Jack's 20gT Overkill SPS Sytem

[jservedio]

Edit 2020 - Anyone reading this, thinking my setup was a good idea should read my final post and look at the new thread I created for this tank after fixing my stupid mistakes: 

 

 

Hello all - my name is Jack and I am new to the nano-reef forum. I have been a member of my local forums CarolinaReefers and CarolinaFishTalk for a very long time, but never really got into the national forums.

 

I've been keeping aquariums since I was a young child and recently got into reefing about a year ago. I dove in head first and never looked back. After 4 months of an LPS dominated tank, I got my first acro and fell in love. Since then I've spent countless dollars converting my system to be the best it can possibly be for SPS corals and grown my collection of acros quite a bit.

 

Here is a quick overview of my system before I dive right into pics (the only reason you came here...):

My DT is a 20g Tall Aqueon special that I used from my FW days that I am using a HOB overflow on with a 10g aqueon sump. I run Radion Pro LEDs 14" over the tank @ 20kK and an MP10 for flow (with a dual return).Below the tank down in the sump, which is guarded by a filter sock, I am running a Bubble Magus NAC 3.5+ skimmer and a BRS Deluxe reactor on an MJ1200 for GFO. This drains into a DIY reactor I made for GAC. To keep my salinity in line I have an Avast Marine ATO and to keep my Alk, Ca, and Mg in line I have a 3 pump Bubble Magus doser. To keep track of salinity and pH I have pinpoint monitors. I am sure I am missing some things (my sump is super packed), but you can see them in the sump pictures.

 

For livestock I keep 2x Percula Clowns, 1x Green Mandarin, 2 blue leg hermits, 4 ceriths, 2 astrea, 2 nassarius, and 1 pep shrimp (which may be butter fried soon for eating my happy linckia...)

 

 

Without Further Ado - here are some pics of the tank. They are about a month old and I have since re-scaped a bit and put quite a few more corals in - but I will certainly update this thread with some newer pictures hopefully this week:

 

FTS 6/30/14:

Well where do I begin... Got AEFW, beat AEFW, moved the tank 950 miles from Durham, NC to Madison, WI a few weeks ago and completely re-scaped... I lost a few things during the AEFW dipping (mainly my big milli, my red dragon, and my ORA frogskin), but it wasn't too bad. Color hasn't fully come back yet after 3 days in a cooler, but it is getting there much faster than I expected! Anyway - here is what the new scape looks like:

 

 

Updated FTS 10/26/13:

Tons of new growth, sold off my ugly brown stag, hacked up my maricultured tort into 5 pieces (and kept 1), and filled up a 2nd frag rack!

 

FTS:

 

Sump:

 

Upper Left Side:

 

Middle Top:

 

Left Bottom Side:

 

Middle Bottom:

 

Center Island (Just added a bleeding apple acan bowerbanki behind it - looks awesome! pictures soon):

 

Right Side View of Tank:

 

"Leftovers" on the Frag Rack:

 

 

Here is some stuff I recently got that I don't have pictures of yet, but is now sitting happily in the tank:

Acro Chesterfieldensis:

 

Passion Flower Favia:

 

Teal Mariculted Tonga Acro:

 

Will post some more pictures later when I have some time!

 

Here is my new mandarin too!:

I set up a Tigger Pod culture just for this guy and set up a nannochloropsis culture for the pods...

Edited April 9, 2020 by jservedio
Stupidity

[TheKleinReef]

it looks amazing. it actually makes me want to upgrade my radion gen1 to a pro... maybe one day.

i see you're using reef fusion by seachem. i was debating on using it, but i went the BRS powder route instead. Do you like it?

[jservedio]

it looks amazing. it actually makes me want to upgrade my radion gen1 to a pro... maybe one day.

i see you're using reef fusion by seachem. i was debating on using it, but i went the BRS powder route instead. Do you like it?

 

It works just fine and because it has magnesium in it and keeps it flat (around 1350), I get to use my 3rd dosing pump to dose AAs. My tank goes through nearly 2dkh/day of Alkalinity and the doser goes off 8 times per day to keep it flat so I don't notice fluctuations of more than 0.2dkh.

 

For my local forum, I have been doing an Amino Acid experiment and the extra spot on the doser makes that super easy (that's what the yellow jar connected to the doser is - diluted to 1 dose/10ml RODI).

 

I have debated switching to BRS - but that means more jugs, more mixing, and more of a pain in the butt. I switched to NSW to prevent any and all mixing (since I only change 10% every 3-4 weeks) and keep the fiancee happy (she HATES maintenance time - so I minimize that).

[jservedio]

BTW - thanks for the nice comments

[TheKleinReef]

It works just fine and because it has magnesium in it and keeps it flat (around 1350), I get to use my 3rd dosing pump to dose AAs. My tank goes through nearly 2dkh/day of Alkalinity and the doser goes off 8 times per day to keep it flat so I don't notice fluctuations of more than 0.2dkh.

 

For my local forum, I have been doing an Amino Acid experiment and the extra spot on the doser makes that super easy (that's what the yellow jar connected to the doser is - diluted to 1 dose/10ml RODI).

 

I have debated switching to BRS - but that means more jugs, more mixing, and more of a pain in the butt. I switched to NSW to prevent any and all mixing (since I only change 10% every 3-4 weeks) and keep the fiancee happy (she HATES maintenance time - so I minimize that).

 

that's one thing i liked about using seachem, its fortified with strontium and magnesium so i didn't have to dose it. but i was using powders, and getting it to dissolve was a hassle, so i switched to BRS. which is surprisingly easy to mix...

 

i dose amino acids once a week, but i want to try it daily. let me know how it works for you! i'll tag along on this thread as well!

[DRLOVEtoreef]

can you share a bit more on the dosage on the AA's ... specifically which ones are you dosing, how do you mix it and what dosage are you giving?

also, do you find any issues with the Reef Fusion settling out between doses?

[TheKleinReef]

can you share a bit more on the dosage on the AA's ... specifically which ones are you dosing, how do you mix it and what dosage are you giving?

 

also, do you find any issues with the Reef Fusion settling out between doses?

 

i'd like to know more about the AA dosing too

[jservedio]

For sure! Right now I am using the Elos Omega Amino Acids. The suggested dose is 3-6 drops per 12g per day. For my tank, that would be 6-12 drops per day. However, I also like the idea of AquaVitro Vibrance, which also contains vitamins, complex sugars, and some bigger proteins in addition to a smaller amount of Amino Acids so I am using this as well. With this, I am using AquaVitro Fuel which is a safe Iodine supplement.

 

I am dosing 4 drops of Elos Omega, 1/2 dose of Vibrance, and 1/3 dose of AquaVitro diluted with 10ml of RODI water. I put about 2 weeks worth in the little jar and shake it every few days.

 

In addition, I am feeding Larry's Reef Food (which is blender mush that is fortified and contains various sized zooplankton and frozen - made here in NC) in addition to Elos SPS Skimmer food. I feed daily. I also feed live cultured Tigger Pods once a week (I have a small culture in my office).

 

 

The reason I started doing this is because I have been completely unable to read Nitrates or Phosphates on my Salifert kits in over 6 months, don't have a single spot of microalgae, and even with the Radion Pros, my sticks weren't nearly as colorful as they should be. Since starting the AA cocktail, I have noticed a little bit of color improvement on some of my sticks and better PE. This is subjective obviously and I have been doing a TON of rearranging, so it could just be that they were being left alone - but I am hoping for good results. I do know that unless I max out my feeding, my acros are pretty pale (with a few exceptions) so I am hoping to keep the feeding to a normal level and letting the AAs and vitamins help out.

 

I will keep things updated and let you know how they work out. And obviously keep up with progression pictures!

[SouthFlorida_Tron]

I'm still waiting for the overkill part

[jservedio]

also, do you find any issues with the Reef Fusion settling out between doses?

 

Very little actually! I had much more of a problem with the Kent Nano 2-part which I used to dose manually (was the only pre-mixed 2-part I could get locally until my LFS started stocking the Reef Fusion). The Kent stuff would basically get calcium carbonate rocks in the bottom of the bottle by the time I was 2/3 of the way through.

 

The Reef Fusion is MUCH better. Sure there are some slightly-visible crystals that form when the bottle gets lower, but it is not bad. When I clean out my skimmer every week or so I give the bottles a shake and its all good. I just finished a bottle last week and there were absolutely no solids on the bottom - so I would definitely recommend it. Definitely not like the Kent garbage (which I have to use when they are out of reef fusion and I HATE).

[jservedio]

I'm still waiting for the overkill part

nearly $1,000 light, MP10, doser, giant skimmer, reactors - pretty overkill for 20 gallons!!! Oh yeah, I am working on building a 2nd cabinet butted up to the current stand for some neat projects.

 

Here is what is on the list that you will be getting pictures of soon hopefully!

1. Calcium Reactor

2. 2nd MP10 for better flow

3. Remote Mangrove pot (I have an internal return/overflow I built that I am working on mounting inside a flower pot - I don't want them in a tank - which looks ugly) which will go ontop of the cabinet.

4. Working on a DIY Arduino controller that is connected up to a Raspberry Pi web server/storage device (I am a programmer by day!)

5. Manifold on the return pump - my return is kind of junky

 

I just got myself a Ranco 111000-000 today! Working on getting that hooked up next week when I have some time!

[SouthFlorida_Tron]

Keep it coming. Looks good. Hopefully it provides results for the $ spent

[jservedio]

Keep it coming. Looks good. Hopefully it provides results for the $ spent

 

Hopefully the light will do something (otherwise I will be a very unhappy camper) - but you can't really buy results with a reef. The good thing about our nanos is for the cost of a nice softie/LPS 90 gallon, you can have a nano that has the best equipment on the market and a full blown SPS reef! I got "lucky" because I set up a budget to build a 60g cube to grow into, but the fiancee put that on hold for 3 years since she will be in rotation and residency at hospitals possibly all over the country - so I put that back into the 20g and tried to turn it from a softie/lps tank into some really good. So far it's been working out - I am hoping I can keep it up and let things grow up and not die.

 

Even if I spent double what I did, without putting in the hundreds and hundreds of hours to learn all the chemical processes, the biological processes, learning the relationship between carbonate, bicarbonate and pH as well as how calcium and magnesium fit in the equation, learning about photosynthesis and lighting, researching every species in the tank, doing the math and constant monitoring to keep Alk, Ca, Mg, and pH flat - my tank would be full of dying coral and tons of algae.

 

IMO - dumping money into your tank can only save you time - not make your reef better (with the exception of your lighting and water flow - to a point). However, that comes at the expense of complexity too, so it is a double edged sword. I would imagine if I bought all this when I first set up my reef, I wouldn't know anything about how it works. I wouldn't have manually dosed to learn how it effects the tank, I wouldn't have manually topped off the tank to learn how much water my tank uses and when it needs water the most, I wouldn't have learned how to run a tank with gadgets.

 

Here is a picture of my tank in February of this year before I found out that I was not going to get my 60g cube and when it was FAR simpler of a setup. No sump:

VERY simple - barely anything on it. Shows just how far you can go in 5 months!

[DRLOVEtoreef]

awesome .. thanks for the feedback on the AA's and reef fusion ... I am getting ready to set up my dosing pumps and I like the idea of giving the sps a continuous feed of AA's ...

[jservedio]

So you were wondering how the AA's were working out... check out this PE!

 

Purple Tenuis:

 

Chesterfieldensis:

 

Baby Blue Acro (Probably Tenuis):

 

Blue/Teal Aussie Mariculture Tort:

 

And while this guy has some little teeny tiny polyps, this is the first time I've ever seen them on this bali deepwater blue/green/purple:

 

Sorry the pictures are pretty crappy - they were taken with my kit-lens using a +4 optic correction filter on the end so I could focus up close and Autofocus doesn't work with it on and I didn't have the tripod out. Also, I just let the radions on 18kK and didn't break out the white-balance cards. Also, no Photoshop on my netbook so they all had to be cropped and resized in Paint so I couldn't correct any of the colors to make them look exactly how they do in RL. That last deepwater is pretty far off - looks SO much better in person.

[DRLOVEtoreef]

those look very healthy and happy!

[TheKleinReef]

The last one is awesome. If you don't see polyps during the day, check at night. My suharsonoi puts out its polyps at night right before lights out and it looks insane. Awesome pics!

[jservedio]

Got a new piece of equipment in for additional safety! I bought an AutoTopoff.com "Nano Upper" float switch and relax box to prevent my tank from flooding in the event that my failure-prone HOB overflow fails. A couple weekends ago, my Tom's Aqualifter pump clogged and failed so the siphon in my HOB overflow partially broke (it still kept some siphon, so it just drained slower than usual and nearly flooded my apartment. I caught it in time and cleaned out the pump, but it scared the hell out of me. If I wasn't home, I would have certainly had a flood.

 

So, to ease my mind - I decided to back up the overflow with several fail-safes. I hooked up the float switch to the tank and connected it to my return pump. When the overflow fails, the return pump will shut off long before the tank overflows. To prevent the pump from failing, I also went out and got a "pre-filter" for the aqualifter pump so it doesn't clog. If the pump does fail, I also put a check-valve on the siphon line - this way I don't lose siphon and the overflow continues to work even without the pump!

 

Now, my HOB overflow is more reliable than most other people's internal overflows! Here is a picture of it all set up and tucked away neatly:

[jservedio]

I ordered another piece of equipment that was supposed to be on my tank already - a Ranco 111000-000 temperature controller! With the near-failure of my overflow, I started becoming weary of what would happen in the even of equipment failures. The biggest concern (other than a flood) is my cheap heater sticking in the "On" position and frying my tank.

 

So - to prevent this, I got a temperature controller. From ETC Supply, I was able to get one pre-wired with the probe pre-sealed in a thermal well. Besides a fail-safe, the Ranco is FAR more accurate than the cheap thermostats inside aquarium heaters. Now, my temperature should be MUCH more stable. I can set the Ranco to 80 degrees exactly with a 1 degree variance and then set the thermostat on the heater to 83. With the thermostat on the heater higher than the temperature in the tank, the switch will ALWAYS be closed - preventing wear on the heater's thermostat (which is the main point of failure). With the heater thermostat higher than the ambient temperature, if the Ranco somehow fails (which it won't - ever...) the heaters internal thermostat will act as a fail-safe.

 

The only problem in this setup is USPS - who claims they delivered my package on Monday - but didn't put it in my mail box, didn't put it in a package locker, didn't leave it outside my door, and didn't leave it with the apartment complex office! So, now I have to wait for them to find it or start banging on my neighbors doors.... Hopefully it will be on my tank in the next few days because my biggest worry on the tank is the cheap heater...

[jservedio]

Since my last update things have been going awesome with the exception of a pretty big problem, courtesy of a bad batch of NSW with 0.24ppm of phosphate in it! I put 15g in my tank before I realized it was the source of the problem and my phosphates were up to 0.12ppm and my acros lost so much color. Luckily, I caught it and didn't lose anything except for 2 small frags that were iffy when I got them anyway. Finally starting to color back up and back up to 26m/day Reef Fusion and 175ml of Saturated Kalk. Definitely test any water before it goes in your tank if you aren't making it yourself - even if the box says "0 Nutrients", give it a test. Out of hundreds of NSW I bought I never had any problems with nutrients, but just one bad batch will set you back a month of growth/color if you catch it.

 

I also re-plumbed my system and changed the bearings in my MP10. I had a Durso Style overflow in my HOB and it was pretty loud. I changed the HOB over to a Herbie with a neat little project (and TONs of failsafes...over $100 in mechanical and electronic failsafes...). Thanks to MetroKat's MP10 bearing replacement guide and JediMasterBen's suggestion for the correct bearings, I was able to do it right and it is dead silent again! Thanks Guys!

 

Without further ado, here are the pictures (obviously all you care about anyway!). Sorry I only took a couple this morning, I'll have to take some more this week and get a new picture of the equipment underneath.

FTS:

( Frag rack has some damaged acros - my old one fell on my acans Hopefully they will recover )

 

JF Sour Twist Top-Down:

 

Tyree Red Dragon - This thing grows SOOOO fast. I can't get the base (or anywhere that didn't grow in my tank) to color up. Everything that grew in my tank from this is a BRIGHT purplish/pink but the rest is still ugly:

 

Top of the Reef, Right Side (Hot-Pink Milli, Big frag from my Maricultured Tort, JF S. Twist, nice purple stag, monti cap.):

 

New Acan (and my incredibly slow growing merulina):

[Reefkid88]

Wow,this thing is so much win. How is it doing ? Any updates ?!

[jservedio]

Well - the past 7 months have been absolutely crazy for this reef, but things are doing really, really well again (finally). I realized I had AEFW sometime in late October or early November even though I dipped every single coral I own before putting them in the tank. I treated for for this with the normal QT for almost 3 months and 8 weekly dips and was able to eradicate them completely. I did lose a few things - my really big milli, my red dragon, my ORA frogskin (which luckily I got a tiny frag of), and a couple other small frags, but made it through better than I expected.

 

Then, in the first week of June, I had to break down the tank, pack it up in coolers, and drive it 950 miles half way across the country (which took 2 days). I only lost 2 acro frags during the move and a few LPS got beaten up fighting with each other because they got shifted around during the drive (Indiana's roads are horrible and it's basically like offroading through the entire state). My coral lived in coolers for nearly 3 days. After that, they spent a week in my QT tank because my 20g got broken during the move so I had to find a new one and of course the LFS up here is in the middle of a move - so it took a bit

 

Anyway, after about 8 months of being in complete disarray, I was able to put things back together. It has only had about 2 weeks of recovery time, but my acros are all starting to get their color back and things are looking a bit happier. Considering what it's been through, I think it looks pretty awesome (It was taken at night - I turned the lights back on at 1am to take the picture so the LPS are in eating mode, not puffy mode):

 

 

Here they are a little bit happier. You can see how beat up some of them got in the trip. The one on the right lost 2 polyps to a merulina, the one on the bottom not glued was attacked by an acro that fell on it (of all things to beat down an acan...), and the green one on the top left just got beaten down by bone cutters because I had to pry it off another rock. All of these were grown from little tiny 2-4 polyp frags (you can still see the plug under some of them):

 

To the state of Indiana: I hold you 100% responsible for my big monti breaking in half. It was in a container all by itself and zip-tied down, but "Offroading" down I-65 through that god forsaken area between Indianapolis and Gary split my monti in two...

[Reefkid88]

Damn,I almost forgot about this tank,well I honestly did lol. But after all the unforeseen crap it's been thru,I'm glad to see it's still going.

 

Tanks looking good though man,especially after what's happened to it. Glad to see you've still got some nice size colonies left and a ass load of frags !!

[jservedio]

It's been 7 years since I made this thread and during all of my moving, forgot that it existed, so I created a new thread for this tank after I settled down in my new house. If anyone sees a picture of my tank now and reads this thread thinking the way I ran this tank for the first 5 years of it's life was something to emulate, think again. This very short thread is exactly how you should not run a nano tank. All of the crap you see in the sump - the reactors, the monitors, the doser, the big skimmer, the filter socks, etc. did nothing but hold this tank back for years and I don't use any of it anymore - literally not a single thing you see in the sump is being used anymore. It's an empty sump with nothing but an ATO and return pump and my tank has never been better.

 

For all of the equipment that I had on this tank, none of it could replace what comes with having a mature, older tank and certainly couldn't replace good quarantine practices. Every single piece of SPS in all of these pictures I don't have anymore - I sold about 60% of them before my moves, but every other one was killed by a pest, unstable conditions, or in one of my moves. The good news is pretty much everything else in the tank is still alive - some of the corals pushing 10 years now.

 

Biggest mistakes from early on in this tank:

1. Buying all of that useless equipment. Simply taking care of the tank properly is all that is needed
2. Buying a Mandarin. I did all of my research, I was culturing pods, culturing food for the pods, and feeding live food daily. Still a huge mistake - they simply don't belong in a newish 20g tank.
3. Not properly QTing: I dealt with AEFW, red bugs, MENs, and a few others. No matter how you dip and how careful you are, nothing replaces quarantine.
4. Stripping Nutrients: With all of my equipment and GFO reactor, I had almost no nutrients so I had starving corals. In addition to that, I ended up with Dinoflagellates twice and a particularly long and nasty bout with Chrysophtes. Don't strip your nutrients...

However, that doesn't mean this didn't come with success. I learned my lessons and fixed my mistakes. My tank is now coming up on 10 years and is still kicking and doing better than ever. If you want to see what came from all of these mistakes, you can see my up-to-date build thread here: