Asylumdown's 275 Tank build

[Delphinus]

"Tron", lol that's awesome. I love doliatus rabbits. There was a time it was near impossible to land this fish in Calgary. Lately I see them more from time to time. "When I was young I had to wait years for a doliatus. And it was uphill both ways. etc. etc. etc."

Things look great overall, very nice!

PS. It's actually "dispar". I've been calling them "disbars" for the longest time and just realized a month ago that it's a p not a b. Ooops.

[lastlight]

things are really taking off. that means you can't shut this thing down ok?

[mseepman]

Tank is looking awesome. That Rabbit the bomb!! Love how your corals have really started to show their growth. Your tank reminds me each day that patience pays off so I dread when you decide to take it down. Hopefully any new owner realizes what they are getting.

[Skimmerking]

looking really good mango. love the SPS in there. the rocks are so clean what the heck no red turf bubble or hair how are you doing this.

[asylumdown]

Originally Posted by Delphinus

"Tron", lol that's awesome. I love doliatus rabbits. There was a time it was near impossible to land this fish in Calgary. Lately I see them more from time to time. "When I was young I had to wait years for a doliatus. And it was uphill both ways. etc. etc. etc."

Things look great overall, very nice!

PS. It's actually "dispar". I've been calling them "disbars" for the longest time and just realized a month ago that it's a p not a b. Ooops.

Yah I love the rabbit. I rarely see him picking at the rocks, but I think he's a big reason why I've never had a recurrence of ANY algae in the display. I still get some hair algae in my overflows that I sometimes have to pull out, but nothing grows where you can see it. They're far more general in the algae they eat than tangs, as in they'll eat any kind of algae (including valonia), where tangs usually prefer one or two kinds. This guy even eats the dinos that grow in my tank. They're way less ich, aggression and problem prone than tangs so I'm happy for him to fill that role.

And Dispar hey... you know that makes perfect sense. I couldn't figure out why they would be called disbar as that would imply something diagnostic in their stripes, and they don't really have any as far as I can tell!

[asylumdown]

Originally Posted by lastlight

things are really taking off. that means you can't shut this thing down ok?

I'm working on it man. The very best case scenario is that the new owners don't want it, and we get to set a possession date that gives us enough time to buy a place where I can set up a new system and transfer stuff over. I probably won't be able to have a system this large in the new place, but at least That would let me save most of the corals.

[asylumdown]

Originally Posted by mseepman

Tank is looking awesome. That Rabbit the bomb!! Love how your corals have really started to show their growth. Your tank reminds me each day that patience pays off so I dread when you decide to take it down. Hopefully any new owner realizes what they are getting.

Hopefully they don't have to and I get to keep most of it! It will all come down to timing and logistics. I'm excited about the idea of setting up a new system (can anyone say Mitras?), but I don't want to start from scratch in terms of coral growth. A bunch of those mini-colonies were frags when I got them, and it's taken some of them 8 months to a year to get to where they are now. The one thing you can't buy is time.

[asylumdown]

Originally Posted by Skimmer King

looking really good mango. love the SPS in there. the rocks are so clean what the heck no red turf bubble or hair how are you doing this.

Biopellets, regularly changed GFO, and that rabbitfish. I had a problem with algae around Christmas when the tank had no nutrient export of any kind for 5 weeks, then when things were set back up properly again I started attacking it with both mexican turbo snails, aggressive water changes, changing GFO sometimes daily, and then finally dosing the tank with algaefix marine for 10 days. The rabbitfish went in right after that and I've never had a problem since. I do however have the occasional bloom of dinos, which seems to synergistically encourage a few patches of cyano here and there.

[asylumdown]

Some pics. If anyone in Calgary ever wants to come over and help me take some good quality images that counter-acts the effect LEDs have on camera sensors, I'd be happy for the help. We have a pretty good camera now (these pics were taken on it), but it's still washing everything out in the images compared to real life. I don't know what else to do!

FTS front


FTS back


South detail front


North detail Front


North Detail photo bomb. You'd think I never feed this guy.


South Detail back


North detail back


Update on the tank - I've been battling low grade dinos for a few months now. I've been trying to be super aggressive with nutrient control, but at the level of phosphate in the water I need for good coral colour, I also get expanding shadows of dinos in the sand around the base of my rocks. I'm also getting a few patches of cyano here and there. It's not getting out of control or anything though, so I haven't really wanted to take extreme measures that can upset the whole system.

I was sure my purple queen anthias were going to starve to death (bought on impulse with no prior research), but I think I'm on month 3 now and all three of them have gained weight. I'm having more troubles with my other anthias - I've got 3 females and two males. I think it's triggered one to turn in to a super male, which is awesome as he's so much more brilliantly coloured, but he's been bullying the other male something fierce.

House is still for sale, but it hit the MLS two days before the flood, and since then the market for homes in our price bracket has been pretty chaotic, so we've not had much traffic. As it stands, the tank is still mine, but I'm still not spending much money one it as I don't think it will be mine for much longer.

I've been having a heck of a time keeping my alkalinity up the past month or so, it hovered around 6.5-6.7 for nearly a month, and my birdsnest took a serious beating. My other corals are growing faster than they ever have right now though, which is why I think the demand is so high. I'm presently dosing 165ml of randy's two part baking soda solution per day, and 130ml of anhydrous calcium chloride solution. I also recently added a third dosing chamber for magnesium, and 30ml/day seems to be keeping the levels around 1300ppm. As of two days ago, my dosing schedule finally brought my alk levels back up above 7.

I'm getting so bloody sick of using filter socks - they sometimes clog and start overflowing after 18 hours these days. WIthout them, my sump design allows too many micro-bubbles to get back in to the display. I've been toying with the idea of completely re-doing my overflow plumbing so that I can have an overflow that functions on the same principle as a BeanAnimal (I have the right number of holes), but that would be a major undertaking if the tank is just going to get broken down. If the people who buy my house want the tank, I'll probably do it.

[Jaws]

Beautiful tank! What substrate did you use?