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Cultivated Reef

Gulf's ever evolving nano party mix tape!


gulfsurfer101

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gulfsurfer101

Edit: tore down the ten gallon on pg2 and forgot about it a couple months then rebiult my 20L sump from my 75g back into a fish and coral holding facility contraption! Not to shabby considering it was covered in calcium deposit and held a few baffles.

 

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Skip ahead 3 mo in and I'm still working on getting my 75g up and this tank is looking too good to tear down after it is!

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I had an empty 10g sitting around along with a diy led fixture I put together a while back. Ran to petco and grabbed the ac20, black sand, and heater on the quick. Headed down to my favorite jetties and scooped up two buckets of water filtered by way of coffee strainer of course, and heard home. I filled her up and let her run for a couple hours. Pulled some rock out my dt and began stocking her up. This tank is now just passing the one month mark and is about as cycled as a fully mature tank could be. The phyto and zooplankton found in the nsw had me worried at first but I haven't noticed any outbreaks of any kind.

 

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The coral seems to be holding up fine if I don't tell them that the water I'm using is straight from the ocean. I collect at high tide, just off the jetties. I usually just do a 50% wc once a week and it's been ok so far. I might let it go for two weeks and see if I see any difference whatsoever, parameters wise.

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nice the colour looks good.

 

I'd be scared to grab water out of the ocean :huh: everyone is very particular about having to have perfect water (RO and mixed back up in the house) be interesting to see how it works out :)

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gulfsurfer101

Well ro water made a huge mess in my 75g by letting silcates make their way into my tank causing nasty dinoflagellates. I know several local reefers using NSW with tremendous success. Here is a local friends tank housing many large tridacna clams, carpet nems, and a few large colonies of sps. This tank is 320 gallons with another 200 gallons underneath in a big plastic bin, all NSW!

 

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JavaJacketOC

I would just worry about local waste affecting the water quality. I know there are areas by me where runoff and high traffic areas (people, boats, etc) make the water quality really poor.

 

Interested to see how this does long term.

 

When are you getting more dwarf conchs?! :)

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gulfsurfer101

They are getting busy right now as we type lol. Most of the cities runoff heads into the backbay and is kept there by surging water from the gulf. Padre island acts like a barrier island and keeps all the nasty crap pushed back into the back bay near all the refineries. The water I collect is straight from the gulf and not the bay near any city runoff. I will not collect of there are any toxic blooms of course, so I'm giving my self some cheat room. I'll be tearing down my 75 and replumbing everything to add breakaway unions and better water change solutions soon. I'll use nsw to fill it back up though. I'm still not certain about the fate of this tank once I get my big tank back up to par. I've upped my wc schedule to 2g every other day in this tank since I've added a large maxima that needs lots of phyto,zooplankton, calcium and magnesium in such high volume. Weekly water changes just won't cut it and dosing in such a tiny tank can get complicated and expensive. No need for that when I have a large tote full of nsw in my garage and it's all absolutely free.

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gulfsurfer101

My 6"+ maxima is just as happy as a clam! It's a wild caught French Polynesian, so keeping alive in any tank is a challenge, keeping it thriving in a ten gallon, science!

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Nice!

 

There's a company here in SoCal that collects NSW out past Catalina Island (RealOcean) to minimize pollutants. I ran tanks for years using that back in the 90's, so I know NSW can work fine.

 

Love that clam. :)

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gulfsurfer101

Most of the things I have in this tank are going back into my75g after changing out the 20L sump for 29T sump and replumbing my entire system to allow for an additional frag tank tied into my system. I'll probably keep this tank going since it's already up and running. I still haven't decided exactly what to do, but it'll give me a good excuse to try out the AI prime later on down line.

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gulfsurfer101

So getting ready for my kids to come down for the summer I decided to move the tank from one room to another. The polyp extention on my sps looks good and my lps always puffs out so huge every time I introduce new sea water to the tank. I'll be using NSW in my 75g from now on after examining rapid coral growth and good pe! I had a favites frag put out eight heads in less than a month.

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gulfsurfer101

Tomorrow will be the day I'll officially tear down my 75g and replumb the whole thing and begin using NSW as my sole source of water in my systems. The local petco is having the dollar per gallon sale going on right now and I've been thinking of currently ditching the 20L sump and building a 20t or 29g sump but the time it could cost me getting everything set back up might be too long. It's something that has crossed my mind before though.

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gulfsurfer101

So after collecting roughly 100 gallons my 75g is now currently set up and running 100% nsw after reworking the sump. I'll let it cycle a week or two but don't expect much of a cycle since I'm using lots of mature rock and lots of sand I was using in the dt in the sump. The coolest thing about collecting your own water is coming across things like this. This is why I love this hobby so much.

 

Octopus caught in the gulf of mexico!:

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gulfsurfer101

Nonsense! You calling my phone a doofus for its inapt grammar capabilities you fool! Nah but I do rely on my auto correct spelling too much. It's almost as if the galaxy s5 got stupider than the s3, just with cooler features.

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gulfsurfer101

No it's the same one. I caught him and wanted to get a good pic before I tossed him back but he was being an @$$#*!e!

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gulfsurfer101

This tank lives again! 10g Nsw, local harvested sand, plants, and live stock. Seems fitting for its purpose.

 

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