drop-off tank island cabinet

[Diveks]

I wanted to try out a smaller tank so I can focus more on the coral as stocking my 210 has been hard on the wallet and I had taken down my biocube 16. I wanted a centerpiece for my game room/closet so I decided to do an island cabinet type tank in the middle of the room. The tank is 110cm with overflow, 95cm without. It's width is 40cm and height is 50cm in the shallow side with a 20cm drop. It was made with 10mm glass. The tank is 50 gallon without the drop-off and almost 60 gallon with.

Equipments:
- Vortech MP10 from my biocube (might add wavemakers ill add as i go)
- Bubble magus curve 5
- Red starfish mini-80 reactor
- jebao dcp 4000
- fluval m200 (will be getting a thermostat for it)

Aquascaping:
- Af coloured rock 10 kg 2x
- Aquaforest stone Fix

As i was aquascaping i had some issues with the rock i rinsed in ro a month ago, some of them had turned white im not sure what happened. I was a bit bummed out but I wasn't too bothered as It might get covered in other stuff later on. Some of the scaping is close to the glass and I might have issues with it but for now i might leave it like that. There are still a lot of space between the rocks and the water surface so im not too worried about that. I wanted to have fish of a smaller size in the tank as to make it not look too cramped. Also forgive my weird lighting making the rock look brown it is actually purple/pinkish but my purple lighting made it look a bit weird.

 

[Julie kerley]

Super cool. A bit jealous

 

[Devaji]

I love how reefers think:
stocking my 210 was hard on the wallet.....SO I start a new smaller tank! lol
I am right here with you man. that is one cool tank normally I am not a fan of drop off tanks but this peninsula style drop off in cool.

 

[Diveks]

Super cool. A bit jealous

thank you!

I love how reefers think:
stocking my 210 was hard on the wallet.....SO I start a new smaller tank! lol
I am right here with you man. that is one cool tank normally I am not a fan of drop off tanks but this peninsula style drop off in cool.

thanks! i think this one should be easier in the long run to maintain as my tall 210 was hard to even reach into to rearange the coral so got a bit hard to maintain, didn't wanna put in too many hard to own corals like SPS in that one.

 

[Diveks]

I have finally finished cycling, it went faster than i thought, i used the dr.tims ammonia for the first time ever and some aquaforest bio S i got for free from the seller as i bought the rocks. Im trying the aquaforest live sand which is working out well (not moving too much while not too big)


the tank’s stockings right now is a lone male designer clownfish im not sure the type maybe someone could identify? Very lively little guy, sadly lost his mate as she grew weak before getting stuck on a filter in quarantine. On process of getting another.

heres a closeup pic of the little guy. Hes really active so really hard to take a picture. Just in case someone can id him. Got him for really 20 dollars as a breeding pair, female was a normal cb clown.

 

[N3mo]

great build..

 

[chris_pull]

Looks awesome! I really like the AF rocks, has great colour and texture. I used a little bit on my new scape but it's kinda hidden at the base, which is a shame.

 

[Diveks]

great build..

thanks!

Looks awesome! I really like the AF rocks, has great colour and texture. I used a little bit on my new scape but it's kinda hidden at the base, which is a shame.

I agree, i wanted to try out some new rocks decided on aquaforest. while they are not too porous I like the look!

 

[Diveks]

Fish Update!
I have added the fishes that were in qt. I didn’t add them at the same time while they did finish qt together, I didn’t wanna overwhelm the bacteria. It was hard taking pictures so from some angles some of them look weird.
First added was a picasso clown

Than a yellow fin wrasse (i think its what it is, we call it a different name here) and a canary wrasse. The yellow fin i thought was long gone since I didn’t see it for 4 days before slowly showing itself more and more. The canary took a while to understand that he can go up into the more shallow part of the aquarium.

Last additions were 2 female lyretails which i suspect one of them is a different subspecies? (Its far more pink than orange and looks different from the bigger one) one of them is turning into a male. The large lyretail is not causing anyone trouble just a bit of chasing to the female mostly when feeding (reminds me of clowns). The rocks and the drop off both help with breaking the line of sight so the small female can easily get away when being chased.

I also added a fire shrimp that molted the night it went in the tank. Still scared to go out but i do feed with tweezers sometimes.

I feed 3x-4x a day in small amounts. Mostly diy frozen with nls, hikari seaweed extreme, and ocean nutrition. Im trying to fatten all the fish up especially the anthias. If the anthias start causing too much problems ill move one or both of them into another tank.

 

[Diveks]

24 July 2021
A diatom bloom happened a month in after putting in some test corals zoas, favias, yumas, and micromussas. No lifestock loss except for one yuma that didnt like the flow and detached itself. Some of the zoas got smothered by the diatoms though. All fishes and shrimp are happy and fat.

A picture from day 3 of bloom

i am now a week in and its now much better, the snails have helped too, only 5 snails working right now slowly adding more as needed from my other tank.

i have suspected my wrasse might have eaten 3 of my nasarius as ive only seen 2 out each night, they might be full as i feed the tank a bit too much sometimes. Im trying to cut down as my fishes now have protruding bellies.

 

[Rob-ski]

HI! I'm new to the forums (and to the hobby!) I am looking to set up something similar to your tank, albeit without the drop, so I'll be following this with interest!

My tank will be pretty much the same dimensions (120cm X 40cm X 50cm) and will sit against a wall on the short edge. So will be viewable from 3 sides and will protrude into the room.

I had a question, how will you setup your flow pumps on this?

Thanks

 

[Diveks]

HI! I'm new to the forums (and to the hobby!) I am looking to set up something similar to your tank, albeit without the drop, so I'll be following this with interest!

My tank will be pretty much the same dimensions (120cm X 40cm X 50cm) and will sit against a wall on the short edge. So will be viewable from 3 sides and will protrude into the room.

I had a question, how will you setup your flow pumps on this?

Thanks

I have added a ai nero 3 to help out my return pump even though it’s strong enough. I wanted varied and strong flow for the upcoming sps. I was thinking about adding another wavemaker on the other side to help push debris back into the overflow. Right now my lps are really happy with the flow though so i will need to make sure i don’t add too much or too little flow.

 

[Diveks]

The diatoms had finally died down and now I'm fighting some hair algae. Some sad news about some of my stocking, i have lost my two anthias to what seems to be a bacterial infection that the shrimp picked at too. I was under the weather for awhile and didn’t do water change in time and sadly they stopped eating and perished in 3 days. My favias are also dying from a broke ATO which i am working on.

on the other hand, as i was cleaning the glass, i see tons and tons of copepod (which i probably killed a lot actually from the glass cleaning…) but nonetheless i now have copepods, and i was gonna dose them but now i am rethinking that

 

[dbq5anlxj]

hello very nice drop off tank you have there. Is the rock any good? I‘m thinking to buy some dry rock break them into small pieces then glue it together how I want. Will this rock work? Thanks

 

[Diveks]

hello very nice drop off tank you have there. Is the rock any good? I‘m thinking to buy some dry rock break them into small pieces then glue it together how I want. Will this rock work? Thanks

sorry for the late reply haven't been on for awhile, the rock is working well and the inhabitants are happy, although i think if you are using the coloured ones i think some colours would be white and some coloured if you break them, as i think only the outside are coloured.

 

[Diveks]

A lot have changed for the tank these past few weeks. Decided to take the biopellets fully offline after all my corals were not looking good and the snails were starving. Ive installed a chaeto reactor and have some phosban in a high flow area of the tank.

Also decided to change the aquascape so its not as flat and also decided to add liverock from the ocean to seed my tank as Ive had better results with tanks started with liverock.

The custom fixture also finally arrived! And I installed a D&D jumpguard to keep the fishes in.

Rescape:

Chaeto reactor:

Fixture: