ZTC’s shallow reef

ztc · Nov 3, 2023

Hey guys,

Wanted to start a build thread for my new reef tank, hoping that in the months and years to follow it will be good to look back upon

Little bit about me, originally from Scotland but then I wised up about the shocking weather and moved to Australia 4 years ago

Main goals for this tank were:

1. low maintenance as possible
2. Want the reef to move with the flow (softie/LPS)
3. Cheato Refugium to be the main nutrient export

Equipment:

Tank - Cade s2/f 600 in white

Rock - aquaforest

Lighting - 1x AI prime 16hd

Refugium lighting - 1x AI prime Refugium
(Wouldn’t buy again)

Flow - Nero 3

Return pump - Jebao DCS 3000
(Planning to change it out as it has annoying hum

)

Mechanical filtration - Filter floss in a plastic plant pot

Tank covers - DIY Perspex for evaporation

Tank was delivered, while Jett had to inspect for breakages

The tank finally in place, want expecting the stand to be so heavy for 2 people!
Cade looking small compared to my chihuahua

First try at aqua scaping this tank, wanted it be one reef piece, low in height due to dimensions of the tank with lots of flat areas for corals to grow, I ended up changing this slightly over the next few months due to the height

Next was to get it filled!… TA DA

I cycled with live bacteria and ammonia as started with dry rock and dry sand. I messed up the ammonia drops while cycling with Dr Tim’s one and only….... 7 weeks later… finished

Few months passed and I decided it was time for the first fish and corals, because there is no LFS near to where I live, everything has to be shipped

Fish:
2x wild clowns
1x purple fire fish (decora)
1x Bengaii cardinal

Few softies and LPS

Few months had past everything settling in…

then that brings us to today!

Waterchange yesterday as per green toadstool Is hating it’s life

And lastly the engine room

Planning on letting the tank settle for a few more months, then add some more fish and LPS

Thanks guys

BairCorals · Nov 4, 2023

Lookin good!

ztc · Nov 9, 2023

Decided to clean the glass this afternoon and take out first bucket of chaeto from sump, not a bad haul

Starting to get brown film algae over the sand bed and glass, haven’t had any green algae growth in the display so far, so presuming it’s Dino?

Cut back the display lighting to 10 hours, and reduced refugium lighting from 16 to 12 hours….. hoping that’ll work

Gumbies R Us · Nov 9, 2023

Great looking tank!

kevgib67 · Nov 9, 2023

Looks awesome and seems to be going smoothly, keep it up!

ztc · Nov 9, 2023

Almost too smoothly, waiting for something

CBonito · Nov 16, 2023

ztc said:
Almost too smoothly, waiting for something

haha. Don't jinx yourself.
Everything looking good!

ztc · Nov 16, 2023

Can’t seem to get my GSP frag to stay stuck on the back wall, going to include in somewhere into the rockwork…. Just unsure where

Tided out the sump today, full of crap. Took out the rock that was just collecting detritus, also moved some of the biospheres over to allow filter bag of carbon

ztc · Nov 16, 2023

Can definitely confirm iPhone 15 pro photos are way better

ztc · Nov 25, 2023

Bought a few things on black Friday sales

Few corals and inverts

Also bought a silicate test kit as I think brown algae from high silicates, finding hard to tell between diatoms and dinos

ztc · Nov 28, 2023

New test kits arrived:

P04 - 0ppm
N03 - 0ppm
SI - 0ppm

Guess it’s Dino’s?

Iv lowered my blade Refugium lighting down to 90% on all channels and reduced light period from 12 hours to 6 hours, hoping that will work, what do other people do regarding low nutrients? More fish? More food?

Janci · Dec 14, 2023

Looking great. I like the size of the tank. But than I am more of a lagoon type a guy.
Actually, more fish should mean more food. So to battle nutrients, you can just start with more food alone.
What are you feeding your fish? Are you dosing other things as well?

MartinM · Dec 25, 2023

Almost everyone who uses dry rock has issues with Dino’s. There are countless threads here about it, and that’s the main thing in common, because for some reason people start tanks with dry rock.

I would try getting some live rock, you have access to great rock there from Cairns Marine. Also dose microbacter 7 on the daily dose, and of course get snails for the rock and something to turn over the sand bed. Also higher nutrients are your friend here, not lower. Can’t go wrong with more fish food and Red Sea AB+.

ztc · Mar 31, 2024

I ended up feeding more and adding new fish.

I 100% agree with the live rock, next time I’ll start with live rock and live sand, previous tanks havnt had this issue before

ztc · Mar 31, 2024

Been a while since I added to this thread, quite a lot has changed.

I was suffering from Dino’s for quite a while so I invested in Hanna ULR phosphate checker and HR nitrate checker which confirmed what the salifert tests read. both read 0ppm.

Tank at this point looked like this:

From this I decided to increase feeding from 1 cube of frozen to 2 cubes per day and added some new inhabitants:

1x small tomini tang
1x coral cardinal
3x blue chromis
1x short spine urchin
Few softies

With the previous inhabitants:
2x clowns
1x bengai cardinal
1x fire fish

Bringing the fish up to 9. Now that the tank had a heavy bioload, Dino’s went away. this worked great at bringing my nitrates and phosphate up but simultaneously had an explosion of GHA into the sump, which was surprising when my Hanna phosphate checker routinely read between 0.03-0.08ppm.

The GHA didn’t bother me that much, sump looked pretty rough but as far as keeping nitrate and phosphate in check, it worked well….

The problem came with the sump layout from Cade, the sump just isn’t made to have a refugium, every time I tried to reduce the cheato in the sump tiny pieces of cheato and GHA would break off and clog the media baskets causing the water level to raise resulting in small bits of cheato and GHA making its way over the media baskets and into the Return pump section and up to the DT.

From here I decided that I would switch the bioballs and the cheato around, so placed the bioballs into the main sump chamber and the cheato into the media baskets to see if would reduce the amount of cheato and GHA getting into the return section

Unfortunately, the GHA just seemed to thrive more with the cheato in the media baskets and started to out compete the cheato. Resulting in the media baskets being full of GHA and a mess.

After quite a few months of constantly cleaning out refugium and the DT, I was fed up with the refugium. So decided to switch it up.

Being a Cade 600, the sump is pretty small and hard to fit equipment in.

I had a hard time trying to figure out what could actually fit inside the sump. Eventually I figured I could fit a reef octopus 110S skimmer and a reefmat 250 or 500 without any modifications. Just so happens it lined up with 20% sale that weekend at Victorian LFS

The sale didn’t include the reefmat 250!! Only the 500, so decided to go for the 500 as it was $200 cheaper lol, but I praying my measurements were correct and both would fit into the sump

Last week my new goodies arrived.
Reef octopus 110s skimmer
Reefmat 500
INKBIRD temp controller
Egg crate and egg crate legs + ratchet clips

First job was to install the egg crate stand for my return pump. Currently a food container is doing the job but the wife is complaining that I keep “ruining” them

Egg crate stand in place

As I was taking the return pump off, I thought I would change to a ratchet clip instead of the stainless steel (which was already started to rust

)

Double 32mm ratchet clip will do the job

Next job was to plumb the reef mat into the sump.
If anyone else is buying a reefmat for a Cade, Red Sea supply both a 40mm to 32mm connector with pipe AND a 32mm union with screw fit for PVC tubing! So you don’t need to buy anything else to plumb it.

Cut the Cade 40mm downpipe as high as possible and pvc cemented the 40mm to 32mm connector, from there I attached the 32mm union to the connector and fitted the pvc flex pipe with some sealant and metal clamp to the screw fit of the union. Nice and simple

The only thing that needed to be changed was I removed the corner bracket on the sump (holds it in place for shipping) easily done.

Below is what it currently looks like.

Everything fitted in perfectly!

Reefmat is averaging around 23cm per day. Better than I thought it would be. High of 53cm (cleaned the DT) and a low of 11.5cm

side on view, some carbon and GFO in the media basket with bioballs. Everything so clean for once

Below is my very plain control board. Unsure how everyone else on reef2reef makes it looks so nice?!

Skimmer after 5 days

110s is a beast. Surprised how much gunk it’s pulling out.

Below is my favourite picture of the tank so far. Pre skimmer and reefmat. Hoping over the next few months with minimal fiddling the softies will open up fully again.