40B Build starting on low budget

[Hdale85]

So things have been going ok. My LED light had a driver for the blue channel go out, luckily the company that makes it shipped me out a new driver in just a few days. I think I had another bacteria bloom for some reason, things seem to be clearing up. 

 

One of my clowns died unfortunately  I'm not sure what happened it, the night before it was swimming around just fine. The next morning it was upside down on the bottom of the tank not moving at all. 

 

Just did a water change and broke down my Jebao circulation pumps and cleaned them real good, was a surprising amount of brown goo inside them.

 

I'm waiting to finish my Refugium before I add any new livestock to the tank, so it's still got the same stocking. 

[Nidilsky]

Do you have any turbo snails?  Zebra turbos are fantastic on the beginning stages of tank development. They make short work of Diatoms. I ousted them once they go big enough to knock things about(my LFS took them back and gave me some RODI water). I then added trochus and astea to keep them at bay.

[Hdale85]

I have Mexican turbo's right now. 3 of them. They were a bit of a problem before my Zoa's were glued down but I've since removed the zoa's and glued them to the rock and they are fine now. 

[Hdale85]

The tanks been looking really good and quite pleased with it. There is some sort of hair algae that popped up when my water was cloudy but it stopped and hasn't grown any since. 

 

3 remaining clowns are doing great though! One has clearly taken on the female role as it's now double the size of the others. The smaller 2 are about double the size of when I got them as well though. I'm planning to get a couple crabs of some sort (porcelain or emerald) as well as some nicer corals. I'd really like to try out a bubble tip anemone.

 

[Hdale85]

Got some new additions, got a bit of an algae thing going on right now. Not terribly worries about it but I'll likely pickup some phosguard or something and cut back on feeding a bit.

 

I got a hammer, torch as well as 2 emerald crabs and a porcelain crab. Could only get a pic of one of the emeralds, the other 2 crabs are hiding.

 

 I'm thinking I may swap the torch and hammer locations and glue them to the rock there.....not really sure the ideal places to glue these.

 

Ugh I'll share the other pics later....don't feel like futzing with Flickr right now lol. I think that torch looks really nice for $25 bucks.

[Hdale85]

So....I was getting ready to glue down my hammer and I accidentally dropped it and it broke off the base and also split down the center like through the tentacles. I tried to keep it together as I glued it in, looks like some of the hammers got damaged too. Is it likely a goner now? 

[Weetabix7]

5 minutes ago, Hdale85 said:

So....I was getting ready to glue down my hammer and I accidentally dropped it and it broke off the base and also split down the center like through the tentacles. I tried to keep it together as I glued it in, looks like some of the hammers got damaged too. Is it likely a goner now? 

 

No, you'll be surprised to see how well they can bounce back from something like that. 

If you have any lugol's iodine try giving it a dip in that. 

Separate container, 1 cup tankwater 2-3 drops lugols, for 3-5 mins, then return to tank. 

Your clowns look pretty cool!!

[Hdale85]

Yeah I'm extremely happy with my clowns! They are quite striking. 

 

We have plans to upgrade the tank next year already, going to start building up supplied and may even use my 40B tank as a sump. I think for now I'm not going to drill it for a sump and just stick with the HOB for filtration or maybe even turn the HOB into a rufugium. 

 

I'm just going to use my 20L tank for quarantine or something, maybe divide it into 2 or 3 sections so that I can have 3 different tanks in one. 

 

Wife saw a baby blue tang the other day and she really wants to go get it. I told her we could probably support it well enough in our 40b until the 150g tank is done. It was pretty small maybe 1-1.5". 

 

I glued the hammer to the rock so I guess I'll just wait and see. I can't leave things just sitting on plugs long because the turbo snails knock them all over the place. 

 

I do have plans for a lighting upgrade that will be scale-able to the new 150g as well. Going to use AcroStar Mega4Z 20k Pro Blue pucks. Probably going to use 4 over my 40B and then on the 150g I'm guessing I may need something more like 8. 4 of them over the 40b likely will be too much light but it'll have nice even coverage and I can turn them down. I may only do 2-3 over the 40b though. 

 

https://blueacro.com/acrostar/

[Hdale85]

Working on building a couple media reactors for carbon and phosgaurd. Also end of the week I'll be ordering a Eshopps PSK-75H hang on protein skimmer. 

 

Then after that I'll be ordering some Chaeto (or getting it locally if I can find it. 

 

Purchasing these LED's

 

https://blueacro.com/acrostrip

 

In the algae growth spectrum (maybe 2 strips not sure yet going to talk to the owner). With those I will be turning my HOB into a hang on refugium. I'm hoping with these changes I'll be able to feed daily without having too many nutrients cause my fish are always looking for food and it's too much will power to not feed them lol. 

[Hdale85]

Just ordered the Eshopps PSK-75H. I was considering getting the 100H but the 75H had a returned unit for only 109 bucks and frankly I think it should be enough. Going to order the mini reactor from BRS on friday along with ROX 0.8 carbon and their GFO media. 

[Hdale85]

Got the PSK-75H today, it was an amazon warehouse deal thing and one of the acrylic mounting plates for the piping is broken off. So I contacted amazon and they are refunding me 35% of what I paid! So I got an additional nearly $40 bucks off. So I got a 150 dollar skimmer for like 70 bucks and a little superglue will fix the mounting tab easy. 

[Hdale85]

Wow....color me impressed! This skimmer has only been running about 10 hours now maybe and my water is already looking MUCH clearer than before, and I'm already getting some pretty dark brown skim mate. Not sure my tank has ever looked this good! 

 

I can't wait to add the reactor with GFO and the new ROX 0.8 carbon. My water has had sort of a weird mildewish smell for a while now and I'm hoping the reactor and skimmer help with that. We got more fish today, and we've decided to just push forward on the sump to help support these new inhabitants. Told the wife we were starting to push it a bit and we can't get anymore fish now lol. Just coral from here on out until we upgrade. 

 

I think we may just use a hang on siphon overflow so I can use this 40b tank for an overflow later. I am super impressed with how nice the water looks now though.

 

Also forgot to mention I talked to the guys at BRS and they recommended the PhosBan 150 reactor as it would hang on my tank easily. So I went that route instead of the BRS mini reactor that I was thinking about. Ordered that and a MJ900 pump.