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christyf5's 90G Gallon Tank of Stupendousness
Introduction Even though I’m only TOTM by default (a last minute thing), I’m pretty happy that some people think I’m worthy of it. Thanks to Canreef and its members, my tank has become what it is today. I’d also like to give myself a pat on the back for surviving this hobby, those of you that have followed my threads on Canreef know what I'm talking about, its been a rollercoaster ride. Just think of any major issue in this hobby, type it into the search bar and its likely one of my threads will pop up.
After deciding I would fill in, I had a good hard look at my tank. Of course it needed to have the front glass cleaned before I could take a photo, out comes the easyblade, clean clean clean. Hmm, a coral has grown too close to the glass, if I just move the rock a little I can get that spot. Two hours later, the tank was “worthy” of a photo, however, two of the corals barely escaped being fragged within an inch of their lives. So, I didn’t end up taking the photo. They looked like hell, all mucous-y and broken. So the waiting game began while they grew some of their parts back (or at least got tissue covering the broken bits). I won’t lie and tell you this hasn’t happened before….often.
Soo, a bit of history I guess. I think I’ve told this story to many on the board. Freshwater tanks when I was younger, then a long hiatus and a resurgence into the hobby with cichlids during my college years. Damned things kept killing each other, apparently only the boring colored cichlids don’t have attitude. In the meantime I started a small reef tank after working up some credit at a LFS that had saltwater. Oooh ahh! Who knew that there were such beautifully colored fish in the saltwater world? I slowly and carefully started my 20 gallon tank with some live sand and live rock. However, when that LFS closed suddenly, I was catapulted into the hobby with a couple of butterflyfish to cycle my tank. They lasted about 2 days before I shipped them off to a couple of friends after reading everything I could get my hands on. I can’t remember what I ended up cycling the tank with but at that point, I was just learning what “cycle” meant and it didn't include beautiful butterflyfish. Once I got the hang of it, let me tell you, that tank had the most lush green hair algae I’ve ever seen, with a few softies peeking out here and there. The 48gallon cichlid tank was looking pretty good as a reef about then and the cichlids were ousted in favour of a bigger reef…sans hair algae. That lasted about a year and a bit (the resurgence of hair algae much less than a year) before I settled on a 90 gallon.
Of course, I’d like to say I got the hang of this hobby fairly quickly. I perservered again and again without much success, looking back, I’m not quite sure how I managed it. Dinoflagellates took up most of 2004 and the early part of 2005 when as a last ditch effort, I removed the sandbed and went bare bottom. While I do love the look of a sandbed, I’ve never looked back and call myself “reefing since 2001, successful since 2005”.
Of course, success comes at a price and in this hobby that's more in the literal sense than the figurative one. While I do enjoy the hobby, lately I've been enjoying it a little too much and yes, thats TWO frag racks in the tank photo. I wanted to remove it for a prettier picture but what to do with it in the meantime? So I just hauled it off to the side. That frag rack on the front glass was almost filled from a single frag swap event. I just keep moving the frags a bit closer together to fit more stuff on. Oh, and that whitish/green coral off to the left next to the wavebox? Yes, that was a frag rack too for some time. I've never been fond of that coral but it makes a great perch for various other things. I eventually realized I couldn't leave stuff up there forever and moved things around. Its slowly coloring back up to its dark green color (while still harboring a piece of my prized Seriatopora callendrium colony that RTNed last month).
System My tank is a 90gallon eurobraced Seastar drilled for a single overflow. I have a 30 gallon sump that was custom built (36" x 11.5" x 16") and wedged in the bottom of the stand (which wasn't designed for these things). The sump doesn’t have any baffles in it, it’s just a basic tank. I must say, I don’t know how I could go back to a standard type sump with baffles, you just can’t jam as much stuff in there! At one point I had a filter sock, Euroreef skimmer, 1.5L zeovit reactor, two phosban reactors, mag 9 and a float valve. For the most part I've only removed the zeovit reactor and have the phosban reactors hanging off the outside of the sump.
Its a bit busy in there but the doors close...mostly
My return pump is a mag 12 which is routed through my PCI 1/4hp chiller before returning to the tank via a 3/4” SeaSwirl which quit swirling a couple months ago. I'm too lazy to figure out why. I also run a 100 micron filter sock on the sump intake which I change out every 4-5 days or so. The sump currently houses my Euroreef CS6-2 skimmer, which gets the job done despite a few cosmetic imperfections. I’ve had it for about 4 or 5 years now and love every inch of it. Hands down the best skimmer I’ve had, and I’ve had a lot of skimmers (not as many as some though eh Mike? :p). I've done both the gate valve and meshwheel mods to it which make it even better! I also have 2 phosban reactors hanging off the sump: one for carbon and one for phosban. I love using carbon in a phosban reactor, it’s so much more efficient. I also have a Schuran Jetstream Pico calcium reactor wedged in my sump cabinet, it uses the larger sized reactor media and I have some Zeomag in there as well to keep magnesium levels happy (although, lately I have been supplementing this as well). Since writing this I have switched to an Aquatronica dosing pump and find that while it was a bit of a steep learning curve to figure out doses (3lbs of Mg gone in just over a week) its doing a bang up job now and I think in the long run it will keep my tank more stable. For flow in the tank, I have a tunze wavebox, two tunze 6060s and a 6045. I’ve never been able to achieve the wave effect with my wavebox (and not for lack of trying, believe me!) but the corals love the flow. I added the 6045 in an attempt to get some of the detritus from the back forty out to the front. That’s a whole other story, since I needed to move some rock to get it in there.
Who has too many corals?? I also use an aquatronica controller to control lighting, temperature and now tank dosing with Ca, Mg and Alk. Previously I had a solenoid hooked up to the calcium reactor and it controlled that too. Also, I can log in and check my tank from wherever there is a computer and the internet. I even figured out to check the tank from my cell phone. Definitely a cool toy! Aquarium Chemistry Specific Gravity: 1.026 Temperature: 80 F pH: 7.8ish Calcium: 410 ppm Alkalinity: 8.6dkh Magnesium: 1350 ppm Potassium: 380 ppm Nitrates: 20ppm
Lighting Lighting consists of 2x250watt Ushio bulbs in Luminarc MiniA3 reflectors running on M58 ballasts. I should have entered this photo in the "Ghetto DIY" photo contest, my Dad built it out of an old aluminum toolbox he made years ago. My Dad loves DIY and is extremely good at it but sadly I didn’t get the DIY gene. Mind you, I did modify a maxijet powerhead once and was infinitely proud of it.
Photoperiod Actinics: 9:30am-10:30pm Halides: 10:00pm-10:00pm
Tank Inhabitants OK I think that covers the technical side of things, now on to the fun part. The biological! Wheee!!! I’m a biologist, so I “get” that in order to sustain life you really do need all these whizjammers but for me, the fun part is the live stuff.
So after passing through my softy phase I think I may have had a few LPS but moved pretty much directly to SPS. I wanted the challenge and bright colors of SPS, I could do it, tons of other people have. I think the challenge of it is probably what kept me going through all the crap I’ve dealt with. While I do miss the movement, nothing matches the colors of SPS (except for reptileguy’s LPS tank HINT HINT JIM!!!). I’ve had this incarnation of my tank for a few years now and actually have some rather large-ish colonies, even though it looks like my tank isn’t that old, its mostly because I can’t seem to keep my hands out of it and am constantly breaking off pieces of this and that (well that and the fact that I'm a frag whore).
Current Fish
Each one of my fish has such character. I remember after bringing my regal tang home in 2005 that she was just like Dory from Finding Nemo.....totally stunned. Sadly, I can hear Ellen Degeneres' voice every time I look at her. Drives me nuts. She also likes to freak out my husband by resting in my large stag acro (the one on the far right), she'll wedge herself in a branch and just hand out, listing to the side, looking rather lifeless. I can't count the number of times we've both been fooled by this. After eating, she also likes to be a total idiot and race to the water surface, gulp air, flip her tail on the way down (splashing my reflectors) and fart the air out her gills. She does this repeatedly for about 10 minutes. Only after eating. Odd. Here is a link to a crappy video, but you get the idea. My oldest fish are my scopas tang and bangaii cardinal, both of which I got in 2003. Bug, the bangaii, came to me from Calgary as a tiny spawn in EmilyB's tank. He came complete with cocktail sword urchin (which I had no idea WTF it was supposed to be, I thought she'd just been drinking a lot and that was the result). He has a bit of a gimpy jaw and reminds me of an old guy without his teeth in. The scopas tang was a Canada day purchase "I'm bored, lets drive to Victoria and see if any of the fish stores are open!!" He's a pretty mild mannered fish, although he's been a bit skittish lately. In late 2006 I added a royal gramma in the hopes that it would survive long term. Previously I had one for about a year, I had my hands in the tank one day and the next thing I know, he's jerking around, gills flared. I tried resuscitating him in front of a powerhead but he was already in rigor. The oddest thing having a live fish go into rigor. Poor thing. I've heard of other cases of this too. Happily mine is swimming along nicely. He's a belligerent bugger though, the whole right side of the tank is his and he protects his rock mercilessly. Not one for photos either. In May of 2007 (yay happy birthday PBT!) I reluctantly bought a powder blue tang. I knew the track record but had seriously lusted after one for almost a year and figured I'd just try one and if it died, never another. I'm happy to say that after the pecking order was defined, he has settled in beautifully. Funny enough, it wasn't the regal who was the aggressor, it was the scopas. Under that guise of mild mannered fish lurked a total butthead. There was a lot of target feeding going on for awhile and lucky my tank had lots of algae to sustain him (wow there's a shocker!)
I added my tailspot wrasse in late 2007 after the previous one got a bit too inquisitive of my crocea clam. The clam closed on his head and that was that. I was very excited to hear that someone had one for sale on canreef as I just had never seen them available before. My previous one was such a personable fish I couldn't resist and drove out to Mission to pick him up. Not quite as personable as my last one, this one certainly does enjoy when I have my hands in the tank: I just might pick up something that has a brittle star beneath it!! He's learned to stay very close to my hands so he can get right in there when he sees something good. These guys have the neatest swivel-y eyes, they don't miss a thing. My geometric pygmy hawkfish was added when I finally couldn't stand my nano caulerpa factory anymore. This little bugger was soooo difficult to feed. He's rather cryptic and feeding was always a nightmare, excess food led to algae growth et voila! good times pruning caulerpa. Finally one day I had had it and put him in the main tank. I rather regret that because I'm pretty sure he ate my lined blenny. Bastard hawkfish!! He seems to be a better feeder in the big tank though, perhaps because its like a snowglobe at feeding time.
He just looks cranky doesn't he? You know, vanderbilts chromis are so pretty but what a bunch of little turds, they're constantly chasing after someone or each other. And talk about your poor shippers. I finally ended up getting 2 out of a batch of 5. One big one and one little one. Surprisingly the little one goes after the big one all the time, although the little one often has a small chunk missing on his nose. Yet in 4 feet of water, they're never far apart from one another. Sometimes they're getting along fine, then the next they're chasing the crap out of each other. Odd little fish. Last but not least, the last fish that I added was a candy hogfish. I probably should have waited to add this fish until I got a bigger tank but I'd never actually seen one in a store, only in the Scott Michael Pocket Fishes book. I was totally stoked and bought him on the spot! What a neat addition. I was worried that he would try to compete with the tailspot wrasse for food (he eats anything that is stupid enough to stick its tentacle/arm out of the rock) but so far its been fat bellies all around. He really adds a neat bullet of color to the tank and doesn't sit still for long. I also had a neon goby in the tank, unfortunately the guard broke on my wavebox and I think he was sucked in. The two just happened to coincide with each other and I assume that's what happened as he was fine beforehand. I also don't know the lifespan on neon gobies, I know a lot of the smaller fish don't live very long. He was kind of rough looking, maybe he died a natural death. He sure was great for parasite control and wound healing (my fish like to wedge themselves into and under rocks sometimes).
During this tank writeup, I also experienced some issues with 4 of my 5 clams. I was having a little scrap with my royal gramma over placement of a coral. I wanted it in a certain place, he didn't want it there. Apparently I was covering up one of his little escape hatches in the rock. So I'd put the coral down and he'd just tip it over, onto the clams. Eventually this hit hard enough to slightly tear the mantle of one of the clams. I moved the coral out of the way of both the gramma and the clams and patiently waited for the clam's mantle to heal. However during this time one of my fish turned into a deranged "clamivore" and started nipping the mantle of that clam and 2 others. I wasn't so sure it was the fish at first so I moved the clams over about 6 inches out of the way of traffic and the royal gramma's territory. However this was next to a 4th clam and over the next day they were all being hit pretty evenly (with the original really taking a beating). So off they went to the local LFS who is "clamsitting" (he had a chuckle over that one) while they heal up. Once healed, I'll try to introduce them back into the tank (they're healing nicely at the store). I say this because there is a 5th clam which is sitting untouched at the opposite end of the tank. My theory is that that damaged mantle released something into the water and made it a temptation for the fish. I never did figure out which fish was the culprit but I certainly had a hard look at both the scopas tang (who was doing various drive by's with the guise of cleaning algae off the clamshells) and the tailspot wrasse (who eats anything that isn't nailed down it seems). So unfortunately, no clam photos except for the lone "survivor".
Maintenance I do weekly 10% water changes with whatever salt I'm currently on the bandwagon with. For the past few months I've been using RBS. I've gone through 2 boxes so far and I'm on the fence about it, thankfully the lack of availability makes it easy to pick a side: its back to IO I go. In the last month I've been doing 20% water changes trying to save a small maxima clam that had a pinched mantle-like condition. Previously my crocea had the same problem and I cured it with the waterchanges. Sadly this wasn't the case with the maxima and it croaked (no more tiny clams for me!). I'm back to 10% weekly now, 20% waterchanges are a big deal in a house with crap water pressure. The skimmer cup gets cleaned weekly and the filter sock is changed every 4-5 days. I have about 4 or 5 of them I run through. I just clean them in the washing machine with vinegar. Don't ever make the mistake of running them through the hot water cycle in a small house. Peeeyew!! I've been testing Ca, Mg, Alk and NO3 weekly. Mostly because I have the test kits and sometimes I get bored. My nitrates have been pegged at 20ppm for quite some time now. Even with the 20% waterchanges they still weren't coming down. Then magically, they were at 10ppm last week. Weird. My ca and mg were also fluctuating so I'm trying a dosing pump to see if that might hold them more steady. So far so good. I also monitor potassium and phosphate occasionally. I see since quitting zeo I have a small patch of green hair algae forming that the fish are ignoring. Guess I should test my PO4 levels. The two tunze 6060s are cleaned every two months. Actually, the one on the top grows this fuzzy red algae in between the intake slats, its a pain in the arse to clean out and it gets done every 4-6 weeks or so. The one on the bottom manages to stay clean longer, less light I guess. The wavebox gets cleaned every 4-6 months or whenever I have spare time or remember to do it. Its amazing what grows in there, lots of little fanworms and various bubble algaes and such. The 6045 is buried back there and its staying there until I have to take the tank down to move, I can just barely see it and it seems to be doing its job without too much crap in the intake. Reflectors and bulbs are usually cleaned every couple of months. As I was taking photos for this I noticed that they're LONG overdue. Damned fish!
Soo, the tank consists of various species of acropora, seriatopora, pocillopora, porites, stylophora, pavona, montipora, turbinaria, cyphastrea, blastomussa, favia, acanthastrea and a few zoanthids. The only SPS I really know names for are the ones I've gotten from CoralMaster, WickedFrags and a few fellow reefers. For the most part I really did try to remember the names but its gotten rather out of control lately (I swear, they just follow me home!!). For the most part I'm nuts about SPS because of their colors and growth patterns: thin branched, thick branched, really large polyps, not many polyps. I love to take macro shots of them and see what's going on up close. Sometimes the things you find can surprise you.
As you can see this coral was infested with Tegastes acroporanus AKA red bugs However, I'm not just all about the SPS (although I mostly am) I've added a few LPS into the mix as well as I've been able to find neat brightly colored specimens. I've always been interested in acans, blastos and ricordeas. I suck at growing acans but seem to be passable with blastos and ricordeas. These aren't all of my corals but I think they make up a "representative sample".
Looking Ahead Future plans include winning the lottery, getting a bigger house and a bigger tank. However, those that will actually happen only include the bigger house and bigger tank. (and isn't that like winning the lottery anyway?). I have already purchased a 180 gallon tank (yeah road trip to Red Deer!) and have been diligently amassing all of the equipment I'll need. Now I only have to wait for the bigger house which is coming in June. I'm hoping to have water in the new tank by mid-July, which I'm thinking might be a lofty goal.
Thanks to my fellow Canreef mods, Wendell and Janet at OceanAquatics, Scott at Island Pet Zone, the staff at J&L, Chris and Robyn at AofA, and all the many Canreefers I've met through the years both online and in person. Your help has been invaluable. Thanks for reading!!
All photos shot with Canon Rebel XT or Nikon Coolpix 880
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