SoCal Biotope Temperate Reef (cold water)

[Dcal]

Hello all,

Currently there will be a lack of visual aids so sorry if any readers get lost in the descriptions
Intro/ TL;DR
I am a San Diego native currently finishing up my marine bio bachelors and hoping for eventual PhD after. I am young and have been keeping reefs since I was 13 and freshwater even longer. Coldwater reefs are something I have always been interested and feel they are a fairly uncommon path in reef keeping. I want to work towards somewhat of a biotope aquarium with one half more of the tidepools/rocky intertidal type and the other half more inspired by the kelp forests and eelgrass/phyllospadix spp. macroalgae of the region, more on that later. I plan on keeping the tank at around 62 degrees. I have a fishing license and have found areas where I can legally and responsibly harvest that I plan on collecting livestock from. The tank will be heavily invertebrate and microorganism based however I will be looking for a fish or two that would be a good fit. I'm very interested in the scorpion-fish but that is far from definite.

Specs:
-90 gallon build with 30 gallon sump
-1/6 hp chiller
-Reef octopus skimmer
-Large return and lots of powerheads to mimic the region closely
-I'm heavily considering putting an airstone right next to my return pump and setting it up to my controller so that it sets off for an intermittent period every so often to fully oxygenate the water like it would if a wave was crashing and to pull waste but more opinions would be very nice.

Plans for set up:

I will be using sand just from the beaches here in La Jolla, shooting for a 3-4 inch sand bed. The left wall of the tank is up against a wall so my plan was to use pond foam and collected rocks to fill that wall completely. Similarly, the left 1/3 of the back wall will also be filled and I'm shooting for it to look like the tidepools and fade down to the sandbed near the center of the tank. Images will come next week when I start that process.

Stocking:
During cycling, I will introduce a large amount of phytoplankton that will hopefully be able to multiply by the time I add larger organisms. After cycling I plan on collecting the eelgrass and other green macroalgae to plant in the right side sandy bottom. Snails and hermits would be near the same time. For the rock-filled left side, the goal is to place the cold water rock flower anemones along that rock slope (hopefully they stay there) and place other smaller red macroalgae and generally stationary organisms over there. For other organisms I am looking for suggestions as I'm still not sure what I'm looking for. My big question is about kelp. I like the idea of keeping a blade or two either floating at the top or just moving around freely. I know growing the giant kelp is incredibly out of the picture but would there be any problems arising with my idea? I am looking for other large terrestrial plant looking macroalgae to put near the seagrass so also looking for suggestions on that.

Thanks for reading hopefully it turns out as well as it looks in my head, any feedback is greatly appreciated...

 

[Devaji]

cool I have thought about a cold water reef. I fews years ago I saw a diving vid of the cost of Ireland and it was quite beautiful.

not sure you can do this but here is an idea to keep the cooling $$$ down . you can run 50-100' of tubbing in the back yard ( if you have one ) burry it 4-6' deep and use the ground to cool the tank water. think radiant heat ing but radiant cooling. IDK just a though guess you house will have AC to so might not be a big deal to cool that water volume down,

what temp will you keep the tank at?

 

[Udest]

Also if you can manage to build it like the thickwalled lobster stock tanks that will help too with cooling.

 

[Dcal]

cool I have thought about a cold water reef. I fews years ago I saw a diving vid of the cost of Ireland and it was quite beautiful.

not sure you can do this but here is an idea to keep the cooling $$$ down . you can run 50-100' of tubbing in the back yard ( if you have one ) burry it 4-6' deep and use the ground to cool the tank water. think radiant heat ing but radiant cooling. IDK just a though guess you house will have AC to so might not be a big deal to cool that water volume down,

what temp will you keep the tank at?

My house pretty much stays in the 60-75 range without using heating or air for 98% of the time which will make things simple for me. I've also heard of the tubbing method and is very efficient and i probably would've turned to that if needed so great suggestion.

Ideally keeping the temp in the 60-63 range although most of the organisms I'll be keeping are eurythermal as they are mostly from tide pools which is making choosing a temp difficult for me so if you think a certain temp is better lmk.

 

[Devaji]

My house pretty much stays in the 60-75 range without using heating or air for 98% of the time which will make things simple for me. I've also heard of the tubbing method and is very efficient and i probably would've turned to that if needed so great suggestion.

Ideally keeping the temp in the 60-63 range although most of the organisms I'll be keeping are eurythermal as they are mostly from tide pools which is making choosing a temp difficult for me so if you think a certain temp is better lmk.

nope, no temp suggestions as you know more about it that I do.
let us know how it goes