Custom 40 Breeder AIO

Sltloser · Mar 18, 2021

Cacopepo said:
Hi, what type and where did you get your t5 ballast and specs? Thanks

I actually bought an old T5 fixture from a fellow reefer in the area. I stripped out the parts and put them in my canopy, then added the reflectors because the old one was a single reflector and was pretty grimey.

Sltloser · Apr 29, 2021

The tank is doing well overall, struggling a little with the seagrass bed and growth but such is the nature with such a small aquarium.

Some updates coming soon.....

Sltloser · Apr 30, 2021

Here it is....another photo dump!

I'm 6/10 happy with the tank right now, corals all look good and are growing. While I was out for a week for work I had an explosion of bubble algae so that took a few hours of manual removal. The bubble algae and the weird hard green algae growing on the rocks are the biggest downsides to the aquarium right now. I'll keep slowly trying to chip away at it, but really with I had the space to QT livestock.

Anyways, onto some of the pictures!

Front FTS

Side FTS

Dragon Acro

Hawkins ORA

Fungia

Bam Bam's

Tye dye can (with a spoiler in the background)

Goni

$500 Eflo - finally starting to color up some

Chalice, stylophora, caulestrea

Torch

Dragon soul

Amazing up close dragon soul

Pectinia

AND finally a few new things. I couldn't stand not having a clam, they're one of my favorite organisms in an aquarium. I searched quite a bit locally but couldn't find anything to my liking. After watching the Pacific East Aquaculture site for a few months I saw they finally got a new shipment of clams in and I just couldn't help myself. This blue maxima with gold lining is a beautiful specimen and I am so excited about it!

I also grabbed a favia and mystery SPS to round out the order

The mystery was a birds nest, but for $10 not too upset!

Hope you all enjoy, I wish I was more active in my build, but like with most small aquariums once you get it set up there isn't much to do but watch it grow and add a new thing here and there haha.

JayStro81 · Apr 30, 2021

Beautiful setup, I'm really liking the custom build. Tank looks great!

TheWB · Aug 31, 2022

Sltloser said:
Here it is....another photo dump!

I'm 6/10 happy with the tank right now, corals all look good and are growing. While I was out for a week for work I had an explosion of bubble algae so that took a few hours of manual removal. The bubble algae and the weird hard green algae growing on the rocks are the biggest downsides to the aquarium right now. I'll keep slowly trying to chip away at it, but really with I had the space to QT livestock.

Anyways, onto some of the pictures!

Front FTS

Side FTS

Dragon Acro

Hawkins ORA

Fungia

Bam Bam's

Tye dye can (with a spoiler in the background)

Goni

$500 Eflo - finally starting to color up some

Chalice, stylophora, caulestrea

Torch

Dragon soul

Amazing up close dragon soul

Pectinia

AND finally a few new things. I couldn't stand not having a clam, they're one of my favorite organisms in an aquarium. I searched quite a bit locally but couldn't find anything to my liking. After watching the Pacific East Aquaculture site for a few months I saw they finally got a new shipment of clams in and I just couldn't help myself. This blue maxima with gold lining is a beautiful specimen and I am so excited about it!

I also grabbed a favia and mystery SPS to round out the order

The mystery was a birds nest, but for $10 not too upset!

Hope you all enjoy, I wish I was more active in my build, but like with most small aquariums once you get it set up there isn't much to do but watch it grow and add a new thing here and there haha.

How about an update?

Sltloser · Sep 7, 2022

O man, I thought I wrote an update to this a while ago. Must have just typed it up in my head haha.

Well, things took a turn unfortunately. I had to have hip surgery last September and decided that it would also be a good time to try using vibrant to get rid of the bubble algae I was dealing with. That unfortunately tanked my nutrients and induced a dino bloom. I luckily had a friend take all the corals and store them in his QT tank as I let the tank do it's thing and healed from surgery.

I got the dinos under control (and the bubble algae haha) and introduced all the corals back into the tank. Things were going well until an aiptasia outbreak happened. The silver lining is that I've started a nudibranch breeding system to help eliminate the aiptasia. I recently brought 17 nudis from eggs to 1/2-3/4" adults that were all transferred to the display tank to help take care of the aiptasia problem. I've got more eggs hatching and hopefully another round of nudis to either sell or put it to the display to help with the infestation.

Sltloser · Sep 7, 2022

Here are a few pics, besides the aiptasia the tank doesn't look awful!

TheWB · Sep 7, 2022

Sltloser said:
Here are a few pics, besides the aiptasia the tank doesn't look awful!

Sorry to hear about the hip, I hope you're feeling better now.
I used Vibrant and I don't feel like I had any real problems becasue of it but there seems to be a lot of contoversy surrounding it's use now. Those threads get so long they become hard to keep up with but it does seem like there are a lot of problems associated with using that stuff.
I tried Peppermint Shrimp and Berghia Nudibranchs for my aiptasia issues a while back and neither has seemed to be effective. What finally did it for me was an Aiptasia Eating File Fish from Biota. I had some larger aiptasia on my rocks but not tooo many. I had a real problem with them in my sandbed though, tons of little baby ones. within a week of introducing the file fish there were no more aiptasia in the sand at all, completely gone. It never really touched the bigger ones on the rocks that I could ever see but they have become less over time, there are maybe about 2 now that I can find if I look hard enough. The Peppermints are also still in there, or at least they were until my tank move back in June. I have not seen any of them since. But some combination of teh file fish and the shrimp seems to be keeping the population down to almost nothing.
Is that refugium section still working out? I always liked that aspect of your build with the display fuge integrated in the front of the overflow like it is.