Trevor Yayoshi
New Member
- Joined
- Feb 16, 2020
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My first post and I'm diving right into a build thread, I guess I'll start for those that like reading cause this is the journey of the tanks that currently make up my reef. It's also just an archive for my own purpose.
TEASER PHOTO
WARNING: FRESHWATER AHEAD!!! KEEP SCROLLING FOR SALTWATER
I had a planted tank since I first of heard that sweet, sweet deal we all know - $1 per gallon at Petco. I got a 20 Long and 10 that lasted for only a year before...
...I bought TWO AquaMaxx 22 Long rimless tanks for 6 feet of tank after graduating college as a gift to myself. They measure just shy of 36x12x12" and are low iron for that crispy clarity. I had shelldwelling multifaciatus cichlids in one and a tropical community in another, both of which were planted. Those tanks had a lot of thought put into them that helped spur the interest in setting up a reef tank as an ecosystem like is best when approaching a planted tank. The right one was rescaped about a year after being setup. Getting into reef tank lighting wasn't as absurd for me as most since I splurged on a Fluval 3.0 36" LED and automatically saw the difference a quality light makes in how my plants grew and looked and knew it was even more important for coral. I was even ahead of the game for flow being a huge proponent of powerheads in planted tanks
Since working at Kona Reef I resisted getting a saltwater tank and gave in after looking at coral all day and bagging them up for customers. I started with a Red Sea Max Nano and went with a ton of cured live rock for the easiest cycling and filtration, I even had an entire Brightwell Xport NO3 brick cut to fit in the internal overflow (which is why it's cut up in my current sump). It was set up as a bare bottom and had a custom DIY "false" bottom that I made out of a flexible HDPE plastic cutting board, silicone, and aragonite. Everyone says it can't be done but mine stayed pristine without turning purple or growing algae. I had an urchin, a conch, and a ton of snails that kept any algae and coralline from building up but also a ton of flow that never let anything settle in the display. I ended up pulling the skimmer out and just letting it do its thing. It had a separate auto top off and three dosers that did Brightwell's Alkaline8.3, Microbacter7 and a kalkwasser solution using thier Kalk+2. It also had a custom built hang on refugium that I made using acrylic and a plant light from amazon maybe I'll post about that next. Things went super smooth until I knew I was moving into a new apartment and it became neglected until I broke it down. Nearly all the equipment from this tank went to the new setup and the freshwater tanks were also broken down. My fish can now be found at Kona Reef Phoenix in their planted display tank. Mainly referring to my baby, a female pearl gourami I had since the original 20 long. ;Happy
Once I knew I was moving I had to go all-in on the new setup now having experienced an AIO I wanted a full sump and stand with my own plumbing. That being said I had more aquariums than I wanted so I decided to say goodbye to my precious planted tanks and plumbed them together for an overkill sump that is the same size as my display as well as learning how to weld to make my own "open" stand that could proudly show it off. Of course it had to match the furniture and style so I went and bought a welder off amazon and some 1" angle steel and prefabbed shelving from the hardware store and practiced making a shelf for our house plants, snails and hamster (peep the Fluval 3.0 now above the houseplants). After that turned out so well I started on the tank stand.
I painted the stand with Rust-Oleum High Performance Enamel primer and flat black to help resist the salt. I thought about getting it powder coated but wanted to move forward quickly. The wood is unfinished sanded pallet wood. I prefer it like this as there's no worry about ruining any finish. If a board really looks that bad at some point I can just replace it. All the cords and pipes are managed using stick on mounts that look identical to the EcoTech ones. The white box the pump controllers are mounted to is just a white IKEA container upside down and everything messily shoved under it to keep transformers and cords hidden. I have my lights hung using a metal planter box that I drilled holes in and mounted my lights inside of. All the electronics are plugged into a DJ switch I got from Amazon that make it easy to turn things on and off from the front of the tank. I used black and grey schedule 80 pipes and fittings with Loc-Line return nozzels from BRS. I was planning on a manifold but I don't think they make sense when using your return pump to feed variably back pressured equipment like media reactors so I opted for having just one split off into the refugium to kick up anything that settles. The baffles are poorly done by me using way too thin acrylic but at this point I just wanted to fill the dang thing with water. My rock structure was also a little rushed and I wish I had spent more time on it but I just kept telling myself to hurry and that coral is gonna cover it anyways. I used Fauth Aquatics Aritisan Rock, it's man made so no nutrient leaching and it buffers super well. It's also softer than CaribSea's rock which I really didn't want after having to frag countless corals of that indestructible, bandsaw blade dulling stuff. I have some cured live rock that I will probably use in the display refugium once i get a light for it. I only have my two clowns (snow storm and midnight) and a handful of corals in there right now. I'll be adding my tiger conch, micro brittle starfish, astrea, trochus, bumblebee, and nerite snails once I get more algae. Future fish will probably include a Tanaka's pygmy wrasse and a ruby red dragonette or target mandarin.
EQUIPMENT
- Sump: Aquamaxx 22 Long with DIY acrylic baffles and sock holder
- Return: Simplicity 1000DC (these things run portions of my LFS and I've seen how much abuse they can handle so although I wanted to play with a Vectra S2 I couldn't justify it when I could be spending less money on something so robust and surprisingly quiet.)
- Powerheads: Ice Cap 1K Gyre using just a single side running a custom program
- Lights: AI Hyrdra 32HD x2 setup similar to BRS Recommended spectrum, intensity, and mounting height for an AI Prime over a foot deep tank translated to the Hydras treating each one a two Primes (overly complicated light settings at very bottom. Are you a nerd? You'll love this)
- Overflow: Fiji Cube LoPro External Overflow Box 400GPH (Small)
- ATO: Kona Reef ATO and dog food container
- Kamoer X1 Single Head Dosing Pump x3 (Up to four can be daisy chained using INCLUDED cords! Ultimate dosing solution IMO because you can do it in installements as you need more and they cost significantly less than a single four head doser, plus I prefer bluetooth over wifi enabled dosers at the moment. They'll get hooked up as I need them.)
-Thermometer: Lifegaurd Big Temp Alert (gives you the room and tank temperature as well as a built in alarm for high and low temps.)
FILTRATION
- Rock: Fauth Aquatics Artisan Rock
- Sand: A mix of random aragonite and Caribsea AragaMax Select with some rubble tossed around
- Hopefully a display refugium with either macro algae (so I can get my planted tank fix) or a soft coral like xenia, gsp, or cloves once I get an AI Prime to put over it
- Maybe a skimmer in the future. Ice Cap K1-50?
SUPPLEMENTS
- Fauth Aquatics Core Alk, Ca, and Mg
- Fauth Aqutics Pristine Nitrate and Phosphate reducer
- Brightwell Microbacter7
- Vibrant
- Red Sea Reef-Spec Carbon
- Brightwell Kalk2+ (I like that includes Mg and Sr)
- Ruby Reef Kick-Ich and Rally (I run these two whenever adding new fish to the entire system as I have not seem the coral upset by it and I think treating ich at the same time as bacterial infections and other potential problems a great idea. I also always have PraziPro, Metro+, and BiFuran+ on hand for anything severe. I've also heard of Rally treating many illnesses like Brook's and velvet.)
- Maybe add Tropic Marin's trace elements to the Fauth Aquatics supplements similar to the BRS hybrid method in the future.
FOOD
- Basically every frozen food Hikari makes. I buy 6 or 8 varieties at a time and rotate through them all.
- Fauth Aquatics Macro Flake
- Fauth Aquatics Macro Coral Food (I know...but seriously...I feed this to the coral at work...it's awesome)
My partner and I have desks in what is basically our dinning room so this peninsula between here and our living room had to look amazing. Also it's October so gotta hang the ghosts!
I added tons of pictures for everyone like me that went through every build thread looking for inspiration. This build is and will be a culmination of being in the planted hobby, working at an LFS and being a part of setting up and working on coral systems at our aquaculture facility, and maybe even more importantly working as a service tech for them and taking care of dozens of good AND bad tanks seeing what everyone's tanks had to offer in terms of the setup but as well as peoples' mind set toward how good they want their tank to look, how easy/difficult it was to care for, and how much they wanted to get invested. The more you window shop, research, and experience the more you learn and change the way you might want your setup to be.
LIGHT SETTINGS
Okay this is super unorganized but basically (not so basically really) what I did was graph the irradiance of sunlight at One Tree Island in Australia against time and recreated a near match of relative light intensity going into my tank over the course of a day. These numbers were taken from a paper called "Prediction of solar irradiance using ray-tracing techniques for coral macro- and micro-habitats". Then I used BRS AI Prime 16HD video for light intensities based on a 12" depth but translated it to Hydra 32 settings just assuming a Hydra 32 is twice as strong as a Prime. I adjusted the spectrum just a bit since the screenshot and moved the entire light cycle forward an hour as well as made a non reasonable lunar cycle that I'm not sure is or even could be a representation of the intensity and duration of natural moonlight using myAI's lunar settings. If its not to hard I'll add my settings as a downloadable file in the future. For now here's all the numbers and screenshot of my phone. Funny how it ended up having all those dips in max intensity similar to David Saxby's AI settings I wonder if he found something similar to what i did.
TEASER PHOTO
WARNING: FRESHWATER AHEAD!!! KEEP SCROLLING FOR SALTWATER
I had a planted tank since I first of heard that sweet, sweet deal we all know - $1 per gallon at Petco. I got a 20 Long and 10 that lasted for only a year before...
...I bought TWO AquaMaxx 22 Long rimless tanks for 6 feet of tank after graduating college as a gift to myself. They measure just shy of 36x12x12" and are low iron for that crispy clarity. I had shelldwelling multifaciatus cichlids in one and a tropical community in another, both of which were planted. Those tanks had a lot of thought put into them that helped spur the interest in setting up a reef tank as an ecosystem like is best when approaching a planted tank. The right one was rescaped about a year after being setup. Getting into reef tank lighting wasn't as absurd for me as most since I splurged on a Fluval 3.0 36" LED and automatically saw the difference a quality light makes in how my plants grew and looked and knew it was even more important for coral. I was even ahead of the game for flow being a huge proponent of powerheads in planted tanks
Since working at Kona Reef I resisted getting a saltwater tank and gave in after looking at coral all day and bagging them up for customers. I started with a Red Sea Max Nano and went with a ton of cured live rock for the easiest cycling and filtration, I even had an entire Brightwell Xport NO3 brick cut to fit in the internal overflow (which is why it's cut up in my current sump). It was set up as a bare bottom and had a custom DIY "false" bottom that I made out of a flexible HDPE plastic cutting board, silicone, and aragonite. Everyone says it can't be done but mine stayed pristine without turning purple or growing algae. I had an urchin, a conch, and a ton of snails that kept any algae and coralline from building up but also a ton of flow that never let anything settle in the display. I ended up pulling the skimmer out and just letting it do its thing. It had a separate auto top off and three dosers that did Brightwell's Alkaline8.3, Microbacter7 and a kalkwasser solution using thier Kalk+2. It also had a custom built hang on refugium that I made using acrylic and a plant light from amazon maybe I'll post about that next. Things went super smooth until I knew I was moving into a new apartment and it became neglected until I broke it down. Nearly all the equipment from this tank went to the new setup and the freshwater tanks were also broken down. My fish can now be found at Kona Reef Phoenix in their planted display tank. Mainly referring to my baby, a female pearl gourami I had since the original 20 long. ;Happy
Once I knew I was moving I had to go all-in on the new setup now having experienced an AIO I wanted a full sump and stand with my own plumbing. That being said I had more aquariums than I wanted so I decided to say goodbye to my precious planted tanks and plumbed them together for an overkill sump that is the same size as my display as well as learning how to weld to make my own "open" stand that could proudly show it off. Of course it had to match the furniture and style so I went and bought a welder off amazon and some 1" angle steel and prefabbed shelving from the hardware store and practiced making a shelf for our house plants, snails and hamster (peep the Fluval 3.0 now above the houseplants). After that turned out so well I started on the tank stand.
I painted the stand with Rust-Oleum High Performance Enamel primer and flat black to help resist the salt. I thought about getting it powder coated but wanted to move forward quickly. The wood is unfinished sanded pallet wood. I prefer it like this as there's no worry about ruining any finish. If a board really looks that bad at some point I can just replace it. All the cords and pipes are managed using stick on mounts that look identical to the EcoTech ones. The white box the pump controllers are mounted to is just a white IKEA container upside down and everything messily shoved under it to keep transformers and cords hidden. I have my lights hung using a metal planter box that I drilled holes in and mounted my lights inside of. All the electronics are plugged into a DJ switch I got from Amazon that make it easy to turn things on and off from the front of the tank. I used black and grey schedule 80 pipes and fittings with Loc-Line return nozzels from BRS. I was planning on a manifold but I don't think they make sense when using your return pump to feed variably back pressured equipment like media reactors so I opted for having just one split off into the refugium to kick up anything that settles. The baffles are poorly done by me using way too thin acrylic but at this point I just wanted to fill the dang thing with water. My rock structure was also a little rushed and I wish I had spent more time on it but I just kept telling myself to hurry and that coral is gonna cover it anyways. I used Fauth Aquatics Aritisan Rock, it's man made so no nutrient leaching and it buffers super well. It's also softer than CaribSea's rock which I really didn't want after having to frag countless corals of that indestructible, bandsaw blade dulling stuff. I have some cured live rock that I will probably use in the display refugium once i get a light for it. I only have my two clowns (snow storm and midnight) and a handful of corals in there right now. I'll be adding my tiger conch, micro brittle starfish, astrea, trochus, bumblebee, and nerite snails once I get more algae. Future fish will probably include a Tanaka's pygmy wrasse and a ruby red dragonette or target mandarin.
EQUIPMENT
- Sump: Aquamaxx 22 Long with DIY acrylic baffles and sock holder
- Return: Simplicity 1000DC (these things run portions of my LFS and I've seen how much abuse they can handle so although I wanted to play with a Vectra S2 I couldn't justify it when I could be spending less money on something so robust and surprisingly quiet.)
- Powerheads: Ice Cap 1K Gyre using just a single side running a custom program
- Lights: AI Hyrdra 32HD x2 setup similar to BRS Recommended spectrum, intensity, and mounting height for an AI Prime over a foot deep tank translated to the Hydras treating each one a two Primes (overly complicated light settings at very bottom. Are you a nerd? You'll love this)
- Overflow: Fiji Cube LoPro External Overflow Box 400GPH (Small)
- ATO: Kona Reef ATO and dog food container
- Kamoer X1 Single Head Dosing Pump x3 (Up to four can be daisy chained using INCLUDED cords! Ultimate dosing solution IMO because you can do it in installements as you need more and they cost significantly less than a single four head doser, plus I prefer bluetooth over wifi enabled dosers at the moment. They'll get hooked up as I need them.)
-Thermometer: Lifegaurd Big Temp Alert (gives you the room and tank temperature as well as a built in alarm for high and low temps.)
FILTRATION
- Rock: Fauth Aquatics Artisan Rock
- Sand: A mix of random aragonite and Caribsea AragaMax Select with some rubble tossed around
- Hopefully a display refugium with either macro algae (so I can get my planted tank fix) or a soft coral like xenia, gsp, or cloves once I get an AI Prime to put over it
- Maybe a skimmer in the future. Ice Cap K1-50?
SUPPLEMENTS
- Fauth Aquatics Core Alk, Ca, and Mg
- Fauth Aqutics Pristine Nitrate and Phosphate reducer
- Brightwell Microbacter7
- Vibrant
- Red Sea Reef-Spec Carbon
- Brightwell Kalk2+ (I like that includes Mg and Sr)
- Ruby Reef Kick-Ich and Rally (I run these two whenever adding new fish to the entire system as I have not seem the coral upset by it and I think treating ich at the same time as bacterial infections and other potential problems a great idea. I also always have PraziPro, Metro+, and BiFuran+ on hand for anything severe. I've also heard of Rally treating many illnesses like Brook's and velvet.)
- Maybe add Tropic Marin's trace elements to the Fauth Aquatics supplements similar to the BRS hybrid method in the future.
FOOD
- Basically every frozen food Hikari makes. I buy 6 or 8 varieties at a time and rotate through them all.
- Fauth Aquatics Macro Flake
- Fauth Aquatics Macro Coral Food (I know...but seriously...I feed this to the coral at work...it's awesome)
My partner and I have desks in what is basically our dinning room so this peninsula between here and our living room had to look amazing. Also it's October so gotta hang the ghosts!
I added tons of pictures for everyone like me that went through every build thread looking for inspiration. This build is and will be a culmination of being in the planted hobby, working at an LFS and being a part of setting up and working on coral systems at our aquaculture facility, and maybe even more importantly working as a service tech for them and taking care of dozens of good AND bad tanks seeing what everyone's tanks had to offer in terms of the setup but as well as peoples' mind set toward how good they want their tank to look, how easy/difficult it was to care for, and how much they wanted to get invested. The more you window shop, research, and experience the more you learn and change the way you might want your setup to be.
LIGHT SETTINGS
Okay this is super unorganized but basically (not so basically really) what I did was graph the irradiance of sunlight at One Tree Island in Australia against time and recreated a near match of relative light intensity going into my tank over the course of a day. These numbers were taken from a paper called "Prediction of solar irradiance using ray-tracing techniques for coral macro- and micro-habitats". Then I used BRS AI Prime 16HD video for light intensities based on a 12" depth but translated it to Hydra 32 settings just assuming a Hydra 32 is twice as strong as a Prime. I adjusted the spectrum just a bit since the screenshot and moved the entire light cycle forward an hour as well as made a non reasonable lunar cycle that I'm not sure is or even could be a representation of the intensity and duration of natural moonlight using myAI's lunar settings. If its not to hard I'll add my settings as a downloadable file in the future. For now here's all the numbers and screenshot of my phone. Funny how it ended up having all those dips in max intensity similar to David Saxby's AI settings I wonder if he found something similar to what i did.
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