Custom 40 Breeder AIO

[BlazinNano]

Love the setup. Defiantly going to have to follow the progress. Keep it up

 

[Sltloser]

Love the setup. Defiantly going to have to follow the progress. Keep it up

Thank you, I appreciate it!

 

[Retro Reefer]

Tank is coming along nicely, everything looks fantastic!

 

[Tl02022020]

very well done AIO set up! Looks great.

 

[SALTYMOPAR]

I like your AIO nicely designed. Im getting close to finishing my 40 gallon breeder build.

 

[Sltloser]

Tank is coming along nicely, everything looks fantastic!

very well done AIO set up! Looks great.

I like your AIO nicely designed. Im getting close to finishing my 40 gallon breeder build.

Thanks everybody, I appreciate you all following along for the ride! I should have a few more updates later this week. I bought a new (ish) model of brine shrimp hatchery and I'm going to work it out this week and update everyone on how it's working!

 

[butchhe]

I like the work you have done on your build. I haven't had a 40 breeder to build yet, but after looking at some of them on here, that might have to change in the near future.

 

[Sltloser]

As more corals have been added over the past month I have decided to resurrect an old feeding technique that I used to use on the 180 gallon I had about 10 years ago.

What I did then was use a 5 gallon bucket to hatch brine shrimp nauplii, after hatching I gut loaded them with phytoplankton and selcon to increase their nutritional value and fed them after 36-40hrs. This worked extremely well and I saw increased growth and better coloration from all the corals I had at the time (Acropora sp., Montipora capricornia, sarcophyton, Pseudopterogorgia sp., Etc.).

This time however my aquarium is much smaller so I needed a different way to hatch artemia. After checking the brine shrimp direct website (I've ordered from them in the past) I found a new feeder (new to me) that looked extremely easy to use, and claimed to almost eliminated having to deal with eggs! It sounded like a great investment to me so went ahead and got it. It also came with artemia eggs as well (https://www.brineshrimpdirect.com/hatchery-dish).

Here are a few shots of the dish. Having the ability to simply scoop nauplii up and transfer them to a different container for gut loading is absolutely amazing!

Inner circle has a small scoop with an attached sieve at the bottom.

Extremely easy to pick up and move to the gut loading container!

I've been able to get napulii for about 2 days. After gut loading each batch I fed them to the aquarium at dusk or after lights out. Coral polyp extension was great, and the firefish/green barred gobies loved the little snack when I fed at dusk. I would highly recommend this feeding for anyone who keeps corals! The benefits far outweigh the small input of time/effort to hatch and gut load the artemia nauplii. Plus this can help supplement normal feedinga for any finicky or shy eaters.

I used about 1/2 of a scoop for the two days of feeding. This can be altered by tank size and coral density, I'll continue to monitor how much I add as coral density/growth increases.

 

[Sltloser]

Things are continuing to grow, the most recent chalice that I got is almost completely recovered from the fragging it went through.

Right to Left
May 5th -> May 10th -> May 19th

It's also interesting to watch the different phases of the tank. I started with the fleshy algae phase like most people, then moved to the coraline phase, and now i'm starting to have a pineapple sponge explosion! I noticed last week how many were hanging around and now this week it seem like they've almost doubled (I'm guessing they haven't truly doubled in population, I've just been paying more attention).

I'm also still loving this brine shrimp hatchery, It's extremely easy to hatch and gut load Artemia without having to worry about the eggs. I highly recommend this product!

 

[Sltloser]

I'm still here!

Sorry for the long delayed update, I've had a few ups and downs. Unfortunately I lost my clam and the blue spotted jawfish . The clam was my fault, the jawfish had buried it one day and I went to move it not realizing it had attached a small portion of it's foot onto a rock. I damaged the base and it parishes a few weeks later.

The blue spotted jawfish was a trooper I think it ended up with a bacterial infection but I wasn't able to get it cured.

Now that the bad news is out of the way onto the good news, new frags!

Bizzaro cyphastrea

Gold rush pectinia (named by someone who has it locally).

Acropora echinata (ORA Hawkins echinata). Just got this one so I'm photo acclimation it on the sandbed, I didn't want any sediment to rest on it so I propped it up on frag plugs.

Mango montipora

The red chalice has now completely covered it's skeleton, and I expect within the next 2 weeks will be fully adhered to the rock. This thing grows like a weed!

This firefish would not stop photo bombing my coral pictures...I thought I'd make it happy and take a picture of it haha.

This red and blue favia from wwc is growing at an insanely fast pace
Left to right

May 14th -> June 14th

The seagrass bed is starting to take off too, you can see the leaves are so long they're curling at the top of the water! Sorry for the dirty fuge, I like to let the snails and pods have plenty of food . I'll scrape one side and get a better picture this week.

And finally a FTS!

I have made a few changes to the tank.

1. I changed out one of the coral plus bulbs for a blue plus and altered the AI primeHD settings to drive more LED white light.

2. I decided to alternate the tunze 6055 flow pattern. They alternate every 4 minutes with a 2 minute overlap in-between. I was worried that some corals were getting too much static flow, especially anything on the right wall. I hope this will be enough of a change up that I can get a few corals growing and happy on that side.

3. I've increased feeding....a lot. I'm feeding brine shrimp nauplii 2-3 days a week. On the days I do not feed nauplii I'm feeding a mixture of reef roids/freeze dried rotifers/V2O oyster eggs. This mixture is also put into the fish food so corals are being fed 3-4x a day. I still can't get my nitrates above 0 . But everyone seems happy so that's what is most important!

 

[Sltloser]

I got quite a nice surprise from my girlfriend yesterday, she ordered an acan I had my eyes on from tidal gardens!! First I want to say that I would highly recommend them, we had a slight issue with what we got and they responded quickly and corrected the issue. So not only is the customer service good, but they do a few things differently then most others. 1. They give you photos under 10k and actinic lighting. This is extremely helpful in understanding what the coral will look like in the long term under the lighting that you run. I tend to run more white than most so it's great to see what it should look like when I get it

2. They shipped everything with styrofoam to hold the plugs. Imo this is one of the better ways to ship frags. It avoids rolling around and damage to the organism in shipping. I will be supporting them again for sure!

I turned the lights off last night to avoid photo shocking the coral, but got a quick picture with little natural sunlight this morning. This thing is going to be amazing as it grows out!

And as promised I got one viewing pane scraped for a better picture of the seagrass bed. I cannot wait until this is filled in.

 

[Sltloser]

Well I had some fun taking pictures today. The tank is doing wonderfully and I'm more and more excited to watch it grow out.

I've been able to add a few new corals too!

Turbinaria sp.

Acropora echinata aka ORA Hawkins Echinata

Goniopora sp.

The Pectinia sp. is really starting to color up nicely.

This little guy was pretty beat up at the fish store. I couldn't help myself and decided I'd bring it home and see if I could nurse it back to health.

This guy is such a chunk, I'm not sure what else he found to eat in the tank but he is almost always this big.

And finally a FTS!

 

[TheWB]

Haven’t seen an update in a while. How’s the tank doing?

 

[Sltloser]

Sorry it's been so long, like everyone else life has been extremely up and down. The tank is doing well thankfully! Check out some of the pictures below and let me know what you think. I'll try to do some side by side growth comparisons in the coming week.

 

[Sltloser]

Well, it's time for another photo dump! Then aquarium has been doing extremely well overall, I do have some tough green turflike algae and bubble algae that I am working to keep under control but besides those things everything is great. All of the corals are exploding with growth, I'm actually a little surprised at how well growth is coming along. It's amusing to look back at the original pictures and see the changes in size/color of all the corals over time. I don't photoshop any of these photos, they are all taken with a pixel 2 during peak light hours. The only downside is that I lost all of the seagrass in my seagrass bed . Luckily I have a friend who has the same seagrass so I'm hoping to nab some from him soon!

I am still feeding heavily with reef roids, freeze dried rotifers, PE calanus copepods, V20 oyster eggs, multiple strains of phytoplankton, and gut loaded brine shrimp. Its amazing how well the sandbed is maturing, the amount of spaghetti worms, micro starfish, copepods, and bristle worms is growing exponentially. I think one of the interesting things I've noted is that the sandbed has remained "fluffy". When I need to move sand around/dig out a small aiptasia I notice how light and non compacted the sandbed is. I think this is a great indication of a healthy sandbed with plenty of turnover due to bacteria/worms/pods/etc.

Finally the pictures!


















The color on this acro has changed drastically, I wish I had a better camera to capture the changed. I think you can see the greens/highlighter reds coming out in this picture when comparing to previous ones.


The purple/blue in this hawkings ORA looks great and it has grown tremendously!

 

[Sltloser]

Full Tank Shots

 

[Sltloser]

Well, I accidentally pressed post before updating you all on anything.

So to start out things have been a little up and down the past few months. I had to move to a new apartment in January which I was anticipating, I thought I had everything worked out to be as smooth as possible but as with everything I was wrong. The actual moving part went well, but after getting it set up in the new apartment I started having some massive pH swings and unfortunately lost both of my Acros and one of my firefish .

Things have been doing a lot better lately. I added a CO2 scrubber and air pump which has helped with pH. I've also been opening the windows for a while each day which has definitely helped the pH top out closer to 8.1-8.2. As things have been doing better I of course I had to add a few new things! The only downside right now is that I'm battling some bubble algae and this very odd green algae that might be calcareous, but I'm not sure. It's extremely tough and I have to use needle nose pliers when trying to remove it (you can see it on the right side wall and on "acro island").



New Fungia plate coral, it's almost tie die with spots of green and blue in it.


New Bam Bam zoas


New Ricordia


New Acropora efflorescens (akla $500 Efflo)


I moved the blasto over to the right side wall as I wanted to add a milli to "acro island"


Stylopora pistillata


I also decided to move the torch. It was too close to the powerhead and I had a ton of space above it so I added this piece of rock to extend it up and away from the main rock structure.


New Tyree Dragon Acro


Replacement for the ORA Hawkins Echinata


New Milli frag


Last but not least, the full tank shot!

 

[TheWB]

Well, I accidentally pressed post before updating you all on anything.

So to start out things have been a little up and down the past few months. I had to move to a new apartment in January which I was anticipating, I thought I had everything worked out to be as smooth as possible but as with everything I was wrong. The actual moving part went well, but after getting it set up in the new apartment I started having some massive pH swings and unfortunately lost both of my Acros and one of my firefish .

Things have been doing a lot better lately. I added a CO2 scrubber and air pump which has helped with pH. I've also been opening the windows for a while each day which has definitely helped the pH top out closer to 8.1-8.2. As things have been doing better I of course I had to add a few new things! The only downside right now is that I'm battling some bubble algae and this very odd green algae that might be calcareous, but I'm not sure. It's extremely tough and I have to use needle nose pliers when trying to remove it (you can see it on the right side wall and on "acro island").



New Fungia plate coral, it's almost tie die with spots of green and blue in it.


New Bam Bam zoas


New Ricordia


New Acropora efflorescens (akla $500 Efflo)


I moved the blasto over to the right side wall as I wanted to add a milli to "acro island"


Stylopora pistillata


I also decided to move the torch. It was too close to the powerhead and I had a ton of space above it so I added this piece of rock to extend it up and away from the main rock structure.


New Tyree Dragon Acro


Replacement for the ORA Hawkins Echinata


New Milli frag


Last but not least, the full tank shot!

This is one of my favorite tanks to follow. I love the fish selection and pretty much everything about the way you set it up.

 

[Sltloser]

This is one of my favorite tanks to follow. I love the fish selection and pretty much everything about the way you set it up.

Thank you, I really appreciate it! The few losses have been unfortunate, but adding the royal gramma and a few new corals has been satisfying. Hoping for another clam soon too!

 

[Cacopepo]

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