Hmmm2 Dual Tank - Frag Tank Conversion

[hmmm2]

Hi everyone, 

 

I’m a reefer from Singapore, and I’ve learnt a lot from reading many of the tank journals of this forum.

 

My current set up consists of a 2 feet cube and a 1 meter shallow connected by a common sump:

 

 

It’s been running since early 2017, and the picture was from Mid of 2017.

 

I’m very inspired by shallow tank builds, so much so that I’d like to have one, but I’ve got no resources to maintain another tank. So I’ve decided, early this year, to convert the frag tank to a shallow mixed reef tank:

 

 

The one circled in red was originally a frag tank.

 

This is a picture of how the tank looks like now:

 

Top 

 

w/o filter 

 

With yellow filter

 

Red Rooster waspfish

 

close-up of the cloves

 

[Christopher Marks]

Welcome to the community @hmmm2! These are two beautiful reef displays! The open layout of the shallow reef is really pleasing. Looking forward to seeing more of your reef tanks!

[hmmm2]

Thanks @Christopher Marks

 

[hmmm2]

Stock list for the tank:

 

Fish

Randall’s goby + pistol shrimp

Yellow tang
Fire goby
Hawaiian Flame wrasse (Female)

Black storm clownfish 

Gladiator clownfish
Okinawa goby
Red rooster waspfish 
Mandarin fish 

 

Corals

Green goniopora

Red short tentacles gonio wyellow/green centre 
Ultra green rhodantic
Orange Bulleyes rhodantic 
Fiji pipe organ (yellow) 
Fiji pipe organ (white) 
Red monti

Green monti with white polyps

orange lobo 
24K golden torch
Green torch with orange tip 

holygrail torch
Yellow elegance 
Some yellow sps (not sure which though)

Assortment of Zoas 

Green star-polyp

Forest Fire cloves 

blue symposium 

Green tentacles leather coral

[hmmm2]

Also part of the coral stock, are:

 

[hmmm2]

Some pictures of the red gonios:

 

[hmmm2]

Took a random pic of my fav fish at the moment - red rooster waspfish:

 

A peaceful fish suitable for nano tanks, I’ve a pair that’s been with me for close to 6 months 

[hmmm2]

I’ve been using Tropic Marin All for Reef for a while now, and I’ve been pretty satisfied with the result. So I thought i’d give a review.

 

A bit of background here. I’ve been dosing two parts to maintain calcium and alkalinity levels, and magnesium and other trace elements have been maintained through weekly/bi-weekly water changes using Red Sea blue bucket.

 

This routine has been working well for me, but after while, I feel that the regular need to monitor the big three is getting pretty mundane, and because of that, I’ve been testing my water parameters less often.

 

I thought this is getting a little risky so I got myself an Alkatronic and switched to Red Sea Skeleton ABC+. We’re supposed to dose based on calcium consumption, but I went against that advice and dose according to alkalinity consumption instead.

 

 

I’ve been keeping up with this routine of dosing only ABC+ together with Kalkwasser (using a dosing pump) while doing my weekly/bi-weekly water changes, and monitoring my alkalinity level through Alkatronic. It was working very well - in the sense that I only monitor my calcium and magnesium once a month and it is kind of stable - until my corals consumed so much alkalinity that I had to manual dose the ABC+ powder 5 times a day!

 

So ABC+ is a great product but it only comes in powder form. I was looking for an alternative, and was at one point very tempted to get a calcium reactor but didn’t due to space constraint. After a while, I chance upon Tropic Marin’s All-for-reef, and decided to try it.

 

So after some fine tuning, I’m finally able to maintain my alkalinity level at a stable enough level so I could finally avoid doing any form of manual dosing. 

 

This is a screenshot of my alkalinity level throughout the day, measured every 2h while I’m towards the end the fine-tuning process:

 

 

I’ll be switching my measuring interval to every 4h, and slowly work towards measuring once or twice a day eventually when things become more stable.

 

Thanks for reading!

 

[Wonderboy]

Wow! Great work with the conversion - that waspfish is absolutely stunning! He's the cherry on top of a wonderfully composed display!

[hmmm2]

And so today I saw that my golden torch is not opening as big as it usually does. I went closer and saw some white spherical stuff on it:

 

 

A quick search on Google revealed that the torch may be spawning, what do you guys think?

[Wonderboy]

Just using google, I agree - looks like it's spawning - very awesome! Let me know if you ever end up with too many torches hahaha 😄

[hmmm2]

I name this the ULM rock 

[hmmm2]

Got this frag a few weeks back, am loving its subtle coloration:

 

[hmmm2]

Classic shrooms:

 

[Tired]

Your tank looks amazing.

How has your pest-coral rock been doing? Do any of them seem to be winning, or are they at a stalemate? 

I adore red rooster wasps! I used to have one, and they're such bold, curious little creatures. I did have a freak accident happen with him, though. You've probably seen how they hunch down and display their spines when something startles them. Well, I had someone make a loud noise downstairs and scare all my fish, the waspfish did that, and a blenny, somehow, darted right into him. Poor blenny died pretty quickly- I guess what's a minor venom for humans is too much when it's an animal the size of the waspfish itself. One-in-a-million thing, I'm sure I'd never hear of it happening again, but it was interesting. If sad. 

[hmmm2]

On 10/21/2019 at 10:57 PM, Tired said:

Your tank looks amazing.

How has your pest-coral rock been doing? Do any of them seem to be winning, or are they at a stalemate? 

I adore red rooster wasps! I used to have one, and they're such bold, curious little creatures. I did have a freak accident happen with him, though. You've probably seen how they hunch down and display their spines when something startles them. Well, I had someone make a loud noise downstairs and scare all my fish, the waspfish did that, and a blenny, somehow, darted right into him. Poor blenny died pretty quickly- I guess what's a minor venom for humans is too much when it's an animal the size of the waspfish itself. One-in-a-million thing, I'm sure I'd never hear of it happening again, but it was interesting. If sad. 

The pest rock - I think they are at a stalemate, keeps the gsp from growing out of hand

 

Sad to hear about the blenny. But yeah many possible mishaps could have happen to a startled fish - jumping out of the tank, big fish causing damages to corals etc 

Added some blues to the tank recently:

[hmmm2]

Also, realised that this gonio has changed colour:

Mid Oct 2019

 

 

Today’s shot:

 

I’m not sure which one I prefer. 

 

Anyone has a preference?

[Tired]

Huh, that's neat. I wonder if it's something to do with the lighting- either the lights changing how it looks, or actually encouraging it to make a physical change to itself.

 

IMO, they're both nice, but the second one is more interesting.

[hmmm2]

I’ve added more corals over the past few weeks, here’s one of them:

[hmmm2]

A few more eye candies:

 

 

[hmmm2]

And my current favourite:

[hmmm2]

Today’s FTS

[hmmm2]

Top down shot of the acro section:

[hmmm2]

It’s been a while, took some random shots today:

1. FTS 

 

2. LPS/softie section

Normal shot:

Slightly Angled shot

 

Top View

 

Closed up of the fav torch

 

 

[hmmm2]

More updates to the tank: