Chew's 30 gallon fun box --- OCCY HOSTING THE SEBAE!

[Chew_Magna]

I love pom pom crabs, they are insanly expensive in Australai though which is a shame. I havealways liked urchins, has it started moving things around yet?

I love them too. This one is tiny, but it has both poms so that's the one I picked. The other only had one and was even smaller.

 

The urchin is behaving so far, I put it in the tank near the top of the glass and it's stayed there for now, just moving around the top.

[albertthiel]

I think it's time to pull my tank out of the beginner's section and let it make a name for itself.

 

This started off as a 10 gallon beast with second hand parts and a lot of noob errors. Originally this tank was set up at my place of work (lps) so it could cycle before taking it home. Eventually I bought a 15 gallon and transferred everything. Its gone through a lot of revisions and moving livestock back and forth from my pico, but I've finally settled on a finished product. All the contents from my pico are here now due to maintenance and time issues.

 

Hardware: 15 gallon AG tank, two Koralia 240's, Fluval 150w heater, LEDTRIC full spectrum par38 with the optics removed, Oceanic BioCube skimmer, AC50. Around 19lbs or Hawaiian black sand, somewhere around 13-18lbs of rock. I have no idea really, I've added and subtracted so much.

 

Livestock: three bar damsel <1", domino damsel <1", black clown goby, peppermint shrimp, two emerald crabs (one baby, one adult), various nassarius/cerith/astrea snails, red and blue leg hermits.

 

You probably wonder about the fish. I don't have a lot of color going there for sure. I ended up with this idea in my head that I wanted all my fish to be black, white, or black and white. Now with my par38 over the tank and all the fish being primarily black, it gives the tank a very mysterious feel.

 

The emerald crabs and peppermint will eventually be removed. The peppermint served his purpose and I want to replace the emeralds with a red mithrax. I also want to get a pom pom and some sexies.

 

Coral (off the top of my head): red lobo, green/yellow lobo, cabbage leather, colt, pulsing xenia, blue xenia, various zoas and palys, two rock flower nems, ball nem, favia, possible acan?, orange shroom, green shroom, green yuma, gsp, neon green and teal candy cane, anthelia.

 

And now with the pics! These are all new after putting the contents of my pico into this tank today. I also put my par38 over the tank to replace my T5HO setup.

 

 

Nice for sure +1 .... Guess I should check this thread more often ....

[Chew_Magna]

Ha, thanks Albert. I need to take the time to do a big update on the tank, a lot of stuff has changed lately. I'm also in the R&D phase of building my own acrylic tank.

[Chew_Magna]

It's been a while so I think I'll dump some pics and a video in here for ya guys. Pics are pretty close to how it looks irl. Using my phone I just dropped the iso down to 200 and bumped up the exposure all the way. The video looks like hell.... Even recorded at 1080p it looks blocky.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Let's see if I can remember what's all changed since my last update. There's a convict goby in there somewhere, it hides under the rocks on the right side of the tank. I've added a few coral, some different zoas and a blasto? There's also a chalice in there. I lost a LOT of zoas a while back, I'm assuming it was to nudi's. They all closed up for the longest time, then one day they were all gone or melting from the plugs. When I was pulling the plugs out I noticed some funky critters running around on the bottom of them, not the pods I was used to seeing. But I haven't had a problem since.

 

Umm... I lost my 3 bar damsel. Believe it or not one of the rock flowers ate it. I turned around to the tank one day and noticed that one was swollen like it had just eaten a huge meal, the next day I realized that a fish was missing. It wasn't sick or anything, just gone. I also lost the black clown goby a while back. I had it for months and never saw it eat anything (except it did munch on an sps once ). The same day I lost the 3 bar I saw the skunk shrimp eating the clown goby.

 

I added a cheap 800gph powerhead made by Sunsun. It's actually not bad at all, but combined with the 750 Koralia, I think there's too much flow in the tank now. It's most likely the tank's dimensions, if It were deeper front to back I wouldn't have an issue. With both of these in there it's hard to position them so that I get good flow and they aren't blowing sand away. I think where they are right now is about as good as it's going to get. Three times now I've had to scoop sand back into the middle of the tank where it was all blown away. Luckily I'm running a pretty shallow bed so it didn't stir up any nasties.

 

I still have a list of things I'd like to get done with the tank. I want to build an overflow box and turn it into an AIO tank. Either that or just buy one from Badfish Reef Systems. I'm also thinking about rearranging my office so that I can change the tank to a peninsula and have it sitting beside my desk. That will be an enormous undertaking though so I'm not sure if it'll ever be done. I also would like to buy another bulb from LEDTRIC and run three over the tank. The LEDTRIC bulbs on the side with the OCReef bulb in the middle. I'd like to swap out a couple led's on each bulb to get a slightly whiter look to the tank. And I'd like to change the sand to white or Fiji pink. That won't happen unless I actually get around to moving the tank. If that ever happens.

[Jay Wee]

Amazing! I like the uniformity in color. The black sand definite helps!

[Chew_Magna]

Amazing! I like the uniformity in color. The black sand definite helps!

I've actually pulled off an optical illusion to make it look uniform. The bulb on the right is the OCReef bulb and is significantly more red/purple than the left LEDTRIC bulb due to it having three red leds (shipped me the wrong one but after waiting 3 weeks for it I didn't bother with a return). The way I had my rock work set up happened that the rock on the left has a lot more coraline on it while the rock on the right is still mostly white or whitish. So what happens is the rock on the left looks purple as it should be under the light and the rock on the left is given that purple tint due to the light above it. If I were to flip the bulbs around you would notice a significant change in how the tank looks. One side would look blue, the other side would look purple. This is the main reason I want to add a third bulb and to change out a couple leds.

[Jay Wee]

Well, watever you do to it I'm sure it'll look equally awesome. What sand are you using btw?

[Chew_Magna]

It's called Hawaiian Black. It does look good, but I'm kind of over the dark and dreary tank look. Someone a while back posted a pic of a sand mix they had done that has Fiji pink, Hawaiian Black and the standard white stuff, I think it looked really good so I may try something like that.

[Chew_Magna]

I think my dream of a sump may finally be realized. What's been holding me back was (a) cost of the equipment due to having less hours at work now, and ( difficulty in setting it up when it comes to drilling or making/buying an overflow box or however I decided to do it because my tank is already up and running.

 

On the equipment part I got lucky. I already have a couple spare tanks laying around, a 10 gallon and a 10 gallon hex (I thought it would be cool to make a tumbler with this) and I got lucky today and scored a free Maxi-jet 900. It was thrown away as not working but I took it home, slapped it together and after fumbling with it for a while I finally got it working right. It's in powerhead mode in my tank right now chugging away (at 1000gph holy shyte). I can convert it to utility pump mode and use it as a return pump, according to the box it has a four foot head on it and by eyeballing it I'll be pushing it about three feet. Ok... I just measured it and if I go the tumbler route it'll be pushing two feet, if I do a sump it'll be three feet. So the main decision is making a 10 gallon sump (I'd rather do a 20 long) or the tumbler.

 

As for the difficulty part and some more of the cost, I think I found a way around that as well. I recently stumbled on the magic of DIY pvc overflows.

 

Specifically this type:

 

I'm going to continue planning out in my head for a while and do some more research before I actually get down on this, but what do you guys think? Display refugium tumbler under the tank or do an actual sump? A display fuge would look cool, but using a hex tank I don't now if I'll be able to hide my skimmer in it because of the changing water level (or I could just remove the skimmer altogether). A sump would give me more overall options.

[Chew_Magna]

I bought most of what I need for my overflow today. I picked up the pipe, fittings, cement and a hacksaw for $20. All I need to do is cut everything to size, build it, and figure out what I'm going to actually put under the tank. I think I'm going to keep my eye out for a used 20 long and build my sump in that.

 

I stopped by the other LFS today and...

 

 

Third time is the charm?

[Chew_Magna]

Well here we go. Nothing cemented yet, just a quick throw together to see how it would look and to get the dimensions right.

 

[Reeftech]

You may need to put the check valve hole in the top of the cap since your 90 couplings are so close together.

[Chew_Magna]

Oh I will, it's actually sitting on the desk right beside me. This was just a dry fit to see if I liked the measurements. There will be a check valve at the top U and I will also drill a small hole in the cap to allow some air in. I need to whack about an inch off the intake to drop it down a little. I'm going to have to look around and see what I can come up with for a strainer on that. I don't like the idea of it being open, especially since I have snails adventurous enough to make regular trips into my current HOB.

 

I only used half of the 10" pvc, I may build another one and run dual overflows.

 

I even have an idea in my head to combine this with a coast to coast overflow and see how that works. Something similar to this but with my own twist:

 

http://www.thereeftank.com/gallery/files/5/0/9/5/3/60772dscn0866.jpg

[Chew_Magna]

Here's a few things to look at:

 

See if you can spot the nasties on this I need to get rid of.

 

This frag interests me. I bought it for the zoas and after seeing it in my tank I noticed something on that skeleton in the middle is still alive. It's green and covers about 1/3rd of the skeleton. Looks like a mushroom but it also looks like the skeleton belongs to it. I have no idea what it is. Also look on the zoa frag behind it, you see where the middle of one is turning half green? A lot of those are getting green spots in them where they didn't have them before.

 

New hi fin! I swear if this one dies I'm done with them.

 

What's this? Purple tip sebae. I know the great debate over whether this is bleached or not, so I'm just going to start feeding it and see what happens. Hopefully my little occy will decide to host in it one day.

 

I also did a little work on the overflow. I drilled the cap, installed the check valve and worked up an intake that I don't think will work too well. Back to the drawing board on that one.

[Reeftech]

The piece on the frag looks to be a chalice trying to grow.I would try to frag off those zoas and see if it gets healthy.

 

Also good luck with the sebae not eating your goby.

[Chew_Magna]

Well... I haven't seen the hi fin since I took that second picture, so I'm a little worried about him. I know they can be a little secretive until they're used to the tank so I'm hoping that's all it is. The sebae looks good, I want it on the left side of the tank but it seems determined to be on the right side near the rock flowers. Hopefully they play nice.

 

After conferring with a co-worker I've decided to do a display refugium under the tank. I'm going to use my 10 gallon hex and do a dsb with maybe 10lbs of rock in it. Now I'm going to have a problem with macros. I have no local source to get anything except a little chaeto (and I mean strands) and calupra, which I'm not sure if I want due to the risk of it going sexual. I'd have to order almost everything and because of shipping costs I don't know if I can justify it. Possibly do a xenia/anthelia fuge??? I can get TONS of that. And that could look pretty cool.....

 

I have one question: The 10 hex has a small footprint, would a dsb even work in that?

 

I think I've (in my head) finalized how I'm going to plumb everything. From my overflow I'll just have a hose running straight down into the fuge via a HOB filter. The HOB will not be running, it'll just be something to catch the flow with some floss to get the mechanical filtration taken care of (I may even buy one of those Marina HOB refuguims for the sake of aesthetics http://www.amazon.com/Marina-Hang-On-Breeding-Box-Medium/dp/B005QRDDJ2/ref=sr_1_16?s=pet-supplies&ie=UTF8&qid=1369538461&sr=1-16&keywords=refugium). Then the water will just flow out of the HOB into the fuge. My return pump will be close to the top of the tank with a pre-filter just to make sure that only clean water goes back into the display. I'm mounting it near the top of the fuge to keep some of the head pressure. The pump is labeled with a 4ft head, from the bottom of the fuge it's 3ft, from the top just under 2ft.

 

I'll probably not be using my skimmer with this setup. The water level in the fuge will not be constant, and I don't want it in the display. And, since I'm not really trying for a pristine tank I don't see the need for skimming and a dedicated fuge.

 

Let's see, anything I'm missing? Umm... I'll put one of my Koralia 240's in the fuge for some movement. Now lighting is something I haven't figured out yet. I'll need something cheap. And it'll have to be very compact. I haven't measured yet, but there will only be inches between the top of the tank and the bottom of the display. The only way around this is to use my standard 10 gallon tank instead of the hex. I think the hex would be neat so I'm going to plan on using that one.

 

Ok I'm tired now so I'll stop writing....... zzzzzzzzzzzz.......

 

SNORE....

[Chew_Magna]

Do you like ghetto?

 

Well, that depends on the ghetto. I like this one.

 

 

Ignore all the crap that's laying around, it's normally not like that (if I leave anything like this for more than a few hours the lady makes it go away).

 

So the overflow is done and installed. It's a rough fit right now, mainly to see how well it's going to work and if I need to tweak anything. It works. It's a bit hard to stand at the moment because I didn't have enough RO to finish filling the 10 gallon so there's a LOT of splashing going on right now.

 

 

Ghetto. This is temporary until I decide how I want the return to look and be positioned.

 

 

White! And ghetto.

 

 

I got this idea from a google search. I'm not a fan of it, I think I may try something with a T to get more surface overflowing into it. This is just a few (8) zip ties that I clipped and super glued onto the pipe.

 

 

Ghetto max. Busted versa top that I accidentally stepped on a while back and the lady taped it back together. I wanted to toss is, she said no. She wins.

 

You can see how I did my drain into the tank. The HOB is just sitting there doing nothing more than catching the water coming from the DT. A piece of filter in it and it works. There's plenty of room to shove a bag of carbon in there as well. I planned this as being temporary but with how well it's working I may just keep it, or buy an actual HOB refugium like I linked farther up.

 

As you can see I ended up having to use a standard tank instead of the hex. While I REALLY wanted to use the hex it just wasn't going to work. The tank fit under there, but there wasn't any room to get into it after that.

 

I need to finish a couple things with it like making a proper return and I need to get a valve on the return line to restrict the flow a little.

 

This Maxi-Jet 900 is supposed to be 230gph in utility mode with a MAX head of 4ft. Now the video I based this off of stated that 3/4" pipe would handle somewhere around 200-225gph (going off of memory right now), so I assumed with the pressure lost due to lift I would probably be pushing around 150gph (just guessing here). Apparently not. I think the pump pushes more water than the pipe can handle because it keeps randomly filling the tank about a half inch higher and it keeps losing the vortex in the overflow. After 20 seconds or so the overflow catches up, the water drops and the vortex starts up again. I'm not losing any flow through the pipe and I'm not losing my siphon, I've checked many times. As a temporary solution I have a pair of forceps clamped on the hose to pinch it a little and it works. Since I've done that the flow has been constant.

[Chew_Magna]

I was doing a little maintenance in the tank today, moving some rock down to the fuge and whatnot, and my girlfriend says something along the lines of "what's the clown doing?" And I look to see this:

 

 

Yay!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

Other than that, we went to Jonesboro Ar. and visited a store down there and I picked up an emerald (ugh, but I need one now) and a frag with some blue clove polyps on it. It also looks to have some sort of sps but I'm not sure if it's alive or not, I'll keep an eye on it. Pics of that later when the clove starts to extend.

[Chew_Magna]

So that 40 breeder that I always wanted?

 

Well....

 

 

Bought and paid for. $6 out of pocket, brand new tank. Stars aligned (and my stars were store credit, coupon, gift card and a small bonus) and it's all mine.

 

 

Let's talk a little bit about the counter.

 

 

It's an old register counter from the store. My boss asked me months ago if I wanted it and I immediately said yes. This has been in my head since. The problem has been finding someone to help me move it (I only have car) and today I finally found a friend that will. Not today or this weekend, but soon.

 

I plan on dressing it up a little, mostly some paint and put doors (acrylic?) on the right portion of it. It has plenty of shelves for storing my tank stuff in and I'm hoping enough space for my hex tank in the left part of the right side. You can see there's already a hole cut in the top, all I need to do is cut one more hole inside and it's ready for plumbing. I need to remove the locks, the left one will have to be drilled out. Slap some handles on that and it'll look great. The top is a cheap counter top blue but I'm kinda digging it, especially for this application. It even has a pull out keyboard drawer that I'm keeping there for whatever I want to use it for .

 

 

If you're wondering if it's sturdy enough the answer is YES. I'm 6'3" and close to 250, I got my big ass on it and jumped/scooted all over it and it never even budged. This thing is SOLID.

 

I also have 40lbs of Fiji Pink sand. That's going in the new tank.

 

Rawr.

[Chew_Magna]

I'm going to shut this thread down and make a new one for the new tank.

 

Still.... Here are some parting pics.

 

Two par38 bulbs still provide ample coverage.

 

Most everything still on the sand bed after the move.

 

 

Already has a new house.

 

 

 

I lost an eye on this one a while back. No idea how but it's been filling in the past month or so.

 

Still have no clue what this is but it's been doing alright.

 

Favorite...zoa...ever... This has been growing like WEEDS.

 

Chalice being all chalicy. I need to get a night shot of this one for you guys. Pretty cool.

 

Shot from the left. Two damsels in detention, going off to a friend.

 

I really like my domino but I'm taking the "safe than sorry" route and re-homing him before he's an issue.

 

Little red mushroom I found during the move.

 

And that's all! Stay tuned for my new thread (eventually).