260 w/ BTA "Island"

[Timfish]

And so it begins . . . 

[Timfish]

Making a big hole in a perfectly good tank.

 

I'm stting this system up with a low profile drain offset to one side away from from the back.  Since it won't have a side to attach it to to keep it in place and a lot of rock setting on top of it, I'm adding a second sheet of glass on the bottom to add additional strength to the bottom.  

 

I prefer to start by making a wood template or jig.  Jigs will keep the bit in place and stop it from "walking".  If drilling multiple holes a jig helps keep all the holes aligned also.  The diamond bit works just as well with wood as glass (no water is required to cool it 😁 )  

 

Sometimes I'll use clamps (use wood on both sides of glass to protect it) but most of the time I use weights to hold a jig in place while drilling.

 

Glass with hole.

 

Silicone and setting the reinforcing piece in place.  After it set up a few days I went around the edge with more silicone.

 

Drilling out the bottom.  To keep the bit cool I added about 1/2" of water.   The tank is stitting on a hydraluc cart, to help keep the bit from chipping when the bit broke through I placed several layers of cardboard compressed under the location of the hole.  The cardboard also helped keep  water draining out to a minimum after the hole was completed.

 

Checking to make sure I drilled the right size hole. 😄

[Timfish]

Here's another teaser,

 

Since the hurricanes Florida experienced this summer has delayed getting maricultured rock I'm going to have to rely on aging dry ock and rock from other systems to set up this system initially.  Fortunately, besides CaribSea Aragalive sand, Grog gave me some excess TBS livesand from his 180 setup.  I've been  keeping it going drooping in pellet food and with a big hermit and a Tiger Tail cucumber.  In the past I've used 50 gallon barrels with a light but one of my holding/QT tanks is a 150 and was availble so I'm using it to get fish and some rock and frags ready. 

 

 

 

[Timfish]

With new setups I like to do a rough sketch of the aquascaping and general layout.  There's a few considerations I use.  One is how it's going to be seen when a person first walks into a room.   Fish and corals will attract an observer but how can the rockwork be structured to help creat a sense of mystery and draw the observer closer.  I always use the "rule of thirds" to set a major focal point(s).  Always try to create as much depth as possible, besides avoiding a 2 dimensional look this can be used to emphasize "show" animals.  What are the initial animals being added and how are they likely going to spread.  Because a final list of animals is never really achieved and there is a wide range of lighitng requirements how can variations in the rockwork and lighting help maximize a wide range of lighting conditions without needing to alter or change settings and avoiding the potential problems associated with established corals having to acclimate to new conditions.

 

For this system the entry door is on the opposite diagonal corner from the tank.  So I started with the rule of thirds putting the overflow about 1/3rd from the end of the tank farthest from the entrance and roughly 1/3 from the back wall but AND because I like to keep drain lines as straight and simple as possible the location of the sump under it was taken into consideration.  The rock wall hiding the over flow, arch and rock against the center back is roughly at a right angle to the observer when they first enter the room so from the get go the main rock structure will dominate the veiw even without corals covering it.    There will be a table in the center of the room so the most direct path to the tank will be along the left side of room.  This will keep the BTA island generally in the forefront and not off to the side if walking down the right side of the table.  This layout will also partially hide the rock structure in the back right corner inititially but completely hide it from view as an observer approaches from the left side, hopefully, drawing them across to the right side.  To help add to the sense of discovery my thought is to have some high light, low profile corals on the sand behind the BTAs that won't come into full view until some one is standing in front of the system (that these will be about a third from the end is intentional and once the system has matured will be one of the three major focal points along with the corals infront of the overflow and BTAs).   I intend to keep the back wall behind the BTAs clear to help give a sense of depth. However, the wall behind the overflow I hope to encourage encrusting corals.  The lights are being mounted in the canopy asymetrically to conform to aquascaping and also to provide a wide range of lighting conditions.    

 

The lights are Popbloom T-50 and are 60 watts per fixture.  One feature I like about them is they use reflectors and not polycarbonate lenses which can brown out overtime.  Another is they don't have fans which can be a bit of a hassle to replace when they fail.  They come with thier own controllers and will be configured to have 3 controllers each running two fixtures (redundancy).   The overall light period will be 12 hours with all the fixtures at the maximum settings chosen for 6 hours.

 

[Timfish]

Lights . . .

 

Near as I can remember the first time the idea of angling lights came up was in a conversation with @mFrame around 2011 or 2012.  One advantage is it reduces the light hitting the front of the glass so reduces one variable that promotes algae growing on glass.  Another plus is it lights up the front of aquascaping better.   For this system with a fairly low canopy giving only 6" of space, a low profile light without fans was a necessary decision and angling them towards the back was kinda an obvious choice.  Since the fixtures have a T-slot mounting at an angle was pretty straight forward by cutting a wedge out of wood and installing T-slot bolts.  

 

The wedges were cut at a 20° angle.  Reasoning is it's about half the angle, around 40° - 45°, where most of the light hitting the water surface gets reflected.  I was planning on epoxing the T-bolts but realized when I could barely pull one out testing it that just a little paint on the end was all they'd need to stay in place.

 

To help hold the fixtures in place but still be easy to remove if needed I found some thin magnets that would fit the T-slots and not block the T-bolts.  The locations of the fixtures and t-bolts were aligned and marked.  The the magnets were glued in place with some JB Weld.

 

Checking the layout of the fixtures.

 

Once I was satisfied with the fixture locations wire runs were laid out and cable ties were mounted to keep them from hanging in the water.  Brackets were made to hold the controllers so if adjustments are needed they will be easy to access. 

 

(For the record, I am not a fan of changing lighting settings once they've been decided on, Corals adjust thier photobiology to the available lighting.  Constantly changing the lighting and forcing them to adjust their photobiology is an additional source of stress and it can take weeks to months to years for corals to acclimate.   Many hardy aquarium adapted varieties may not be put out much with big changes, but many of the corals for sale with fancy or exceptionally bright or unusual combinations of colors do require very specific settings.  Arbitrarily making changes without knowing what a coral wants ends up in frustration more often than not.)

 

I did want a fan to move air so I built a box to hold a 120mm "muffin" fan.  The fan can be slid in place and will be easy to replace it when it fails  The bracket that holds it angles it to blow diagonally to the opposite corner and has athe intake on the back side to minimize any salt spray getting into the fan. 

 

 

 

 

[mFrame]

Is the canopy going to be on hinges? The only issue I've found with mounting lights in the canopy is for maintenance, when you lift it they shine right in your face. If you have one plain bar light set at a 90degree angle toward the back, then when you life the canopy you could turn off the main lights and turn on the bar light that would be facing into the tank to work.

[Timfish]

The front about 1/4 of the hood hinges 180°.  With it flipped all the way over and the lights mounted below the edge of the reinforcing rib and the tanks sitting on a 36" stand glare from the lights while cleaning shouldn't be much of an issue.  It will light up the room pretty well though when open.  

[Timfish]

Got some heavy duty boxes for my cats and some really nice buckets for doing water changes from Tampa Bay Saltwater. 

 

[Timfish]

And they tossed in some rock in the bargain!    I got 20 pounds of rubble that will go in the sump, 20 lbs of base rock and 40 lbs of premium.  Lots of cool stuff and of course hitchhikers.   Hitchhikers included lots of really cool stuff, of note there were quite a few tiny porcelain crabs which could be very quick when they wanted to be.  Not so good were some whelk snails (easy to pick off), what looked like one tiny, tiny gorilla crab which went into one of my holding tanks to see what it grows up to be.  Questionable is a zebra flatworm, Stylochus zebra, as it's commensual with the hermit crab Pagurus pollicaris and shares the hermits shell it seems to me to be much more a scavenger feeding off leftovers from the hermits meal than a predator of some kind.  So all the rock is in a tub right now with lights and an air line for circulation.

 

This is the rubble rock, that should work really well on the bottom of the unlit 40 gallon sump with some sand.

 

 

 

 

[Timfish]

For the low profile overflow I'm using a 2" PVC pipe.  To set the height the PVC is cut about an inch or so less than the intended water line.  

An intake screen is then used to set the actual water level when the system is running taking into account the depth of the water level running over the weir of the intake.  An important consideration is to use an intake screen that has a roughly 1/4 gap between the teeth.  Smaller gaps will clog quicker and wider gaps are more likely to let small fish squeeze through.  I also like having removable intake screens partly so they can be adjusted for changes in water flow and so they can be removed and cleaned with H2O2 or bleach when claveraous algae and organism grow on them.  For tanks that have a lip or frame I like to set the water level just above the bottom edge of the frame so there's no glare from the lights shining through a gap.

[+Grog]

Nice!  Getting ready to get water in it soon!

[Timfish]

Hopefully soon.    There were issues with the AC and the main unit had to be replaced then the wrong unit was shipped and . . . so this project is now about 6 weeks behind.   Which turned out to be a good thing for the live rock.  Because of the damage the Florida live rock growers (farmers ?) experienced with 3 hurricanes in short order it took over a month and half to get any live rock.  Live rock is looking good but I'm being more aggressive than I usually am checking it every day water changes at least every other day and scrubbing off anything that develops any white or brown slimey films.  That's a post I still have to do before the system is set up.

[+Grog]

When I had that huge tote of sand in the living room, that was strange.  But it worked out very well and really helped make the tank stabilize quickly.  It was a good choice.  The TBS products are good, and it is good to hear they are shipping stuff after the multiple storms.

[Timfish]

Cute, miniscule and belligerent little monster.  No idea what species of crab this is but it did a pretty good job of evading me for 10-15 minutes in the bottom of a bucket with just half an inch of water. 😕 Judging from the well developed back legs it's going into the sump until I get a better idea of what it is.

Here's a video with metric ruler.

 

[Timfish]

Live Rock

Just like everything else living that goes into a reef system, live rock needs to be quarantined for a month.  Any container will work.  I don't worry about getting good lighting for rubble and base rock but I do want decent lighting on premium rock.  In this case I've loosely stacked the rock with the premium on top.  For circulation a rigid air line is inserted so bubbles percolate up through the rock from the bottom. 

 

A baby Rose Coral.  At this size they look similar to hidden cup corals but that it's growing on the top or sunny side of the rock and has some color indicates it's a Rose coral.

 

After a week or so I like to stick a hardy couple corals in with the live rock as indicators of how things are progressing.  In this case I used a small duncan and red mushroom colony.

 

Here's a good example of the detritus generated by sponges or endolithic organisms that have colonized the rock and dissolving it or breaking it down.   Although there are several low spots detritus could collect if water currents were transporting detritus it's only collected in this one spot next to the red sponge.  This is about a weeks worth.

Back in the '90s my mentor owned a LFS with his wife and they always had multiple tanks just for holding live rock.  Whenever he saw any sponge starting to develop a white slimy coating like pictured here he would not only aggressively remove as much of the sponge as possible but would go through all the rock in the tank and remove any foul smelling or suspicious looking sponge.  Over the years I've tried being lazy and just let thing run it's course but it seems to have led to more loss of additional organisms than I remember when I was working for him.  For the last 2 decades when I QT live rock I'll start with 2 or three water changes a week (~10% - 20%), inspect all the rock closely and remove anything that looks slimy like the ball sponge in this pic or has a bad smell.  Once I don't find anything to remove I'll switch to just a small weekly water change.  Fortunately most sponges like the red one above do fine and don't seem to be affected even if there are sponges close by that need to be removed.   The best tool I've found for doing this is a flat blade screwdriver about 3/8" wide (partly because if my hand slips I won't be stabbing my self as deep like I would with a scalpel   ).

[Timfish]

When setting up a system I like to use as much conditioned carbonate base rock as possible along with the maricultured live rock.  It can be any of the dry rock products commercially available but since there's a lot of honeycomb or "holey" limestone locally I'll use a lot of that.  (If any is missing from your yard I had nothing to do with it's dissapperance!)  I also use a good carbonate based live sand and dry sand even though the later is a lot more work to rinse well to minimize the cloudyness it causes but it does help to maintain alkalinity.   I also like to used a fair amount of conditioned water (10% at least).  In the past I've used tubs and barrels as well as tanks, it's really just what happens to be easiest to grab.  With this setup between the water the live rock was QTed in and having about a hundred gallons in a tank I conditioned water and rock with I used roughly a little over 100 gallons of aged water along with about 150 gallons of new.

 

KimP has a good video of drilling rock and designing the base aquascaping so I won't duplicate that here.  Here's a link to Kim's video.

 

Setting up the rock wall that will hide the overflow.  As the overflow is away from the wall I didn't want any rock leaning on it.  A large piece of limestone flagstone was cut and drilled to fit around the overflow.  It would be set on several rocks to provide additional hiding places.  To help distribute the weight several pieces of eggcrate were set under the supporting rocks along with a lot of sand to help cushion everything.  Besides having a cut to fit around the overflow there were holes drilled for CPVC pipe to help hold everything together.  I prefer to drill holes and use pipe or rods both for stability as carbonate base rocks will dissolve in marine systems potentially compramising cemented rock and to facilitate disassembly when the aquascaping is dismantled (however far into the future that may be) with minimum harm to the animals that have colonized it.   It's also faster to set up and adjust as the rock work is being assembled.

 

I've made arches by drilling rock and using PVC but a purple dieyed "life rock" arch is less work.  (As "life rock" is just a very hard concrete product I don't like using much because it's very difficult to drill and won't provide much alkalinity as endoliths can't bore into it.)

 

Here it is with the base aquascaping done and sand and water added. 

 

As soon as all the water was in I added some easy corals as indicators.  Here's a couple, a duncan and GSP at about the 20 hour mark.  To help clear up the water quicker i added a small canister filter made out of 4" PVC with some filter media.

 

Here's a quick video at the 3 day mark.

 

 

[Timfish]

Day 6

 

Added more corals and clownfish on day 3. Here's some current  pics

Rainbow BTA

 

Green polyp Toadstool

 

Purple Stylo

 

Hollywood Stunner

 

Duncan and zoas (added in initial setup).

 

Lime Green Toadstool

 

Xenia (added in initial setup)

 

Short video on day 6.

 

[+Grog]

What has been your experience with Duncan's?  Do you find them easy to keep or not?

[Timfish]

Easy but slow growing compared to Euphylia.  Not surprising though as their skeleton is considerably denser and solid compared to Euphylia and a lot of other corals.

[CaptainK]

Wow, awesome setup and super clean. I expect a nice sofa or recliner in front of that tank!

[Timfish]

@CaptainK  Thank you!    I learned a long time ago not to overdo the initial aquascaping     I also like having areas or sections open all the way to the back of a tank to give a better sense of depth.  Even though the rock work in front of the over flow is only about 2" from the front glass, someone standing on the right side can see it's open behind all the way across the back to the arch in the middle. 

[Timfish]

Here's pics and a video from day 14.

 

Abby's 260 gallon on day 14. The "uglies"* have started. Besides the role live rock has in reducing the severity and duration of the growth of nuisance algae, water changes have been started using steel straws to assist the urchins added in the first week (there's links at the bottom with more info on this).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Aquabiomics article on live rock to establish healthy microbiomes: 

 

Restoring coral reefs using manual removal and urchins:

https://response.restoration.noaa.gov/about/media/save-corals-oahu-bay-first-vacuum-invasive-algae-then-apply-sea-urchins.html

 

 

 

 

 

[+Grog]

What is the red thing?

[Timfish]

Those are red Actinodiscus  sp. mushrooms.  This picture of them isn't much better but some of the individual polyps are visible.

[Timfish]

Day 21, everyone seems to be doing pretty well.