NBurg's 40g Breeder Mostly SPS Tank

Nburg's Reef · Nov 4, 2017

I've been in the hobby since 2006, but this is probably my most successful run at an SPS tank. Mainly because this is the first time i have spent more than a year in one spot. My method for this tank has been keep it simple from the start and eliminate unneeded sources of failure. I wanted to upgrade recently, but I said screw it and decided to just focus on 40 gallons. I'll upgrade when we move into a bigger house and there is no more room in this one.

Pics include some of my corals, but not all. I have a good amount of corals, but nothing thats really eye opening.

I did, however, buy this browned out monti for 10 bucks 3 years ago to see if my 18g could handle sps. the monti turned out to be a leng sy look-a-like. minty green color, blue polyps and purple tips. doesn't grow pillars for me, but does have unusual growth. It also grows quick and I just busted it up. I will soon frag it and try to sell some pieces to buy a Battle corals pack.

Setup

Tank: Standard 40g Breeder drilled with an Eshopps slim overflow
Self-Built Stand and accompanying storage cabinet
Sump: Eshopps R-200
Light: Hamilton 250w MH Radium on M80 Ballast and x4 39w T5s
Flow: Vortechs - x1 MP40 and x1 MP10 with battery backup
Return: Sicce AC Return Pump
Skimmer: AquaMaxx ConeS CO-1
Dose: C-Balance on BRS dosers and hand dose KNO3 and Acropower
Controller Neptune AC-III Pro
ATO: Tunze Osmolator 3155
Heaters: x2 Eheim Jager for redundancy
Rock: 75% is Caribsea Reef Rock Shapes (love it!) and Tropical Eden Meso Flake sand

Fish

Pair of Clowns
Flame Hawk
Yellow Tail Damsel (banished to sump)

Cabinets I made with my old man

FTS

My Unusually dirty sump

My side cabinet that holds all the eyesore stuff like ballasts, ATO water, cords, etc.

ORA Hawkins - this thing didn't do much for about a year... I moved it to high light and now its exploding

Everyone should have a slimer.

Frogskin acro. fast grower and seems to glow. Started out as a test coral to see if my old 18g cube could handle an acropora. It did quite well.

This Secale looks a lot like the battlecorals one. Not sure of the lineage, but looks awesome in person.

My ricordea garden. Its about 3 years old and started from 4 polyps. Not that fastest growers in clean water, but keep nice colors.

One of the nicer Rics

Unknown Figi acro. Looks okay face on, but looks awesome from above. has nice growth shape so I like it anyways.

Duncans are always photogenic

And my favorite, yellow-tip A. austera. doesn't photo well, but boy does it look awesome. yellow growth tips, purple ends and glowing metallic green stalks.

Next project will be to set up a frag section in my sump since I don't use the fuge section. That way I can get the frag rack and some of the frags off my sand bed.

jaguars4263 · Nov 4, 2017

Nice!! I love seeing a simple and clean sps tank! Nice color on the corals.

AdamNC · Nov 4, 2017

Looks very nice and should fill in nicely.

Nburg's Reef · Nov 12, 2017

Few minor updates in the works:
- Moving my frags to the sump and putting in an overside LED down there to light them. I have a Mars Aqua fixture and did some testing today. 30w of power, using a kill-a-watt, gives me 350 par throughout the frag area, which matches much of my tank's par.

- Have a Battle Corals grab bag battlebox in the works. should be here in a week or two. Once I get that, I will probably take it easy on adding anything else unless I get rid of stuff.

Nburg's Reef · Jan 16, 2018

Updated FTS for a few weeks ago. I moved some stuff down to the frag tank to clean up the sand. The frags on the rack have been glued onto the rocks since this was taken and the rack was removed. I'm going to frag some of the ricordea soon as they are getting too bunched up on that rock when they fully open. Once those go to the frag tank, I might have to set up a smaller frag rack in the sand for some of the acros down there... they don't like the switch to LEDs and have all browned out.

Devan Petersen · Jan 16, 2018

Looks good. I am about to start a build thread for my breeder.

Nburg's Reef · Jan 16, 2018

Yours looks much fancier than my petco $1/gallon special. lol. My old nano started to crack so I was in a hurry to put something up. Then I moved it to the new stand setup and drilled it once I got the stand done.

Are you going to do a build thread? I love following other breeders since its an unusual size... not quite a big tank but still roomy.

Devan Petersen · Jan 16, 2018

Nburg said:
Yours looks much fancier than my petco $1/gallon special. lol. My old nano started to crack so I was in a hurry to put something up. Then I moved it to the new stand setup and drilled it once I got the stand done.

Are you going to do a build thread? I love following other breeders since its an unusual size... not quite a big tank but still roomy.

yes i will do a build thread. It started life as a turtle tank and all i really did is take the rim off.

Nburg's Reef · Apr 22, 2018

The time has come to close this thread down... but for a good reason. I will be starting a new thread soon for my new Red Sea Reefer 450.

Daniel@R2R · Apr 26, 2018

Nburg said:
The time has come to close this thread down... but for a good reason. I will be starting a new thread soon for my new Red Sea Reefer 450.

Definitely post the link in here when you get the new thread started. I'll be glad to follow along!

Daniel@R2R · Jun 29, 2018

@Nburg did you get the new thread going? We're still waiting...

Rakie · Jun 29, 2018

Devan Petersen said:
yes i will do a build thread. It started life as a turtle tank and all i really did is take the rim off.

Hey just a heads up... That rim is there for a reason, and is part of the structure that keeps the tank working. That rim meant they could cut costs on glass, using thinner glass means thinner strip of silicone with less surface area... What I'm getting at is, sometimes tanks explode when you take the rim off them. They were designed with that rim specifically for lots of reasons, and that rim determines the build, glass selection, etc etc.