Peter's 40Breeder Budget Build

[ptora]

Hey everyone,

 

I was inspired lately by some talks lately surrounding budget builds. So I've decided to re-use equipment I already on my current tanks or budget priced/used items to hopefully keep a successful thriving mixed reef tank. Hope ya'll tag along on this frugal journey! 😀

 

It's part of my crazy plan to use a third of the tank to grow frags and the rest will be a display but done in a very unconventional way 🤪. 

 

Decided to start up this journal and share after being inspired by Reefbuilders' latest video on their budget build to post this journal but been following some folks like telegraham, inappropriate reefer, mahina_corals on instagram who have been preaching that you don't need the latest and fanciest equipment to run a reef tank. Also loved checking out Reefbums latest tank build so why not give it a shot and document the journey.

 

Equipment

Tank: 40 gallon Breeder 

Lighting: Modified Viparspectra 165W + 2x AliE (Populargrow) 54W LED bars

Filtration: Seachem Tidal 75 w/ marco rocks and AF Reef Bio Fil as biological filtration

Powerhead: Jebao SLW-20, Nero 3

Skimmer: TBD - Most likely a cheap air pump skimmer

Dosing: Saturated Kalk using the Kamoer X1 Pro T

Controller: Coralvue Hydros Control 4

 

Stocking

1 x Biota Captive Bred Yellow Tang

2 x Mocha Storm Clowns

3 x Seale's Cardinals

1 x Orchid Dottyback

1 x Neon Goby

 

[Jaren45]

is that light diffuser on your black box?

[ptora]

1 hour ago, Jaren45 said:

is that light diffuser on your black box?

Just a piece of frosted acrylic from what I've seen others used to reduce shimmering. I had pulled out all the 90 degree lenses and replaced the outer lenses with 120 degree lenses to be able to drop the height of the light down to 12 inches above the water and give the tank a nicer spread. 

[ptora]

Tank has been running really well so far. Decided to take a twist on the "cycling" method this time and added corals in first per Jake Adams, I did used Dr. Tim's One and only and the tank was literally cycled in 5 days and saw a bit of nitrates from the test kit, so I decided to start moving easy softies and zoanthus that would appreciate that extra nitrate, then LPS. The pair of clowns went in along with a couple of bubble tip anemones which were digged deep into some of the old rocks. Getting a bit of diatoms but this is perfectly normal and the snails have taken care of that. 

[ptora]

Knowledge is power! 🧠🧠🧠🧠🧠

[ef4life]

Looks good

[ptora]

10 hours ago, ef4life said:

Looks good

Thank you! 🙏 

[ptora]

 

Just an update to cap off 2021. 

 

Added all the fish that were in quarantine for the past couple months, everything has been thriving so far including some of the acros (bali green slimer, yellow tip austera, and tri-colour valida). Bit of algae but nothing nuisance an the clean up crew are taking care of it.

 

I've actually decided to get a hydros 4 controller after talking to some peeps including Jim (telegraham) as my plan was to dose kalkwasser and don't want to send my pH through the roof and so far it's been my best investment yet. Hooked up the Kamoer X1 Pro T doser and been riding that boosted pH!

[ptora]

January update dump! 😅

 

Anacroporas

 

PC Rainbow 🌈

\

 

Rainbow Pectinia 

 

Jack-O-Lantern Lepto

 

Green torch

 

Wild Chalice

[mitten_reef]

Some nice looking stuff on the tiles 👍

[ptora]

1 hour ago, mitten_reef said:

Some nice looking stuff on the tiles 👍

Thank you! One of the challenges of going bare bottom and wanting a carpet of various zoanthids I find.

[joshthebox]

That chalice is wicked! Nice Anacropora as well! 

[DevilDuck]

On 12/29/2021 at 10:47 PM, ptora said:

 

Just an update to cap off 2021. 

 

Added all the fish that were in quarantine for the past couple months, everything has been thriving so far including some of the acros (bali green slimer, yellow tip austera, and tri-colour valida). Bit of algae but nothing nuisance an the clean up crew are taking care of it.

 

I've actually decided to get a hydros 4 controller after talking to some peeps including Jim (telegraham) as my plan was to dose kalkwasser and don't want to send my pH through the roof and so far it's been my best investment yet. Hooked up the Kamoer X1 Pro T doser and been riding that boosted pH!

Can you walk us through how you have this kalkwasser doser setup? Does it trigger via pH?

[ptora]

On 1/24/2022 at 8:54 PM, joshthebox said:

That chalice is wicked! Nice Anacropora as well! 

It is! I'm hoping it colours up as it has lots of potential. Anacros have become my favourite as of current, I'm on the hunt for a TNT.

[joshthebox]

Just now, ptora said:

It is! I'm hoping it colours up as it has lots of potential. Anacros have become my favourite as of current, I'm on the hunt for a TNT.

Exotic Aquarium World had some TNT a while back, maybe he still has some frags? I think they were priced pretty cheap as well. 

[ptora]

On 1/25/2022 at 12:37 AM, DevilDuck said:

Can you walk us through how you have this kalkwasser doser setup? Does it trigger via pH?

For sure, I dose kalkwasser using the ACI Method which Chris Meckley uses on his coral system. Essentially it's fully saturated kalkwasser, 2tbsp/per gallon of RODI mixed up then let settled before dosing. The kamoer doser doses at a rate of 1mL/min for my tank and I only dose at night from 9:30pm to 11:30AM at which I have programmed using my hydros controller to turn on and off. This of course differs from tank to tank due to evaporation rate, and alk consumption as I've heard others dosing at 10 or 20mL/min  I can set the hydros to shut it off if pH hits a certain level however my pH only hits a high of 8.2 at the moment so I'm not too concern with it. Alkalinity has been pretty stable and usually sits between 8-9dkh. I'm still tweaking it for my system but I am tracking data before I give it a full in depth review, perhaps I'll make a video breaking it down a little bit better.   

[ptora]

12 minutes ago, joshthebox said:

Exotic Aquarium World had some TNT a while back, maybe he still has some frags? I think they were priced pretty cheap as well. 

Thanks for the heads up, for some reason I always thought he only brings in fish and inverts. 

[pal]

11 hours ago, ptora said:

using the ACI Method which Chris Meckley uses on his coral system.

I have been reading about this method  and just watched this video, very interesting please let us know how it goes, are you going to just ignore alk and just focus on ph like he implies on the video?
 

 

[ptora]

I will, I'm at the 1 month mark at the moment so I'll continue document the progess on kalk dosing as I'm not comfortable releasing data and progession prematurely, perhaps I'll look into releasing initial observation at the three months mark on my progression. At the moment, I'm slowly adjusting to increase my pH to and ensuring that my alk doesn't run higher than I am comfortable with along with that, when I started kalk. The main goal was to boost my supressed pH while increasing and maintaining alk. Initially when I started dosing my alk, it was sitting at 6.7 dkh and I have slowly brought that up to 7.5dkh and now sitting between 8-9 for the past 3 weeks. I've seen no ill effects with corals and my pH has gone from a low from 7.67 to 8.01 at night. So there maybe some truth to what Chris has mentioned regarding ignoring alk, however this is just my short observation at the moment. 

 

  

2 hours ago, pal said:

I have been reading about this method  and just watched this video, very interesting please let us know how it goes, are you going to just ignore alk and just focus on ph like he implies on the video?