100 Gallon Naso Home

[Pavle]

Hello Reefers,

This is my first post here on the forum and I would like to present you my 100 Gallon Rimless tank that I've been working on for the past 14 months. I wish I could say It was fun, but you know how it is. So much frustration, so many problems, but hopefully I am out of the woods now.

Lets start from Tank and Equipment

Tank Custom built rimless low iron 12 mm glass

Sump DIY simple 3 chamber sump 

ATO not functional yet, work in progress 😄

Skimmer Bubble magus C7

Flow Ice cap 3K gyre, 4.000L/h return pump.

Lights 2X 165W Chinese black boxes 

Dosing Arka H4

Heaters 2 X 300W   

Refugium 150W full spectrum LED

So, quite simple.

 

Live stock

Blonde Naso Tang (Ljubinka)

2 Clowns 

And a few green chromis (less and less every day 😞 )

Soft corals 😄 

 

The journey started in November 2017. The tank went trough many ugly phases and problems. Major dino outbreak that I was struggling with for good 6 months and it took the best of me, then a cyano outbreak, and so on. Again, I do hope those phases are over and there are no surprises ahead of me 😄

 

Basically the idea was to create a simple system, without too much technology involved, but a system that is stable with minimal maintenance and 0 water change.

So far so good, even though I had to preform some water changes because I used some treatments that required me to do so. It is still minimal, and I plan on absolute 0 in the future.

So, Lights for corals, refugium and skimmer for nutrient control, dosing of major elements, fish food and RO/DI water. 

So lets start with pictures 😄 (its going to be pic heavy, sorry for that) 😄 

 

 I was so excited when I got the tank. Such a masterpiece. Its like there is no silicone, seams are just perfect.

And acrylic overflow box, custom made again. 

And finally water 😄

Didn't stay so clean for long..

[Pavle]

Moving on,

Cycling and ugly stages. 

Started with a mix of live rock and dry pukani. It takes a long time for pukani to become live, and it still doesn't look like mature live rock, even after spending 2 years in saltwater. So, if anyone asks how long does it take, the answer is, too long. Wouldn't do it again.

Two clowns from my nano reef. And the star. Blonde naso tang. Her name is Ljubinka (kissing girl). She is not a fish. She is a dog.

Took her almost 2 months to start eating, and still she only eats nori. Just nori, and a lot of it 😄

this is how bad it got with dino. Everything other than fish was dead. Snails, worms, stars, pods, everything just floating dead in the water. It was terrible to look at.

[Pavle]

This was not my first reef and I knew reefs juts don't look good day one, but still it was frustrating. I swear dino almost grew on my fish at one point. Those who were lucky enough to deal with it know what I am talking about.

I tried everything, DinoX, peroxide, blackouts, bla bla, and understood that it is all about balance. So I started growing chaetomorpha and waited.

This is how much I harvest almost every 2 weeks.

And after many months of frustration and reconsidering my reefing hobby, dino finally went away, but then cyano took its place. Thank god there is chemiclean for that, otherwise I would just quit.

[Pavle]

And finally things started to clear up a bit, corals started growing and chromis started jumping out😭

[Pavle]

I take many pictures of Ljubinka. She is my pet, she is the star and we really have a special relationship. Such a great personality. 

This is like half of the story. More in the next episode.

Happy reefing 🙂

 

[Christopher Marks]

Welcome to the community @Pavle! 👋

 

Thank you for sharing your reef aquarium with us, Ljubinka really is a beautiful fish! The first year is always the most difficult with a reef tank it seems, but your hard work has paid off. 🙂 

[Pavle]

@Christopher Marks Thank you sir!

It was tough. Not saying that I didn't enjoy it at all, but many times I just wanted to grab a hammer and smash the tank 😄

Anyway, some newer photos and future plans 🙂 

 

[Pavle]

[Pavle]

Ljubinka just loves posing for the camera 😄

[WV Reefer]

On 12/29/2018 at 3:25 AM, Pavle said:

Ljubinka just loves posing for the camera 😄

She’s so pretty!  The tank looks great also.  😊

[Pavle]

[Christopher Marks]

Beautiful photo @Pavle, it's great to see the tangs again. They look so healthy and vibrant! 🙂 

[Pavle]

Thank you Christopher! I only feed nori sheets to my tangs , no commercial food. Haven't had any problems with any of them. Dory is out, it started picking on corals, they started closing up for extended periods of time, then rotting almost crashing my tank. It did kill all of my SPS so it had to be transferred to a fish only system. It was hard to take it out since it was a beautiful specimen. But yellow tang is here now, it's much smaller so I feel better about keeping it in a 100 gallon rather than the blue tang.

[Tamberav]

Beautiful tank and good work making it past the dino and cyano.

[Pavle]

Some new pics after a long time. The tank is doing great.

Also follow us on IG @gorkireef

[DevilDuck]

Beautiful tank @Pavle I think we all felt your frustration with the long ugly stage.

Is the gyre the only source of flow in the tank? Can you post pictures of your sump and chaeto refugium?