Featured Tank, Third Quarter, 2010

Mike Meek's 120 Gallon Reef Tank

My business partner piqued my interest in reef keeping about eight or ten years ago. He had a 110 gallon tank that was absolutely fantastic compared to the African Cichlids and planted aquariums that my wife and I were keeping. We knew that it was time for something different.

Off to Aquatek to buy a little Eclipse tank. With two power compact lamps, it was enough to stock a tank with LPS and this was fantastic! Fast forward, and of course, we upgraded to the 120 gallon reef ready tank. In the years since, I have tried many different approaches to reef keeping and spent most of the time thinking I was good about reef chemistry, husbandry, and the lot. All the while, I was growing brown SPS and tons of zoos and mushrooms under twin 250Watt HQI lamps in a tank with an aging 4-5" sand bed. Fabulous tank for fish, LPS and raising brown acros in a high phosphate environment. Pity I never bought that Hanna meter. Instead, I kept thinking the old brown reef was from inadequate equipment. You know how that goes and it's always a great excuse to cycle through all sorts of different approaches to the mechanics of reef keeping. All the while, I overlooked the one thing that we all know intuitively: water quality matters!

So in July of 2008, after equipping the tank with LumenBrights and 400W Reeflux lamps, I began a course of Polyp Lab. You can read about my experience with it here.

The Polyp Lab system worked with some success, but I was still ignoring the elephant in the room. THE SAND BED! I finished the first course of Polyp Lab and watched the tank slip backwards for a six to eight months. Out of frustration, I bit the bullet and bought another round. Three months later, I was left feeling like the lack of color had to be from something else. Then it hit me...I had an old crashing sand bed. I just knew that with the detritus and trash-filled sand bed gone, all this cool equipment would grow colorful, healthy coral.

My very supportive wife volunteered to help with the removal of the sand. I read all the threads I could find on how to do this without poisoning the tank and determined that the best way would be to remove the sand bed incrementally. For a month, I took a bit out with each weekly water change and little by little, everything in the tank began to wither. We realized that the incremental approach was not our friend.

In September of 2009, we decided that we had to perform radical surgery and either kill or cure our tank. We brought the house temperature up to 78 degrees, set out all the rubbermaid buckets we could find and took everything out of the tank. In a span of five hours, the tank became a bare bottom tank. This marked the new beginning for the tank.

Six weeks later, most everything had recovered to better than pre-bare bottom status...a very average looking bit of millieporas, brown acros, and booming montiporas. I had continued Polyp Lab, but I didn't have confidence that it was going to be able to overcome what clearly was an issue of bound phosphate from my live rock soaking in a high nitrate and phosphate environment for the last 6-7 years.

In December of 2009, I began researching Zeovit. Additives with names like Sponge Power, Pohl’s Extra, and the like caused me to feel a great deal of skepticism about trying this protocol, but I just kept reading. There are zeo threads on all the reef boards and the funny thing about them was that most all threads had examples of good looking SPS tanks. More reading and digging had me convinced that it might be something I wanted to try since I had had some luck with bacteria and carbon source systems like Brightwell Aquatics Microbacter7/Vodka (yes, tried this too) and Polyp Lab

In January of 2010, I retooled the sump to the 40-gallon breeder that would hold my large 9440 skimmer and the Vertex Zeo reactor. I began to let my alkalinity drift down to 7. Yes, 7...zeo tanks run at a lower alkalinity and the hidden blessing in this is that your pumps calcify less quickly and require fewer breakdowns for cleaning. I love this "side effect".

At the end of January, I started dosing the basic four, and all the good things you see in the tank have happened since then. If you are interested in seeing my zeo startup, check out my Zeovit Journal on the Zeovit Forum.

I am so fortunate that my wife, Sherri, is very enthusiastic about our reef tank. She is actually the reason we still have it. I was ready to throw in the towel at the end of 2007. Our tank was just average and I had tended to it for years with average results. She encouraged me to do whatever it took to make it what I wanted so I got re-energized to build a healthy SPS dominant reef.

The one thing about the passage of time is that it helps you forget. This "amnesia" has caused me to block out acts of stupidity, but I would tell you that overall, the dumbest thing I think I have done with reef keeping is thinking equipment will solve all the problems.

I currently run the 400W lamps 5.5 hours per day on Coralvue E-ballasts and Reeflux 10K lamps. They are ugly lamps, don’t get me wrong, but the growth demonstrated as compared to what I get with the Reeflux 20K lamps is noticeable. For this reason, I tolerate the ugly look of the tank for the amount of time the halides are on to help grow out these still small colonies.

For evening viewing, we run the T5’s. I mix a KZ Fiji Purple with one actinic tube. I think I currently have at an ATI Actinic Plus. This is a nice mix with a touch of red light to allow the pink/read/ and orange tones to show when we are enjoying the tank. These lights run from noon when the halides go off until 9:15pm when it's lights out for the tank.

The lighting is housed in a hood I made from birch plywood. Once constructed, I coated the plywood with two part epoxy to seal the wood from salt creep and water penetration and rigged it with five Silen-X fans for ventilation. The Lumenbright reflectors are mounted along with the T5’s on an aluminum rail that allows it to be slid in and out of the hood for bulb changes.

Calcium levels and alkalinity are maintained by the little Precision Marine Calcium Reactor. I found that limiting its run time to ten hours a day was perfect for my system and I regulate this with the solenoid for the CO2 tank being on a timed outlet from my Apex Controller. The most significant aspect of this arm of the system is the use of Brightwell Aquatics NEO Mag in the reactor with the calcium media. I have found that I can maintain alkalinity levels with this product in combination with the D-D ROWAlith C+ media at a pH of 6.4. At this level, the pH is low enough to also dissolve the NEO Mag and it keeps magnesium and calcium in balance fairly well. I was not able to achieve this using other brands of calcium media that dissolve at a higher pH.

Skimming is handled by the Tunze 9440 Master DOC skimmer. With this system right in my living area, noise is a major concern for us. The 9440 is the closest thing to a silent skimmer that I have used to date. It is a skimming monster and I clean its giant collection once a week when I change water.

The Zeovit media runs in a Vertex reactor. The reactor circulates the tank's water continuously over the zeolites and supports the nutrient reduction of the Zeovit protocol.

Top off to the system is controlled by a Tunze Osmolator. I really like this device since it notifies you when the top off tank is empty. An RO/DI system is mounted near the top off tank outside our condo and a timer-operated solendoid actuates the systems once a day for thirty minutes to replenish top off water. This has been one of the most convenient upgrades I have performed on our infrastructure. No more hoses in the house!

The RO system was assembled from Bulk Reef Supply, and I run my water through the following stages

The RO unit is fed at 80 PSI by the booster pump also available from Bulk Reef Supply. This produces 0 TDS water for the system very reliably. I installed a solenoid from McMaster Carr to allow my Apex controller to run the RO/DI system every day to maintain the reservoir of top off water.

Temperature was controlled with a Tunze Chiller until just a week or two ago when an unfortunate short caused the chiller to go out. I have retrofit with a 1/2hp JBJ Artica chiller and I have to say, I am very impressed with the remote head unit and plumbing on the chiller. In addition, it runs at a mere 5.5 amps as compared to the 9 amps of my old chiller. Finally. there is a 1000W heater that also is controlled by the Apex controller.

I perform a 7-10 gallon water change once a week and I am currently using the Brightwell Aquatics Salt mix since it mates nicely parameter-wise with the Zeovit protocol. Water changes of about 7-10 gallons each Sunday do not disturb the corals and help replenish elements.

Water testing is performed weekly with regard to calcium, magnesium, and phosphate. Alkalinity is checked twice weekly or if anything, and I mean anything, looks amiss with the specimens. In addition, I try to test potassium weekly, but honestly, that particular test is very difficult to quantify. I like the Salifert kits for calcium and magnesium, don’t have an opinion on alkalinity, and use a Hanna meter (not the little Checker) for phosphate.

Since January when I started up the Zeovit protocol, I have worked to maintain the following parameters:

We feed on average about 6 times per week. Frozen mysis and blood worms are used. After thawing the cubes in tank water, I use a stainer basket to decant the water to help reduce phosphate introduction from preservatives in the frozen food. This is a change I have made in the last six weeks and seems to have helped us get over the last little bit of our phosphate problem. At this time, I do not use dried phytoplankton or other “coral” foods.

My current Zeovit schedule looks something like this:

My wife and I are planning on moving on up to a six foot long 180 gallon tank. Most likely something like an AGE custom built job with some kind of LED lighting. Meanwhile, I am going to continue pursuing SPS through the Zeovit protocol and enjoying the help and support offered through the Zeovit forum. I also want to add a large frag rack and lighting to the sump to allow for a grow out area for trimmings and accidental fraggings that always seem to happen when tank work is performed.

I have enjoyed meeting many of you in the last year of trimming and selling the monti’s and blue tipped acro’s of my tank and look forward to sharing more frags in the near future. When these colonies get too big…well, you know, we’ll get out the snips and open up the Ol’ Frag Buffet!

Best regards,
Mike Meek