Seabass's In-wall 100 Gallon

[markalot]

Holy cow, another update.

 

If you can snag some coral+ give them a try. I'm 4 coral+ 2 blue+ and really liking the white + blue + a tad of red light they produce.

[Benny314]

How about making up a couple of clips you could zip tie filter wool to so the water runs over the wool. That would catch a lot of bubbles and crap.

If you got really smart you could make the clips grip the filter wool so when you needed to change it because it's too dirty for a quick rinse to sort it you didn't have to cut the zip ties.

[seabass]

Good, the microbubble problem went away. I didn't really want to modify the sump. It has been awhile since I've run that skimmer; but I couldn't remember it being a big problem before, so I'm glad it resolved itself.

[seabass]

I'm using a "Maggie" Muffler. It's certainly neat and easy.

Available at AquaCave or Amazon (and seen on Reef Builders). My setup is far from silent, but it's alright. I think next time I'm going to do a siphon overflow.

[jedimasterben]

Since you have two holes drilled as it is, you can already do a siphon setup, just run the return over the top. That's what I did, and on my rimless tank it doesn't look bad.

[seabass]

Thanks, maybe I'll play around with it someday.

 

On a side note, the anthias seem to love Ocean Nutrition Formula One flakes. They won't eat anything from the surface, but if I break them up and presoak them in RO/DI (so they sink), they go after them more aggressively than they do with the frozen mysis. I think it's always a plus to be able to feed dry food on occasion.

[jedimasterben]

Thanks, maybe I'll play around with it someday.

 

On a side note, the anthias seem to love Ocean Nutrition Formula One flakes. They won't eat anything from the surface, but if I break them up and presoak them in RO/DI (so they sink), they go after them more aggressively than they do with the frozen mysis. I think it's always a plus to be able to feed dry food on occasion.

I would get a 'feeding ring' like the one from TLF. This way you don't have to presoak them and they won't find their way right to the overflow, they'll sink on their own.

[seabass]

I would get a 'feeding ring' like the one from TLF. This way you don't have to presoak them and they won't find their way right to the overflow, they'll sink on their own.

Thanks. I have an autofeeder, but I was still wondering how I was going to feed them whenever I have to leave town. A ring might prove to be the best option.

 

I might also see how they react to small New Life Spectrum pellets.

[seabass]

So far my cleanup crew consists of bumble bee and nassarius snails, the brittle starfish, and some tisbe pods.

 

FTS:

[eitallent]

The rockscape looks great. The negative space makes the tank look huge! Well done!

[seabass]

The rockscape looks great. The negative space makes the tank look huge! Well done!

Thanks! The anthias seem like the open space to swim. For anybody interested in these fish, people often recommend a 120 gallon tank for a trio like I have (a standard 120 is 4' by 2', just like this 100 gallon).

[Justind823]

Nice! FTS looks wonderful.

 

I saw you said you don't plan on spending a bunch on livestock. Any thoughts of macro algae? An order of a few macros from live-plants.com can go a long way. They pack the bags full - seriously. I think some macro would looks great in there.

[ml86743]

Nice! FTS looks wonderful.

 

I saw you said you don't plan on spending a bunch on livestock. Any thoughts of macro algae? An order of a few macros from live-plants.com can go a long way. They pack the bags full - seriously. I think some macro would looks great in there.

I 100% agree with this...Some nice macro would look awesome!

[seabass]

I figured that with how much I feed the Anthias, it would be helpful to have something faster than snails to cleanup whatever lands on the sand. So I got a pair of captive-bred Blood Red Fire Shrimp (Lysmata debelius) today. Here's one of them:

[seabass]

Unfortunately I lost one of the shrimp a couple of days after I got them. The other is doing fine and eating.

Snail eggs:


More eggs, plus some of the pods seem to have survived (I wasn't sure if they would populate):


A couple nassarius snails:


Anthias trio:

[Justind823]

Alright alright I caught you. How's the tank doing?

[jedimasterben]

Whoa whoa, Justin, slow down now. We don't want to rush him.

[seabass]

Wow, it's been another year already? I guess I have some splainin to do. I knew someone would call me out shortly.

Bad news about the anthias. I had the top cover off and one of the females jumped (they aren't notorious jumpers, but are certainly capable of it). The remaining female got bullied by the male and I believe that it died of stress. The strange thing was, once the male was by itself, it became so timid, that it hid and refused to eat. I tried a number of different types of food, but he just refused to eat. About a month ago, I had to euthanize it as its stomach was sunken and it wasn't eating. While I love anthias, these will likely be the last time I try to keep them.

To top it off, the tank developed a bad case of dinos.

 

I ended up siphoning out the sand bed, dipping the rock in saltwater/peroxide dip, and adding a UV filter from Amazon.


I got rid of the dinos and moved my ocellaris clownfish pair and bicolor blenny over to this tank. I had been battling an algae bloom in the tank they were in. Having them in this tank has allowed me to be tear that tank apart and better deal with the problem. Here they are in the 100 gallon tank:

(pic taken tonight)

This tank still doesn't amount to much. I've moved some palythoas and zoanthids into this tank from my algae tank (so I guess this is an official reef tank now). I was fairly careful about trying not to introduce the algae, but was unsuccessful. Luckily, it was just hair algae and a couple of peroxide dips have done wonders in cleaning it up.

[Justind823]

I was mostly just worried you took the tank down or something.

 

Sorry about the anthias, they always sounded like too much work for me.

 

That picture of your dino outbreak is terrifying but your rock is so clean it's like it never happened!

 

Reef tank ftw!

[seabass]

That picture of your dino outbreak is terrifying but your rock is so clean it's like it never happened!

 

Yeah that pic was after a trip we took. It didn't always look that bad. However, I could scrub the rock down and make it look pretty clean; but by the end of a light cycle, it would start to get dark again (then much better in the morning, and worse toward the end of the light cycle). Without coral, I was tempted to dip the rock in freshwater to try and knock it out (but didn't).

 

I'm not sure if the UV filter helped or not (just felt I had to try something else), or if it was the thorough cleanings and peroxide dips. It actually didn't look this clean again until after the hair algae bloom. I figure it was the salty peroxide dips that helped finish it off, but maybe it was the competition for nutrients with the algae.

 

I'm glad that it's gone. I'd like to say that I have to magic prescription for getting rid of dinos, but I don't feel that I know what was effective and what wasn't. Plus, I realize that some of what I did wouldn't be very practical in a tank that was full of coral.

 

Anyway, the experience has made me much more comfortable with doing maintenance on this tank. I've siphoned the sand down to nothing twice already. Then I'd rinse it out, soak it in peroxide, rinse it again, and put it back in. Now I do partial vacuuming pretty regularly.

 

It's also gotten easier to clean the acrylic. At first, the bracing really made it awkward, but I feel like I'm getting the hang of it now. In a way, it's nice that I don't have any coralline algae yet (as I haven't introduced any yet). However, it's looking very sterile at the moment. Some more coral should help. I also plan on trying to move a few BTAs into this tank.

[GHill762]

Hey Seabass!! nice tank build, don't know how I missed this.. very sorry to hear about your anthias, they are such beautiful fish..

 

are you sure that was dinos? looks like a bad case of cyano which wouldn't be terribly uncommon in a new tank.. anyway, glad to see you got it all cleaned up, can't wait to see what happens with this awesome tank!

[seabass]

Thanks GHill. I can confirm that there was cyano as well. However, manual removal and Chemiclean treatments didn't get rid of it all (which made me believe it was dinos). However, I never verified it with a microscope. But either way, I'm hoping that phase is done on gone.

[seabass]

Possibly the most helpful thing I've done during this build, is hooking up my 210 gallon water storage tank. It holds about 175 gallons when I let it fill up. I can confidently leave this on 24/7, but I turn it off after it's full. This way it doesn't turn on and off whenever I remove water. When I use about 20 gallons or more, I turn it back on.

I drilled a couple of holes (the smaller one above for the supply, and the larger one below for an emergency drain).


From the inside. I used a Uniseal bulkhead for the drain, and an adjustable float valve for the supply.




I added a Mag7 pump (and surge strip) to pump the water out.


Here's the supply and emergency drain (which leads into an air gap shared with the waste water line).


I installed a valve and nozzle at the end of the tubing. In this shot, the pump isn't on and the water is just siphoning out.

 

I also added tubing at the bottom for an ATO unit.

[seabass]

This BTA arrived this morning.


I've had these mini carpets in this tank for several weeks now.


Coral frags, yet to be placed on the main rocks.


Current FTS.

[seabass]

It's been awhile since I've purchased a new BTA. My existing ones don't move, so I forgot how much they walk around when you first put them in your tank. I'm used to rock flower anemones and mini carpets, which are more like stickers that you can place where you want. I'm not sure where this guy is going to end up, but I'm pretty sure it'll be somewhere that I don't want it to be.