abcha0s' 300G Ultimate Reef

[Kalifornia]

Beautiful absolutly prefect

May ask what was the cost of the stand as I am planning a 180 DD build inwall and just want to get an idea of the cost to go to a steel stand such as yours

Thanks

Looking forward to the progress

[Delphinus]

All throughout the planning stages on my current tank I was convinced I would stay BB for it. I've run smaller tanks BB and it was always amazing to me how much vaccuuming was required every week to keep them BB. Sandbeds hide this aspect which is both good and bad: it may look good but what lurks beneath?

In the end I chickened out and put sand in at the last minute. Two reasons, actually maybe three: 1) The rockwork that I built for myself has various supporting structures (combo of of acrylic and PVC on different pieces of it) and sand does a nice job of hiding that - otherwise I would have had to use rubble and I'm not a huge fan of rubble piles. 2) The silicone on the bottom edges is supremely thick and it was distracting to look at so sand hides that. And then 3) I have some fish that prefer to bury in sand at night and I thought it would be a kinder thing to offer them that.

I have to say that I still prefer the look of a shallow sand bed even with all the aggravation it causes. Sand storms, bacterial clumping etc.etc. I have a cleanup crew including sand dollars, conchs and nassarius and for the most part they keep up. I also put some moon snails in there but in hindsight this was a questionable move. They do an *incredible* job of turning sand over, but they are predatory. Nice newby level mistake on my part: buy first, research later. Oops. It's too bad, they are really neat snails. Look exactly like the apple sized moon snails you can find on on the BC coast but at 1" in size (and pure white in colour).

So I like the look, but I TOTALLY understand why some choose not to.

[albert_dao]

Thought I'd toss this out there:

http://www.zeovit.com/forums/showthread.php?t=22732

♥

[abcha0s]

Sorry for the delayed responses.

Originally Posted by lastlight

Sorry to hear about the hassles. I love the look of my sandbed but yeah it can be a hassle at the same time. I'd get a sand-sifting fish to help you out. My sand was also forming solid layers (but fused with what may have been cyano) which quickly disappeared with my goby always sifting.

Interesting idea about the pellets too. Maybe you should suspend their operation until the tank has a decent bioload. Your skimmer definitely looked severely under-worked when I saw it.

My stocking plans include a couple of sand sifting gobies, but I have been hesitant to put them in the tank before it matures a little. Other than bacteria, theres probably not much in the sand bed for them to eat. I'll have to consider whether I can keep them fed with pellet food?

Turning the biopellet reactors off may or may not be a good idea, if I ever plan to start them up again. I'm not ready to give up yet. I'd really like to get things balanced and have the biopellets work for me. If I take them offline now, then I will have to go through this whole ordeal again at some point in the future. I'd rather just figure it out now. I guess I'm stubborn that way.

Originally Posted by Kalifornia

Beautiful absolutly prefect

May ask what was the cost of the stand as I am planning a 180 DD build inwall and just want to get an idea of the cost to go to a steel stand such as yours

Thanks

Looking forward to the progress

Thanks for the compliment - I tried to PM you but got an error. Anyway, I paid way to much for my stand because I didn't like the first version and sent it back to a different welder for modifications. In hind sight, this was a mistake and I should have just left well enough alone.

I do really like my stand and would recommend to anyone to build a metal stand. Just make sure the welder understands the importance of having it perfectly square, level and planar. Also, consider how you will brace the stand against sheering.

If you have the ability to transport the stand yourself, I would take it for powder coating yourself. The first go around I paid the welder $250+ to do this for me. The second go around I took it to the power coater myself and it cost me something like $100.

For a 180 DD your probably looking at around $400 - $500 all inclusive, but it could be less. I wouldn't expect it to be more.

There's a link in my post about the stand to a thread on RC. I found that to be a very useful thread.

Originally Posted by albert_dao

Thought I'd toss this out there:

http://www.zeovit.com/forums/showthread.php?t=22732

♥

Thanks Albert!! - That's really amazing. I will talk to a friend of mine and see if he has this for sale.

I'll have to do a little reseach to see how it interacts with biopellets. My concern is that it will interfere with the biopellet process. If it works by breaking down protien then the bacteria should not be directly affected but I want to understand that process a little better before going down that route.

In the thread, the OP wants to rid his tank of bacteria. I want the bacteria, I just want it to stay in the biopellet reactors.

If I do try this, I will let you know how it works.

[abcha0s]

Originally Posted by Delphinus

All throughout the planning stages on my current tank I was convinced I would stay BB for it. I've run smaller tanks BB and it was always amazing to me how much vaccuuming was required every week to keep them BB. Sandbeds hide this aspect which is both good and bad: it may look good but what lurks beneath?

In the end I chickened out and put sand in at the last minute. Two reasons, actually maybe three: 1) The rockwork that I built for myself has various supporting structures (combo of of acrylic and PVC on different pieces of it) and sand does a nice job of hiding that - otherwise I would have had to use rubble and I'm not a huge fan of rubble piles. 2) The silicone on the bottom edges is supremely thick and it was distracting to look at so sand hides that. And then 3) I have some fish that prefer to bury in sand at night and I thought it would be a kinder thing to offer them that.

I have to say that I still prefer the look of a shallow sand bed even with all the aggravation it causes. Sand storms, bacterial clumping etc.etc. I have a cleanup crew including sand dollars, conchs and nassarius and for the most part they keep up. I also put some moon snails in there but in hindsight this was a questionable move. They do an *incredible* job of turning sand over, but they are predatory. Nice newby level mistake on my part: buy first, research later. Oops. It's too bad, they are really neat snails. Look exactly like the apple sized moon snails you can find on on the BC coast but at 1" in size (and pure white in colour).

So I like the look, but I TOTALLY understand why some choose not to.

Hey Tony - As always, thanks for the feedback and ideas. I'm in the camp that really doesn't like the bare bottom look. I also have all kinds of crazy looking structures under my rock, so bare bottom isn't really an option with this tank.

It's really just one more thing to learn about. Lot's of people have successful Shallow Sand Beds. I just have to figure out how to manage it.

I've been starting to think about moving some fish over. Probably not for another week or two as I want to make some new introductions before transferring my existing stock. I might send you a PM about the fish trap that you used.

- Brad

[lastlight]

My diamond watchman goby is a model citizen for what it's worth. Doesn't even leave the sandbed while spitting it out and he also eats everything else I feed the tank. One of the best livestock choices I've made as my sand did a 180 since the addition.

[abcha0s]

So I've been busy working on the tank. I think I have some interesting updates.

• I have really been struggling with the never ending bacteria bloom that has been plaguing my tank. Today I did what I promised myself I wouldn't do and took both biopellet reactors offline . New tanks are all about finding a bacterial balance and I believe that the bacteria that had colonized the biopellets were somehow preventing the tank from reaching an equilibrium. I also think that having started with Dry Rock for most of the tank was detrimental to the overall success of bringing the tank online with the biopellets running. If I had started off with a healthy and diverse bacteria colony from good live rock, it might have played out differently. I do plan to try again with the biopellets, but I will wait until the tank matures a bit.
  .
• I took Brett's advice and picked up a pair of Diamond Watchman Gobies. To be fair, this was not the first time I had considered these fish. I had one in my 90G before I added the screen top and he jumped out (I'm still mad at the Calgary LFS for assuring me it was a good beginner fish). This pair is doing great in the 300G.
  .
• I took Albert's advice and I started looking into Zeovit. I talked to Dave at Concept Aquariums about this and he had the product in stock! - Dave used it on his home tank with similar results to the thread posted by Albert. I bought a bottle of Bio-Mate from Dave and will be testing this on my tank.
  .
• The BIG news - Jeff and Renee at J&L Aquatics hooked me up big time! I don't know if they were doing me a personal favor or if they do this for all of their customers (my guess is the later), but they really came through on this one.
  
  I picked up a harem of 12 Bartlett's Anthias. 1 Male and 11 Females - and they are awesome! Getting that many females in a single order is basically unheard of and no one else (probably in north america) could have done this for me. All but one were eating on the first day. I've had them a little over a week now and they all love pellets.
  
  My next post will have lots of pictures of these fish.

Pictures in my next post...

[fishytime]

sweet!......a harem!.......I wish I had a harem.............of anthias.....ya, anthias

[abcha0s]

I picked up the fish at the Air Canada Cargo depot at around 9:30am on Saturday. After a quick inspection I could see that the fish were swimming in their bags and the water was warm. J&L packed them perfectly.

. . .

Acclimating 12 fish at once is not an easy task.

I setup a containment tank for the Anthias. I would have liked to do a full QT, but logistically this would have been difficult. With the intent of getting these Anthias to eat (4 or 5 times a day), it would have been difficult to keep the water stable in an isolated system. At least in the containment tank I could observe the fish and clean up any leftover food after each feeding.

.

After releasing the fish into the containment tank, they schooled as a tight group in one corner. This was encouraging as no single fish went off on it's own. After about half an hour, they started exploring the tank.

.

For the past week, I've been feeding a variety of food including Frozen Cyclop-eeze, Reef Nutrition Arcti-Pods and New Life Spectrum Pellets. My focus has been on the pellets as that is how I plan to keep them feed in the main tank.

Today they were moved to the main tank. There were a number of considerations here, but Anthias really need more space than a 30G holding tank. In order for them to feel at home, they need the rocks and the current.



You can see the two gobies on the left.

There are some interesting threads on RC that talk about female Batlett's changing into males (more frequently than in some other Anthia species). In the wild, there seems to be more males than females which is unusual for an Anthia species. In captivity, many people observe some or all of their females changing into males after which they occasionally fight until there is only one left. These considerations were not lost on me when making this purchase. I am hopeful that the ratio of males to females in my tank will remain in favor of the females. Having said that, I do expect at least one or two of the now females to change into males. It is entirely possible that this process started before introducing the fish to my tank and that it is now irreversible.

I do believe that my tank is big enough to support at least 2 or 3 males. Assuming no losses, this would result in a 1 - 3 ratio of males to females.

There are reasons why I believe I can achieve long term success with this group of fish, but I can really only hope I am right. No question they are a delicate species. Time will tell.

The other concern I have right now is in regards to flukes. There is absolutely no sign of any disease or stress, but I'm not sure that I could identify flukes if I were looking right at them? - I am considering treating the tank with PraziPro as a preventative measure. This would be the one advantage of starting with Dry Rock - there is nothing to kill. I haven't made this decision yet, but once the tank starts to mature, it will become difficult if not impossible to treat for flukes. While it would be purely preventative, I do have a rare window of opportunity. My research suggests that there is no residual effects from PraziPro that would impact the reef long term.