New 110 Gallon Reef
 

110 Gallon Reef setup day 1:

https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/vn...g=w876-h657-no

Got a used tank off Kijiji and resealed it. Size is 48W, 18D, 30T. Built a 2x4 and plywood stand and bedded the tank on 1" white foam. The tank came with a Fluval FX5, so I'll give it a try. I grow macro inside the display, so the dark sealed FX5 won't hamper me unless it comes time to use a skimmer. Rocks are ClearDeep, chose them because I like the shapes available. I set this tank up because I was moving to a new house and I wanted to have a stable tank already running before I moved the life.

looks good man I like. The rock structures look like the apes from jungle book hahahaha

Lol! I was thinking garden gnomes.:mrgreen:

I came home from a 6 week absence to find the new rock covered in hair algae and cyanobacteria. The old live rock I had transferred from my previous system was nearly clean. One of the little clown fish decided that the cyano was his host, and I find him in the same patch of the stuff all the time.

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Oh I hate that stuff. that almost sucked me into giving up i went through that stage for 9 months and bam it all went away

Sweet mountains! That's going to look great with a bunch of grown out colonies on it!

Thanks, I'm hoping so. It'll be a bit of a wait though, right now my only colour comes from my crop of slime.:confused:

I added 6 inches of cheap fine play sand to one of the ends of the tank for my melanurus wrasse to play in, and to add a bit of biofilter. The sand looked brown under sun light but is a pleasant lunar-surface grey under the reef lights. I didn't do 6 inches over the entire tank because I wanted to preserve the visual impact of the tall rock work, and I like the look of the sand slope on the one side.

SUNLIGHT

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REEF LIGHT

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I added 4x 6500K LED strip lights since I've read zooxanthellae respond well to that spectrum. The tank brightened up a lot and the algae in the tank really started bubbling. 6500K boosts the vibrancy of the green coloured stuff in the tank. Not everyone's cup of tea for viewing, but I only run the 6500K's during the day and the reef lights slowly fade to actinic during the course of the evening. I think the changing spectrum throughout the day is pretty cool and it highlights different things in the tank.

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cant see the lastest pics.

6500k will definitely brighten the tank. its considered a "daylight" spectrum.

but it is yellowish. 6500k was a staple baseline spectrum long time ago.

with supplemental lights, T5, LEDs... people tend to go higher like 10,000k for a more aesthetic light color.

Let's try this picture thing again.

https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/2B...Q=w811-h608-no

After reading up on all the benefits of deep sand beds, I went ahead and added one to the whole bottom. I've only had bare bottoms in the past, but I'm really liking how the tank looks now. I had to move the tank to make way for some renos, so I figured the imposed low tide was an opportune time to make the change. I got a few bags of the old fine grain silica play sand and went to town. I've heard people saying how silica sand or rocks in the tank will lead to diatom and dinoflagellate explosions, but the test patch I put in a couple weeks ago didn't produce anything. The bed depth is between 4 to 8 inches. It definitely makes it easier to reach the bottom of the 30 inch tall tank.

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Here is a shot of the tank with all of the lights turned on now that the 6500k's are wired in. This is the daytime colour, in the evening only the 18,000K and actinics are on.

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nice!
miss a good old DSB, it'll be teeming with life in no time!

Ever run into trouble with your's? Got any tips for the long term?

I picked up some new inhabitants the other day. They are currently sitting in my high tech quarantine system for observation. Yellow tang, Clownfish, Bicolor Blenny, Anthias, green and orange bubble tip anemone (green not visible in this light), live rock with a feather duster colony and some sponges. I highly recommend buying the rock your anemone is sitting on at the store, as it makes the transition much safer and stress free.

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Yeah but look at the algae on that rock... yikes! I'd physically remove as much as possible by hand before introducing to your tank.

Yeah i would keep an eye on those cups for a while. You never know what been in it.

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I'm with Waren. I would not put rocks with algae in my tank. The same practice I do on adding new frags esp acroporas in my tank. I cut them off and ditch the frag plugs. It's too much of a risk.

Not to worry, they've only been used for carbon dosing.

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Cute little wormies

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You sure those are "wormies"? I hope I am wrong, but it looks like that could be aiptasia to my very uneducated eye.

Impossible to see in the low grade picture, but these little worms live in tubes and are much smaller than an adult aiptasia.

Lol, hopefully he helps.

very nicehttps://babang.xyz/assets/11/o.png

Those are hydroids and there are bad. If they spread and cover all your rock it will be impossible to get rid of them. I had the "pleasure" of dealing with them in the past.

Hydroids and algae... well I guess the anemone doesn't get to keep its rock. One for the boiling pot. Thanks for the heads up folks.

absolutely do not boil live rock

Are the hydroids only on one rock?

yes, a new rock currently in qt

I have boiled the rock before with hydroids and the hydroids came back. I strongly suggest just to get rid of the rock all together. Get another one without the pest.

Curious, why not?

Fumes that can get you sick, if there are any pallies on the rock and you literally cook them, they will release toxin that can kill you. Rocks can shatter and explode if boiled and so on.

Please never never never actually cook and boil rocks.

As mentioned dont literally cook/boil rock. To kill what is on there, do bleach or acid bath. Word of warning about acid. While it does work and work fast, it can be quite dangerous to work with. So unless you know what you are doing and have all the safety gear, do a bleach bath. Takes a bit longer, but it is much safer and you get same result.

It has been a week since I added the new livestock to the aquarium. The tang was hating quarantine, it wasn't swimming and wasn't eating but looked healthy otherwise so I took the chance and put it in the display tank a couple weeks early. After a few hours of settling in it started swimming around and pecking at the rock. Now it is fat and healthy and is always cruising around looking for a snack.

The bubble tip is starting to colour up nice in its new conditions and has not moved from where I placed it. However the clowns are not interested in it and still prefer a nice bed of algae and cyano. I'm thinking they look for a specific texture for a home, and the slime on the rock does the job.

The blenny found about six different holes that it calls home, and it darts from one to the next throughout the day.

Overall everything is fat and happy.