JimH's 32 Gallon Coralvue T-60

[jolt]

I threatened to do this back in December when I started this build, but at the time I said I'd post more when I had something to say.

About me: I have been keeping aquariums on and off for 4 decades. I have probably 15 years of saltwater experience, but my last saltwater tank was a fish only system in the late 1990s. No live rock. Early in 2013 I started reading up on the newer techniques for keeping coral and wanted to give it a go.

Perhaps the biggest limiting factor was that I wanted this system in my main living area and there were only a couple of spots where it could go, and they were tight: the max width I could go with was 30 inches (24 was better) and the depth needed to be 20 inches or less! Given these size limitations and the fact that I wanted to keep a mixed SPS/LPS system I decided to aim for a high amount of automation to control water parameters.

My goals for this build were:

1) Furniture quality cabinet, suitable for the main living space in my home

2) Rimless, low-iron glass

3) Pre-drilled tank with minimum clearance required between the tank and the wall behind it

4) Room in the cabinet for a sump, and all the other gear I needed for a mixed LPS/SPS system

I shopped around for a few months before settling on the Coralvue T-60 aquarium (23.6″ x 17.7″ x 17.7″). I got quotes from Reef Savvy, DSA, and Planet (many thanks to Aquadome and RCA, and although I did not end up purchasing the tank through them they earned a lifetime customer). In the end, given that I had limited space for this system it just did not make economic sense to build a custom so small. I especially did not like the cabinets I was seeing offered with these systems: they either did not look furniture quality to me, or they were incredibly expensive. Cabinet quality was important to me because we are in a new home and this is a centerpiece in the living area. The Coralvue ended up being the right combination of price and features. I especially liked the glossy piano finish on the cabinet

The tank has had water in it since Feb 12th 2014. I started the build in November 2013.

Current Equipment list:

Coralvue T-60 32 gallon 'Luxury Rimless Aquarium' with stand

Reef Octopus BX-40 Water Flow System

Reef Octopus Small 80 Sump

Eheim 2000 Compact Pump (265-528 GPH)

Kessil A360WE Tuna Blue LED lamp with gooseneck mount

Reef Angel system with Salinity Expansion

Bubble Magus NAC3.5+ Skimmer

BRS 2-Part dosing package with doser pumps

Phosban-150 reactor with Eheim Compact Pump 300

Hydor Koralia Evolution 600 flow pump

Eheim Jager 150w Heater

Tunze Osmolator 3155 ATO

Advanced Acrylics custom-built ATO reservoir (gloss black, hidden wiring and tubing, sits beside cabinet)

Hanna Checker Phosphate Colorimeter

VeeGee STX-3 Refractometer

Milwaukee MA887 Digital Refractometer

CaribSea Arag-alive fiji pink sand (20lb)

25 Lbs BRS Pukani Dry Live Rock

For water mixing and quarantine I have the following located in a closet (more on this later):

Buckeye Field Supply 75GPD 'Chloramine Special' RO/DI unit with auto shutoff valve

US Plastics 10 gallon vertical water tank

Nalgene 5 gallon mixing bucket with spout

Some reasoning behind equipment choices:

- the skimmer needed to be compact because I was going to cram a lot of equipment into a compact space

- wanted to take the slow (no unwanted hitch hikers) live rock route

- I am a software engineer by trade and after researching controller options and reading a lot of forum posts I eventually decided to take a stab at the Reef Angel (also liked the price of it!)

So here are the pix:

Unboxed:

Cooking the rock for 6 weeks:

My Reef Angel 'testbench':

Modifying my washer connection for RO/DI:

My wife let my punch a hole in wall between laundry room and a closet !

Playing with aquascaping:

Assembling the sealed electrical box:

Calibrating the dosing pumps:

The back of the stand with GFI, various power supplies, and Reef Angel Head unit with custom holster (target $6.00 shower caddy):

Inside the cabinet:

Electrical closeup:

Filled with ATO reservoir sitting bottom left

Diatom bloom after adding sand (lasted two weeks or so, no diatom or algae blooms since!)

First fish (Black Ice Clown):

First Coral (my haul from Capital City Coral Corral in May 2014):

Pix from today (7/20/2014)

[Bpb]

Awesome build. Love that Jason fox jack o lantern those are amazing. Following

[jolt]

Thanks! Got the Jack o'Lantern from RichardL last week. I love it too. It has about 25 eyes and I can't wait for it to grow out.

[victoly]

Dude. Bro. Nice.

[FarmerTy]

Very nice! Great setup and the tank is looking good.

Sent via Tapatalk

[jolt]

I decided to measure PAR since I got some nice acro frags from Sam!

The executive summary is this: I have a Kessil A360WE LED mounted 5" from the water surface. It has two adjustments, controlled by my Reef Angel: (1) intensity, and (2) color. The higher the color setting the whiter the light. Current schedule is parabolic curve, beginning around 6am at 10% intensity and 10% color (so mostly blue). Maxes out at 50% intensity and 37% color. Ramps down until 8pm or so.

I mapped a grid at 2", 6" and 11" deep for combinations of intensity and color. The detailed maps are below. At the current config, I measured directly under the LED at 2" depth with about 280 PAR and 6" depth at around 160 PAR. I believe I need to ramp this up a bit for the acros, So, my plan is to alter the parabolic maximum to be 90% intensity and 50% color over the next 10 weeks. That would be an increase of 4% intensity per week and 2% color per week. This should take me up to about 500 PAR directly below the light at 2" depth and up to about 265 PAR at 6" depth. And this would put the bottom of the tank directly below the light in about 175 PAR fading out to 115 PAR at the bottom left and right.

So, lighting gurus: please critique this plan.

Here are my readings:

[SAM]

Interesting. I told a quick reading my tank at the very bottom about a total of 31in from the light (light hung 7 to 8in above water + 25in deep of water but 1in sand), mine was about 50 to 100 PAR all around the bottom of tank. Funny thing is even acro like Oregon Tort thrived just fine and didn't lose color just didn't grow as fast.

The coral up higher in the 200 to 300 PAR range definitely growing faster....of course gotta have those good flow.

Those good flow really makes a coral grow thicker and stronger than the thinner growth from lower flow from my experience.

[nori4dori]

Awesome build Jim! Love the rimless look and your rockscape. I can tell this is going to be a heck of a nano once all the corals fill up.

After seeing your tank Sam, I am beginning to realize how important flow is for acros. Even after a month I couldn't see any polyps from a nice tricolor valida frag I got from Mitch. A day after moving it to high flow, polyps started showing up. So far I am really happy with the performance of my Jebao.

[jolt]

Thanks furam28! I've been wanting a jebao too, probably gonna break down and get one in the near future.

Sam- interesting PAR info. So if I remember right, that means you have the Red Planet, PC Rainbow, and Raspberry delight in the ~ 200 PAR region of your tank?

[SAM]

I believe you are correct. The raspberry delight is at around 200 to 250.

Pcrainbow is a bit higher at 250 to 300

Red planet at 300 to 350 region

[jolt]

So I've not been happy with my PH and decided to go down the road of CO2 scrubber. It had been peaking around 7.9 and I would like it higher. I did the aeration test on a cup of water inside and outside and I clearly have CO2 saturation in my household air since aeration inside had no effect and outside had good effect. Previous attempts to run a line from my skimmer to outside had no real improvement.

So, I used soda lime and a gatorade bottle (not my idea as you probably know). It looks like this:

You can see it is working (media already turning purple!) But I think I heed to re-work it to use larger tubing to allow more air as my skimmate dried out significantly, I think I am choking the skimmer a little.

What do people think, larger tubing and some floss between the media and the airline???

Within 24 hours it raised my PH ranged from ~8.0 to ~8.1 (on a newly calibrated lab grade PH probe)

Then, my wife threw a bridal shower at our house for our daughter. 32 people in the house had this effect on PH, within 2 hours:

[jolt]

Though I'd also update on livestock. Here's the last addition to the fish crew. I know I am taking a risk. But I love angels, what can I say ...

And a few new corals.

Emerald mummy eye from Bigsby. Already adding an eye!

Back, left to right: Rainbow Nasuta (Sam), Red Planet (Sam), Raspberry Delight (Sam), ORA MIMF Blue Bottlebursh (Sam)

Front: ORA Tricolor Valida ($25 at Petco!)

A Few more. Left to right: World's smallest Red Dragon (Sam), Neon Green Suharsonoi (Ty), Frazzleberry microclados (behind neon suharsonoi, Sam), ORA Hawkins echinata (Ty), ORA Verde (Petco, 17$ !!)

[SAM]

Nicely done Jim!! Great collection....sooner or larer you gonna be like Ty and Chris and would have to upgrade your tank size lol!!!!!!

If that red dragon lives, hands down on you tank!!!! Its solid!!! Acro proof!!![emoji41]

[FarmerTy]

Looks great Jim! The additions you got look superb! Tell Sam you'll upgrade when he upgrades. Haha.

Sent via Tapatalk

[jolt]

Ok, the good news is I already have my wife talked into the upgrade. The bad news is I have to wait until I have 'budget'

[jolt]

Nicely done Jim!! Great collection....sooner or larer you gonna be like Ty and Chris and would have to upgrade your tank size lol!!!!!!

If that red dragon lives, hands down on you tank!!!! Its solid!!! Acro proof!!![emoji41]

Nicely done Jim!! Great collection....sooner or larer you gonna be like Ty and Chris and would have to upgrade your tank size lol!!!!!!

If that red dragon lives, hands down on you tank!!!! Its solid!!! Acro proof!!![emoji41]

Sam, Red Dragon has survived one week with no signs of STN. I double checked photos from first day with visual inspection just now.

How many weeks does it take until I get the official 'Sam certified acro proof' ribbon ??

[SAM]

I am very happy and excited to hear the good new on the Red Dragon. Now let it have another week or 2, you will see it start to encrust. Once it's done encrusting, it will take off and take off fast. Once you able to frag a piece off of it and start distributing it to club member like Ty.....I will personally make you a "Sam Certified Acro Proof" Ribbon!! Plus I will give you another sensitive high end frag for free for all your dedication!!! lol

I will also welcome into an elite group of Acro keeper called "SPS Tamer" lol <-- that will be our fraternity

[Reburn]

Lol SPS tamer..... That hilarious.

Other names to consider for the frat.

"Men who like sticks" (that may already be the name of a club on 4th street and may bring up some unique google searches, but I don't know)

"Watching SPS grow is like watching paint dry"

"Awesome acros" but I think AA is taken as well

And my favorite

"I hope my wife doesn't find out how much money I spent on coral last month". It can be abbreviated down to "DOGHOUSE."

But being serious good job JimH. Make sure to take monthly pictures to document growth.

[jolt]

I think I already belong to the DOGHOUSE club

[jolt]

Today I added a Jebao WP10. It's sweet! Set it on 'else' mode about 50%. Several of my acros are just loving it already! And it's so small compared to my hydor.

So, what mode do other people run their Jebao on?

[Makena95GT]

Awesome! Im hoping to get ine of the new RWs in the next few months. Right now I have a broken "aqueon circulation pump" that I can no longer aim due to being glued back togetger lmao

[nori4dori]

I run my Jebao on the highest setting (H1). If that's too much flow, H2, H3 or "Else" worked well for me too.

You have a rimless with not much room above the water level. Same with my tank. Otherwise, the wave function is pretty awesome. You can play with the frequency and create some massive waves.

Don't forget to clean it every 3 - 4 months. Algae builds up and slows down the flow. You gently twist off the front half of the pump, and everything will disassemble neatly.

[jolt]

Thanks for the tip furam28

[jolt]

Well I think I have had what qualifies as my first 'mini crash', at least I hope it is only 'mini'. Went out of town for a four day weekend. pH shot from a daily high of 8.1 up to 8.35 towards the end of the 3rd day according to my probe monitor. I measured alk when I got back and it had dropped from 8.4 down to 7.8. Alk had been stable at 8.4 for weeks. I can only guess these changes are related and due to the house not having people exhaling CO2 all day long for 4 days???

I lost the world's smallest red dragon that I got from SAM, which was a real shame because it had been hanging in there and I was looking forward to getting my 'acro proof' gold star from him. RTN'd before I got home. The jedi mind trick I got from Ty at the frag swap RTN'd too.

I'm now seeing STN starting at the tips of 3 acros, including the awesome UC ultra-blue tenius I got at the frag swap silent auction. Other acros are looking unfazed so I am hoping that is all the damage. Being new to this, it startles me how one acro can be happily waving fully extended polyps next to one that is RTN-ing.

I raised the drip time on my dosers by one second every hour to slowly raise the alk and will be testing frequently.

[Reburn]

Sorry to hear that Jim. Where did you end up with on your lights intensity wise? I made it all the way to 50% with my A360we tuna blue, then started to see some slow, very slow bleaching. By the time I compared pictures it was too late and I RTN'ed a lemon Mille. These kessils are so bright that I think they can bleach so easily. And acro being the worse because they bleach so slowly. I am going to start taking pictures this weekend 2 times a month to reference to. I have cut back to 45% intensity and 60% color for now. I may go back down to 40/60 but I am unsure at this time.

The only reason I tell you all this is because the bleaching happens over a month and it's so slow that you don't notice because your looking at your tank daily. After the color is weakend the slightest parameter change throws it into a nose dive. At least that is what has happened to me.