East1's Majestic Reef

[East1]

I just upgraded the display on this and figured I should take some photos for NR, cus I haven't posted anywhere in a while! 

 

 

 

This is how the tank looks currently, dosing etc isn't hooked up yet! 

The corals were grown out in a display that's basically exactly half the size of this, I built this by hand last week and moved everything over, using my theories about constitution of tank water I was able to just keep everything growing and coloured as normal even though it's a fresh display and (essentially) fresh sump. 

 

The majestic is a new addition, though I think she's gonna be the only fish other than the damsel and clown in this tank. 

The corals have been growing basically since last November when I made a smaller version of this - new tank with some live rock and corals on basically day 1, with automated dosing to keep it all stable. I've been mostly hands off but the tank was so small it succumbed to detritus and always looked messy. Hopefully V2 won't. I'll likely add a Gyre of some sort eventually for some monster flow. 

 

 

 

here's a closeup of someof the corals, the majority of the right 'island' is the big a. tortusa and it's associated base dieoff tthat makes that island structure, the rest is just two tiny pieces of liverock! 

 

[Ratvan]

Always have loved your builds and attitude to reefing. Looking forwards to seeing this grow out further.

 

So whens the next planned upgrade? 😂

[Squid_reef]

Looks fantastic! 👀

[tran]

how long have you had those colonies?  they look great in your tank.

[empresto]

@East1, you mention your theories on tank water constitution, and I know I've seen some of your posts where you get into certain aspects of this, but do you have somewhere you have collected all your theories together in an easy to find location?  I'd love to learn more.  Your tanks are always fascinating, and I appreciate the ways you work through problems.

[East1]

9 hours ago, Ratvan said:

Always have loved your builds and attitude to reefing. Looking forwards to seeing this grow out further.

 

So whens the next planned upgrade? 😂

hahah! at this rate either 6 months, or before I add another random display connected to the same sump on the cabinet where the bonsai is, though I think the majestic has a good year before she outgrows this tank 

 

 

7 hours ago, Squid_reef said:

Looks fantastic! 👀

thank you! 

 

2 hours ago, tran said:

how long have you had those colonies?  they look great in your tank.

I had them since last November, prior me the big acro was grown in a larger reef that was thinning out some stock, so I snatched it. I thought it was a good test in a fresh reef - if my theory was true then an established acro put into the same constitutution of water it came from and kept that way would be fine even if it was a totally new tank. 

 

 

11 minutes ago, empresto said:

@East1, you mention your theories on tank water constitution, and I know I've seen some of your posts where you get into certain aspects of this, but do you have somewhere you have collected all your theories together in an easy to find location?  I'd love to learn more.  Your tanks are always fascinating, and I appreciate the ways you work through problems.

 

I haven't really finished the theory, so not really? It's quite simple though, the basis is that a tank is approximated as a biomechanical machine that makes a certain quality of water (varies from tank to tank) 

 

when you consider that, then a tank that's 10 years old and maintained in the same fashion (like Glenn Fong's reef, where his elements are benchmarked) and a brand new tank is no different chemically, except that the new tank has a more volatile chemical potential as a result of a lower biological potential, so if you can automte to dampen that volatility and keep all elements exactly stable and balanced to the uptake of the biology in the tank you can have a 'mature tank' from day one, as long as you know how to influence all elements necessary both up and down. 

 

The hardest part is bring it back in balance when that volatility starts to go to the edge of the distribution, cus like some elements will cause the corals to do crazy things when they're under supplied or over supplied, some will kill them and some won't really even show  

[M. Tournesol]

21 hours ago, East1 said:

I just upgraded the display on this and figured I should take some photos for NR, cus I haven't posted anywhere in a while!

what's the size of the upgraded display?

[East1]

3 hours ago, M. Tournesol said:

what's the size of the upgraded display?

in cm, 90x35x30h, about 90 litres or something. Biggest tank I've had since about 2009 

[East1]

 

Got a 2nd AI Hydra, though the wifi is broken so it's stuck on all channels at full, which works for me.

 

Little cyano on the rock etc, I let the nutrients swing a little when I set the tank up and didn't have dosing from day 1, caused a bit of a bloom. Everything looks good though and I can already see growth on a bunch of the corals 

[East1]

[East1]

I had a couple thoughts further @empresto on water constitution,

 

The main thing is really just the 'ratio' approach, ie rather than shooting for individual levels, everything should be relative, simple considerations like 'high nutrient necessitates higher alkalinity' or 'higher alk : higher cal' for example.

 

It gets confusing when you look at N:P though, this is best illustrated as a story as below:

 

A semi-mature tank with daily feeding, and no corrective N or P dosing tests for 1ppm NO3 and 0.1ppm PO4. The solution to this is immediately to add nitrate, because we want a higher ratio - however the reason we are using relativity as opposed to absolute adjustment becomes clear:

Adding the nitrate then causes PO4 to reach undetectable (by salifert) levels, causingg a sharp bleaching in coral - some users would then say adding nitrate caused their corals to bleach and then RTN, however if we look at this by ratio, and test over the time period, it'll be obvious that the addition of nitrate then necessitates a ratioed addition of phosphate to ensure that these will be addded in a balanced fashion and, relative to time, won't limit each other.

 

It is in this way that shooting for a ratio for N:P is so important, because one cannot ever influence one without influencing the other. 

[East1]

 

This is the tank the corals in the above were grown out from, you can see some of them were a lot smaller before Is tarted this tank, though I did lose that staghorn and the green acro annoyingly - I actually lost them learning the above lesson.

 

This photo was taken about 5 days after I set up this tank, corals were added after it was a couple days old but only cus it took some time to arrange collecting them from the previous owner. This was the first time I tried setting up what was a totally fresh tank with a heavy mature coral load, and trying to balance the parameters from day (not really) 1

[East1]

This was the above tank on day 1 (zero actually) when I just bought a few chunks of liverock and moved what few corals survived the previous AEFW plague. You can see a lot of the porites which I have multipled and kept todate. I really like porites a lot

 

 

 

This was roughly how that tank looked on a very good day. 24x continuous additions of NO3 and PO4 meant a lot of algae because the tank was too small to get proper detritus - managing flow. Corals grew really well though! but it was disappointing it wasn't a 'display' tank

 

 

 

and the sump, pure chaos. This was dosing AFR, Nitrogen, Phosphor, Zeo Coral System 1, 2, 4, Aquaforest Calcium and Magnesium so I could stop my insane daily dosing regime I was running on the previous tank. 

 

 

I wish I'd taken more photos of this tank when it looked it's worst, cus it was a mess lol - just to give credence to commitment to the process of iteration and only guaging my system based on coral health. 

[empresto]

On 7/2/2022 at 12:12 PM, East1 said:

I had a couple thoughts further @empresto on water constitution,

 

The main thing is really just the 'ratio' approach, ie rather than shooting for individual levels, everything should be relative, simple considerations like 'high nutrient necessitates higher alkalinity' or 'higher alk : higher cal' for example.

 

It gets confusing when you look at N:P though, this is best illustrated as a story as below:

 

A semi-mature tank with daily feeding, and no corrective N or P dosing tests for 1ppm NO3 and 0.1ppm PO4. The solution to this is immediately to add nitrate, because we want a higher ratio - however the reason we are using relativity as opposed to absolute adjustment becomes clear:

Adding the nitrate then causes PO4 to reach undetectable (by salifert) levels, causingg a sharp bleaching in coral - some users would then say adding nitrate caused their corals to bleach and then RTN, however if we look at this by ratio, and test over the time period, it'll be obvious that the addition of nitrate then necessitates a ratioed addition of phosphate to ensure that these will be addded in a balanced fashion and, relative to time, won't limit each other.

 

It is in this way that shooting for a ratio for N:P is so important, because one cannot ever influence one without influencing the other. 

Thanks for this! Matches a lot of my thoughts and experience. For N:P, do you tend to go for the Redfield ratio, or do you do something else?

[East1]

I got my self a Hanna Nitrate HR and Phosphate ULR tester - game changers! I get so much more data compared to a salifert test, really useful for dialing in nutrients (especially considering most of my nutrient addition is via auto dosing instead of feeding) 

 

Been battling keeping PO4 and NO3 in balance, I'm starting to see a relationship, or a trio, between NO3, PO4 and Alk, it seems balancing all of these simultaneously results in some amazing coral behaviour, and it's possible to get corals into 'growth mode' really strongly by keeping this balance stable. I'll experiment a little more and post more thoughts as they develop 

 

Currently got some cyano cus the tank has been overskimmed - had to rebuild the skimmer cus I modified an external skimmer and it was running too high in the neck internally, hopefully there's some balance now with less skimming and a tweaked dosing schedule. 

 

Here's an unflattering photo of the tank - coral growth is very healthy despite all the grossness. This was on Wednesday, the tank was at 0.01 PO4 and 0.08 NO3 at this point, and it's possible to see the threads of dino building up. Adjusting the dosing to get 2.2ppm NO3 and 0.04 PO4 alleviated this, I'll get a recent pic later today. 

 

 

 

On 7/4/2022 at 6:05 PM, empresto said:

Thanks for this! Matches a lot of my thoughts and experience. For N:P, do you tend to go for the Redfield ratio, or do you do something else?

 

I think the redfield ratio was agood thought experiment but doesn't hold much weight, it seems like 50-100x N:P is the sweet spot, but it's more like anything that approaches N:P parity ie 0.1ppm NO3 and PO4 is always bad for coral, and tank health (cyano, then dino will start very very fast) and having NO3 at 0 is basically RTN territory in a few days. PO4 at 0 will cause STN but not RTN, I think because the corals can cannabalise their own mesoglea and that's the basal 'recession' we see.

 

 

[East1]

one of those Bad Day ™️ posts,

 

accidentally overdosed the mineral salt solution of my balling salt during a big heat wave in the UK, lost a couple frags and my corals aren’t too happy, also found out my calcium somehow crept to 500 lol

 

think i will switch back to AFR with corrective calcium doses rather than Aquaforest Components

[East1]

Sad times post continued, I changed a bunch of water to rectify the above, I think the osmotic stress, then the heatwave and the KH rise from 6-9 from changing so much water pushed a bunch of my acros over the edge, there are a couple hanging on but I fear I may have lost the big colony I've been growing all this time! 

 

Sad days! 

 

Though I am hopeful because the remainder of the coral looks like it's recovering, and it means I have a decent amount of space for some fresh frags / small colonies to grow in

 

[East1]

Wow I left this thread hanging on a cliff, I lost most of my acros in the above. 

 

It did give me a stepping off point to think about reefing in general - how important the ability to bounce back can be. I'd spent so long trying to grow acros for the sake of reasearch I kinda forgot what I enjoy growing - and that's just corals. 

 

This gave me a moment to reflect on that, and also realise the importance of reef building corals (porites [some of my favourites] and montipora for example). In a farming environment these corals can quickly establish and set up a nutrient cycle that can support more sensitive SPS, and so I started to collect and grow some montis. 

 

I do now have a few acropora, as well as my all time favourite coral - pocillopora, and the tank seems to be bedding in and settled again!

 

here's a 'I just cleaned the tank and it's murky' shot 

 

 

[East1]

 

considering  it's fully automated, I don't really clean the glass often, this is roughly how it looks on an average day. 

[DNR88]

But if you would clean the glass, I think it would look a lot cleaner. Still a great view in the last picture. 🙂

[East1]

8 minutes ago, DNR88 said:

But if you would clean the glass, I think it would look a lot cleaner. Still a great view in the last picture. 🙂

you're definitelly right, but recently I've been trying to culture some dove and stomatella snails and the babies swarm the glass at night. I leave it dirty so they can eat. I have some new corals coming this week so I might give it a proper clean and soak the pumps and get some nicer photos!

[debbeach13]

You don't have to clean all the glass at once. Or take 2 more pictures of it dirty and enter the nano-reno contest.

[East1]

On 10/23/2022 at 7:24 PM, debbeach13 said:

You don't have to clean all the glass at once. Or take 2 more pictures of it dirty and enter the nano-reno contest.

The main reason I keep it dirty isn't really laziness (or the snails) but when I say the tank is automated, it is 100% - I don't feed or anything other than topping off dosing solutions and tweaking the frequency (except strontium, because that's powdered I throw a few teaspoons in the sump every week).

 

Prior this phase, the tank had awful cyano + dinos and rather than treat it mechanically with filtration etc, I used it to experiment with calibrating the dosing regime. 

I'm trying to do the same now but to maintain a layer of film algae so the snails can feed - the idea is in a couple months the snail population and the film algae as a function of nutrient dosing should balance and it won't need to be cleaned. 

 

if my theory works, then things such as cyano, dinos, poor polyp extension and lacking coral coloration should all be adressable via the dosing regime over a shortish period of time.

 

Currently I think the tank is lacking iodine contributing to the pale montis so I've started dosing that supplementally to see if that has an affect on the algae before nutrients are adjusted. 

 

 

[East1]

So, I barely cleaned it but I did add a canvas backdrop and spent some time getting the lighting set right, which apparently makes a huge difference cus even in the previous pics it's not nearly as dirty in person. 

 

Added a couple new montis and some nice little acro frags today,

and rearranged quite heavily too!  

 

[East1]

https://imgur.com/a/UcYkzcU

 

aw, it doesn't unfurl - but it's a short video of the tank