Venkman's reef: New FTS

[markalot]

Venkman doesn't post enough.

Update! The tank has just turned 14 months old. It is still skimmerless and sumpless and doing great. In order to celebrate its success I am going to take the tank down.

 

Fluval Edge 12: 7/24/14

 

 

 

　

 

 

 

 

Its contents are being added to a 34 gallon Low Iron rimless/framless Mr Aqua tank to give the corals some more room to grow.

 

Over the last few months, I have had to aggressivly frag corals to keep them from stining the shit out of eachother. However they are now growing much too quickly to keep up with.

 

Each of the three live rock pilars are one peice that can be lifted right out of the tank, coral and all. However I am going to have to cut the top of the tank off in order to remove them - I built [grew] a ship in a bottle. I do not plan to add any more rock to the new tank, just the three pilars; I want room for the staghorn acroporas to grow out.

 

I have innoculated 40 lbs of dry sand with sand from the DT and have it cycling in a bucket. I plan to fill the new tank with 24 gallons fresh salt water and 10 from the old tank. Then I am going to place in the pillars and add the new live sand sand as gently as possible. Hopefully the livestock doesn't mind too much.

 

The tank is going to stay all in one, no sump or skimmer. I have bought a Tunze Streamline intank filter, to run filter floss and carbon. I have also purchased a second WP10 for a possible 2500GPH of Flow. Even without a skimmer, the growth in the tank has been amazing and the colors are very good, though its hard to appreciate in the picture as I can only take pictues with my aging phone under white light only as you all have probably expereinced on your own. The tank has required minimal maintence, and I don't have to worry about issues with plumbing leaks or pump failures, clogged overflows, etc. I think for smaller tanks, the absence of a skimmer has it benefits; my frags have outgrown the same frags in the high-end ultra-low nutrient systems of my friends. Without a skimmer to remove them from the system, plankton proliferates very quickly in my tank and anyone who come to see it notices the quantity of sea bugs on my glass and the swarms in the low flow areas of the tank, which are definatley helping to feed the coral. As far as dissolved nutrients, I have had GHA pop up a few times in small spots but it was always proximal to an area of coral die back from being stung by neighboring corals, nothing the emerald crabs and turbo snail couldnt exponge after a few days, and rarely get algae growth on my glass. I plan on keeping the new tank stocked minimally so I don't push my luck running without a skimmer. In addition to the three fish I have I will likely add only two more, a tailspot blenny and possibly a flameback angel if it behaves itself.

 

 

I plan to gravity drip kalk to maintain calcium, Ph and act as a top-off, and continue doing two part manually as needed.

 

I also have upgraded to an AI hydra for a larger area of light spread and the benfits of additional spectra. I have been acclimating my corals to it over the last few weeks with great results.

 

The tank equipment has been purchased with redundancy in mind; two Wp10s, two undersized cobalt neotherm heaters, each on seperate circuits. The Tunze Streamline and one of the heaters will operate thorugh a battery backup incase of power failure.

 

It will be nice to have a larger tank to allow for growth and to give the fish some additioanl swimming space. However I am definatley going to miss the look of the fluval edge and the top-down view.

 

 

New page quote.

[DrVENKMAN]

Great tank! Are you starting a new build thread for the new tank or are you going to continue here? I'd love to see what you do with it. Following...

 

Thank you. I'm just going to keep this thread, the only thing thats really changing is the glass.

 

Venkman doesn't post enough.

 

Venkman has been studying for the MCAT and doing little else. The new tank was a present to myself in celebration for being done.

[DrVENKMAN]

Still waiting for the acrylic! Damn you 5 day ground shipping for actually taking 5 days~!

[DrVENKMAN]

Added new tang today.

 

I am going to upgrade once it gets big!

[Cameron6796]

Marmalade ?? They are auite a rare species how much you pay for that. Also what filter media you using my water is more yellow orange and yours is just so vibrant orange.

 

Haha lol to good.

[DrVENKMAN]

Marmalade ?? They are auite a rare species how much you pay for that. Also what filter media you using my water is more yellow orange and yours is just so vibrant orange.

 

Haha lol to good.

 

$1.99. I am filtering the water through a bed of cheetos.

[Dark_ice]

Added new tang today.

 

I am going to upgrade once it gets big!

 

This is epic

[DrVENKMAN]

Fin.

 

 

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[TigerLily]

Fait accompli, huh? Looks great. I really like the rockscape.

[markalot]

Very artsy fartsy. Nice scape.

[DrVENKMAN]

Fait accompli, huh? Looks great. I really like the rockscape.

Very artsy fartsy. Nice scape.

 

Thanks. The rock scape is two parts rock, one part cuss words, thirteen parts superglue. Carpe vinum.

 

[DrVENKMAN]

Two months post upgrade...I think

 

Tank is doing well. I had some issues initially with crazy ALK swings browning out some of the SPS. Things are stable now and color is beginning to return. I had to increase 2 part dosing to about 40 ml per day and added saturated CaOH to my ATO reservoir. This has been keeping the dKH between 9-10 consistently for the last two weeks. I naively though saturated kalkwasser in my ATO water would be enough to keep the ALK up. Not even close. With out dosing 2-part the ALK would drop from 10 to 6.5 in one day.

 

 

 

 

Centropyge potteri

I have had this fish since the upgrade. It is highly entertaining, never stops for a moment and has quite the personality. So far it hasn't bothered any coral, or any other occupant in the tank. I feed a small amount 3x a day and give it a little piece of nori once a day, which seems to be keeping it healthy; its colors have brightened considerably since I got it. Besides being hilarious it has also become a valuable members of the CUC; it grazes constantly, picking the rocks clean of any algae and keeps the sand bed free of detritus. Very happy I took the risk. If it decides to go rogue and eat all my soft coral and LPS I'd still love the fish.

I also added a yellow tail damsel which has been surprisingly passive and a neon goby which cleans the Potters Angel daily. The only other fish I plan to add is a tail spot Blenny, if only I can find one in a store. For such a common fish, I still have never seen one in person.

I also bought a fighting conch, which is doing a great job keeping the sandbed and lower part of the glass clean. The only other invertebrate I would like to add to the tank is a Tridacna dersa.

[DrVENKMAN]

 

 

Just finished battling GSP, the melanoma of the reef ecosystem. That is one invasive coral. I heard such warnings but never quite appreciated how quickly it could cover the entire tank and allelopathically burn the sh|t out of neighboring corals. When I set up my first reef tank I placed a small amount of GSP - ohh its so pretty - at the base of the pillar on the right. IDIOT. In no time it covered the entire thing, and has been killing the seriatopora at the top and overrunning a large colony of various Zoanthids. I could not take the pillar out to burn it with fire since the anemone is attached to it. If I moved the anemone in anyway the occelaris would surely die of anxiety.

 

The safest option seemed to be using superglue to create a sarcophagus for it. However I found it difficult to spread it over the rock while in the water without making a huge mess or super gluing my potter angel to my hand. What ever shall I do? It would be easier if I could lay patches of fabric over the areas like in fiberglassing. So that is what I did. Using nori as my fabric and superglue as the resin, I was able to shape patches to fit the areas I needed to cover. I cut the nori sheets to size soaked them in water to prevent them from soaking up any solvent from the superglue, covered them liberally with superglue and placed them over the offending GSP. I guarded the area for about 25 minutes with The Chopstick of DOOM while the superglue set up so nothing would end up eating the superglue while it was wet. By the next morning the snails and emerald crab cleaned all the nori off the area leaving only a hardened sarcophagus of superglue behind. Boom. Take that GSP.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[markalot]

I can never get GSP to spread. I have to think there are multiple species, or would the correct term be sub-species, and only some are invasive or adapt well to tank life. I have tried to put every invasive coral I have into my 29 to see what happens and so far only the Xenia is doing a good job of spreading. A few Blue Clove polyps here and there, but the GSP look to be dying.

 

After any major tank work I have more superglue on my fingers than in the tank.

[DrVENKMAN]

I remember a time when super glue on the hands was a major crisis that was assumed to require medical intervention. Now its just what happens on Sundays and Thursdays. If someone told me that I would spend 20$ a month on superglue and would not be huffing it, I would have never believed them.

 

I have GSP growing in areas of my tank with literally no visible light. Since I don't skim I am assuming that they grow so quickly because I have higher nutrient levels than most.

[wildbill79]

Your tank is amazing! Very minimal but really detailed. Your birdsnest at the top is awesome. Is that a stag horn at the bottom left. Very cool looking.

[DrVENKMAN]

Thank you very much. That is a stag, Acropora abrolhosensis, it a really beautiful coral - or was anyway. I am trying to nurse it back to health currently. It became over grown with GSP in my previous tank and lost a lot of tissue near the bottom. I am going to give it another week if it doesn't show signs of healing I am going to try and frag it again to save at least a piece of it. You can see base of that birdsnest also fell victim to the dreaded GSP as well. Vicious stuff. Hopefully it is under control now.

 

On a positive note I scored frags of strawberry shortcake Acropora, Myagi tort, green milli, and some kind of tricolor stag from a local reefer, and have a frag of ORA Red Planet on the way. Now I just need to upgrade my tank again.

[markalot]

I'll be interested to see how long it takes the SSC to color up for you. Mine is ever so slowly gaining some color.

[DrVENKMAN]

I'll be interested to see how long it takes the SSC to color up for you. Mine is ever so slowly gaining some color.

 

It was nicely colored when I picked it up which is a shame really, because now I will have to watch it fade over the next few days from the stress of being dipped and transferred from T5's to LEDs. I almost prefer buying brown Acros knowing that they can only look better.

[DrVENKMAN]

July:

 

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November:

 

 

 

 

 

[Sk8n Reefer]

Tanks looking really good- love that potters angel- is it still behaving? Like all the SPS ?

[FishFrog]

It is so nice to see tanks with no skimmer or sump doing well.

Yours looks really great!

 

I set up a skimmerless/sumpless 34G a few weeks ago and was worried it wouldn't work out.

Now I think I might actually be fine

 

Was just wondering, how much LR do you have in there?

[DrVENKMAN]

Tanks looking really good- love that potters angel- is it still behaving? Like all the SPS

The Angel is a model citizen. Very well behaved. It shows no interest in any coral.

 

It is so nice to see tanks with no skimmer or sump doing well.

Yours looks really great!

 

I set up a skimmerless/sumpless 34G a few weeks ago and was worried it wouldn't work out.

Now I think I might actually be fine

 

Was just wondering, how much LR do you have in there?

 

There is probably 12-15lbs of live rock in there. Not too much. There is atleast 30lbs of sand though.

[DrVENKMAN]

I thought the earth would crash into the sun if you tried to run a tank without a skimmer. Turns out that is not the case. This tank stays clean with a 4-8 gallon water change every two weeks; three if I am esspecially busy. I only run polyfilter and 200 ml of carbon, of which I change out half the volume everytime I do a water change.

[FishFrog]

I thought the earth would crash into the sun if you tried to run a tank without a skimmer. Turns out that is not the case. This tank stays clean with a 4-8 gallon water change every two weeks; three if I am esspecially busy. I only run polyfilter and 200 ml of carbon, of which I change out half the volume everytime I do a water change.

That sounds good and is similar to what I do: WC, filter floss and carbon. But like I said, I have only just started. Want to try and do a 4 - 5 gallong WC every week and see where things go. The coral seems happy so far, everything is growing new heads etc. and it is all LPS and soft coral anyway. Do you have any trouble feeding the scooter blenny enough pods? Or does he eat along with the rest?