Howdy!
I want to start off by thanking everyone here on reef frontiers for helping make my tank happen. Ive asked hundereds of questions and you guys have given me thousands of answers =). Without such a knowledge base, I would have been doomed to failure! I also want to give a special tanks the whole crew at Barrier Reef for all their help. Thanks for being on the cutting edge and making things like ATI skimmers and Elos tanks available to the area. Every time I encountered a serious problem, the guys at BR went above and beyond with offers to fix my situation. These guys will never leave you hanging!
The tank:
Elos 120xl(47.5x31.5x19.5)
Custom stand
Custom CFI sump w/refugium
ATI bubblemaster 150
2 x 250W reeflux 10k's on HQI ballast, mounted in lumenarc minis
1 x aquactinics T5 fixture(5 x 24W) mounted in the center, perpindicular to the tank
2 x Tunze 6101's w/controller
1 x 6025 tunze
Ehiem return pump
1/4hp sea-line chiller
AC JR for automation W/ranco controller for backup temperature protection
aquamedic dosing pump + 5gallon bucket of kalk for all alk/calc needs
20HR battery backup for the tunze 6025
System history:
Oh boy... So a year ago I had to move and thought, "what an excellent chance to upgrade my tank!" So I started my research and began to put together the system. I had a 38g reef that was filled to the brim at the time and wanted something several times larger. Time passes and a few weeks before Im set to move, the new rental unit falls through, but Ive already given notice to my previous landlord. Not fun having to find a place to set up a tank for month, and since I didn't have a place to stay myself, I was really up shts creak... Luckily two awesome members of the board(Class Clown and Trido you guys are the best!) offered to take on my live stock. Moving 35 corals, dozens of inverts, a few fish and 80 pounds of LR to a location 40 minutes away all by yourself though is no easy task. The whole thing took me about 8-10 hours to move it north, then another 8 hours again to move it all back to Seattle a month later. The corals did excellent and I had not a single loss.
Spirits were high at this point as I put all of my favorite critters into my new fancy glass box! I ordered some LR and began curing it. I figured I had about a month or so untill I could get the tank really going. At this point I made the horrific discovery that my LR which I had just recieved was infested with cirolanid isopods. For those who don't know, cirolanid isopod are fish killing lice that can survive on the smallest amounts of decaying food. They are pretty much the most resilliant thing on your LR. You could stick your rock in FW, you could leave them outside for a week, it doesnt matter, these things will survive. Nothing short of boiling can ensure that you kill the critters and their eggs. Since I didnt want to turn my LR into DR, I went with option two: capturing every single isopod in the tank by starving them and sparsly using traps. And So I went on for months trying to capture these *******s with no real luck. Every time I thought Id gotten them all Id wait a few weeks then catch one or two more. It was a losing batttle that went on for about 8 months.
In the mean time every other plague known to the reefer hit my display. First I discovered red bugs. Then an infestation of red flatorwms came. Finally, the flatworms were gone and dianoflaggeletes set in. Dianoflaggettes look a lot like diatoms and cyanobacteria so for abouth 4 months I misdiagonsed my problem as an algae bloom while the dinoflaggeltes wreaked havoc on my system. For those who don't know about dinoflaggetlets, they are a toxic bacteria. It coats everything like a fine layer of snot and bubbles. It kills off your cleaner crew first because they are walking in it and consuming it. I lost two cucumbers along with every single snail and hermit crab, my cleaner shrimp and my peppermint shrimp. Throughout this period of 4 months of dino's I began to slowly lose my corals. The stress of two moves, a new system, red bugs, flatworms and now dinoflaggelets was just too much for them. Next came my fish. They came down with some sort of poisoining from the dinoflaggelets and began swimming eradically upside down in circles. I managed to save my mandarin goby, but my Helfrichi firefish did not make it =\ It was this time that I realized that this was not diatoms, that it was infact dinoflaggeltes. After a few weeks I beat the diatoms and things began to recover. About this time I also beat my cirolanid infestation and was finally able to stableize my tank by adding the LR that I had bought for it 8 months previous. My tank finally got aquascaped and my corals started to grow! At this point I have lost about 6 or 7 of my original 35 coral but things were looking up.
About a month later the final nail in the coffin came. During this time all I added was a cleaner crew and a birdsnest frag, but somehow I got AEFW's. They really did a number on my tank, and desipte several TMPCC baths I lose another 10 of my favorite corals =\ Corals that had just barely made it through everything else finally gave out. Of all the SPS I started with, only 1 colony remained complete and unfragged(Ben's pruple tipped nana if anyone is intersted) most others were reduced to frags about an inch long, while others were lost completly.
The good news is I did beat the AEFW, and after a few months of good water quality things are doing awesome! That brings us to present day where this little reef is finally getting on its feet! Thats right... I dealt with redbugs, flatworms, dinoflageletes, cirolanid isopods, AND AEFW, and im still here =P I guess when something is a passion you can't give it up easily.
Feeding:
To keep the anthias and the rabbitfish happy I try to feed often and offer a good variety. Deciding how much to feed has always been challenging for me though so right now I really dont know if Im feeding a lot or a little or just right? Twice a day I give the tank 2 cubes of mysis with a chunk of rods reef food(labout the size of the mysis cube or maybe a little larger). I also feed the rabbitfish by hand 5 or 6 times a day with medium sized pecies of different dried algaes. Maybe a sheet in total?
Current inhabitants:
Fish-
Coral rabbitfish
Mandarin Goby
Yellow watchman goby
5 x Lyretail anthias
Inverts-
Cleaner shrimp
serpent starfish
Some snails
dozens of mini starfish
a big ugly crab in the sump
Corals-
Abouta dozen differnt SPS
a couple monitporas
Frogspawn
About a dozen aussie acans and micros
Duncan
Austrialian lobo
Pagoda cup
About 120~ pounds of LR
Both islands were consructed out of PVC first, then drilled and ziptied with dozens of rocks. The right "mound" is acutally hollow and my 7 inch rabbitfish loves to hide in it. Theres tons of mini caves and crevices for the smaller fish to dart in.
Pics:
Full tank shot:
Left side:
Closer shot of the pillar on the left:
Some acans on the left:
View through left side panel:
Center with the school of anthias:
I want to start off by thanking everyone here on reef frontiers for helping make my tank happen. Ive asked hundereds of questions and you guys have given me thousands of answers =). Without such a knowledge base, I would have been doomed to failure! I also want to give a special tanks the whole crew at Barrier Reef for all their help. Thanks for being on the cutting edge and making things like ATI skimmers and Elos tanks available to the area. Every time I encountered a serious problem, the guys at BR went above and beyond with offers to fix my situation. These guys will never leave you hanging!
The tank:
Elos 120xl(47.5x31.5x19.5)
Custom stand
Custom CFI sump w/refugium
ATI bubblemaster 150
2 x 250W reeflux 10k's on HQI ballast, mounted in lumenarc minis
1 x aquactinics T5 fixture(5 x 24W) mounted in the center, perpindicular to the tank
2 x Tunze 6101's w/controller
1 x 6025 tunze
Ehiem return pump
1/4hp sea-line chiller
AC JR for automation W/ranco controller for backup temperature protection
aquamedic dosing pump + 5gallon bucket of kalk for all alk/calc needs
20HR battery backup for the tunze 6025
System history:
Oh boy... So a year ago I had to move and thought, "what an excellent chance to upgrade my tank!" So I started my research and began to put together the system. I had a 38g reef that was filled to the brim at the time and wanted something several times larger. Time passes and a few weeks before Im set to move, the new rental unit falls through, but Ive already given notice to my previous landlord. Not fun having to find a place to set up a tank for month, and since I didn't have a place to stay myself, I was really up shts creak... Luckily two awesome members of the board(Class Clown and Trido you guys are the best!) offered to take on my live stock. Moving 35 corals, dozens of inverts, a few fish and 80 pounds of LR to a location 40 minutes away all by yourself though is no easy task. The whole thing took me about 8-10 hours to move it north, then another 8 hours again to move it all back to Seattle a month later. The corals did excellent and I had not a single loss.
Spirits were high at this point as I put all of my favorite critters into my new fancy glass box! I ordered some LR and began curing it. I figured I had about a month or so untill I could get the tank really going. At this point I made the horrific discovery that my LR which I had just recieved was infested with cirolanid isopods. For those who don't know, cirolanid isopod are fish killing lice that can survive on the smallest amounts of decaying food. They are pretty much the most resilliant thing on your LR. You could stick your rock in FW, you could leave them outside for a week, it doesnt matter, these things will survive. Nothing short of boiling can ensure that you kill the critters and their eggs. Since I didnt want to turn my LR into DR, I went with option two: capturing every single isopod in the tank by starving them and sparsly using traps. And So I went on for months trying to capture these *******s with no real luck. Every time I thought Id gotten them all Id wait a few weeks then catch one or two more. It was a losing batttle that went on for about 8 months.
In the mean time every other plague known to the reefer hit my display. First I discovered red bugs. Then an infestation of red flatorwms came. Finally, the flatworms were gone and dianoflaggeletes set in. Dianoflaggettes look a lot like diatoms and cyanobacteria so for abouth 4 months I misdiagonsed my problem as an algae bloom while the dinoflaggeltes wreaked havoc on my system. For those who don't know about dinoflaggetlets, they are a toxic bacteria. It coats everything like a fine layer of snot and bubbles. It kills off your cleaner crew first because they are walking in it and consuming it. I lost two cucumbers along with every single snail and hermit crab, my cleaner shrimp and my peppermint shrimp. Throughout this period of 4 months of dino's I began to slowly lose my corals. The stress of two moves, a new system, red bugs, flatworms and now dinoflaggelets was just too much for them. Next came my fish. They came down with some sort of poisoining from the dinoflaggelets and began swimming eradically upside down in circles. I managed to save my mandarin goby, but my Helfrichi firefish did not make it =\ It was this time that I realized that this was not diatoms, that it was infact dinoflaggeltes. After a few weeks I beat the diatoms and things began to recover. About this time I also beat my cirolanid infestation and was finally able to stableize my tank by adding the LR that I had bought for it 8 months previous. My tank finally got aquascaped and my corals started to grow! At this point I have lost about 6 or 7 of my original 35 coral but things were looking up.
About a month later the final nail in the coffin came. During this time all I added was a cleaner crew and a birdsnest frag, but somehow I got AEFW's. They really did a number on my tank, and desipte several TMPCC baths I lose another 10 of my favorite corals =\ Corals that had just barely made it through everything else finally gave out. Of all the SPS I started with, only 1 colony remained complete and unfragged(Ben's pruple tipped nana if anyone is intersted) most others were reduced to frags about an inch long, while others were lost completly.
The good news is I did beat the AEFW, and after a few months of good water quality things are doing awesome! That brings us to present day where this little reef is finally getting on its feet! Thats right... I dealt with redbugs, flatworms, dinoflageletes, cirolanid isopods, AND AEFW, and im still here =P I guess when something is a passion you can't give it up easily.
Feeding:
To keep the anthias and the rabbitfish happy I try to feed often and offer a good variety. Deciding how much to feed has always been challenging for me though so right now I really dont know if Im feeding a lot or a little or just right? Twice a day I give the tank 2 cubes of mysis with a chunk of rods reef food(labout the size of the mysis cube or maybe a little larger). I also feed the rabbitfish by hand 5 or 6 times a day with medium sized pecies of different dried algaes. Maybe a sheet in total?
Current inhabitants:
Fish-
Coral rabbitfish
Mandarin Goby
Yellow watchman goby
5 x Lyretail anthias
Inverts-
Cleaner shrimp
serpent starfish
Some snails
dozens of mini starfish
a big ugly crab in the sump
Corals-
Abouta dozen differnt SPS
a couple monitporas
Frogspawn
About a dozen aussie acans and micros
Duncan
Austrialian lobo
Pagoda cup
About 120~ pounds of LR
Both islands were consructed out of PVC first, then drilled and ziptied with dozens of rocks. The right "mound" is acutally hollow and my 7 inch rabbitfish loves to hide in it. Theres tons of mini caves and crevices for the smaller fish to dart in.
Pics:
Full tank shot:
Left side:
Closer shot of the pillar on the left:
Some acans on the left:
View through left side panel:
Center with the school of anthias:
