Cook's 40 Gallon Breeder Frag Tank

[Cook]

So, with no additional bleach to be found, I've moved to an alternate plan for after the 10-14 days of treatment with the Chloroquine Phosphate, tomorrow is already day 7 for them. I went to pickup dog food Thursday at Petco and the $1 a gallon sale was on. So, I will move to the tank transfer method afterwards just to be sure. I built a stand last night to hold two 20 long's, but I am struggling for paint. My choices from the shed while the quarantine is in place are black truck bedliner, fluorescent orange, fluorescent green, or brake caliper red right now.

 

[snarky shark]

Red would be interesting.

Sent from my SM-N975U using Tapatalk

 

[Cook]

15 days of CP treatment completed Monday. I just completed the first tank transfer tonight. So far so good and having two tanks to switch them out quickly makes the whole process much easier. Yes, the stand is red, it was the only paint color that I had two cans of. Sterilizing everything is still a pain though.

 

[Cook]

To clear the tank of ich, I drained it and refilled with tap water and added 1 cup of vinegar per 10 gallons (5 cups for the 50 gallon volume).I cycled it for 8 hours last Saturday. I drained the tank and sump and dried out any residual water. Everything is dry as of yesterday. I will restart the tank this weekend. I did not disassemble the piping, but I did disconnect the return pump and take it apart to dry and all the piping is open. I may blow some compressed air though the lines to be sure.

Everyone is still looking good so far in QT, tank transfer #4 was yesterday. Saturday will be the last transfer before observation. I treated with Prazi last week and I will treat again Saturday, before I move them back to the 40 gallon this Tuesday. At that point, the tangs will be for sale again. I'm tempted to keep the Hippo even though the 40 gallon is too small for him long term, he is such a crazy fish and any small area he can find to cram himself into he will.

 

[Cook]

30 Days later and here we are, everyone back in the tank again for observation.

 

[Cook]

Cinco de Mayo! Day 76! The tank condensing is ready to begin. I was drawn in on an R2R post where they praised Garf Grunge for adding biodiversity that I now know is pretty old school. I ordered some of the stuff to try to help kickstart this tank. I will be moving about half of the Marine pure spheres that are in the RS 170 over to this tank as well. The rest I will leave with the live rock until the parameters on this tank settle out. When the grunge arrived, it was pretty terrible smelling stuff. I placed the grunge in a small tank with new water, a heater, and a bubble filter and just let it run for a week. There is definitely some stuff still kicking in there. We will see how much live stuff there actually is as this progresses. I transferred the now more normal smelling contents into the refugium area of the frag tank tonight. I also added a cup of live sand I have from the 30 gallon trough from the original tank also. I'm interested in whether or not this can help smooth out the longer period bare bottom tanks generally take to stabilize.

One quick thing, I bought a bucket head shop vac from home depot right before the quarantine and it makes draining and cleaning a sump so much easier.

 

[ZapataInc]

Cinco de Mayo! Day 76! The tank condensing is ready to begin. I was drawn in on an R2R post where they praised Garf Grunge for adding biodiversity that I now know is pretty old school. I ordered some of the stuff to try to help kickstart this tank. I will be moving about half of the Marine pure spheres that are in the RS 170 over to this tank as well. The rest I will leave with the live rock until the parameters on this tank settle out. When the grunge arrived, it was pretty terrible smelling stuff. I placed the grunge in a small tank with new water, a heater, and a bubble filter and just let it run for a week. There is definitely some stuff still kicking in there. We will see how much live stuff there actually is as this progresses. I transferred the now more normal smelling contents into the refugium area of the frag tank tonight. I also added a cup of live sand I have from the 30 gallon trough from the original tank also. I'm interested in whether or not this can help smooth out the longer period bare bottom tanks generally take to stabilize.

One quick thing, I bought a bucket head shop vac from home depot right before the quarantine and it makes draining and cleaning a sump so much easier.

View attachment 23510View attachment 23511

I need to get one of those bucket top vacs.

 

[Cook]

I had to wait for parts for my aquatic life hybrid fixture. I've been waiting since February. They are finally here, so I will be starting the tank condensing process this weekend. Since the 40 gallon frag tank at this point is only a month old, I have been swapping 5 gallons of water a day between my red sea 170 and the 40 Gallon. I'll be ready to transfer once my alkalinities are equal between the two. At that point I will transfer all the rock and media into the frag system along with the SPS frags. I need the return pump from the 170 to run my UV sterilizer.

I have done a few things in the down time. I made a shade for my Kessil 160 fuge light when it's needed.

 

[Cook]

I have these pistol shrimp that my son loves and I wasn't a fan of putting them in my display and hearing the clicks they make ALL the time, but I wanted the frag tank to be bare bottom. I opted to make my own acrylic box to place some sand I already have in the tank for them. Of course there is what you watch on youtube and then there is how you work with acrylic for the first time. It looks good in all the right places, but definitely not my next career. I drilled 120 holes with my drill press and didn't crack a single one, so I can be proud of that. The bottom is frosted because I made a mess with the excess solvent and sanded it.

 

[Cook]

I got the 19.4" brackets installed and moved the Mitras into the Aquatic Life fixture over the weekend. I rented a par meter from Pure Reef for a day and balanced the lighting out. I have about 150-200 par on the racks at the moment. I have 2x ATI Blue plus, a coral plus and an actinic installed. I'm only using the T5's for an hour a day while I let the frags acclimate to their new home. I moved over about 10 pounds of live sand over from the garage trough from Martin's tank. I used some egg crate that I clipped the centers out of (each square is ~1" in size now) and added some 3D printed frag legs to so that I can set some rock on top without worrying about crushing anyone later. I transferred the frags Monday and some live rock and Marine Pure spheres that were left in the RS 170 today after I let them stay there without lighting for a 3 day blackout due to cyano. I'm back down to 2 tanks in the house finally.

 

[Cook]

This weekend's project was a UV sterilizer. My first challenge was plumbing since I didn't plan for a sterilizer ahead of time. I designed a 3D bracket to fit the Aqua UV bracket to the side rail of the stand. I think it worked out OK. I went with an Aqua UV 25 watt Classic that I got for $100 and now that I have it running, I might have preferred a 15W to keep the tank turnover down. I'm running a dosage of 90,000, but it's an 8x turnover rate. My overall flow through the sump is up also, probably 750-800 gallons an hour. It's basically two returns now. I'm starting with a new bulb, so I am definitely excited about the 14 month schedule for replacement that they recommend, I thought I was in for a 6 month replacement schedule. Also, almost all the corals have gotten some of their color back, it's been a fairly rapid improvement now that there are nutrients in the tank. I have an algae bloom going on at the moment which isn't surprising given the tank move and the higher level of nitrate (2-5ppm) and phosphate (0.07).

 

[NanCrab]

Cinco de Mayo! Day 76! The tank condensing is ready to begin. I was drawn in on an R2R post where they praised Garf Grunge for adding biodiversity that I now know is pretty old school. I ordered some of the stuff to try to help kickstart this tank. I will be moving about half of the Marine pure spheres that are in the RS 170 over to this tank as well. The rest I will leave with the live rock until the parameters on this tank settle out. When the grunge arrived, it was pretty terrible smelling stuff. I placed the grunge in a small tank with new water, a heater, and a bubble filter and just let it run for a week. There is definitely some stuff still kicking in there. We will see how much live stuff there actually is as this progresses. I transferred the now more normal smelling contents into the refugium area of the frag tank tonight. I also added a cup of live sand I have from the 30 gallon trough from the original tank also. I'm interested in whether or not this can help smooth out the longer period bare bottom tanks generally take to stabilize.

One quick thing, I bought a bucket head shop vac from home depot right before the quarantine and it makes draining and cleaning a sump so much easier.

View attachment 23510View attachment 23511

I’ve never seen or heard of this! Thanks for posting it as I will definitely be looking at getting one! Haven’t used our good shopvac yet, this would be awesome! Thanks.

 

[Cook]

So it's been a few months. I came to realize just how badly zero nutrients was hurting me in my ill fated RS 170 experiment. All my corals went from super pale to fully colored within two weeks of moving to the new tank.I learned a few things in that time also like don't add your freshly seeded live rock just before you leave for vacation. In my case, the Marco Rock addition also increased my Alkalinity to 13.5 dkh within 7-10 days before I caught on. I believe that was related to the Citric Acid bath I gave them, I had a lot of by product (calcium citrate) that was difficult to remove from the rock afterwards. STN'd during the alkalinity spike were Voodoo Majik, Pink Floyd, Pinky the Bear and two others I can't remember the names of. The corals that pulled through that event and are now back to normal are Walt Disney, Jason Fox Flame, WWC Slimeball, Aussie Gold, PC Rainbow, AV99 Orange crush, Oregon tort, Myagi Tort.

 

[Cook]

Here is an update from today. Still working through a mini cycle from moving tanks despite swapping water between the two for two weeks, so I have some uglies and enough green algae that my clownfish are hosting it. I have clownfish eggs. Great polyp extension on the SPS, it's better than my display tank. Low nitrates (2-5) and .06 phosphates. I'm using an automatic feeder to feed once a day to keep from bottoming out. I'm not lighting my refugium or using any phosphate reducer media, just carbon. I'm also experimenting with my 3D printed frag bases that I drilled the rocks out to fit before I placed them in the tank. The intent is to grow out several of my best frags into colonies. Walt Disney and Homewrecker are shown, but I'm not sure if the Homewrecker is going to make it. It was in poor shape when I got it, but it was super cheap so worth the risk. I also now understand why people might not like egg crate for a frag stand. Any algae that floats gets trapped on it and it grows very well once captured. I just blew these totally clean with a pressure washer last weekend.

 

[Cook]

Things are growing well and I have coralline algae forming on the rocks. I placed another Walt Disney frag on a clear frag base to see what I like better. The other one is growing out onto the base without any issue. I'll probably take the smaller one off to sell and make room for something else on the rack. I only have grow out room for 4 of my favorites. The homewrecker nub has pulled through and the algae in the tank is becoming more manageable. I have a very fat lawnmower blenny to show for it. I'm experimenting with several varieties of zoanthids, and I tried to also pick some that I haven't seen for sale on the forums all that often. I have them on tiles for grow out purposes. Acid rain, Supergirl, Flaming Brohican, Hyper Phoenix, Black Orchid, Time Warp, Blue Lagoon, Frozen Armageddon, Armageddon, God of War, Hyper Jubilee, Punk Rockers, Chemical Romance, Rainbow Yoda, Mystique, Burning Embers, Utter Peace, KH Sunburst, and Nightmares.

 

[Cook]

So after the storm and 3 day power outage, most everything pulled through except for the black orchid zoas which are intact but closed and discolored, and all but one of my acid refluxes melted. My oregon tort is losing some tissue, the phosphates are a little high at 0.16ppm, with my Nitrates a little low at 2ppm. I bought some B-Ionic Nitrate to try dosing a little to see if there is any benefit and added some Rowaphos to drop the phosphates. I was also the victim of bad timing on my part. I ordered some high end zoas that shipped out on Cyber Monday not thinking about how many more packages were being shipped due to Covid. They did not arrive on Tuesday, I picked them up Wednesday morning at Fedex and they were in bad shape. I lost every one of them within 3 days, Solar Circus, Leprechauns, Exospheres, even the less exotic ones like purple hornets and OG Jason Fox bloodshots melted.

Now that I have the extension plugs from @civics14, I'm going to place my Mp10's in the tank for more flow. I can see some areas that don't have enough like where my gold hammer is.

 

[Cook]

Since no one is going to remember this post in about 4 days now, how about a virtual opening of my first corals of the new year from zoanthids.com! Fedex is still slow, I pushed these into the new year for delivery and they still took an extra 4 hours to arrive. I haven't ordered from Brandon before, but I wanted to get some stuff from him after I missed his table at the frag swap. The box is well packaged with multiple heat packs.

 

[Trizzino]

Since no one is going to remember this post in about 4 days now, how about a virtual opening of my first corals of the new year from zoanthids.com! Fedex is still slow, I pushed these into the new year for delivery and they still took an extra 4 hours to arrive. I haven't ordered from Brandon before, but I wanted to get some stuff from him after I missed his table at the frag swap. The box is well packaged with multiple heat packs.
View attachment 36082View attachment 36081

where are they opened?

 

[Cook]

Hey, I'm a slow dipper.

 

[Cook]

They are just starting to open.