twhit030

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Hello all!

More so just doing this for fun feel free to follow along. Over the next few months I’m going to be actively working on building a dream mini tank in my apartment. My end goal is to make it a mostly sps tank with a few softies or hammers to fill in gaps. Eventually the long term goal is to upgrade over time and transfer this tank to a 160 gallon or so in a house I will purchase down the road.

I’ve successfully started and maintained many all acro tanks with the help of friends and this forum along the way!

Its been about 2 years sense I had my 75 gallon all acro tank and I’m back at it again. I’ll have plenty of questions and things I might try. I hope to post almost weekly with updates and questions for yall to help me decide.

Currently all I have is a 25 gallon brand new Waterbox and some old dry dead rock from the last few tanks. I’m considering starting over with all new rock or maybe trying to pick up some live stuff. I might even experiment with some filter sock adjustments and modifications so we shall see

I have plenty of time I’m in no rush so I can make this thing perfect and hopefully avoid some of those issues we all get when we rush.

Tank will be light with an AI PRIME 16hd judge all you want but I actually did a 75 gallon all acro tank with 4 of these suckers running so I know it works.

Next step is to build a stand myself and one that the wife will enjoy and approve of.

Feel free to drop any comments or suggestions let’s talk about ideas and aquascaping or anything under the hobby realm for that matter.

Thanks again! And I hope you follow along.
 

jackson6745

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The 25 waterbox is a gateway tank :). I used it to seed frags for my 200g. Hope to see you do the same for your 160! IME with this tank, if you're keeping high light acros like tenuis, milli, and tabling pieces, you'll want more light than a single 16hd. you'll need 2 of them or a different model. If you're growing caps, stylo, birds nest etc ... It will be fine. Can't wait to see you pics!
 
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twhit030

twhit030

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The 25 waterbox is a gateway tank :). I used it to seed frags for my 200g. Hope to see you do the same for your 160! IME with this tank, if you're keeping high light acros like tenuis, milli, and tabling pieces, you'll want more light than a single 16hd. you'll need 2 of them or a different model. If you're growing caps, stylo, birds nest etc ... It will be fine. Can't wait to see you pics!
Yeah eventually when I get the tank going and been running for 6 months or more and everything stable and I have a controller on it I’ll add a second or I do have some t5s I can attach or an led light bar.

It’s weird because I’ve done the par readings and it produces plenty using the BRS setting in one of the videos they made. But the edges are where it really really drops off and you’re 100 percent correct a wall to wall acro stands no chance on the edges. But that 12 inch circle under it is great.

I’d be interested to get a par reading on 2 ai primes and then 1 ai prime with some light bars.

In my 75 gallon after the colonies started taking off I did add some 48 inch light bars to it.

I’ve even seen some 18 inch t5 bulbs I’m considering just have to figure out how to mount them later on down the road
 

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Call me crazy but these could be fun

2 Pack SunBESTer LSF8181 Fluorescent T5 18“ 18W Single Strip Grow Lights w 2" Wide Mirror Reflector and 6500K and 2000 Lumens, Great for Seeding and VegGrow! (2, 18") https://a.co/d/2Lj1cy5
Nio idea about the output with whatever ballast and reflector they're using, but with 65k bulbs I'm sure it adds some par!
 
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twhit030

twhit030

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Hey all sorry it’s been crazy I’ll take some pictures and post soon but tank went really well in the beginning I did a 3 month cycle process everything was perfect started adding fish with no issues never lost one. Started adding corals and they were growing well. Went out of town on our honey moon for 5 days and came back to a lot of algae. Phos was un readable along with nitrate and because of that I was getting Dino’s. So I made my own food and started feeding heavy and overshot my goal and got them way too high. Some of the corals started browning out and dying but some are still alive.

My plan to get back on track is to throw a few soft corals in there maybe another fish and then it into a mixed reef tank. If anything that will help stable the parameters out better and then I can go back to introducing acros again.

If I’ve learned anything from all this it’s two things
1. A long cycle period is crazy helpful
I did 1 month of no light then 2 months of ramping my lights up from 10-100 percent and it worked sooooo well. I didn’t use doctor Tim’s or anything. I’d throw a little pellet food in on occassions during the no light period and then fish in when the lights came on. Never ever got the ugly phase.

2. It’s crazy easy to raise nitrate and phosphate with the right foods. I use to use neophos and neonitro to raise in a pinch but this time I just made my own food and within 3 days I went from 0 nitrate to 10 and phosphate went from 0 to 1 and I can truly say I didn’t feed like crazy. I only doubled my feeding for two days.

Live stock:
1 clown (the other sadly jumped out of the tank before I got a screen in)
1 lawnmower blenny
1 six line wrass
1 royal gramma
1 peppermint shrimp
TONS of trochus snails that are breeding
And blue legged crabs
 
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