CaptCrash with his amazing mixed reef tank !
Prizes kindly donated by:
Aquablue Distribution
Darren has won:
Ocean Nutrition Foods Prize Pack
You can find out more about this tank in his Tank Journal
1) How Long have you been in the hobby?
I have been involved with marine fish keeping (sort of reefing) for a bit over three and a half years. The first marine tank was purchased as a second hand unit in October 2009; it was a 6x2x2. My experience with fish before that was some gold fish in an outside pond.
The old tank did not really get the love it deserved; whilst the fish have done well, corals have not. The new tank is an effort to correct this.
The stars of my tank
2a) what size is your winning tank, dimensions and litres?
The tank is an 8’ x 2.5’ x 2’ (2400mm x 750mm x 650mm) with an internal full height overflow and a 4’ x 2’ x 1.5’ sump (1200mm x 600mm x 450mm). Total system volume is just over 1300L.
2b) any reasons for that size tank?
The decision to upgrade to a larger tank had been coming for a while, the original tank was difficult to clean, the design was not great and the ability to return water to the tank from the sump was limited by a small overflow with a 25mm drain. The final straw was it starting to leak.
The dimensions of the new tank were based on providing more swimming room for the fish and I went with the maximum practical dimensions that could be passed through the doorway. The tank is 750mm wide, the doorway with facia and door removed is 765mm.
New Tank Delivery
2c) how long has this tank been setup?
The tank came together quite rapidly considering it and the stand were custom built. The tank was ordered on the 2nd of May this year with an ETA of the end of May. Dramas with the manufacture of the stand held up the tank being delivered until the night of the 17th of June, the tank was wet and running on the 20th June. I had organised all of the plumbing beforehand and most of the equipment was moved from the old tank, so it was really just a case of putting it together. It is now coming up on being wet for 2 months.
The transfer of livestock into this tank was rushed, as with the old tank leaking, there was a need to move everything as quickly as possible. Luckily I have some spare 3' tanks that I use for my fish breeding grow out, that were unused. These became the temporary home for the fish, live rock and the two corals that I had during the changeover. The fish were quite good in their temporary tanks but after about two weeks began to squabble quite a bit and because of this I didn’t give the new tank much time to settle before moving the livestock and live rock into the tank.
The filtration equipment from the old tank, rocks and 50% of the water were moved to the temporary tanks and then once the new tank was in place the rocks, water and filtration equipment were moved to the new tank.
Because of the lack of time to cycle the tank, I made sure that I had enough water for two full water changes on hand and also kept the temporary tanks running should there be any issues.
During the first 10 days of the fish being back into the tank I was testing the water every day (pH, salinity, temp and redox are continuous monitored via the GHL aquarium controller). Manually I was monitoring kH, phosphate, ammonia, nitrate and nitrite. Luckily everything has gone well with few casualties due to the move (a snail that got stuck under a rock in the temporary tank and two small corals from the old tank who didn’t do well in low light in the temporary tank). Also in the first week in the new tank two blue green chromis that became lunch for an anemone.
3a) what is your goal for this tank?
There were a few goals that I wanted to be able to meet for this this tank.
The first of which is to simplify the maintenance of the tank. By improving access inside the stand with a metal stand and by making it taller (975mm), I have been able to work in the stand in a much more comfortable manner. This has helped with keeping the tank clean and the water quality high.
Utilising three filter socks in parallel has been excellent, the flow of water in the return section is “aggressive” to say the least, and almost no settling occurs in this first section of the sump. The water then cascades onto the filter sock holder and then through the filter socks. I feed heavily to encourage spawning of the fish and shrimp in the tank, so the mechanical collection of leftover food and detritus is important. This design does an excellent job, but at the cost of changing filter socks on a regular basis (every 1-2 days).
I wanted to also work on minimising the number of active devices in the tank and as such I only run a single return pump connected to a manifold that feeds the skimmer, four reactors, chiller, UV and twin returns to the tank. All plumbing uses union joints and is hard piped where possible.
With some of the tangs starting to get towards adult size, they needed more swimming room; the new tank really helps with nearly twice the water volume as the old system and much more swimming space, easily twice as much. With this new tank I would also like to keep some corals, mainly stuff that will move with current, add some colour to the tank but also be hardy so that it doesn't get too much of a hard a time from the fish or the amount of food that goes into the tank.
The other significant goal with this tank is to provide a happy home for the blue tangs so I can keep working on raising the blue tang larvae and perhaps one day is able to provide captive bred blue tangs. Up to date information on this is available on in the breeding thread here on MASA and via the Facebook page for the project (http://www.facebook.com/RegalTangBreeding).
Blue Tang Prolarvae
3b) Have you researched anything specifically to reach this goal?
Other than lots of reading of people’s journals to obtain ideas, nothing specifically was researched. The ideas for this new tank have really come about due to deficiencies with the old one.
I have read up on a number of filtration options and have ended up going with a combination of solutions rather than focusing on a single method (live rock, macro algae, bio pellets and soon to be added an ATS).
3c) biggest lesson you've learnt whilst planning/setting up this tank?
Big drain pipes are excellent and will make a big puddle quickly if you don’t pay attention
If I was doing it again, I would have made my sump 50-100mm taller and made the partitions within the sump, 25mm steps rather than 50mm steps I used.
3d) any tips you'd like to pass on for others to learn from?
Planning everything out beforehand has saved a massive amount of time in the implementation stage. I used Google sketch up to plan everything from the tank layout, overflow, plumbing, stand and cabinet to even the approximate layout of rocks within the tank.
Plans
4) Do you have a sump and/or refugium? If so, what size?
The sump for the tank is a 4’ x 2’ x 1.5’ and includes five compartments. These are a drain section which overflows to three 100um filter socks then refugium with coral rubble and macro algae section under a DIY led light array. Then on to the skimmer and reactors section and then finally the return pump section.
Within the skimmer section of the sump I also have a small sand bed that is used for both sponge growth and to provide a sheltered home for mysid shrimp, copepods and micro brittle stars.
5) Filtration e.g. amount of live rock, sand bed or bare bottom, mechanical filtration etc.?
I use quite a few types of filtration within the tank, though not an overly large amount of each type given the tanks volume.
The tank itself has 80 Kg’s of live rock and 60 Kg’s of sand (10-20mm deep). Another 10Kg of coral rubble is in the sump under the filter socks to provide a protected home for mysids and copepods.
Three separate types of macro algae are grown within the refugium with Caulerpa brachypus being the most dominant.
Reactors in use include PhosGuard, GFO, Carbon and bio pellets.
Soon to also be added to the tank is a LED powered Algae Turf Scrubber; this has been ordered but will not arrive for a few weeks.
6) Do you have a skimmer? If so, what?
I use a Tunze 9016 skimmer in the tank. This unit is three years old and has done a good job on the old tank. With the change in tanks, it has improved in its operation with more water flow through the sump; it is now regularly filling its collection cup every 3-4 days. As the bio load of the tank increases, I will either add a second unit or replace the skimmer with a larger one if needed.
I really like the skimmer and also have a 9015 that I use with one of my breeding setups; the units do a great job and are really simple and easy to clean.
7) Water flow/movement (power heads etc.)?
The tank has four Tunze 6105 power heads that run on a surge pattern controlled by a GHL Profilux III Ex aquarium controller. The pumps alternate from 30% to 90% flow with one pump running at 90% then others at 30%. This rotates across the four pumps.
Once a day at a random time, storm mode runs on the controller and all pumps run at 90% for a varied period of time (5-30 minutes) to keep detritus in suspension and clear any detritus out from around the rocks etc.
To enhance the movement in the tank, there is also a Tunze 6215 wave box for creating a surge in the tank with a small wave, this provides an almost natural surge look to the tank without a large wave being formed (40-50mm peak to trough).
Flow in the tank is quite difficult to define, given the variance that the controllable pumps introduce. In the tanks normal day time mode, the tank has about 23,500L/h of flow, dropping to 15,600L/h at night. When a storm is running this increases to around 47,000L/h of flow.
The system uses a single 12,000L/h return pump, allowing for reactors, chillier and pipe losses approx. 6,000L/h is delivered to the tank via two educators, each being supplied by a separate 25mm line from the return manifold.
8) Lighting, type and times?
I took the opportunity to enhance my DIY LED lighting with the tank upgrade. This involved lengthening the existing fixture from 6’ to 8’ and lowering the lights slightly.
At the same time I introduced additional channels of colour into the LED array. The lighting array includes eight independently controllable channels of royal blue and white LEDS (4 channels each) for the primary lighting. Eight additional channels of independently controllable supplemental lighting has then been added to provide additional colours during sunset and sunrise and during the day (colours include near UV, deep red, amber, green, cyan, blue, cool white and warm white).
The refugium is lit by a DIY controllable LED array with a single channel of 8 x deep red and 2 x royal blue LEDs.
All of the lighting is controlled by the GHL aquarium controller, lighting runs from 7:30am to 8pm with a 40 minute turn on/off sequence. During this time the lighting fades on/off from the left of the tank to the right.
The lighting intensity adjusts during the day with peak intensity at approx. 2pm (65% max brightness). The LED arrays are all passively cooled and run the LED’s at lower than their rated specifications.
The aquarium controller provides a large number of controllable components (lighting show off stuff
), these are mostly all enabled to provide a more realistic appearance. Randomly clouds will move down the length of the tank. Some days the controller will run a rainy day and the lighting intensity will be reduced for the day. Storms are activated by the controller with the main lights dimming and some GHL effects lights then providing lightning across the tank during a storm. During the night, the effects lights provide moonlighting across the tank with the intensity of the moonlight corresponding to the phase of the moon across the month. Whilst there is quite a bit of fun stuff, in the lighting that it would be hard to argue is required. The result of putting all of these pieces together is a variable lighting pattern that adds extra interest to the tank.
A bonus to all of the lighting is that the Blue Tangs co-ordinate their spawning with the light dimming at dusk and spawn once half of the tank is in darkness, just on the light side of the tank.
Blue Tang Eggs
9) Other equipment such as auto top-off, Ca reactor etc.?
I use an RO auto top-off system controlled by the aquarium controller with about 60-80L of RO water per week.
3x36w UV units are plumbed into the system in series but are not run unless required. Water flows through the units no matter if they are powered on or not and is returned to the sump.
10) Water parameter targets?
Water parameters are measured weekly, typically before and after a water change to obtain an idea of the stability of the system and to gauge the frequency of changes. Given the age of the system, I’m still getting some movement in measurements and trying to figure out where it’s likely to stabilise.
Overall most parameters are at the lower end of the typical target (e.g. calcium, alk etc.) values by the time a water change is due or just starting to exceed the target levels (phosphate etc.). As such I don’t dose anything really; I just do regular large water changes (10-40% per week).
11) Additives and conditioners (kalk, phosphate removers etc.)
I don’t use any additives regularly (occasional kH supplement), but do use PhosGuard, GFO and Carbon that are all run in reactors.
12) Fish stock
3 x Blue Tangs, two female one male (Paracanthurus hepatus)
1 x Naso Lipstick Tang (Naso lituratus)
1 x Yellow Tang (Zebrasoma flavescens)
1 x Achilles Tang, yet to be added to the tank, currently in QT (Acanthurus achilles)
4 x Blue Green Chromis (Chromis viridis)
2 x Blue Streak Cleaner Wrasse (Labroides dimidiatus)
2 x Banana Wrasse (Halichoeres chrysus)
1 x Yellow Damsel (Amblyglyphidodon aureus?)
1 x Decorated Goby (Istigobius decorates?)
13) Coral stock.
2 x leather corals
4 x hammer corals
2 x disc corals
lots of zoo corals
several varieties of Morphs and Rhodactis
14) Other Inverts.
2 x Red line cleaner shrimp (Lysmata amboinensis)
6 x Peppermint Shrimp (Lysmata vitatta)
8 x Glass shrimp (Palaemon serenus?)
2 x lime green bubble tip anemones
2 x clams
6 x Turbo and Trochus snails
12 x Nassarius snails (Nassarius sp)
2 x Strombus snails (Strombus sp)
20 x mysid shrimp, now 100s
10 x micro brittle stars
5-6 random hitchhiker crabs and quite a few pistol shrimp
15) Maintenance such as water changes, cleaning etc.?
Every 2-3 weeks I siphon the sand, clean the glass, scrape the overflow and do approx. 500L water change. In the other weeks I do a 150L water change and clean the glass.
Every 1-2 days I change the filter socks and due to the design, don’t need to stop the water flow, move pipes etc. It just a case of lift out the dirty one and put a new clean one in.
16) Acknowledgements, thank-you's and any other comments you would like to make that don't apply elsewhere.
I would like to thank everyone from MASA for the honour of being selected as the tank of the future. I hope that I can deliver a tank in the future that is as stunning as some of the other tanks shown within the forum and that are selected as Tank of the Month.
Without the efforts of T-Bone, Zig, the guys from Vebas and Jess getting the tank into the house would have been a bit of a problem. I cannot thank them enough for their efforts of carrying such a heavy chunk of glass and managing to get it through the doorway undamaged.
Many people from MASWA who have graciously given me livestock and equipment for the new tank, including T-Bone, DgrMouse, BlueBay, chrispc66, some_one and others (sorry if I missed you).
I would also like to thank Rex for never actually managing to get into the tank and being happy to just watch.
Finally thanks to everyone who has provided advice and has followed my journey with this tank and my breeding efforts. I really appreciate the support you have provided.
Darren
