New SPS Tank in Georgetown (150g)

[+olaggie01]

Tank is moving along. Had a lot of ups and downs. Mostly downs unfortunately. Our city water has a lot of chloramine, which I was unaware of until recently so I've been battling high phosphates. I removed 90% of the sand (never liked the look anyways) and am starting to do every 3 day water changes to get the PO4 to a normal level. Was also battling a leaking sump. Both of the plastic Temco sumps would bow when I put water in them so I was never able to get a good seal on my return pump. Finally got a new acrylic sump, so that fixed that problem. Got the skin finished and it does look great and cuts down on a lot of the noise from the tank. I want to add some dynamat to help get the noise lower.

Here are some pictures from my iphone. Not the best, but they will do.

Stand is knotty alder stained to match our doors in our house

On either side of the stand is a bookshelf with a false back, the left side has the electronics, and the right has my ATO tank.

ATO side

New sump

[Tommy]

great build tagging along.

[+olaggie01]

Thanks Tommy. I finally have an update worth posting about. Since I have had this tank setup, I never liked the way the lights were hanging from the ceiling. I looked online and started to sketch out some ideas. I finally figured that I could use tighter optics and get some spot lights (par 30 / 38) and move the lights up to the ceiling inside a wooden box (for a lack of a better word).

Here is what it looked like before:

I got some extra knotty alder from the stand builder (thanks Andy) and built a box (24.5" x 30.5"). The thought was to have the long side facing the front but as it turns out, the rails that I had were just a touch too wide for the short side. Oh well. Plus the stain that I used didn't pull in enough dark color to match the stand. Live and learn. Doesn't look too bad.

I will continue to use the 3 modules that I had built for the tank, but I bought 2 boostLED par30s and 2 exotic LED par38s to supplement the modules. These spotlights are all blue as I felt like the old tank had a little too much white, even though I could adjust the white/blue ratio, it still was too white. These 4 supplemental lights are very nice and put out a lot of blue.

These pictures are with the spotlights on. I haven't put the modules back up in the fixture yet as I need to beef up part of the rail to be on the safe side and I'm leaving this afternoon so it will have to wait till the weekend.

[+olaggie01]

Had a huge PO4 problem and I think that a lot of it was due to the sandbed and dead clean up crew. I lost a lot of my reefcleaners order and my PO4 level went up to 1.71 measured on a hanna meter. Started to run biopellets and sucked out all the sand in the tank. Amazed at how nasty the water and crud that came out of the sand. I will never run another sandbed. On the way to recover though.

[Tommy]

Had a huge PO4 problem and I think that a lot of it was due to the sandbed and dead clean up crew. I lost a lot of my reefcleaners order and my PO4 level went up to 1.71 measured on a hanna meter. Started to run biopellets and sucked out all the sand in the tank. Amazed at how nasty the water and crud that came out of the sand. I will never run another sandbed. On the way to recover though.

Hopefully your tank coming back even more nicer than before. I never like the Sand anyway if you remember my 300gal inwall and 400gal was BareBottom. I just have to add sand to this new tank is because the wife wanted to. But trust me it is only like 1inches and eventually will be no Inches LOL

[+olaggie01]

My wife never cared either way, or even about the tank actually. I should have trusted my instincts and gone bb the whole time.

[Tommy]

My wife never cared either way, or even about the tank actually. I should have trusted my instincts and gone bb the whole time.

It is never too late for BB. But yes those a really blue on the tank. so you still runing the xpg white. You know i got 48 Led for this new tank even though i already knew it is way too much light for the tank. But i always play save which add enough and dimm it down instead of later it is not enough. But original i was gonna do 36 Blue/ Royal Blue combine and only 12 xpg cool/neutral white. But i was affraird that is way too much blue and the white made not be enough. Which at the end i choose to do a 4 different mixing. I did a 1:1 ratio like all my previouly tank. But i did 12 blue/ 12 Royal / 12 neutral / 12 cool and that does the job for me i actually really like the look of this tank compare to all my previous tank.

[+olaggie01]

That's just the par 30 / par 38 spots. I haven't added the other three modules yet. Probably get around to it this weekend.

[+olaggie01]

Well, removing that phosphate trap of a sandbed really helped my PO4 levels. I'm down from 1.68 to .58 in a little more than a week. Hopefully I can get it down to less than .1 and then I'll start getting more corals.

[Tommy]

Sound good. See sometime you can get away with Sand if you only have like 1 inch but yah BB is the way to go, are you running Bio pellet or dosing Volka as carbon source to help ?

[+olaggie01]

Sound good. See sometime you can get away with Sand if you only have like 1 inch but yah BB is the way to go, are you running Bio pellet or dosing Volka as carbon source to help ?

Yeah, currently running BPs. Just started about a week ago. I'm sure that has helped lower my PO4. I didn't have much more than 1.5" of sand, but it still got nasty.

[Tommy]

what did you supplement with the BP Microbac7? because that will help with the Bac blooming to feed the carbon source. But with the high P04 i agreed you made not need to start the Bac7 yet. Please keep up update im interesting to see how your water Par turn out by BP alone.

Edited November 10, 2011 by Tommy

[+olaggie01]

what did you supplement with the BP Microbac7? because that will help with the Bac blooming to feed the carbon source. But with the high P04 i agreed you made not need to start the Bac7 yet. Please keep up update im interesting to see how your water Par turn out by BP alone.

Will do. I'll test it in another day or so when I get home.

[Tommy]

any update ?

[+olaggie01]

Been working diligently on getting my PO4 in check. Got a new skimmer pump, removed all the sandbed, sucked out all the detritus in the sump, etc. Also started biopellets and VSV again. I have been reading about lanthanum chloride dosing and PO4 reduction. It really works. I'm amazed.

Tested my PO4 this am after my 2nd dose of LaCl3 and it is now .03. That's after 2 diluted doses of LaCl3 at 2.5 ml / L for 150 gallons. I'm still quite impressed. In 3 days it brought my PO4 down to .03 from .49 after 2 doses. I'll keep an eye on it, because I'm sure I'll have some PO4 leaching from my LR, but I don't mind another dose or two. The biopellets and GFO should help as well.

I am about finished with my LED fixture. I re-did the lights and added 4 LED spot lights (2 PAR38 and 2 PAR30). I'll post some updated pictures once I get the rest of the parts to complete the fixture.

I have been adding zoas and LPS again now that my PO4 is going down. I'll order a box of SPS in a few weeks after the holidays.

[Tommy]

Update ?

[bimmerzs]

Hey Chris,

Me you and Tommy need to grab a beer sometime, let's schedule around the time you get in that box of sps.

Cheers,

[+olaggie01]

Sounds good Ron. Did you want a few SPS with your beer?

You need to stop over at Calvins and pick up those fairy dust paly's by the way.

[bimmerzs]

Sounds good Ron. Did you want a few SPS with your beer?

Alway's

You need to stop over at Calvins and pick up those fairy dust paly's by the way.

Man you know how my schedule is, either I get caught up at work, driving back and forth to Dallas or I'm frolicking in Asia or Europe. I'm driving back down tonight, at least now I have a tub setup in my apartment so I don't have to bring it all the way back to Dallas. He's probably ready to shoot me.

Cheers,

[JasonJones]

Chris,

How is the tank coming? I was at Calvin's yesterday and heard you were coming by a little later. Sad I missed you.

Hope all is well.

[+olaggie01]

Chris,

How is the tank coming? I was at Calvin's yesterday and heard you were coming by a little later. Sad I missed you.

Hope all is well.

Tank is coming along slowly. I am working (still) on getting the PO4 down. Last time I check it was .15, still too high but better than 1.75.

Calvin said you were over there, I wish he would have texted me, I could have come over earlier. Oh well, I need to make a trip to see your tank anyways

[Tommy]

Iam always down for some Beer and some SPS with you guys.Hit me up

[+olaggie01]

Got a big update. I bought the AI Sol from Calvin and have installed them over my tank. They are amazing. I really liked my DIY fixture but these things are so sexy. I bought three of them, 2 white and 1 blue. Calvin swapped a few of the pucks around so that now each module has 3 of the blue pucks and 5 of the white pucks. Makes the colors pop.

On a sad note, I lost one of my convict tangs and all three of my orchid dottybacks. I think that the sailfin tang that I added has ich and the fish succumbed to it. I need to set up a hypo tank but I'm not sure if I have the space or time to do it. I'm hoping that increased feedings and perhaps dropping the temp a bit will help with the ich.

And yes, I have a ton of aiptasia. If anyone has any pep shrimps that are known eaters, let me know. Otherwise, they get the laser.

[+olaggie01]

I also did some improvements to the tank. I built a skimmate "locker" to catch the skimmate and shut off the skimmer when it is full. This is mainly for when I travel and I worry about the skimmer overflowing. This should help me sleep a little easier at night. It uses a float switch and is hooked up to my profilux. There is also carbon on the output side to help clean up the stink.

I also bought a brs dual reactor for GFO and carbon. I am still using biopellets and LaCl but GFO helps more on the low end than LaCl from what I have read.

I bought some corals from some locals recently. They are coming around nicely now that my PO4 levels are still dropping.

Maybe I'll try and take some good ones tonight when the white LEDs come on.

[+olaggie01]

A bad update. I added a sailfin tang the other day and it developed ich (although I'm sure it came in with it) and since I don't QT, guess what? I'm down to 4 fish now (from 12) and most likely will be down to 0 soon. I can't catch the remaining fish and while UV would work, I'm worried that it would crash my bacterial population in the biopellets which would probably end up in a worse situation. I would like to sell this tank and get a rimless shallow tank. While I like having this tank for the size, I want a longer shallow tank that I can view from the top. I also may take an office job so I won't be around the tank as much.