48G ADA Rimless

[+Mcjudge]

I just got my first reef tank up and running. It is a 90P from Aquarium Design Group with about a 20G Custom acryllic sump I made myself. I have 2x korialia 2's in the display with an eheim 1250 as the return. So I have a decent amount of water movement. I have a 150W MH I have been running for about 3-4 hours during the curing process. Getting to the point I have a 5 gallon bucket I am using for automatic topoff during these last couple of weeks I have had to fill it up 1-2 times a week. Does that seem normal to any of you or should I bee looking for an unseen leak.

2nd ? is about my first fish. I have about 60 lbs of LR and a pretty decent clean up crew in my tank. I am waiting a few more weeks until I get better algae spread. I wanted to get a Bristletooth Tomini Tang. There is some conflicting information about this guy out there. One webstie says minimum tank size is 50G another one says 70G, the LFS says NP. I don't want to put this guy into a place where he feels cramped. Does anyone have any experience in the small tang catagory and could offer some advice. I am also not really into trading a fish out if he gets too big, I would like to keep him until he dies.

Any thoughts/advice would be greatly appreciated.

Mike

[10gReef]

get a clown fish for your first. they are hardy, inexpensive and not a damsel.

[Pailines]

First, congratulation on the tank It looks great!!

Topping-off can vary from tank to tank. the amount to TO depends on water-movement, surface agitation, air-movement, surface area of open water and etcetc. However, it's plausible to be a leek, double check to make sure. Other then that, it shouldn't be much of a worry. IME, i have to TO about 5gallon every 2-3days for my 60gal FW.

As for the Bristletooth Tomini Tang, i suggest holding off on getting him just yet.

Since this is your first reef tank, going slow is ideal and worth every second. (trust me, it really does)

The reason being that even in a "perfect parameter" tank, there's still a chance for a crash or disaster.

Algae boom, dangerous hitch-hikers, sudden-N-cycle and many more can be lurking in your tank.

As 10gReef suggested, a clown is a great candidate for first fish in the tank. They are hardy, cheap, and sometime quite entertaining. As a added bonus, they are more money friendly than a tang. They can 'test-out' your tank while you research more about the tang.

Good luck on your tank, and keep us posted on the status

Edited September 29, 2011 by Pailines

[+C Lo Slice]

I love the looks of those ADA tanks. Nice setup, man.

IMO a 48 gallon is going to be too small for just about any Tang once they reach full size. They are avid swimmers and need enough algae growth to graze on whenever they feel like it. I have a Kole Tang in my 60 gallon with 125 pounds of LR and I felt that was pushing it a little when I bought him. He would probably be much happier with a bit more swimming room. If this is your first SW tank, I would start with a clown or two (I did). Tangs can be finicky eaters and are much more susceptible to diseases like Ich and HLLE. Get your feet wet with a hardier fish first. Just my two cents...

[+C Lo Slice]

Take what Pailines said to heart. Patience is going to be your best friend in this hobby (that and research). I really wish I would have taken an extra two or three weeks to let my tank cycle before I added anything. Also, you don't want to add things too quickly. I've had two losses in the past month and a half due to just getting too dang excited about adding things. Something that will help with your process is making a stocking list and sticking to it. You want to start with your least aggressive fish and make your final addition be your most aggressive. Good rule of thumb would be at least 3-4 weeks between adding fish until your tank matures more and gets used to having a bioload on it.

Good luck, buddy, and keep us updated. And never be afraid to ask questions. We're all here to help and to learn from each others' mistakes (they're bound to happen).

[Robb in Austin]

Agree with most of the above. Patience is really key. Let it run at least another few weeks. This will let the tank run and give you time to look into what you want to keep and plan accordingly.

I don't know that I would add a clown as the first either. They can become territorial and not let you add anything later, species dependent of course. Try a chromis instead.

Tangs need swimming room, gallons 'don't matter'; e.g. you can have a 4 ft wide 50g or a 1 foot wide 100g. Which would you want to swim in? (Extreme example I know but you get the point.)

Great looking tank BTW.

[+Mcjudge]

Thank you all for your help. You all confirmed what I was thinking I guess I just needed one final... hint. Probably not going to get the first fish for another couple of weeks or at least until I have better coralline coverage and get my food supplies (rots copes brines and phyto) going. The live rock has been in for 3-4 weeks. I just now ramped up to 7 hours of light a day. Clean up crew consists of 2x peppermint shrimp (had some aptasia on my live rock) 3 nars snails, 2 conchs, a pink cucumber and a brittle star. Please let me know if you think I need to supplement them with some food of some sort to make sure they are fed enough.

I am just getting my koralin 3002, I know its over sized but I got a deal on craigslist and I was trying to plan ahead. Hopefully my algae will take off. I guess my only other concern at the moment is I have some brown blackish hair algae on my chaeto in my refugium. Since it has stayed in my fuge I haven't really tried to do anything about it and thought that t might just kill itself off when it runs out of food. Thoughts Ideas on that?

Here is a current picture of the tank and a macro picture of my chitton (he is tiny).

[Pailines]

Really likes the FTS! Got a sleek look to it.

As a second opinion, as long as it stays in the fuge, imo it's not worth trying to remove it.

Rock On!

[+Mcjudge]

First major lesson.... Do not turn up Co2 on Calcium reactor to 3 bps... Calcium was low so I thought ok the way to go is turn up Co2 and effluent drip. The nice folks @ aquadome confirmed my suspicions and my alkalinity had shot through the roof, causing my calcium to precipitate. FAIL!! So water change/ Aquavitro calcification and ions later and am back on the road to success (slowly). Dialing in this stupid reactor without a probe lid and controller is like trying to balance the US budget!! Any experience with korallin 3002/1501 would be greatly appreciated. Glad I don't have fish yet.

Setting up my quarantine tank. My quarantine tank is an old planted tank I had. As far as cleaning it before I set it up are there any recommendations, vinegar/water, a good rinse or just set it up and go, you all might have would be appreciated. I have a heater, sponge filter and a small canister filter I was using. Think it should be enough.

Will post some more pictures when well I have something fun to post...

[JasonJones]

First off, congratulations on the tank, it looks really nice. As you are already discovering, there is a wealth of knowledge out there, and a wealth of gadgets to spend all your money on. Try to lean on the former to avoid some waste in the latter.

As far as your quarantine, give it a good vinegar/water bath and you should be good to go. Your filters sound fine for it.

A couple of other pieces of advice. Cut your lights way back if you do not have any photosynthetic corals in there yet. As a new tank, you will likely experience some algae cycles, and running the lights a full days worth now will only contribute to that. I would run the lights no more than 3 hours a day at the moment. You don't want to give algae a foothold now.

Also, I would consider taking the calcium reactor off the tank for the foreseeable future. Even when you begin stocking corals, your calcium load will be minimal for the first several months, maybe a year. You should easily be able to keep up with the calcium demands simply by water changes and dosing a 2-part calcium and alkalinity supplement, B-Ionic is great. I would also never run a Ca reactor without a controller. It sounds like you don't have a Ca or Alk test kit, I would invest in those and monitor weekly, to see if you need to be dosing.

Best of luck and keep us updated.

[jestep]

For the QT, I would just go with a good scrubbing and rinse. You probably don't need the canister if the sponge filter is decent size. Just the sponge filter, a heater, and a powerhead should be plenty unless you plan on running carbon or something else in the canister.

[+Mcjudge]

I finally got some fish. It was a little hairy on the first day considering my water parameters were a little off. Did a quick water change and eveyone appears to be normal. This is Fats and Nora, they are an ORA tank raised mated pair of domino clowns. I took this with my phone so I apologize for the jumpiness.

My QT was not big enough to house these guys and they are my first fish so into the main display they went. They are eating just fine, Cyclop-eeze and Frozen Blood Worms so far. They don't seem to like my spectra pellets (They swallow them and spit them back out.) I was going to pick up some hikari frozen mysis as I hear all clowns love those. They have not really explored the rocks yet is that normal?

[jestep]

Watching this one. Just got my 90P this weekend. Looking to set it up and transfer in the next few weeks.

[+Mcjudge]

Just a heads up if you got the drilled version the bulkheads & pipe that come with the tank are Metric... If you want to add extra pipe or a stand pipe you kind of have to buy new bulkheads and all new pipe, or rig something. They are great tanks look forward to seeing your build!

[+Mcjudge]

So I have a water parameter question... I know right don't we all, so here goes.

Calcium is at 390, DKH is at 10.5, and magnesium is at 1400 (I know its high I am working on bringing it down), and my ph is at 7.9.

I am recovering from an alkalinity OD that precipitated all of my calcium and Mag out of my water.(I turned up the CO2 on the reactor way to high b/c calcium was dropping) I used Aquavitro Ions and Calcification to recover. Which finally drove my salinity up to 1.0028 refractometer tested. I know I am newb. Anyways pulled out some water slowly and replaced with RO, NP.

So how do I get my PH up to 8.3-8.4, and my calcium up to 410-420. Right now my reactor is set to Co2 at 1 drop per 18 secs, and effluent DPM is 20. The ph of the effluent is 6.6.

Calc, DKH and Mag were tested with Red Sea Pro Kit. PH was tested with a recently calibrated milwaki PH Monitor.

My first thought is to turn up my effluent drop rate, but that along with the CO2 increase put me in a bad place last time. So I am a little gun shy. I have read the 2 different instruction maunals on the reactor and can't really decide on what to do.

Any advice would be grealty appreciated.

-M

[jestep]

I would say first off, stop dosing everything until you can get back in balance. Unless you have some major stony coral colonies, you shouldn't need to add anything for a while. Stability is more important than any target parameter. I would just leave everything for the time being and do a 10g water change each week with carefully mixed water. That should bring everything back in spec in about a month or two. After that you can decide where you want to go, but I really wouldn't be adding Ca or messing with Alk until your corals start requiring it.

Also, as far as the 1.028 SG, you need to be really careful adding anything that changes the specific gravity of the system. Mg and other salts can artificially increase specific gravity. Since the salinity itself didn't change when you added these, you're just getting a false SG measurement. The SG didn't increase due to an increase in NaCl, so you shouldn't take out water and replace with RO. That would be lowering the actual salinity of the system which you don't want to do.

[wesreyn]

Just curious about why you feel you need a calcium reactor at this point?

[+Mcjudge]

That is some really sound advice. So that being said I have 4 corals total. A small button colony, a few ricordia polyps, 6-7 zoathus polyps and a one other forgot the name. All are supposed to be not very demanding. Are decent water changes 10% enough to keep up with the demands? If so I will unhook that darn thing tonight!

[+Mcjudge]

So its been a bit since I last posted, and I wanted to catch people up a bit. I took the calcium reactor off, and did a water change. Alk and Mag have come back down to normal levels. Calcium is low again for some reason so I am going to do aother 10G water change this weekend. Everything in the tank is doing better. Coraline is showing up more and better everywhere.

I wanted to show off my first corals all of which are supposed to be easy to grow. Picked these up from Aquadome. Here is also a macro image of my new porcelain crab. I think he looks a bit anemic, I have been adding 25-50 drops of phyto to the water every day as well as scraping the glass on three sides. I do feed cyclopeeze every day as well. Thoughts?

Cheers Happy Reefing!!

[+Mcjudge]

So my porcelain crab was turning red... I thought something was wrong. He just shed his skin and now he is all pretty and white again. His skin/shell was really cool, looked like he cloned himself. I got a picture will post soon.

[+Mcjudge]

Update video have since picked up some corals and a clam. I have a midas blenny in a quarantine tank at the moment. The 2 MP10W's are new as well as the LED light strips. Hope you all like the video was taken with my phone so apologies for the quality. I did a bit of editing through youtube... the effects I thought were funny, kinda feels like the camera got wet. Any questions welcome.

Cheers!!!

[+Mcjudge]

Happy 1 year be-lated-ish birthday... Its so hard to keep track of these things. Many amazing things have happened with the tank and I have learned so much. Changes in hardware, Livestock and even location. The tank is doing better than it ever has been. The corals, fish and all the other live stuff are really moving into full gear and I notice daily changes in the tank.

Everything started off seemingly pretty slow. Adding sand & rock, letting it "cure" and stabilize the tank, adding a few corals here and there. Getting my first pair of fish a pair of domino clowns. Trying to keep up with water maintenance and flooding my house a few times. Thanking my wife for putting up with my addiction and I think if she hears the words "making water" one more time she will FLIP! Adding a anemone, maxima clam and sps corals are so exciting.(having them live and flourish is even better)

For those interested in the hobby here are my 4 lessons I learned.

1. When they say its all about keeping your water parameters consistent, they aren't joking. EVERYTHING in the tank benefits from it in a visual and almost seemingly instantaneous way. To add to that the smaller the tank the harder keeping those parameters in check is. I will say I think I have finally come up with a system that fully supplies the tank with everything it needs for success, and my method for doing so unfortunately is to incorporate lots of hardware. 4 items that have helped in my success here lately are chiller, calcium reactor, kalk reactor and biopellet reactor. The combination of all 4 of those has made the tank so much happier. All of those enable me to do less day to day task and sit back more and enjoy.

2. The amount of "energy" that goes into the display tank to make things thrive is truly amazing. I don't mean my energy I am referring to the food & minerals that all of those things in the tank need to flourish. It gives me a whole new perspective on our oceans and how much of an energy producing/consuming engine it is. Alkalinity, Calcium, Magnesium, Phytoplankton, Zooplankton, Amino Acids, Carbon, Bacteria, the list goes on about what you need to add almost on a daily basis, not just to be successful but to create a similar habitat to what these animals have in our oceans. They all need to be in balance.

3. Patience... I wish I had more... nough said.

4. Moving a reef tank is scary and something I don't wish for anyone. You need experience because it is unlike anything as far as just building it. Hire a professional, I did. Mason the Fish Whisperer is the man. I had zero fatalities.

I have 4 fish now which I so love. For a while there I had none, as the 3 I had over time had jumped out. I really think in hindsight that my water quality was bad and I was making some rookie mistakes. Don't by an expensive pair of fish when you are just starting out. Start small and buy the expensive ones later.

Anyways I have the ubiquitous clown fish,

chromis,

6 line wrasse

orange stripe prawn goby

Maxima clam

Rose bubble tip anemone

Poreclain Crab

2 Peppermint Shrimp

1 Fighting Conch

All different kinds of snails

A few hermit crabs

& SPS LPS & Softies...

Just wanted everyone who hadn't had a chance to see it to have a look and enjoy.

Also give a shout out to the peeps at Aquadome. Thank you!!!

Cheers

-M

[victoly]

[jestep]

Everything's looking good and happy. You have a heck of a lot more restraint in stocking than I do.

[+Mcjudge]

Thanks Vict!

speaking of with a person that has the same tank... I have and am guessing a total water volume of about 60-70 Gallons & just started up the biopellets. I overskim, and have a refugium lit 24/7. Also use carbon. Sooo I just recently added all of those fish... at the same time... I know I know, but really got lucky and the dome has some good stock.

So that being said, being responsible...

6 line wrasse max 3 inches

Occelaris clown max 3.5 inches

Chromis max 3 inches

Orange stripe prawn goby max 4.5 inches

Total 14 fish inches...

5 gallons per fish inch = 70 Gallons needed (on the conservative side)

3 gallons per fish inch = 70 gallons would equal 23 fish inches.

i.e. I could add 9 more...

I was thinking a dwarf lemonpeel angel, but i was going to wait until everyone gets settled.

Thoughts?