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Building a Reeftank

  • Thread starter RamPuppy
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RamPuppy

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*** Since I got a positive response to posting this info, I am going to go ahead and start. I renamed the topic from "Would you be interested" so it's clear what it is.

BEWARE, THIS THREAD GETS PICTURE INTENSIVE ON PAGE 2

***

END EDIT

Hi All,

I was wondering if you would be interested in me creating a 'follow along thread' here on the construction of my new 115 gallon reef tank.

If I did do it, it would be picture intensive, showing every step of the process of building a reef tank from the ground up, from the carpentry involved in building a Stand and Canopy, to plumbing the Sump, Refugium, Tank, and Pumps together with wave making devices. Electrical wiring for Metal Halide, T-5, and Moon lighting, heating, cooling and so on.

I will also be making a lot of my own 'live rock', and would take you through design of the aquascape to the actual implementation of it, and the stocking of corals, invertebrates, and so on, eventually, just making updates so you can see the progress of the tank.

I know we are a CP forum, and I know I will be dong this on the two reef forums I visit, but I thought we all have such diverse interests here that some of you at least might enjoy seeing this process.

As it stands today I have about 90% of the stand finished, the tank is purchased, and I have almost 100$ of bulkheads on order.  This processis going faster now, and I anticipate having the entire tank online by the end of june.

Let me know!
 
I'm in!
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What kind of fish are you gonna have in the tank?And I didn't know you could make your own coral!!!
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*Niki*
 
Oops I meant live rock,not coral.*Niki*
 
Hi NIkki,

I already have a pair of Sumatran Gold Stripe Maroon clowns that will be going in the tank, and a Purple Tang my wife has named Mr. Nibbles (he nibbles on algae all over the current tank.) I also have a pair of PJ Cardinals, but I don't think they are going in the new tank, but to a friend or something, as they will compete for the same food as a mated pair of Mandarin Dragonettes I have on order.

Final Fish list will read something like this:
Mated Pair of Gold Bar Maroon Clowns
Mated Pair of Mandarin Dragonettes
Pair of Helfrichi Fire Fish
1 Purple Tang
1 Black sailfin blenny
1 Undecided Pygmy Angel (have to find one that won't nip coral)

Making 'live rock' is relatively easy, you fill a container with arragonite sand and crushed sea shells, and wet it, so it's like good sand castle building sand and holds it's shape, you make a mold in it that you want your rock to be shaped like. Then you mix 6 parts aragonite sand (and or sea shell mix) with 1 part portland cement, wet to the concistency of thick mud, and fill in your mold. To build higher, you build up around the sides of the rock with sand as you go. You can do interesting things like add snail shells, clams, and even spaghetti to the mix. let the rock cure for a couple days, and then put it in fresh water to cure for 2 weeks. During the curing process excess alkalinity will be leached out, and (if you added spaghetti) the spaghetti will deteriorate and leave small tunnels through out the rock for critters to inhabit (and assist in water current movement through the rock.) once it is cured properly you put it in (in this case) the main tank where all the REAL live rock is curing. Over the coming months, organisms will migrate into the fake rock and colonize it, sponges, tunicates, coraline algae, you name it, if it survived the curing process on the real live rock, it will eventually get on the 'fake stuff' and make it 'alive'. I am making the rock because I have some very specific structures in mind for the tank, and they can't be trusted to form out of random bulk ordered premium fiji live rock. I plan on starting to make rock this weekend, or, to make the container to make it in... the first piece will be a 28 inch long 'table' that extends along the back of the tank, and will be fused with another 28" long table that runs along the right side of the tank, this will hold the live rock later, because it will have hidden PVC legs underneath it, water will move under it and keep detrius from building up under the rocks, improving the water quality of the tank without sacrificing the 'natural' look.
 
DO IT!

joe

sounds like what my brother talks about. hes into salt tanks.
 
Oh my goodness!That sounds so neat!Good luck with it and keep me posted!You sound very talented!*Niki*
 
lol... talented? thanks, but determined is more like it. I keep doint something until it is 'the way I want it' usually, I have to employ the brute force method... hopefully this won't come to that...
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GOOD LUCK
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*Niki*
 
Sounds like you know a good lot about fish Rampuppy! I say go right ahead with the tank. Sounds like a big project, but it will be greatly helpful for reef and cp growers as well - I daresay many of us who don't know much about wiring and aquaria (like the person who's talking here) will want to find out more. Plus fish and cps have a lot in common - they have to be taken care of, given light, given food, "watered"...
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And most of cps do well in where? TERRARIUMS! (ie. aquariums)
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I may even be inspired to try reef keeping after this...
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  • #10
lol.. now that is what I like to hear, spreading of my addictions...
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I will post some pics later today of the finished stand, I have been up all night (I work friday nights) so will go home, take a nap, and then get to finishing the stand this afternoon. I actually made a big mistake with it, I had originally planned to do 4 2 x 4's per leg, but jointed, and then glued together, one set would be BETWEEN the top and bottom, the other set would be taller and come alongside of it, offering me an easy point to screw the legs in. I decided this was overkill mid way through building the stand and realized yesterday, I have no easy way to attatch the legs! erp...

Anyhow, before heading to work I purchased 18 5/16 x 6" lag bolts, and a 1.5' long drill. Gonna go straight down, and straight up!
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putting the legs together with the top and bottom is a little stressful, aquariums of this size must have perfectly level stands, and one little mistake could mean some serious re-building of the stand on my part... so, nap first. build later!
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  • #11
Sounds worthy of being a mini-site when it's done... let the world see.
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  • #12
well, I just woke up... realized I forgot to buy a new batch of screws today to attatch my trusses.. sigh.
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to tired to work it tonight, will do so tomorrow.
 
  • #13
Man,

What a weekend. I didn't have time to do anything on the tank, but I figured I would tell you guys how I got to where I am right now.

I started researching Reef Aquaria back in 2000, when I got married and moved, I planned on breaking down my planted fresh water tank (which of course I had to do to move it) and set it back up as a Fish Only w/ Live Rock Tank. (just fish, no corals or inverts) however, my apartment at the time did not allow fish tanks over 30 gallons, and I had a 55. So, I converted to another blooming passion, Carnivorous Plants. (that 55 still has my Bical, Truncata X Vetchie, and several other neps in it. Including a 5 year old home depot nep which is suprisingly, one of my favs.) Fast Forward to 2003, I am working at a nice big company again, pulling in enough money to consider starting a reef up again. I started doing hard core research but again outside interference, my contract was supposed to be for 1 year, it lasted 8 months, and I was unemployed for a couple months, I did however, get hired back to a new contract at the same company in december. I january, I build my first tank.

A 30 gallon hexagon with 40 lbs of live rock. The first inhabitants were a pair of Electric Blue hermits, and emerald crab, and some dward zebra hermits. That was the situation for about 3 months. During that time, the tank blossomed a ton of micro fauna known as Copepods and amphipods. Then I added the PJ Cardinals, (which decimated the 'pod population) and later, 2 maroon clowns, which unfortunatley did not pair up and proceeded to attempt to kill each other. They were removed, and sold. Here is a pic of one of them.

Display.JPG


That clown, and it's almost partner were eventually sold to friends, and I bought two much much younger ones, each was less than an inch at initial purchase, one rapidly became dominant and made the transformation to female. Here is a quicktime movie of them playing in their anemone.

http://www.digitalflytrap.com/Movies/DSCN0614.MOV (requires Quicktime)

You can see one of the PJ cardinals in the movie, (they are named Jammies and Rompers. Anyone guess why?)

Coral went in around this time too. Along with the bane of reef aquaria. One one of my Coral Frags (read 'cutting' to associate with plants) came in with what we call a hitch hiker in the reek keeping world, an Aiptasia Anemone.

You can see it here, the Coral is a green trumpet, a very nice speciment, look below it in the shadow, you can barely see a little star shaped critter. Within a month, that aiptasia became 10, when I started killing them, it became 200. It is a never ending battle.

The tank was humming along very nicely (except for the constant fighting to kill the pest anemones) until late in the year when I switched to a new position at my company and my schedule went to 12 hour nights. I hardly had time to work on the tank, no water changes were done for a month, and I was just throwing food in before collapsing in exhaustion, this contributed to a hair algae bloom, and caused the Aiptasia population to get out of control again. When I finally adapted to the new schedule, I had about 800 aiptasia anemones, they stung the green trumpet I posted above to death. It was time for a biological control. I worked hard at bringing the tanks rapidly swinging parameters back under contrl for a month, and used a kalkwaser paste to kill as many of the pest anemones as I can find. Unfortunately, once hair algae takes control, it is hard to get rid of. So I invested in an item called a "PhosBan Reactor" this required the addition of a new pump.

before adding the reactor though, I purchased 4 little nudibranchs called Berghia, they eat only aptasia, they were expensive, but a better control than peppermint shrimp that would have attacked my feather dusters and bubble tip anemone as well. They made short work of the surviving visible aiptasia, and since once you have aiptasia you never get rid of it, They had a food source they could feed on, at one point, there were about 20 babies, but the population stablized at around 8.

Then, I added the Phosban Reactor, and this is supposed to pull phosphate down to 0 in the tank and help remove algae. Two days after adding it, my schedule changed again, and I ignored the tank for a couple weeks. This turned out to be a highly fatal mistake.

The new pump was defective, after a couple of days my average temp raised from 78 degrees (appropriate for a reef tank) to 89.8. This heat wave caused all my crabs, my berghia nudibranchs, and most of my coral to die slowly. My anemone and several Mushroom coralamophins expelled their symbiotic algae in displeasure, and I came home one day to find a tank that was once colorful, bleached white. I was devestated. It took me a while to narrow in that the new pump was the problem, but I did find out that it was the cause. My fish survived, and my star Polyps and Zoanthids survived. You can see them in the following picture.

gree_Star_Polyps_JPG.jpg


These mushrooms survived as well (the beautiful Rhodactus (purple and orange) on the far right perished as well.):

Fungi_JPG.jpg


as did my pulsing pom pom xenia

pompom_xenia_JPG.jpg


My purple Millaporia did not:

purple_Millapora_JPG.jpg


At this point, I decided the 30 was pretty much 'dead' and to move my fish into a temporary tank of greter size to ensure stability, and give myself a little breathing room for the possibility of future disasters. I had purchased a 110 gallon tank for my wife a month before, and was restoring it by removing scratches and such before installing it in her office for her fancy goldfish. It became a temporary refuge that is still up and running. This tank is not without it's problems either.

It was originally plumbed with an Iwaki MD70-RLT, a pressure rated pump that sucks down energy like a black hole eats matter. Because the tank and stand were very tall, the pump was always in overdrive, and causing heat issues. When I removed it, The temp dropped from the mid 80's to the mid 70's. Yay. However, algae is still an issue, and without the bhergia to control the aiptasia, they have skyrocketed back into astronomical numbers, I estimate there are 2000+ in the tank at this point. this is partly due to the fact most of the heat damaged coral did not die until it was in the larger tank, this fueld algae and aiptasia growth.
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Several water changes later, a new pump, and the phosban reactor running full bore, the algae stopped growing, now to get rid of it. I purshased a Purple Tang my wife calls "Mr. Nibbles" he can be seen in the following quicktime movie destroying algae. (eating it!)

http://www.digitalflytrap.com/Movies/ptang.mov

The tank is very ugly, the lights I had on my 30 hex were not strong enuogh to penetrate the depth of the 110, so the corals had to be puto n PVC and egg crate racks to elevate them higher in the tank. Mr. Nibbles is about the same diameter top to bottom as that of a baseball. If you look closely, you can see the clowns pop out for a second near the bottom of the frame.

I have not made any major investments in this current tank, I am in a holding pattern until the new tank comes on line. When I purchase the new live rock, which must be cured in the new tank (allowing dead matter to decay, and water to stabilize) the live rocks and corals in the 110 will take a vacation at Camp Instar. Instar is a friend of mine that breeds copper banded butterflies, and Berghia. The CBB's are a gorgeous fish that eats feather dusters, and AIPTASIA. He is going to put the rocks in his tank and allow the copper bands to denude the aiptasia off the rocks and coral for 3 weeks. So that when I add the rocks to the new tank, it won't immediately become an aiptasia farm. 8 brand new baby berghia will return home with the rocks to maintain a low aiptasia population.

I will post plans and prices for the new tank shortly.
 
  • #14
That is SO cool!
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*Niki*
 
  • #15
Don't spoil it with prices!
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I was talkin to my brother the other day and he told me what a couple different peices of whatever he had cost him. I dropped a brick in my shorts. Like "DUDE! it's just a rock!" colorful or not. i gotta admit reef tanks and salttanks in general have no competition for tanks except pro-vivs.

Joe
 
  • #16
thats awesome, I'm currantly having to redo my 100 gallon reef as well its overgrown with coralline and I was lazy for a few months and it built up. To bad the TOTM is no long at RC....
 
  • #17
OK, I have a few minutes now, I am running a query on 8K computers so it will take a while. (usually twiddle your thumbs time.)

Here is a list of the equipment that will be included in the new tank:

115 Gallon Ocean View Cube 30" x 30" x 30" w/ custom drilling $430.00 -PURCHASED

Bulkheads for tank (schedule 80 PVC 1.5" and 1" w/ screens) $90.00 PURCHASED

Custom Sump - $200.00
Oceans Motions Wave Maker - $309.00 + shipping
Oceans Motions Revolutions - $140.00 + Shipping
Reeflo Dart 3200 GPH pump (2X) -$350.00 - PURCHASED
Stand - $150.00 (Supplies PURCHASED - Under Construction)
Canopy - $150.00 (supplies estimate)
IceCap T5 (Quad) retro fit kit 24" - est $400.00
IceCap 250 watt Metal Halide w/ Iwasaki 10K/20K bulbs - est $800.00
Custom Refugium - $200.00 est price

As you can see, this hobby adds up FAST. Luckily, i work at a petstore for fun, and get a hefty employee discount, so some of those prices may come down big time.

When it is all setup, $350.00 of live rock will be added (Fiji Premium, Kalini, Tonga Deep Water)

Planned Stocking:

Vertebrates:
1 X Purple Tang - (Mr. Nibbles (allready owned)
2 X Maroon Clowns (already owned, wife has not named yet.)
1 X Black Sailfin Blenny
2 X Mandarin Dragonettes (to be purchased as mated pair)
1 X Citrine Goby (Maybe - still up in the air on this one.)
2 X Helfrichi Firefish (to be purchased as pair (150.00 each)

Invertebrate Life:
1 X Tridacna Maxima Clam White and Black (Ultra Grade)
1 X Tridacna Maxima Purple and Black (Ultra Grade)
3 X hawaiian Feather Duster Colonies
2 X Coco Worms (Orange - Red Hawaii Endimic)
3 X Dwarf Feather Dusters
2 X Fire Shrimp
1 X Red Linkia Starfish
1 X Blue Linkia Starfish
1 X Ultra Rose Bubble Tip Anemone (current one is bleached, if it survives, it will be in the tank.)
1 X Bee Sponge

CORAL: (all Coral will be Collector Grade, i.e. no brown)
Purple People Eater Palythoa
Various Zoanthids
Various Yuma Ricordea
Acropora (various varieties)
Hydnophora (branching, blue and green varieties)
Blastomusa (various varieties)
Black Sun Coral
(oh heck, if it is pacific in origin, and I still have space for it, and it is gorgeous and hardy, it will get a home in the tank.)

Coral will be added slowly, most of the ones I want are the equivalent of N. Hamata, i.e. gorgeous and highly sought after, thus expensive.
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my pocket book is not going to be fat for quite some time.

I would be happy to answer any questions you guys have.




Invertebrate Clean Up Crew *My Janitors*
3 X Tuxedo Urchins
1 X Porcelin Crab (pacific)
1 X Teddy Bear Crab (Hawaii Endemic)
2 X Pom Pom Crabs (Hawaii Endemic)
50 X Dwarf Zebra Hermits (Hawaii Endemic) (great scavengers)
3 X Electric BHermits (Marshal Islands Endemic (Blue))(Hawaii Endemic (orange))
2 X Haloween Hermit Crabs (Hawaii)
2 X Strawberry Crabs
2 X Hawaiian Mud Crabs (similar to Emerald Mithrax, but of pacific origin.)
20 X Trochus Snails
20 X Pacific Turbo Snails
10 X Super Tongan Nassarius Snails
2 X Tongan Fighting Conchs
2 X Harlequin sea Slugs
 
  • #18
Sorry man, prices went up before I saw your post...

Flipside... Coraline is a GOOD thing! just scrape it off the glass and be happy!

Oh, and the tank of the month not being on RC anymore is an april fools joke.
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  • #19
OMG RamPuppy are you rich??I know you're gonna get a discount but still that's a crapload of money:O Have fun:) *Niki*
 
  • #20
LOL.. RICH? no, not by any means (at least by American standards) I would be considered Middle Class, if I ever pay off my wifes car and my truck, then we would easily be considered upper middle class as far as our income goes, we do have a ton of bills, so not much money left over.

I do however work that pet store job just to pay for this, and I do Macromedia Flash development on the side. I have a few contracts that will pay for the entire tank when the companies pay up. I have also been saving for this tank for 2 years, it has been 'planned' from the get go, but I thought it would be a lot further off, when we actually got around to buying a house (because we live in a 2nd story apartment) but we recently found out that our floors are light weight concrete and can handle the weight, so no worries there, and with the extra money coming in, I can knock out at least a large part of that cost.

Oh, and those rare corals are a gift that gives back too. given a year to grow, when I make cuttings of the colonies (frag them) some will go for about 60 to 120$ apiece. So I can easily make some of this money back.

I am also laying down the scratch for ICECAP ballasts, which are more energy efficient than any other ballast on the market, so my 700 watts of light will come w/ little heat waste and so forth usually associated with these tanks. Lowering operating costs, making me even more happy.
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