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Beginner's 240 Gallon Reef Tank


Cdklos

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Hello Everybody! I’ve got all the plumbing done, except for what ever I have forgotten and will remember once everything starts running. The Apex is in and controlling the RO top off tank and the sump top off. Only took a few days to figure out how to program and code this thing. The Apex has been the most frustrating thing so far. I’ve got sand in, it’s between 1” and 1.5” deep sand bed. I made one spot about 3” deep to accommodate some jawfish in the future. The rock formations are built and glued. I’m quite surprised by the reef glue I pick up from River City, this glue is no joke. I’m going to start filling the tank with water this evening. Is there anything that I am forgetting before I begin adding water? I don’t want to get this thing fill with 240+ gallons and realize I forgot to do something important. Can’t wait to see this thing in action!

 

P.S. I picked up 4 Kessil 360WE, I’m gonna put these in 2 of the Aquatic life 36” hybrid light systems. I was gonna go with the AP700, but with no Apex support, I opted for the 360s.

 

 

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Looks great looks like you have everything just make sure you check everything after filling it to make sure nothing is leaking I see some pumps in the pictures to move the water around so I think you are good to go let it stablelize and see the temperature to see if you need to add heaters but other then that looks good


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Yes, I put them on the 1” lines. I feel like I’m cutting it close as far as required flow. This way I will know if I need to install a larger pump. I hope not, I’ve got minimal fittings and it’s a 3000GPH pump. I guess we shall see.

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**Update**

Tank is full of water, overflows look good. No leaks. I'm not sure if I have enough water in the tank yet, the last baffle in the sump seems to allow the water level to get kinda low and you can hear it like a water fall. It keeps the water level about 1" above the pump bulkhead. Should I add more water? There is also a TON of air bubbles in the tank, will these work their way out over time? It's so much air bubbles that the water is super murky. According to the flow meters on the Apex and the WAV pumps it has about 10X tank turn over per hour. Most of the sand was blown away in the back of the tank leaving a huge bare glass spot. I adjusted the WAV pump direction a bit, I hope this will alleviate the sand problem. Heaters are in, I put (2) 800 Watt heaters, one of them is programmed as a back up, tank is now 78.5 degrees. Can I add live rock now??

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The bubbles should clear up, especially once you've added some cleanup crew after the cycle.  I see no reason not to add the rock

Side note: it's a bit of work to see your pictures since you posted them as bitmaps.  jpeg or gif works a lot better!

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Hey guys, tanks has been operating for about a week now. The ORP has been around 180-190. Is this okay?
Its nice to monitor a baseline for your tank and then when things drift off that baseline, usually means something of note has occurred in your system. Otherwise, not too useful IMO.

Here's a good article on it.

http://reefkeeping.com/issues/2003-12/rhf/feature/

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Hey guys, tanks has been operating for about a week now. The ORP has been around 180-190. Is this okay?


The ORP is just something you watch for trends, not necessarily for a desired level, at least in my experience. If your Tank normally hovers around 220 then if it spikes down or up, you know something is off.


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There’s a worm in my tank!! I don’t know where he came from. I put some live rock in the tank from a friend of mine that I trust is good rock. I also put some sand from the LFS that was a bigger grain so it would stop moving from the water flow. I haven’t seen him at all until today. Is this worm okay? Do I need to remove him?

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I remove every worm I can.  You'll never get every one, so it's not like you're really removing them, but you're removing the biggest & boldest.  Trust me, there's 20 more you can't see.  Like fleas, there's no such thing as just one.  Also, it makes me feel better about the situation.

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Small bristle worms perform a necessary function as clean-up crew. Once they get above 4" or so, then you should remove them. Only the large predators will eat them when they get to that size and the worms can sometimes go after corals or clams. If you keep fish that eat bristle or fire worms, then you very few will reach a big enough size to cause a problem. Arrow Crabs and Coral Banded Shrimp also eat worms, but they come with their own drawbacks that should be considered. 

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  • 2 weeks later...

**Update**

Tank has been up and running with water in it since the 18th of December. On the 23rd, I added 2 clowns, 1 starry blenny, and 2 watchman gobys. All of them are about 1 inch long. I also put about a 2” ball of Chaeto in the fuge. I have been running the fuge light from 9:00pm to 6:00am everyday and there is a pretty big bloom of brown algae. I also added about 10lbs. of live rock from a friend of mine and 10lbs. from River City. I have not turned on any lights in the tank yet. I feed the tank 1 cube of frozen mysis everyday at 6:30pm. I’ve been testing the water every couple of days.

 

 

Week 1

Week 2

Week 3

Week 4

Alkalinity

9

7

1

2

Ammonia

0

.25

.25

.25

Calcium

520

520

440

400

Nitrate

0

0

0

0

Nitrite

0

9

5

26

Phosphate

.03

.3

.16

.18

Salinity

1.021

1.022

1.023

1.022

pH

8

8

8

8

 

 

 

 

 

I have done no water changes at all, and quite honestly I don’t plan to unless it’s absolutly necessary.

Should I expect a large ammonia spike? It’s been 4 weeks and it’s been really stable except for the nitrite spike. What should I expect from here?

The tank did develope a really bad smell, enveloped the entire house, like a dirty lake or dead fish smell. I ran some carbon for about 4 hours and the smell disappeared completely and has not come back at all. 

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Also... you should never see nitrite or ammonia after a cycle. So I think you’re still in your cycle.

 

Don’t get anymore fish and let the ammonia and nitrite go away before doing any other livestock.

 

Did you add any beneficial Bacteria? Zeobak, Microbacter7, Stability, Dr Tim’s?

 

That would help establish a good biological filter faster, especially since you used dry rock.

 

Either way, I’d let things settle for a while.

 

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first.. i love the table and details :) once your tank is stable, you wont have to test everything so often, so paaatience.

remember, each and every thing you add to the tank starts a mini cycle.  did you happen to add a lot of stuff/rock/sand on week 3?  thats a huge nitrite spike on week 4.  

5 hours ago, Juiceman said:

Also... you should never see nitrite or ammonia after a cycle. So I think you’re still in your cycle.

-we usually dont see it on established tanks because it a quick cycle, and we rarely test for ammonia/nitrate at that point... but everything has its own cycle until they complete. (for example, when i added a frag tank to my system.. i had a mini diatom bloom and everything... same water from the main system.  since it was a significant add, it was more obvious)

while many of us seem to not have patience when you are reading our threads, the larger more stable tanks are built on it.  you should get the lights on so it'll cycle faster.  the diatom bloom is a good thing on a fresh tank.  just keep the glass clean, blow off the rocks, let the skimmer get it out.  I tend to throw a filter sock somewhere when i have a bloom... just easier to export.

what brand testing kit you have? for new tanks, API's reef stuff is good enough.  its w/in the margin of error to get you where you need to be.  once you cycle ammonia/nitrite, and you only have nitrate.. keep it under 20ish (religious debate here... some like near zero, some like 10-20, depends on what corals you wanna keep).  focus on the "trinity".... alk/calcium/magnesium.  those three have to be in check for coral to grow.  if you are doing water changes pretty frequently, don't worry about the Mg too much yet (plus API doesnt make a Mg test).

re: ORP... seems like the reef community doesnt really come to a consensus on this.  many of us just use that port for a second pH for the calcium reactor... so i wouldnt really get too worried/stressed on orp readings on a reef tank if you have proper air/water exhange (overflows and skimmer is usually enough)

last thing... salinity is kinda low in my opinion.  i aim for 1.025-1.027 @78degrees.  dont bother w/ hydrometers, get yourself a decent refractometer and calibrating fluid (doesnt have to be a brand name or super expensive).  I had 4 diff hydrometers, and none read the same reading on the same water...so yea.  some of us even have the digital ones if you need to test your new refractometer's calibration!

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I assumed the tank hadn’t finished cycling yet, just more wondering if I should expect a higher ammonia jump soon. Juiceman was correct, I totally goofed the alkalinity test. I’ll test it again when I get home. I didn’t think about it too much, but it would be kinda hard to have a 8.0 pH and that low of alkalinity. 

Its hard to determine what to do sometimes, I asked some guys at the LFS and they said to go ahead and put some fish in the tank. Kinda wish I hadn’t yet. Hind sight is 20/20. Now there are fish in there will it be helpful to add some beneficial bacteria or do I just wait it out? Also, should I get up my CO2 reactor or wait till I start adding corals? 

Is the amount of ammonia added by the fish and the food enough to keep the bacteria going? Or do I need to add more? 240 gallon tank with probably 45 gallons in the sump just seems like a lot of water for the small amount of fish and food. Should I turn the skimmer off for a while? It seems to be working really well.

I bought a refractometer and calibrated it according to the instructions with DI. Water temp is between 77.5 and 78.1. I will add some more salt and slowly bring it up to 1.025. 

Light box will be up sometime this week. I need to get it all wired and then figure out how to program it in the Apex. (4) A360WE tuna blue and 4 dimmable T5 with the ATI blue bulbs. Anyone have a lighting program that I can copy and paste. Took me 2 weeks to figure out how to make the ATK work the way I wanted it to.

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your around the right schedule for a "test fish" as i call it.  water/rock for a week, clean up crew second week, green chromis or two third week.. wait for tank to stabilize.. then yer good.  you really dont need a ca-reactor until you cant keep up w/ manual dosing, but i wouldnt say NO at this time, but you'd have to run it pretty slow.  my neighbors tank we rehabbed, it just hit 1yr, and we're barely looking at ca-reactor for it... so you got time.

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You could install the reactor but don’t use any CO2 yet until you start getting some corals.

As far as Bacteria, I’d go ahead and still add some, it won’t hurt. If you want to just wait it out too, that’s probably fine, I’d worry about the discomfort of the fish at this point.

Give it Time. You want to only be reading nitrates.... no ammonia or nitrite.


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The tank is officially cycled. Ammonia zero. Nitrites zero. Light box is finished. Waiting on the wife to get home to help me hang it. I’m thinking I will put the box 16” above the tank for now and maybe borrow a par meter from someone to adjust the height. The 5 fish in the tanks seem to be doing really well. They all come out from their normal spots when I feed them and seem to know that it is time for food.

I have noticed some algae growth in the tank if you look real hard. I suspect when I get the lights up it will be a lot more than I can see now. 

So hopefully it’s time to add a few fish. I was thinking maybe 5-7 little guys and some snails and crabs. Anyone have an idea of how many snails and crabs to put in there? Everything online says 1 per gallon, which would be 240. This sounds CRAZY. Should I start out with like 5 and see what happens and add more in the future? 

Here’s the line up I was thinking to start off with:

(1) small Foxface

(1) Royal gramma basslet

(3) Yellowtail damselfish or Azure Damselfish

(5) black trochus snails

(2) pedersen cleaner shrimp

(5) dwarf blue hermit crabs

Any added direction is most appreciated!!

 

 

 

 

 

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