Had my old tank on here... Switched over to a 120 with a move in May 2014.
The tank has had some ups and downs. Here is the tank as of July 31, 2015.
I constantly take pics of my tank on my phone but always delete them. Going to use this as a platform to post progression shots. I get alot of sun in the room so the right side is getting hit pretty hard right now with sunlight.
This tank is run on a Zeovit system with a starboard bottom (no sand) and uses 2 MP40s, 1 MP10 and an Eheim 1262 return for water movement. With the system being ULNS my biggest challenge is maintaining colors in the system. At the time of this post it has been a few days since I have throttled back my nutrient removal by 50%. I plan to monitor things for the next 3 weeks while nutrients are able to build up a bit in the system to see how that changes the overall color in the tank. I am hoping during this period I will get richer color and in some cases the pale corals I have will start to gain color back.
Lightning source is an 8 bulb ATI fixture using the following combination front to back:
Blue Plus
Coral Plus
Blue Plus
Blue Plus
Purple Plus
Blue Plus
Coral Plus
Blue Plus
As for par measurements in the tank, the top right pillar is receiving around 650 par while the corals in the bottom center of the tank are receiving just over 300 par.
Current fish in the system:
Black Tang
Achilles Tang
Blue Hippo Tang
Borbonius Anthias
2 of Donnie's Premium Picasso Clowns
Midas Blenny
Four-line Wrasse
Orchid Dottybak
2 Neon Gobies
As for corals in the system I keep mainly SPS. For non-SPS corals I do keep a couple different blastos, an aussie gold torch, frogspawn ,a duncan, some aussie acans and a trachy. I only have ked's reds for zoas. I try my best to have corals growing on all sides of the rocks so when you look at the tank from different angles there is also something different to see. Some of my largest colonies are actually growing on the back side of the rocks and cannot be seen in the above image.
^ Ha! Yes growth has been doing good as of late. It is true what they say, after the first year or so the tank starts to really take off.
At the moment I am dosing 2-part at 60ml of Alk and 72ml of Ca daily. In addition, I also run kalk through the reactor I had which is fed by my ATO.
More importantly - You liked my desk! Since you were here last I actually put some fans up, painted a wall and added shelving so it actually looks like an office in here!
This branching monti is my oldest piece since getting back in the hobby a few years ago. It was a wild caught colony I obtained in May 2013. It now covers the entire back of my left pillar and I've traded a couple good chunks of it away over the years as well. Very fast grower for me.
This is a shot through the left side of the glass to show things a little more. You'll see some stuff looking good and some stuff paled out. This is where I am hoping that by reducing the nutrient export it will help get color back into those pieces. They are growing and have great PE but lacking the desired color.
Its 1/2 starboard siliconed to the bottom of the tank and around the edges. Overtime some of the silicone gave way and I would suspect that some detritus may have found its way through.
My MP10 runs across the bottom back of the tank in an attempt to make sure nothing gets to settle and I've debated changing that out to a MP40 but I think it could be too much flow.
I do not have much build-up under the actual rocks themselves and most of the detritus will end up in one spot under my large green digitata colony. I will siphon this out into the filter sock 1-2x a day as I am passing by the tank.
A turkey baster is used a couple of times a week but there is never much detritus build-up within the rocks.
Blasting the rocks and dosing the tank with any nutrients happens between 10:30 and midnight everyday. My skimmer does not run between 11pm and 2am so the corals can eat.
I am somebody who really, really hates having sand in an aquarium. Having a sand bed does make the tank look better but with as much detritus as I siphon out despite being bare bottom and having a dedicated powerhead just for the purpose of keeping stuff off the starboard, I can only imagine how much crap would have built-up over this past year had I went with sand.
I got a nice chunk of Tyree Setosa from Michelle a couple of months ago. I do have a blue tort but it is very small (1.5") I could probably use a mini-colony of that.
Here is a pic of my tank I posted Feb 22, 2015. When comparing the before and now, alot has changed in almost 6 months.
My largest piece in the tank. This piece is around the size of a dinner plate and has ran out of room in alot of places to spread out so now it is just climbing up the back wall of the tank. The corals on the right of the image are primarily the ones I would like to see gain some color over the coming weeks with the changes I made recently.
The largest and most visible piece on the right is a red planet I got from Michelle a couple of months ago. It is encrusting and starting to grow but has not gotten any green in it yet. It is definately more red in person than what these images portray.
In the middle right of the image is what I believe to be an abrotanoides. This is one of my worst pieces interms of faded with no signs of color. It has encrusted well and starting to grow out. I'm hoping the green starts to come in soon (I got it brown) and if I am lucky maybe we will have some red.
I'm starting to notice my Borbonius likes to be in all of my pictures.
Awesome tank man. I know what it's like to have a tank full of frags and then it finally gets to the point where it looks good in full tank shots - its no small feat with SPS. It's funny with SPS... each individual branch grows kind of slowly, but at some point they get multiple branches, and then when all those branches start growing its like the growth explodes... seems like you reached that point somewhere around spring this year lol.
Very nice tank . I like the 2 bommie scapes . I hate sand as much as I hate BB n starboard .
It seemed I couldn't keep the BB clean enough and I constantly had to siphon detritus out of the sand . (shrug shoulders ) .
What is your dosing regimen ?
I run 1/2 liter of stones in my Zeovit reactor at around 65gph and 1 cup of carbon in my Bluefin reactor that I change out every 4 weeks.
Daily I will add 3 drops of Zeostart3 (fancy Vinegar) in the morning and evening. Everyday I also add 5 drops of Coral Vitalizer around 11pm.
Other products I will use 2-4x a week are Pohls Xtra, Iodide Flouride, Coral Snow, Zeozym, Biomate, Zeobak, Amino Acids and Coral Frenzy.
Have used B-Balance and K-Balance in the past but at this time I do not use them. If nutrients start to build-up and corals darken too much I will start using B-Balance again.
I don't see Zeospur2 listed so the paling out isn't from that . (scary stuff if used incorrectly ) .
I talked to someone who has seen your tank and this is just a guess . Do u think you are pounding that tank with too much par or too long of a light cycle ? The par numbers I heard are like "WOW " . Have u tried leaving everything as is and just tweaking down the lights a little ?
I gotta give it to you . That tank is immacualte ..Well done ..
Wow! That is amazing! Thank you for posting that. My phone is so full on pics I kept deleting the old ones and was trying to find somebody who had an original...
Yes, I suppose I have to say things have come a long way.
The tank stand is 10 feet long and was made by Deerslayer from 2x4s. My next "tank goal" as long as I am staying put here for another year will be to skin the inside of the stand in white HDPE material and build myself a sufficient sump.
I work from home so my working desk is attached to the stand making it giant 10x10 L. My work area uses Ikea kitchen base cabinets without feet so my desk sits a couple of inches higher than your standard office desk. The desk / stand top are Ikea kitchen counter-tops which makes it really easy to clean-up water.
The entire thing is skinned using Ikea kitchen cabinet side panels and doors. I had to be a little creative when trying to figure out how to hang the doors on the tank stand. What I came up with works just ok as it is not really functional when it comes to taking the doors on and off repeatedly through the day.
I'll post a full shot with everything finished tomorrow.
Looks awesome as always Matt, let me know when you want to frag some stuff! Lol...
tank is beautiful, pics don't do it justice, have seen it in person and it is gorgeous.
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