A tank within a Tank - East1's Concept Reef

[East1]

Hi NR!

 

It's been an absolute lifetime since I've posted on here. Many of you may have seen my mangrove reef, graciously nominated as tank of the month in March 2016 (has it really been that long!)

There was also the precursor tank - the 1.5 gallon ultra-tiny-micro-reef that ended up on Reefbuilders because I went so over the top with automation. The good old days!

 

I've recently been on a bit of a hiatus, I maintained the reef on autopilot and kept a few soft corals in a less-than-display worthy tank for a while owing to a number of house moves, and focused my efforts on some self-regulating recirculating terrariums I've been experimenting with for the past while.

 

Today I finally got around to pulling together what I've named the Enku Reef.

 

Enku was a sculptor that worked in wood in Japan a long, long time ago. Each of his many sculptures have a very natural, earthy feel to me, and speak volumes about the unique beauty in the chaos of nature, which I aspire to mirror in each and every one of my creations.

 

The tank is a 1 meter high nano reef!

Not all of this is for water, otherwise It wouldn't really be a nano. The tank itself is handmade acrylic by myself and the full water volume is something like 16 gallons. The remainder of the tank is open space in the top with a lid system to regulate the environment for the mangroves.

 

Currently, it looks like this

 

 

I've put a lot of effort in to get it to this stage and hopefully will have some better photos in the coming few days/  weeks.

I aim to create a shallow rubble zone reef like you'd find close to the shore - probably the closes thing to a natural mixture of hard corals and mangroves that I can think of. A lot of attention has been paid to the rock arrangement and the sand - I've used 4-5 different grades and types of gravel to create a naturalistic sandbed because this was something I deeply regretted not doing in my previous tanks.

 

I'll stop rambling,

 

It's good to be back NR!

 

 

[East1]

The tank's finally cleared! And with all this hot weather, it uses like 5 litres of top off water a day (which is pretty dire, considering my RO only makes that much at the moment because of the terrible mains water pressure)

 

I'm not going to post a picture juuust yet, Instead I'll ramble about something or the other. Does anyone remember a user called Animalmaster or something? He wanted to make a goby only tank from what I remember, I really liked the idea. 

I'm leaning toward a small colony of burrowing gobies, from what I understand ambyeleotris can coexist peacefully and would probably do well with my partially deep sloped sandbed (I've never gotten over that since my older reefs!)

 

I feel like they'd probably also make good use of the mixed grain size of sand and rearrange the slopes a little bit, give it a bit more of a chaotic feel - I'd be greatful if anyone who's kept multiple burrowing gobies could chip in. Fortunately because of the chamber design, jumping isn't an issue at all.

[Christopher Marks]

Welcome back @East1, it's great to see you!

 

This looks to be a really innovative system design, building a terrarium hybrid tank for the mangroves is brilliant! It looks like the side panels can be removed for maintenance access to the tank? I'm curious to see more of the lighting setup, did you reuse the lights from the previous reef? 

 

I love the sound a goby only tank, I'm not sure if @animalmaster6 ever built one.

 

I can't wait to see more of this system when it clears up! The mangroves already have a cool form. Sculpted with wire?

[1891Bro]

What the hell is a “meter”? Careful with the answer, my dad didn’t not fight in the Cold War for me to have to learn the metric system! 

 

Kidding. Looking nice and cloudy. Hope the ribs are pork (beef ribs are for nasty Texans) and yummy. 

[East1]

On 6/26/2018 at 2:03 AM, 1891Bro said:

What the hell is a “meter”? Careful with the answer, my dad didn’t not fight in the Cold War for me to have to learn the metric system! 

 

Kidding. Looking nice and cloudy. Hope the ribs are pork (beef ribs are for nasty Texans) and yummy. 

Hahah! I'm such a traitor - They were beef ribs too! In my defense, it's the second time I've seen beef spare ribs for sale anywhere that I shop at in the 8 years I've lived in London, usually I'd just get a steak and some lobster / shrimp.

 

Working as an engineer and dealing with centimeters and millimeters for work, and inches interchangeably for most plumbing I use on my systems gives me such a headache. Why can't we be friends! 

 

 

On 6/26/2018 at 1:51 AM, Christopher Marks said:

Welcome back @East1, it's great to see you!

 

This looks to be a really innovative system design, building a terrarium hybrid tank for the mangroves is brilliant! It looks like the side panels can be removed for maintenance access to the tank? I'm curious to see more of the lighting setup, did you reuse the lights from the previous reef? 

 

I love the sound a goby only tank, I'm not sure if @animalmaster6 ever built one.

 

I can't wait to see more of this system when it clears up! The mangroves already have a cool form. Sculpted with wire?

Hi Chris! It's great to be back, I forgot how great the community is! I'm glad the forum is still going strong! 

Yeah, both side panels are removable. I'm very tempted to expand on the terrarium concept and add in a planted area with some orchids or something, but I don't want to ruin the clean simple look so I'll be patient with that idea. 

 

The lighting system is all DIY now, it's the same system I use on my regular terrariums (I'm hoping I can post non-marine photos too, I'd love to share some of what I've been working on) 

The gist of the lighting is a series of 10W LED chips. I've recently requested custom phosphor chips for a project I was working on to grow some fynbos plants - plants that come from a region in the Western Cape of South Africa. They require similar levels of light and care to SPS corals interestingly - extremely low nutrients, high levels of (air) flow etc. so I wanted to experiment with the same lighting in this. I'll post a photo where you can better see the lighting setup, currently it uses 5 10W LED's slightly overdriven and lensed down through a diffuser plate made of acrylic. I really like the effect, it gets the shimmer without the 'disco' that a lot of LEDs can be prone to, it reminds me very much of my oldest reef running a 10000k MH bulb. 

 

I did a bit of reading and I'm disappointed he didn't, a large reef full of gobies would have been great! I'll have to follow in his conceptual footsteps.

 

They have been sculpted, I'm always pretty untidy when I wire my bonsais, but they're starting to take shape, I just hope they start growing again soon, I always get nervous when I have to disturb their roots! 

[Christopher Marks]

1 hour ago, East1 said:

I'm hoping I can post non-marine photos too, I'd love to share some of what I've been working on

We'd love to see your other terrariums, these are such a curiosity. Those fynbos plants sound really interesting too!

[East1]

They’re my current favourite study! 

 

The region of South Africa that they come from is about 200km long, but accounts for 20% of plant species on the continent, it blows my mind! Most of them require bush fires to either release seed or to resprout, with many species of seed only germinating when there is smoke in the soil, I’ve recently had to burn a load of leaves to impregnate some germination medium, I’m hoping it works too!

 

They live in very nutrient poor soil so similarly to Acroporids that can absorb amino acids over their skin, these plants have specialised roots to extract nutrient by creating a zone for fungi to help facilitate nutrient uptake. Additionally, they need high PAR value, I’ve only been able to get them to to flower with a 10w LED less than 4 inches from the flower head, and at that point spectrum becomes very important. 

 

 

This is my current fynbos terrarium, you can perhaps see the two dwarf chameleons that live in here too, though at a species level they aren’t endemic to the exact area that the plants come from, they have adaptations that lend them living in dense shrub as opposed to trees like many other chameleons.

 

if anyone is curious for more photos, my handle @eastonecreations on instagram is where I post most of my endeavours, though now that I have @Christopher Marks Blessing I’ll be posting more of a range of what I’m working on!

 

 

in other news, I think my cycle is completed (this tank has been full for about 3 months now, I’ve just been lazy!)

so im off to my LFS tonight for some coral possibly. 

[TatorTaco]

Not going to lie....I've spent my entire work day reading your old thread from the start.  

 

Maybe I'll forget that I was here from the beginning and I'll catch you in another few years?  I feel like that's a movie plot or something.  

 

Do you plan on stocking corals in this tank as well, or leaving it mostly clear at the bottom?

[East1]

On 8/13/2018 at 9:19 PM, TatorTaco said:

Not going to lie....I've spent my entire work day reading your old thread from the start.  

 

Maybe I'll forget that I was here from the beginning and I'll catch you in another few years?  I feel like that's a movie plot or something.  

 

Do you plan on stocking corals in this tank as well, or leaving it mostly clear at the bottom?

Ha, that's wild! I ended up distracted reading your tank thread and delayed the post I came here to write. What did you think of the thread?

 

It's been a while since I posted, I got a coral after a few weeks of the last post, then the heatwave London got caused a crash and I had the worst cyano I've ever experienced for 3 weeks, it's only just started to settle.

I've been pretty busy alongside that, I've been developing the terrariums I've been prototyping into what you see here:

 

https://www.instagram.com/p/BmRTTd9HpaG

 

It's an automated plant chamber, I've got one on display at the Aquatic Design Center and another at Reef Depot:

 

 

 

I've spent a lot of my time focused on these recently, and their commercial application which probably contributed to the reef going slowly, but I'm pretty excited on both fronts! Recently, London's been quite sparse with coral, and following a tour of Kew Gardens with some of the most brilliant minds, I've decided to take the tank a slightly different route to what I'd planned! I'm tempted to spill the beans but who doesn't like suspense!

[LeeJiYoung]

any update ? 😄 

[East1]

I have an update! I'll post more in depth tonight but the gist of it is after letting this tank cycle for months, I picked a novel direction to go in - a leaf-litter dominated lagoon. This was quite difficult to manage in the early stages and actually meant I had a blackwater reef for a few weeks, but has finally settled. Off to get some canary in the coal mine corals later this evening and I'll post some photos to follow! 

[Christopher Marks]

Sounds really cool @East1, great to see you 🙂 

[East1]

I don't have any good photos of when the tank was in it's blackwater phase - It went really quite yellow and dark, my girlfriend would start singing 'under the pee' every time she saw it.

 

After I addressed it with polyfilter and loads of activated carbon it's got a slightly yellowish-green tinge but looks quite natural, and pairs nicely with the lighting colour I've gone for, trying to mimic natural sunlight and doing away with heavy-blue weight. It's also backlit with a little warm white LED for some ambience. 

 

Here's a photo pre-coral from the other evening, I've managed to create a dust storm re-arranging a little so I'll have to get some new photos once that settles.

Behind the rocks in the above and between the mangrove roots is approx 4" of cattapa leaf litter. I have a blood red cleaner shrimp that cna totally disappear in the leaf litter with ease, due to the large size of the leaves, I've just aquascaped it to show off the sandbed.

 

I've modelled it on the following reference images screencapped from some snorkelling videos I found online 

 

 

I need to decide what/if I'm going to stock fish-wise but that's for future-East1 to figure out. 

 

There was some method to my madness, for this whole setup and subsequent experimentation - Initially I'd been a strong proponent of biopellets and bacteria heavy systems, but part of the research I was doing into terrarium ecosystems highlighted the importance of a thriving micro-biology colony, and the ease at which this can be established using leaf litter and some seed inverts, so I wanted to see if this would apply in the saltwater biome too, especially under 'reef aquarium' conditions. 

My criteria for failure was simple, total system wipe or actual blackwater, as you can see above despite leaf litter and decay, the tide keeps the water very clean apart from detritus. 

Since starting the project, I've had colonies of pods, snails and worms boom in the tank with no additional feeding, as well as increased skimmate - my  theory is that the breakdown of the leaf litter by biofilms in the water then shear off or get consumed and further get skimmed out, removing nitrate and phosphate as part of the biofilm establishment. prior to this (because I use tap water with very high PO4) I was battling cyano to some degree, it wouldn't die in certain spots, but I've not had a resurgence though this may be for a myriad of reasons. 

 

Interestingly, despite catappa leaves turning black in freshwater environments in a few days, this hasn't happened in this tank. Unsure why that is, I may soak some in freshwater and add them here to see what happens. They also don't go soft in the same way that they do in a freshwater environment - aquatic or terrestrial. 

 

Anyway, I want to keep documenting this, so I'll try keep posting when I can. 

[East1]

average cellphone pic. 

 

[DNR88]

So much good things in this short topic, keep the pictures coming up! 😄 

The only thing I'm not sure off are the 'leaves' in the tank, I think it makes it look like a bit messy. But other than that, great workd and hope to see more from this one soon!

 

Ps. I really like the UK, hope it remains fairly the same after the 'Brexit'. 😉

[East1]

After posting in @JohnTheReefer's thread I realise that I hadn't touched much on the systemic design of this reef. 

Initially it was an experiment for growing Seagrass, however I was unable to source anything so I pivoted to macroalgae. From guidance from Carlos Magdalena at Kew a while abck, I started dosing CO2 to boost the growth rate of the mangrove and any macroalgae. I was dosing quite a lot daily and ended up losing a soft coral at one point because I didn't run it only on a day-cycle, so I've temporarily disabled it.

 

At the time I saw an explosion in macroalgae growth, and was dosing nitrate and iron to compensate. Corraline algae took off and it got to the point that running biopellets wasn't achieving anything alongside the algal growth in the tank. The mangrove also started growing heavily but the leaves were starting to look 'dry' and deformed, I think from inadequate rinsing.

 

This led me to develop a system that causes a natural dew within the tank. The top terrarium is sealed for the most part, so at night with reduced circulation I get a heavy condensation on the panes and the mangrove itself, acting as a dew and hydrating the tree, in the morning the fans ramp up again and dry it out within about an hour. As a result of this, I've seen an increase in growth of the mangrove as well as healthier, fuller leaves

 

 

 

12 hours ago, DutchNanoReefer88 said:

So much good things in this short topic, keep the pictures coming up! 😄 

The only thing I'm not sure off are the 'leaves' in the tank, I think it makes it look like a bit messy. But other than that, great workd and hope to see more from this one soon!

 

Ps. I really like the UK, hope it remains fairly the same after the 'Brexit'. 😉

Thanks for the kind words! I quite like the 'messy' look, I've started to appreciate tanks that mimic nature truly (lots of organic detritus, and heavy microfauna populations, but keeping the leaves from tangling up in the corals is somewhat difficult.

 

Also from using tap water my KH is really high, it's stressed my stylophora so I'm going to have to switch to RO or softer bottled water to lower this, hopefully before any significant damage is caused to the coral, I'd hate to lose that piece. 

[vlangel]

This is a fascinating tank East1 and I really like it.  It's so unique and I love how it looks like it could in nature.  That is what really appeals to me when I set up a tank too.

[East1]

On 3/5/2019 at 1:11 PM, vlangel said:

This is a fascinating tank East1 and I really like it.  It's so unique and I love how it looks like it could in nature.  That is what really appeals to me when I set up a tank too.

Ah thanks so much! coming from you, this means a lot - I'd been a fan of your tanks for quite some time and they've definitely left a good impression. I really like the natural look, I think in the current 'meta' of saltwater aquascaping the natural look is very rare. It's semi-popular in blackwater freshwater tanks but I've not seen any reef tanks or close that maintain a dirtier more chaotic look. 

 

I was actually hoping the catappa leaves would break down and go softer and create a more mulmy leaf litter in the tank but the don't seem to react the same way in a saltware tank that they do in freshwater - interestingly they don't seem to stain the water anymore either, though that may be a combination of UV and lots of GAC doing it's job. 

[East1]

Leaves!

 

[East1]

Sad day, I used an expired supplement and it's caused my stylo and frogspawn to up and die overnight 😞 

 

[East1]

 

Sans corals, but looking better. It's not as yellow in person, because of the backlight effect it is difficult to photograph

[DNR88]

Ooow, that is really different and looking very natural, excellent! 😊

[East1]

[vlangel]

Are there any cuc or fish in this habitat?

[East1]

9 hours ago, vlangel said:

Are there any cuc or fish in this habitat?

Yeah, I have a bunch of dove snails, a turbo snail of some sort that’s spawned and so loads of it’s babies.

also a few hermits. 

 

Orher than that its full of bristle worms, amphipods and various worms, also a few small mysid shrimp and a small colony of tannaids.

 

i have 3 chromis, but I’m not likely to add more fish than that, the main driver for the leaf litter was to grow as much of my micro fauna population as possible, and to see if I could get snails and the like to breed