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ADA 60p Soft Coral Mangrove Peninsular - Long overdue update


East1

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Yay page 2! Also, Giga, this is the mangrove I got from the site you recommended in Europe last december, it sprouted and grew 5 pairs in total of which I've trimmed one down and am seeing my first axial growth. I'm in need of some advice however - I need to transition it from freshwater that I grew it in to full strength seawater, do you have any advice on the time period to do this over?

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Tools arrived today! It was the first time I've ever used a dremel so I tried it out shortening my skimmer then took to the tank. It took surprisingly long especially considering I had to allow time to cool with each cutting. Took me about an hour or three to get everything sorted. I've ended up using a narrower downpipe so flow is limited (but this is what I wanted, I don't want a high-flow tank, considering I'm going mainly soft coral < LPS )

 

The picture shows the freshly drilled and drained tank and a half filled tank with my mangrove rooted in it. The mangrove roots are about 2" deep and I intend to bonsai the tree, so this should work well.

 

I'm just waiting on the final courier to deliver my salt and return pump and we're Gucci!

 

xEEoAMN.png

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Turns out the postman didn't feel the need to ring the doorbell, so I went on a walk (and picked up a steak for dinner, funfact, Helena Bonham Carter and I use the same butcher)

 

Now for the meat of the post. I'm so sorry about that dadjoke!

 

u5Pz3FV.png

 

...it just occurred to me that I put the overflow on the wrong side.

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Appreciate it! I love this site, it's got a hell of a lot more innovation per thread than most other forums I see in all honesty.

 

So, I've never had a sump before this, all of my tanks have been pretty ghetto-looking as a result, but holy hell this is convienent. I've always been scared of drilling stuff

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I know nothing about plumbing but I keep telling myself that if/when I upgrade I'm going with a sump. The benefits from convenience alone when it comes to equipment placement are worth it. The extra water volume that I long saw as the primary reason is now just a small benefit compared to the convenience.

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I know nothing about plumbing but I keep telling myself that if/when I upgrade I'm going with a sump. The benefits from convenience alone when it comes to equipment placement are worth it. The extra water volume that I long saw as the primary reason is now just a small benefit compared to the convenience.

 

Oh man, 45 minutes with my Fake Dremel changed my life, after doing 3 or 4 hightech SPS builds without a sump I'm never not doing this again!

 

You have a very unique and interesting little tank. What do you plan on adding to it later on?

 

Thankyou! Currently the idea is colorful zoas in the roots of the mangrove, perhaps an LPS and some gorgonians in a patch-reef rubble esq fashion and hopefully a rare goby (whitecap if I can find one, I think this tank would suit perfectly)

 

I'll probably end up getting a relatively large acro millepora as the centerpiece, too. I'm not planning on biotoping this one much.

 

If all goes well, I can run 3 or 4 of these from one return pump it seems, as I've got the 1200 turned down to absolute lowest I could probably just plumb it with a valve on each feed pipe to control flow individually and perhaps expand the stocking lists

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Oh man, 45 minutes with my Fake Dremel changed my life, after doing 3 or 4 hightech SPS builds without a sump I'm never not doing this again!

 

 

Thankyou! Currently the idea is colorful zoas in the roots of the mangrove, perhaps an LPS and some gorgonians in a patch-reef rubble esq fashion and hopefully a rare goby (whitecap if I can find one, I think this tank would suit perfectly)

 

I'll probably end up getting a relatively large acro millepora as the centerpiece, too. I'm not planning on biotoping this one much.

 

If all goes well, I can run 3 or 4 of these from one return pump it seems, as I've got the 1200 turned down to absolute lowest I could probably just plumb it with a valve on each feed pipe to control flow individually and perhaps expand the stocking lists

You better work on your water params and stability if you plan on putting a millepora in this tank. It would look really cool though. GL.

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Yay page 2! Also, Giga, this is the mangrove I got from the site you recommended in Europe last december, it sprouted and grew 5 pairs in total of which I've trimmed one down and am seeing my first axial growth. I'm in need of some advice however - I need to transition it from freshwater that I grew it in to full strength seawater, do you have any advice on the time period to do this over?

 

it's a crap shoot if you just drop them from fresh to salt as the survival rate is about 10%. What I did it fill the tank with fresh water and then just auto toped off with saltwater. My tank was 11o gallon altogether so it took about a month to convert to 1.024. I would try and shoot for 3 weeks at a minimum. just go slow and the rate is close to 100% survival rate

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You better work on your water params and stability if you plan on putting a millepora in this tank. It would look really cool though. GL.

 

It's definitely going to be a challenge! The tank in my sig was about 5 gallons or so and did alright with agressive skimming and biopellets, so I'm going to emulate that on this tank, all in all I've got about 8 gallons of water volume at the moment.

 

it's a crap shoot if you just drop them from fresh to salt as the survival rate is about 10%. What I did it fill the tank with fresh water and then just auto toped off with saltwater. My tank was 11o gallon altogether so it took about a month to convert to 1.024. I would try and shoot for 3 weeks at a minimum. just go slow and the rate is close to 100% survival rate

 

Ah that'd work perfectly actually! Yeah, currently it's freshwater so I'll just autotop it and aim for around 3 weeks to a month,

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The next step is going fresh to salt water now, I've got about 27 litres of water in the system so I'm just going to replace a litre every day with natural strength water to ease the transition for my tree. Once I tend close to NSW levels I can turn on my biopellet reactor and skimmer properly, I doubt I'll have more than a 1 week cycle with the reactor running which is good.

 

In the mean time, I'm trying desperately to track down some trimma/eviota gobies. I'm also extremely tempted to pull the trigger on a flaming prawn goby - they want a refundable deposit but isn't prepared to ship till the fish is rested till April, I'm not sure if I've got that much willpower.

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yeah, I aim to emulate a scape like this one below, keeping it rubble-y and the majority of my corals relatively low to the sandbed, with one or two SPS colonies breaking the height barrier to make it more striking.

 

ZXN7RND.png

 

Image source here

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So the plumbings perfect and silent too, good turnover and a nice flowrate, with a soft gurgle that I really like in my room. Added a tiny bit of saltwater today, but no noticeable effect on the spec. gravity.

 

I've got a lovely shimmer but more of a ripple, most of the flow is angled downard to maximise the movement in this small volume because I don't want a powerhead in the tank. I'm tempted to build a tiny acrylic overflow that's approx 2" x 1" x 1" and made of black acrylic fastened over where the PVC elbow is.

 

There is a slight bowing, it's about 2mm maximum at the centre of the span, nothing I'd worry about but I was wondering, is it possible that this would tear the bonds at the seams apart? am I being silly?

 

idFb1vk.png

 

and the pic showing the bowing (call the pun police)

 

2TAStTo.png

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Yeah I know, I've run out of cable ties! :unsure:

 

I need about 6 of them to cable tie the LED on a goosneck I've got for it, so that's tomorrows job, along with getting the new iPhone

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I need a better name for this build

 

Here is the full lighting assembly. I caved and just went with ductape. I'll probably neaten it up at some point (I need to hide the pipework that's exposed too, but that's for another day.

 

Salinity is up to 1.009, and the skimmer is starting to form a head. My ghetto modified MCE300 is actually looking really good, and best of all the sump, even though exposed is still silent as a stoner in a police station.

 

nyU6GQDl.png

 

heh, you can see the tip of my dragon in that picture (lol penis joke [it's actually a 6 foot long dragon I drew one day when bored)

 

(just discovered that adding an m or an l to the end of an imgur link auto-resizes it. The original is here http://i.imgur.com/nyU6GQD.png and the smaller links look like this: http://i.imgur.com/nyU6GQDm.png, this may be useful to someone)

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totally being a downer! :P

 

it's a 3w LED which I thought would do it, I've replaced the driver from the IKEA one, it runs a bit hotter but brighter, and I figured with 45* lens at about 3.5 inches from the top of the top leafe would be enough. I've included a picture of no lighting in my room (also included) showing it lighting up the entire room very well. I genuinely think that till the canopy spreads beyond what this can reach within 4 inches the tree will be fine, coupled with daily direct sunlight in summer for 2 hours and ambient light otherwise.

 

 

 

YqIvt88.png

 

q4h3JAt.png

 

Check out my sweet computer. I'm a gamer at heart!

 

The tree was grown so far under a 10W led at about 1 foot distance with 60* lenses, hence my assumption.

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In the mean time, I'm trying desperately to track down some trimma/eviota gobies. I'm also extremely tempted to pull the trigger on a flaming prawn goby - they want a refundable deposit but isn't prepared to ship till the fish is rested till April, I'm not sure if I've got that much willpower.

 

Unique Corals (a great reliable vendor with cheap shipping) currently has three species of eviotas and trimmas too:

 

http://uniquecorals.com/fish-44/gobies.html

 

edit: oh sorry you're in the UK :blush:

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