A Shallow sps reef
 

Hi everyone I wanted to share my new tank with the community, it was started in late September of 2016 for now the display is a frag tank of mine 48" long 24"deep 12" high. The tank is nothing special but works fine.

My goal is to achieve easy to maintain smaller sps reef. (That is algae free) in the past I've grown lots of sps with overall a pretty good result but I've always had my buddy bryopsis, bryopsis drives me crazy but regardless of what I've tried I could never kill it.

September 24 was the day the tank was moved in the house to a spare room now the (tank room). That day I also added a small 30 gallon tank for sump and plumbed it all up, By night it had live rock in tank and water running thru it.
http://i1218.photobucket.com/albums/...206-100811.png

Next day I started on the lights my plan was a lot of light in a hood I will build.
6x48"t5
2xai sol blue
1 250 halide
I'm using this combo hoping for the best color, I want the halide for the deep sps color they achieve, ai sol are for fluorescents they can produce and I like the dawn and dusk effect , I'm only running the blue channels white is off. And the t5 are for the fast growth I find they help with also they do a great job of removing most shadows in rock work.
http://i1218.photobucket.com/albums/...206-100745.png
Pic with all lights
http://i1218.photobucket.com/albums/...206_120234.jpg
Added a white trim for finish
http://i1218.photobucket.com/albums/...206_120936.jpg

The following week anything I wanted to keep from my frag table was fragged up and moved to new tank also added a few fish and my rock flowers . For the most part only high end sps frags made the cut as I was pretty picky with the limited space in this tank. I also added a older vertex skimmer a buddy let me borrow.
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In the following week I also added 60 left hand hermits 4 golden cowries 10 trochus snails for clean up crew and 3 peppermint shrimp for aptasia. Well weeks later the aptasia was gone but they also ate 20 or more rock flower babies it was then I realized this combo will not work so I ordered a new sump, I got a eshopps adv-300 it has a nice refugium that I could use for my rock flowers.

Couple weeks later the sump showed up as it came from Ontario I'm in bc, by this time I've also added a bubble king mini 200.
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Back side
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Last pic has new skimmer in old sump also shows the brightwell bio brick and bio pellets in reactor.
http://i1218.photobucket.com/albums/...206-100631.png

Where are the rest of the pictures on the sump.....show us the real goodies Ryan!

Next step was to install all this for the most part it will be all piped in pvc the reactor on right was set up to run cheato it grew pretty well tell my phosphates dropped way too low .
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Around this time I also started using the aquaforest sps method,I started with salt and pro bio s with np pro for nutrient reduction.
http://i1218.photobucket.com/albums/...206_130249.jpg
at this time my nitrate is unreadable and phosphate was .06 since the cheato reactor was done I added rowa to get the phosphate a bit lower I'm looking to get it around. 03 before I started feeding the A,B,V,E sps food from af
http://i1218.photobucket.com/albums/...206_130201.jpg
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There coming buddy doing this all from my phone

Added a float to skimmer lid
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Also found with all the light I was getting pretty high temperature so added the Chiller too the loop.
http://i1218.photobucket.com/albums/...206-095159.png
Chiller will be in garage too keep heat outta house in summer.
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That's also my ato water above the Chiller.

Here we go!

Few pics of earlier rock scape
http://i1218.photobucket.com/albums/...206-095118.png
http://i1218.photobucket.com/albums/...206-095138.png
Rock flowers in the refugium
http://i1218.photobucket.com/albums/...206_094740.jpg
On the bottom right I plugged the return that comes directly from the drain before the filter bags, I found a lot of debris was going thru this tank then straight into my return pump and into display. To fix the issue of no water returning to refugium any more I piped my gfo reactor to drain into the refugium.
http://i1218.photobucket.com/albums/...206_135011.jpg
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Also week or so after being introduced to new home one or so rock flowers had babies again.
http://i1218.photobucket.com/albums/...206_094754.jpg
http://i1218.photobucket.com/albums/...128_174506.jpg
http://i1218.photobucket.com/albums/...201_083544.jpg
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Rock flowers janitor
http://i1218.photobucket.com/albums/...128_175143.jpg

Few pics of the livestock up top I lost a lot of color when I moved everything over plus the lower nutrients was a bit of a shock. Everything is slowly coming back and growing finally.
http://i1218.photobucket.com/albums/...206-140702.png
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Bleached out rrc pc
http://i1218.photobucket.com/albums/...206-140736.png
Tenius from wardog
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Rr loomy
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Jf beach bum looks like Apple berry at best right now came in looking pretty shitty gaining color every day.
http://i1218.photobucket.com/albums/...206-140801.png
There's lots of other pieces I haven't really took pics of yet everything is still small.

Looking good buddy!

Thanks Chris

Another project on my tank was to get the brightwell bio brick running a certain way recently I was informed the correct way of running this brick to encourage anaerobic bacteria was to run water thru the block something like the pic below.
http://i1218.photobucket.com/albums/...6-094938_1.png
So off to work i went I started with building these 2 supports.
http://i1218.photobucket.com/albums/...205_090805.jpg
Then glued them to sump
http://i1218.photobucket.com/albums/...5_100644_1.jpg
Next I cut a tee in off my return pump line with a valve to control flow.
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And finally it running, so enough water should go thru that water runs off each nipples.
http://i1218.photobucket.com/albums/...205_125243.jpg
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Awesome build buddy , looking great.

Fantastic skills Ryan! Looks sexy!

Thanks jess getting there gotta fill with sps now


Thanks hung I have plenty of sump skills now let's see about those corals

Looking good Ryan.

Mad skills indeed. I love this tank, now let's see some growth!

Ryan I need to do that with my block, when I had mine breaking the surface there was algae growing and now coraline from the sump lights. I have very slow flow off my rowa I could probably run overtop of the brick to replicate what you have done.

Keep us updated on the block and new corals!

Don't use the flow from your rowa Chris. The bacteria inside the brick need po4 to feed on and the effluent from your rowa reactor should have near zero po4 exiting it.

I can help you make something Chris

Thanks Duncan when you getting a tank running again?

Very kind of you sir nice too get a pass from the sump king lol

Looks awesome !

Thanks Mark one of the dosers i got from you is fueling the tank working great thanks again.

Hopefully soon. I'm getting serious withdrawals.

tank looking good Ryan, how do you like the skimmer?

Time for some pics of faded sps , hopefully I will turn that around soon. I took most the pics threw a top down viewer I built outta scrap acrylic it's ugly but works pretty good.
http://i1218.photobucket.com/albums/...162812_001.jpg

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Thanks bud loving the bk skimmer I really could never go back it makes very very little noise takes up very little room and is just really good at its job.

the first thing i noticed was the small footprint. did you have to order that online or does JL carry it?

So the sump on this tank is pretty great looks sharp its built pretty well. only complaints would be the return pump area is a bit small but does work, my biggest issue is the rectangular filter bags you have to use. There 40 bucks for 3 that's just fine but I've found my washing machine just chews them up with there odd shape. http://i1218.photobucket.com/albums/...208-164759.png
The bags rip along the edge of the hard plastic so today I decided to cut the bags completely off and make something removable that I can wash without the hard plastic rim.
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I found it used locally I was very lucky got it for a great price don't think you can buy them new in Canada, premium aquatics in the US carries there line.

Hey, those brown corals - did you snap those pics from my tank . Lol

Your corals look fine, the colours are definitely there. :smile:

That's a sweet setup Ryan! things have really come along now eh, it's going to look awesome once things hit their sweet spot.

Looking forward to checking it out sometime!

Nice set up Ryan , I like the little refugium with rock flowers, also how that reactor ( I guess with the cheato) works for you?
Looks great


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Thanks fhad come by anytime still looking for magicians by they way hope yours are growing.

Your colours blow mine away mark lol what you talking about gotta come say hi soon.

Thanks Kokoman they are there but will be better 😉

Thanks buddy the reactor worked fine when my phosphate was .08 ish now there very low hanna phosphorus reads 0-4 ppb on tests so that's 0. 012 if im correct on the higher end lol as a result the cheato melted away.

So my main goal for this tank (losing the bryopsis) is a fail my sps is all fine but there were multiple zoas frags I just couldn't throw away, at first all was well but when I started dosing the aqua forest foods the bryopsis went from I few small stems poping out to covering the zoas on affected plugs.
http://i1218.photobucket.com/albums/...208_111640.jpg

So last night I took the plunge I added 9 fluconazole pills at 200mg each, tank is 85-90 gallon total water volume.by the way thanks Dan (vanreefer) for ordering these up.
Few pics
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Got a bit cloudy
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So, never heard of this . Can you explain ?

That's a pretty sweet looking sump. Does it just look pretty or is it good design too? Quiet?

Don't get discouraged...my SPS did the same thing when I transferred into my tank. Nutrients too low, all faded out. That's your issue too? I tried everything...Pohl's Xtra is the magic ingredient for me. My buddy is Valonia though, not Bryopsis. Not sure which sucks more. :lol:

Mark there's another thread about it on canreef but in short you add the pills to tank I removed skimmer cup others don't. Then wait for the magic to happen, day eight you do a 25% water change bryopsis should be dead by then.

Thanks it's does work pretty well and was very very quiet until I added the dripping feature with the bio brick, but doesn't bother me at night and my room is very close. As for color yeah it's from low nutrients they were also dipped a few times so think it's a bit of both but I'm feeding lots they will come back. The valonia must be a mod thing pretty sure that wardog guy had a few also. But yeah either are brutal to deal with hoping for the best with the fluconazole.