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20H portable starboard reef


bucknellreefer

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bucknellreefer

Well, almost exactly a year after I set up my first tank, a 10g, I am finally ready to make a leap to something a little larger. For awhile I thought my next ank was going to be a 33g Oceanic cube tank I got at the $1/gallon sale at petco last fall but unfortunately my present situation as a full time college student make a tank that large almost impossible due to frequent moves and the fact that I wanted to do mostly sps in it (sps don't move well, at least in my experience that is).

 

I decided to go with a tank that fits between the 10 and 33, a 20g high. The tank will use a few things I acquired for the 33g as well as some things from my 10 including all the livestock.

 

One of the things that I had to consider for this tank are the numerous problems that arise when moving a reef. First off, after a year I have probably lost ~2/3 of the corals that I have purchased. Many things did well for months and then died suddenly. It took me awhile to catch on (silly NOOB) but these deaths were concentrated around all of my moves. While they weren't like the next day after moving, things would become visably stressed and then after a few weeks they would either be back to normal or dead.

 

I think there are a few reason for this, but the one big reason that I couldn't fix in my last set up was the detritus that filled the tank everytime I moved it. Because of my shallow sand bed I could not completely remove all of the detritus no matter how hard I tried and when I set the tank back up it was always a complete ###### storm.

 

My solution to this is going bare bottom. I will be able to completely drain the tank and rinse all detrius out every time I move to and from school, greatly reducing the stress to my corals and fish. It will also make the tank easier to carry because a tank with sand and just enough water to keep it covered is extremely hard to carry.

 

I will have to wait until the fall to see how this works out but I am very hopeful that this will solve the coral die off issue, it just pains me to think of all the coral I have lost to the mistakes I have made in the last year. My only goal now is to learn from these mistakes and create system that is a lot more move friendly.

 

Even though this tank is BB and I am lighting it with a 250w HQI Aqua Medic Oceanlight pendant (purchased for the 33g) I don't anticipate that it will feature SPS heavily, at least until I can see how well it goes through a move.

 

I will be trying to keep this system as simple as possible. The rest of the equipment will consist of one Tunze 6025 for flow and a DIY acrylic refugium that holds 2-3 gallons of water used to hold rubble and chaeto.

 

Stock will consist of my 2 occellaris clowns that have made it through all my moves like champs, my blood cleaner shrimp, and 15lbs of rock with assorted corals from the 10g. I will probably try and pick up a few more pounds of LR from established tanks. I think that I will probably add a small wrasse as well, a sixline or a flasher(if I can find one around here for not too much $$$).

 

In any case, I am waiting on my custom cut starboard for the bottom, once that arrives I will be siliconing it down and allowing the silicone to cure for a few days. My guess right now is that I will have it all put together as early as a week from now.

 

I will take some pics of the tank and lights set up tomorrow after I get a chance to take some.

 

(longest post evAR, guess this is what I get for taking summer courses and having work to procratinate)

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bucknellreefer

Ok, I managed to finally get the camera and snap a few quick pics of what I built. You'll see that I used an extremely overbuilt design in that I ran a base all the way around my tank and added extra support on the sides. I did this beccause my stand is a little over 3 feet tall and I didn't want to take any chances (don't want to be the kid that burns his dorm down). I also glued most of the joints together and this really stiffened up the structure considerably. I am probably going to paint it black in a couple days if I don't get too lasy.

 

You'll also see that I added an eggcrate lid to keep everything that supposed to be in the tank there instead of on the floor. I still need to cut holes for my ato and maybe my heater unless I put it in the fuge (I'm not sure if there is enough flow through there to put my heater there).

 

vertical.jpg

top.jpg

side.jpg

front.jpg

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funnyguy911

it that a clothes drawer you are using as a stand it might flex, mine had a hard time trying to hold up my tv. Love the light stand you made. Ever thought of using fusion spray paint,to paint the pipes different color that would be awesome....

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HecticDialectics

haha I'd be more worried about being the kid that flooded the dorm with 150 pounds of water on top of that dresser. Does it have any give if you push the side of it?

 

Sweet looking light setup though. Definitely needs some paint but looks good.

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bucknellreefer

The dresser is extremely sturdy, no worries there its had a 20 long turtle tank on it for months and it doesn't wiggle at all if pushed.

 

I have krylon fusion ready to paint, I just wanted to see how it looked and such before going through the trouble of painting.

 

I got the starboard from cuttingboards.com today, they were super fast. It only took 3 days for my custom cut board to arrive and it looks great. I siliconed it down and sealed around the edge to keep water and detritus to settle around and underneath it.

 

I am hoping to get everything moved over on friday, I need to start mixing up water.

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bucknellreefer

Water is mixing and painted light stand is drying, looking like i will be good to go tomorrow!

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bucknellreefer

Transfer is done (and I know I don't have pics yet, I'll get some when things settle a bit)!

Everything looks ok, zoas are open, xenia is pulsing and the clowns are coming out of hiding and starting to explore the tank some.

 

I think I need more rock but not as much as I thought. Because this is BB there is nothing to hide the rocks at all so they take up more space above the substrate than they did before.

 

I am going to run the lights for 5 hours today and slowly increase the photoperiod back up to 11-12 hours to give the corals time to acclimate to the big increase in light. One good thing about having less rock is that it keeps the corals lower in the tank which is good for the time being.

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fw2sw-wannabe

sick tank. cool setup. good call, painting the lighting stand. B)

 

btw, your build thread on the old 10g is what convinced me to start my own 10g AGA.

 

Thanks!

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bucknellreefer
sick tank. cool setup. good call, painting the lighting stand. B)

 

btw, your build thread on the old 10g is what convinced me to start my own 10g AGA.

 

Thanks!

 

 

Thanks, that means a lot to me. If it weren't for the people on this site I would have no clue that you could keep a saltwater tank of less than 55gs!

 

I really liked my 10g but its issues were made worse by moving and now I have more room!

 

I still have the 70w MH and aquaclear fuge setup so it may get brought back to life eventually!

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bucknellreefer

Haha! Nothing beats the ultimate procrastination tool!

 

This tank will probably stay pretty much the same for the next couple of weeks, I am starting work on monday (finally) so I will have a little bit of money to spend soon.

 

My basic plan for the summer is to get ~5 more pounds of LR, a sixline wrasse and I am probably going to split a large fragpack from reefermadness or someplace similar with a N-R member who is like 5 mins from my house. I need to not buy individual corals from my LFS, they are as expensive as ######.

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bucknellreefer

I got a new fish!

He is a small bicolor blenny, he has been in and out of the rocks all day and seems to have settled in very quickly.

 

Here he is peering out of a hole:

blenn.jpg

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  • 1 year later...
bucknellreefer

Time to revive my thread...

 

In the past year I managed to lose almost all of my corals through stupidity and a faulty electronic salinity reader. I also graduated from college so I decided to revive my tank. Despite having my salinity well up over 1.030 for a number of months all my fish are doing fine and the xenia and gsp pulled through as well.

 

I had some really nasty mutant algae that has died off a lot since the correction of the salinity. I also added soem new snails and hermit crabs to replace those that were lost.

 

I also got tired of the hugely excessive 250w halide over my almost empty tank so I sold it and picked up a cheap 65w pc fixture to tide me over until i move out and upgrade. I have been slowly adding some new coral over the last month or so, mostly LPS and some zoas. I am keeping these on frag racks closer to the surface due to the lower lighting conditions in my tank and to make it easier to feed the LPS.

 

Pics:

flame.jpg

 

newmicro.jpg

 

purpfavia.jpg

 

newfavia.jpg

 

greenfavia.jpg

 

More:

 

acan-1.jpg

 

closezoas1.jpg

 

duncan.jpg

 

firstmicro.jpg

 

zoas.jpg

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hey back from the dead... fts? everything looks like its doing well, you have some really nice looking favas

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bucknellreefer
hey back from the dead... fts? everything looks like its doing well, you have some really nice looking favas

 

FTS is kinda embarrassing... So i didn't take one today. Maybe in a couple weeks, I'm still waiting for the mutant algae to go away...

 

I think the high salinity mutated my bristle worms, I swear they are the fattest, meanest SOBs ever. I was trying to get something out of my fuge but I don't really wanna stick my hand back there now after the first rock I pulled out was covered in huge ass, super aggressive bristle worms.

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bucknellreefer

Here are some pics I just took that show the colors a little better on my favorite favia, I actually picked it up at my LFS today, I probably shouldn't be spending money on coral right now but I just couldn't resist...

 

betterfav.jpg

 

sidefav.jpg

 

I also forgot to post my last favia, pseudo war coral?

 

pseudowar.jpg

 

Better pic of some zoas:

 

betterzoas.jpg

 

Still no FTS (tank is just too ugly).

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bucknellreefer

Thanks for the complement, those zoas really caught my eye and I couldn't say no! Hopefully they will be good growers and I'll be able to frag them, I noticed that there are a couple new buds starting to form since I added them.

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bucknellreefer
What light are you using???

 

Current Single 65w PC, its not 250w MH but it gets the job done for now :D

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