this is the face of the feeder. Smaller holes are drilled so that only the mouth of the CBB could fit through them. Plastic bolts run through the larger holes on the top left and bottom right to hold the whole thing together.
Picture B (above): the opposite side of the same piece of PVC trim showed in Picture A. Larger diameter holes are drill here to create wells where frozen food is placed. The odd holes in the bottom left and top right of the PVC are the same holes that the plastic bolt runs through in Picture A.
Picture C (above): a second piece of PVC without any holes drilled in it serve as a back to the piece shown in pictures A and B. Holes for the plastic bolts that run through the contraption can be seen. The holes were enlarged on this side of the PVC piece for the head of the bolt holding the feeder together to sit recessed. This allows the feeder to sit flush to any surface on its back. The odd looking area that appears to have been dug-out and covered with non-toxic caulk is precisely that. Magnets and pennies were placed in the cavity created to add weight and functionality to the feeder.
All assembled, it looks like this (below):
Excuse the excessive blue of the photos. The pictures were taken early in the morning, when only my 20,000 K bulbs are turned on.
By placing magnets inside of the feeder, I’m able to attach it to the glass. Also, the additional weight is needed as PVC is quite buoyant.
The feeder holds approximately two full cubes of frozen food. I’m currently feeding 1 cube of brine and 1 cube of blood worms. I typically feed this way once every 2-3 days. Aside from that, I see my CBB constantly nipping at rocks and the substrate for other food stuffs. When the feeder is placed in my aquarium, the fish have learned to hang out around the CBB for scraps of food that are dropped by his eating.
So far, my CBB appears to be doing quite well.
I have also been doing some work on my sump, but I’ll save that for a later post.
As always thanks in advance for any comments or critiques!! They’re always welcome.
As I mentioned that I was going to do above, I purchased a large variety of products from Indo Pacific Sea Farms (ipsf.com) and added it to my tank. I bought nearly everything they had to offer and I ended up with quite a variety of worms, micro starfish, amphipods, copepods, snails, etc.
There isn’t really much to show pictures of, but that won’t stop me from posting some.
Within just 48-72 hours, I noticed a huge improvement in my hair algae situation. Speaking of hair algae, it has steadily decreased over the last few weeks. I added two more emerald crabs (I have 3 total) and a single Sally Light Foot crab. Other than fighting amongst themselves and occasionally ripping another’s claw off, the crabs don’t appear to harass anything else in my tank.
The above picture was taken at about 6:00 this morning, when my 20,000 K bulbs turned on.
I doubt anyone is following my build this closely, but you might notice that I added a Copper Band Butterfly (CBB). I was with my youngest daughter at my LFS and we both thought we needed to come home with this guy.
He was at the LFS for about two weeks and eating frozen brine before I bought him. He’s been in my tank for about three weeks now and is vibrant and bold in his demeanor. In the past, I’ve attempted to keep two other CBB’s, but neither of them would eat and the both starved and died over the course of two weeks.
I was concerned about that my newest CBB would die the same way, but I had a plan. I made a feeder out of PVC board I purchased from Lowe’s/Home Depot by drilling a series of small holes on one side and a larger connecting hole on the other side of a piece of PVC. I used a second piece of PVC as a back. By using plastic bolts and wing nuts, I’m able to hold the hole thing together.
Picture A (above): this is the face of the feeder. Smaller holes are drilled so that only the mouth of the CBB could fit through them. Plastic bolts run through the larger holes on the top left and bottom right to hold the whole thing together.
Picture B (above): the opposite side of the same piece of PVC trim showed in Picture A. Larger diameter holes are drill here to create wells where frozen food is placed. The odd holes in the bottom left and top right of the PVC are the same holes that the plastic bolt runs through in Picture A.
Picture C (above): a second piece of PVC without any holes drilled in it serve as a back to the piece shown in pictures A and B. Holes for the plastic bolts that run through the contraption can be seen. The holes were enlarged on this side of the PVC piece for the head of the bolt holding the feeder together to sit recessed. This allows the feeder to sit flush to any surface on its back. The odd looking area that appears to have been dug-out and covered with non-toxic caulk is precisely that. Magnets and pennies were placed in the cavity created to add weight and functionality to the feeder.
All assembled, it looks like this (below):
Excuse the excessive blue of the photos. The pictures were taken early in the morning, when only my 20,000 K bulbs are turned on.
By placing magnets inside of the feeder, I’m able to attach it to the glass. Also, the additional weight is needed as PVC is quite buoyant.
The feeder holds approximately two full cubes of frozen food. I’m currently feeding 1 cube of brine and 1 cube of blood worms. I typically feed this way once every 2-3 days. Aside from that, I see my CBB constantly nipping at rocks and the substrate for other food stuffs. When the feeder is placed in my aquarium, the fish have learned to hang out around the CBB for scraps of food that are dropped by his eating.
So far, my CBB appears to be doing quite well.
I have also been doing some work on my sump, but I’ll save that for a later post.
As always thanks in advance for any comments or critiques!! They’re always welcome.
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Great tank! Cant wait to see it continue to mature with corals
Me too!
As soon as my hair algae issue disappears and I begin to see any sort of coralline algae growth, frags are going to start going in.
I've had a bit of a setback and I've now deciding to change the direction my system is going.
I bought two fish a few days before I went on a recent vacation and I didn't have the ability to properly quarantine them while I was gone. I only had one auto feeder and it was on my display tank. So, I never had a problem before with disease from my LFS, I decided to just dump them into my display and not worry about it. Well, I came back a week later to find that ich had broken out in my aquarium. I pulled all of my fish out to medicate them, but it was too late for three of them. My two clowns and my copper band butterfly both died. Below is my quarantine setup:
The quarantine tank is a 50 gallon tank that I divided into four sections with PVC board.
I obviously don't want to treat my entire system with copper and Ich will remain dormant in a system for up to 72 days so I basically have to leave the tank fallow for that time while my fish hangout in quarantine. Fortunately my invertebrates are fine and I can still move forward with adding corals in the near future.
I noticed that my sandbed, despite my best efforts, has become a huge nutrient sink. I've never had a sand bed in a tank before and I thought that I'd give it a shot in this system, but I'm not liking how it's turning out. As of yesterday, I'm slowly pulling out the substrate with every water change. Eventually, the system will be bare bottom like the systems I kept before.
In the next few weeks I also plan on redoing my sump tank. I haven't really seen any benefit with my oversized sump and I could make a smaller sump that will accomplish the same things that I initially wanted to be my focus. I'm still setting up a cryptic area like before and I'll also have an algae refugium. There also were a few other aspects of my original design that I wish to change. I only had about $300 invested in my plywood tank, so It's not that much of a financial loss to rebuild it. The sump will be reduced from a 6' tank to a 4' tank and water volume of the sump will reduce from 125 gallons to probably 65-75 gallons.
Partly because of the nutrients that built up in my sand bed, I decided to put an old protein skimmer that I had in the sump. It's way undersized as it was the skimmer I had used in my 30 gallon systems years ago. It's also drawing and dumping water in the section where water comes from my display, so much of the tank water passes through the compartment without being skimmed.
My intention with that is to let much of the microbes and smaller organisms pass through untouched. The amazing part is the quantity of skimmate I've been pulling out of the system.
It's hard to see in the picture below, but after 36 hours of skimming, I have 3" of skimmate in the bottom of a 5 gallon bucket. I was shocked with how much crap was in my system.
At about 6 months of age, my system has not matured enough to be able to process the wastes it produces without any form of mechanical filtration. Going forward, I will continue to use an undersized skimmer and very slowly ramp back the amount of time it's on over the next year so I can maintain high water quality while my cryptic zone develops. Eventually I would like to not run a protein skimmer at all and follow my original vision.
Eh, its a bit of a setback but its more of a learning experience for me. More updates for follow as I begin building the new version of my sump.
I bought two fish a few days before I went on a recent vacation and I didn't have the ability to properly quarantine them while I was gone. I only had one auto feeder and it was on my display tank. So, I never had a problem before with disease from my LFS, I decided to just dump them into my display and not worry about it. Well, I came back a week later to find that ich had broken out in my aquarium. I pulled all of my fish out to medicate them, but it was too late for three of them. My two clowns and my copper band butterfly both died. Below is my quarantine setup:
The quarantine tank is a 50 gallon tank that I divided into four sections with PVC board.
I obviously don't want to treat my entire system with copper and Ich will remain dormant in a system for up to 72 days so I basically have to leave the tank fallow for that time while my fish hangout in quarantine. Fortunately my invertebrates are fine and I can still move forward with adding corals in the near future.
I noticed that my sandbed, despite my best efforts, has become a huge nutrient sink. I've never had a sand bed in a tank before and I thought that I'd give it a shot in this system, but I'm not liking how it's turning out. As of yesterday, I'm slowly pulling out the substrate with every water change. Eventually, the system will be bare bottom like the systems I kept before.
In the next few weeks I also plan on redoing my sump tank. I haven't really seen any benefit with my oversized sump and I could make a smaller sump that will accomplish the same things that I initially wanted to be my focus. I'm still setting up a cryptic area like before and I'll also have an algae refugium. There also were a few other aspects of my original design that I wish to change. I only had about $300 invested in my plywood tank, so It's not that much of a financial loss to rebuild it. The sump will be reduced from a 6' tank to a 4' tank and water volume of the sump will reduce from 125 gallons to probably 65-75 gallons.
Partly because of the nutrients that built up in my sand bed, I decided to put an old protein skimmer that I had in the sump. It's way undersized as it was the skimmer I had used in my 30 gallon systems years ago. It's also drawing and dumping water in the section where water comes from my display, so much of the tank water passes through the compartment without being skimmed.
My intention with that is to let much of the microbes and smaller organisms pass through untouched. The amazing part is the quantity of skimmate I've been pulling out of the system.
It's hard to see in the picture below, but after 36 hours of skimming, I have 3" of skimmate in the bottom of a 5 gallon bucket. I was shocked with how much crap was in my system.
At about 6 months of age, my system has not matured enough to be able to process the wastes it produces without any form of mechanical filtration. Going forward, I will continue to use an undersized skimmer and very slowly ramp back the amount of time it's on over the next year so I can maintain high water quality while my cryptic zone develops. Eventually I would like to not run a protein skimmer at all and follow my original vision.
Eh, its a bit of a setback but its more of a learning experience for me. More updates for follow as I begin building the new version of my sump.
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