90 gallon reef

[Pat02026]

These jeabos are decent little pumps! Noise is acceptable (while not silent, very quiet with the stand doors closed). The cooling fans on the reef radiance fixtures are obnoxious. They run full speed all the time and that's all I can hear. The bean animal, well all I can say is wow. The flow that it handles silently is incredible. The flaw with this tank is the fact that I started with a reef ready tank. As flow gets up over 800gph (guesstimate) the water cascading over the wall of the overflow starts becoming noisy. In hindsight I would get a regular tank, c2c overflow it with the beananimal and probably try to keep the overflow as small as possible using a similar design to the "ghost". I picked up a 48" maristar fixture to have for when I decide these LED's won't cut it as corals start to accumulate. I know I have been adamant about "efficiency" but what's the point of a reef tank if the corals don't grow and look good?

 

[Marshall O]

Few questions/points. For the pump(s), give them a few days; my guess is they will quiet down. Looks like you have vinyl tubing off the return pump, which definitely helps with sound/vibration. Second, how do you have the drain plumbing setup? Do you have a picture inside the overflow? Finally, for the lights, unfortunately it looks like you have the original Evergrow D120 design fixtures. They have 3 fans that are quite noisy as you noted. The newr Evergrow D2120 fixtures are much better fixtures. They have real heat sinks (the D120 just has a flat sheet of aluminium vs. the D2120 which has a finned heat sink). The new ones only have two larger, quieter fans. Difference is night and day! Here are pictures of the heatsinks for each:

D120 taken apart:


A look inside the D2120:


So now you can see why the D120's needed to have the fans running full blast all the time! Right now over my 125 I have (1) D120 blue/white fixture (soon to be replaced!), (1) Reef Breeders full spectrum Value fixture (comes with 120° optics, is the newer D2120 fixture) and (1) D2120 "Ecotachi" branded (Ebay) full spectrum fixture with 90° optics. With the 90° optics, I have the dimmers set much lower than the 120° fixture for obvious reasons. I just got the Ebay 90° one, but so far I like it. I liked the spectrum & LED selection and matched up with my Reef Breeders in that respect. I have plenty of SPS, and so far so good as far as growth and color. It may be worth your while to sell those fixtures and get the newer designed ones.

 

[Pat02026]

Thanks for the info Marshall, very informative. I am going to get some pictures up hopefully Tuesday night once I finish up the under tank plumbing. You are correct about the vinyl tubing which is awfully rigid. I used it temporarily to get up and running since it was on hand. I am expecting a package on Tuesday with some 3/4" and 1" silicone tubing for all the sump to display plumbing and I am very hopeful that it will keep the noise resonance down as well as keep things much neater looking being so much more flexible.

I used to use a reefbreeders value color fixture <1year ago over a frag tank with the old system, and I regret not going with them again. That fixture was much quieter, and although I am aware and capable of removing the current fixtures 90* optics, the blending of the 120* fixtures colors was much smoother. These reef radiance fixtures are very spotty. I plan on raising them a bit, but don't want to have the light "spillover" all around the tank. In all reality I am a Halide guy anyhow, and with the maristar I picked up for short money, I'm betting that's going to be lighting this tank the majority of the time. I will likely keep the LEDs around for the warm summer months, but there's still no contest for the look and performance of MH lighting. Just not looking forward to running a fixture that's 600 watts all the time.

 

[Pat02026]

Well this is boring! Tank has been wet for 12 days, and I'm starting to see a bit of ammonia, slightly under .1 ppm. I'll add some seeding sand to get some life in the tank in a week or two. I added some live rock to the qt tank, which is more or less going to be a new arrival tank from here on out; everything goes there for acclimation first. I have a 10 gallon and a couple 20's for treatment and qt if and when the time comes. Corals are going to have their own separate qt tank for observation before going into the display. I'm going to do as much as I can to establish a healthy and pest free system.

 

[Pat02026]

First new arrivals

They won't stop moving to get a decent shot, sorry for the poor quality images

 

[this is me]

Those juvie onyx clowns look great! Where did you get them?

 

[Pat02026]

Tropic isle. $29 for the pair. They were in the true perc tank. I was surprised they were sold as such with such dark markings. They are very healthy looking too, both eating like pigs.

 

[this is me]

Ah. I remember it now. They had this 2 years ago. My onyx pair from Rod, which is from C-Quest, is reaching their 7 years in my tank. Very beautiful clowns.
I wonder what's the lineage of the ones in Tropical Isle.

 

[Pat02026]

The meeting was great, I took home a bunch of good stuff. A nice Greg hiller blue tort, a 3 polyp frag of blue hornet zoos, an army of Yuma rics, and a few other goodies all happy in QT.

 

[Pat02026]

 

[Trevor]

Looking great pat! I'm still using the ats you build and it's still working like a champ, pulling at least a half sandwich bag of algea every other week! Keep up the great work!

 

[Pat02026]

That's awesome Trevor! The second one I built got sold when I broke down the old system, and it was half the size and had double the flow and light output. I have just about everything to build another, just don't have any plans to run one at the moment. If I eventually plumb to the basement then I will, but for now I'm trying to stick with the minimalist approach under the tank.

 

[Pat02026]

It's been a few weeks, and a few things have changed. The clowns are now in the 90, and I picked up a tomini that's still in QT. I moved a 3 head hammer frag and a 2" blue Tort up to the 90 as well.

Apex is hooked up and running the show now, including top off duty (adding a gallon a day by hand for the past two months go old two months ago lol) which I snuck a 5 gallon tank under the stand for top off water, until I get some nice dosers then top off will be supplied directly from the bulk RODI in the basement. Wp 10 in the coral qt tank and there's a wp40 making waves in the 90.

Just about done for equipment, only thing left on the wish list is an aquatrend evolution doser, which will run the Ca/mg/alk.

 

[Pat02026]

Just ordered a pair of Phoenix 14k and a pair of ATI blue plus lamps for the maristar fixture. I moved a blue tort and a hammer up to the 90 two weeks ago, and they don't like the LED's. I am not going to mess around, I'm putting a real light over this tank. At least for the first year or two, until things start growing then maybe I'll go back to the LED's.

 

[Pat02026]

Maristar is up! Really enjoying the color of the 14k Phoenix/ATI blue plus combo. And boy does 600 watts of light really make it's presence known! I need to move some more corals up from the qt tank into the display. Any suggestions on anthias species? I had a trio of bartletts in my last tank and really enjoyed them. I am looking to change it up a bit this time though but like the color/activity of anthias.

 

[Pat02026]

Brought up a few more pieces from QT today
Couple of monti's

Green/purple polyp birdsnest

Red digi, and yellow porites

And a quick sump shot; there's a 5.5 ATO resivior, and a ghetto skimmer collection container to the left of the sump. The bullet skimmer is a beast, pumping out a half gallon of reef diarrhea every week; I am pulling the trigger tonight on a nice waste container with a charcoal filter and level switch.

I've been adding around 100ml a week worth of Ca and alk, I think I'm just going to start adding kalk to the ATO. I've got it on hand already expecting to need it sometime soon. I'm holding off on automated dosing until I can afford the PAC sun doser. That's a nice piece, and it will handle my daily small volume water change duty for me too.
That's all for now!

 

[PSU4ME]

Very nice looking! I have Randall's anthias and I like then. Blue star wrasses are my fav if you're looking for suggestions.

 

[Pat02026]

Thanks B, I am so tempted to come pick up some of frags you just posted but there's still a bit of time to go before I am ready to start adding the pricey pieces. I've got a nice mixed handful in there now just test driving, and they seem to be happy. A few are a little browned from being in the qt, the nitrates jumped higher than I could manage with the bioload I had in such a small tank, that's why I started moving things upstairs so quick. There's some nasty stuff on the rocks now too, thinking a little Dino and a little cyano. I'm hoping it will clear up without any intervention. There's a wp40 and a wp10 in there now for flow, plan on adding a wp25 to the mix to really get the water moving.

 

[PSU4ME]

It's a process brother, don't rush it! Looks like you're doing it right and its coming along nicely. I'll have some frags for you when you're ready

 

[Pat02026]

It's been quite some time, and there's been a few hiccups with this tank. I had almost all of my corals in the qt tank earlier this year, and the reef keeper kept the ATO pump on and pumped about 20 gallons of RO into the 30 gallon system and wiped out just about everything. I've changed a few pieces of equipment. New bubble magus skimmer, ATB copy. It has been working a little more consistent than the bullet was. Also went to a 6 bulb ATI fixture and it was a good move, much better coverage than the reef radiance and half the power consumption of the maristar. Also recently switched to Red Sea coral pro and I've been hitting the tank with one or two 5 gallon a week changes to get it cleaned up. Some bubble algae snuck in and I've been trying hard to stay on top of it. Here's a few pictures;