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Katrina's 90 gallon SPS reef


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My tank is an AGA RR on a diy stand, canopy and side cabinet finished with oak.

 

I recently added a 20g long for zoanthid propagation. This tank sets on a 36" x 30" "cabinet" that also conceals my closed loop and chiller pumps and gives me a work area for fragging, water testing, etc.

 

I'm running 2 - 250W Iwasakis on the new Icecap ballasts supplement with 3 - 110W blue actinics and 1 - 110W white actinic. I'm thinking about switching to Ushios. Anyone running Ushios on Icecaps? I'm curious to see what they look like.

 

Other equipment:

 

DIY phosphate reactor, nilsen reactor, acrylic refugium

Mag 12 return pump on SCWD concealed in overflow

Panworld pumps on closed loop and chiller

GEO calcium reactor

Pacific Coast CL-280 chiller

Turboflotor 1000

100 gpd RO/DI

Auto-top off and nilsen reactor plumbed into RO/DI line

Won Bros. 350W IC titanium heater

Pinpoint pH and temp monitors

 

I run the calcium reactor 24/7 and drip about 2 gal of kalk everynight to keep my calcium around 390-400.

 

I have approximately 16 small-med sps colonies. My faves are granulosa, yellow monti cap, pink monti cap, pink&blue millepora, and unidentified bali acro.

 

Over 20 zoanthid colonies, purple tang, coral beauty, royal gramma, neon psuedochromis, 2 green mandarins, widowed ocellaris clown, purple and blue linckias, 2 serpent and 1 brittlestar, 100+ snails, NO crabs (except acro crabs)

 

It's getting awful crowded in there :lol: After seeing Jeff's (4C Horseman) GARF tank--I'm thinking "I can do that!!" :D First I need to figure out how to get the 80+ bales of hay out of my garage :lol:

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  • 4 months later...
  • 6 months later...

My tank recently melted down somewhat--lost most of my sps. So I decided to rethink the whole thing and made some major changes.

 

Nikki helped me with this project and started a thread with pictures about it on RF. If you're interested here's a link to that thread.

 

http://www.reeffrontiers.com/forums/showthread.php?t=9070

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how deep was your sand bed? how long was the tank up and functioning? H2O changes... how often and how much? just curious.... trying to find patterns (if any) to sand beds leaching orthophosphates. thanks and sorry to hear you were having problems. ttys.

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welcome to bare bottom Katrina. As I found out ones tank can still overheat and kill most of your montis...

 

 

yuck

 

i like my new chiller.... still not all recevered yet though

 

 

is the zoo tank going to remain connected?

 

and were those 6000s or 6100s?

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Those are 6000s--I think 6100 would be way too much in a 90 g.

 

The sandbed was about 4-5 inches and about 22 months old. It was actually pretty clean when I pulled it although I could measure phosphates in a water sample pulled from the sand bed even though they weren't measurable in the water column. I don't think the sandbed was the cause of my problems although it may have been a contributor. I pulled it because I wanted to put the Tunzes wherever I felt they were needed without producing a sand storm.

 

I think my problems were caused by an unfortunate combination of events/conditions--

 

1. Changed bulbs from AB 10k to Phoenix 14k

2. Excess caulerpa toxins

3. Reduced flow from size of colonies

4. Redbugs

 

I have always done 10% weekly water changes, except for about a month early this summer when I wasn't feeling well. I also shut my carbon canister off at that time, because I knew it needed to be changed, but didn't feel well enough to do it. I think this had been controlling the toxins from the caulerpa. This was about the same time I changed the bulbs. Finally, some of the colonies had gotten so big, that the water circulation, I believe, was no longer adequate. I had about 5000 gph, but it was all concentrated in the top of the tank. I think all of this coupled with the stress of the red bugs and light spectrum change was just too much.

 

All of my fish, clams, zoos, and lps are doing great. It was just the sps that suffered. I have about 6 of the 20 colonies left--I think I may still lose a couple of those.

 

The 20 g zoo tank remains connected--I'm still in the process of upgrading that to a 40 and adding a 50 g cube that will be an anemone habitat--all 3 will be plumbed together.

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hmmm.. i would like to plumb tanks together.. but how do you plan to deal with the no dead spot problem with the new tanks... let me know how it goes...

 

 

it is interesting .. when i changed to an AB 10K from my sakis.. that was the same time as the start of my problems... once i saw there was bad voodoo amiss.. i went back and am still sitting on the olderbulb... needless to say i am a little parinoid about that bulb... though i know it didn't cause it based on where the infections started on my montis...

 

i too have been working on pretty hard on my circulation .. right now i have about 4-5000 in the 75 via eductors and the return/ chiller on panworlds adn several maxis pointing under rocks, and am doing phase 2 soon, which is a 6000 at the bottom of the tank, and pullign some of the maxis. [phase 3 will be a 2nd tunze on the other side :)]

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but how do you plan to deal with the no dead spot problem with the new tanks

 

Hmmm, not sure what you mean....

 

If anyone's interested, I posted a few more pics at the link above. Mostly new livestock.

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  • 2 years later...

This tank has gone through a lot of changes in 5 years and now it's coming down for good. Thought I should post one last pic, but apparently after all this time I still don't know how to post a pic. It's here in my photo gallery.

http://www.indmas.org/modules.php?name=cop...um=57&pos=0

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Thanks for posting the pic for me Robert. I'll have to have you teach me how to do that.

 

I'm going to set up a Solana which is a 20-inch cube and I'll be keeping the smaller livestock. But the large caps and the foxface and hippo tang have to go as well as a large CBS and several RBTAs, serpent and brittle stars. Selling all equipment except AC Jr & RO DI.

 

I'm looking forward to having a smaller system.

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No problem and I'd be glad to do a write up on how to do images. Seems it is something lots of people have problems with initially.

 

I know a certain long haired guy that tried to boil his reef over the summer. He might be in the market for a chiller before it starts warming up again. :)

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I think a sticky in this forum on how to do images makes a lot of sense.

 

When the tank starts coming down and stuff is available for sale, I'll post in the INDMAS sale forum before I offer it to non-members.

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