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Old 01-02-2015, 08:31 PM
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Default Jmike's 120g Mixed Reef

Hi All,

The tank has been up and running for 10 months now and I thought I would start a thread.

A little background. I've had fish tanks my whole life. All fresh water; from predator only tanks (pacu/gars) to African cichlids and community planted iwagumi & dutch. Never made the jump to a saltwater setup until a great deal came my way from a friend reducing the number of tanks he had.

I picked up his 120g with a 45g sump and the basic equipment (400w heater, bubble magus curve 7 skimmer, return pump, Vortex MP40 and I added another one, filter socks etc). The tank was previously a FOWLR but had 120lbs of premium fiji rock included and 3" of black Hawaiian sand (which while nice I wanted the classic white reef look, so I bought new arogonite caribsea).

I purchased a 7 stage RO/DI unit from aquasafe canada for the water supply and two TLF 550 reactors to house the GFO and GAC.

I had a Tek light 8 bulb T5 fixture from by fresh water planted setup which I'm currently using. Bulbs go from back to from BP, BP, ABS, CP, BP, PP, ABS, BP. Lights outer 4 on for 8hrs and inner 4 for 6 hours. An LED strip from home depot does the moon light and is on 24/7.

I setup the LR in a brute container and re-cycled the rock for 2 months to ward off any die off as the rock was dry for a few hours and I was going to be taking my time setting up the tank anyways.

I cycled the tank for another month or so with only the rock and sand and kept an eye on the NH3, NO3 and PO4 numbers. A little Bryopsis outbreak occurred but some dosing of Kent Tech-M and water changes along with manual removal slowly got that under control.

Addition of the CUC (turbo snails and other snails, hermits and a lawn mower blenny) took care of the rest and soon the tank was back to normal.

Soon after I began to add a few corals and my other first fish. I added a pair of ocellaris clownfish, yellow tang, 7 BG chromis. I lost two chromis along the way (never did see the bodies) but everyone else was doing fine. I've also tried adding a scopas tang who was larger than the yellow I have but eventually got pestered to the point where it got stuck to the MP40 and didn't make it (looked as if they had sorted it out but I guess not).

Slowly I've been adding more frags and colonies as I progress. I've also included a Vertex duo calcium reactor w/ pH controller and a GHL profilux 3.1nx and doser to control everything. I added an 800w Ti heater controlled by the profilux as well.

The bubble magus curve 7 quit on me so I picked up a new Vertex omega 180i skimmer. I've continued to run BRS Rox 0.8 GAC and HC GFO as specified on their calculator. I'm currently dosing NOPOX, KZ meerwasser, Pohl Xtra Special and Aqauvitro 8.4 as my pH tends to sit on the low side at 7.9-8.0. I've also been experimenting with KZ b-balance, coral snow, AA complex and the macro elements which are hand dosed at a fraction of the recommended amounts.

The lawn mower blenny has pulled a disappearing act and is presumed dead. I've also added a few more fish recently, six line wrasse, purple stripe dottyback, chalk bass, watchman goby, and sadly a flame angel who didn't make it through quarantine (bit of an oops on my part with an NH3 spike in the tank which also nuked a 120$ acro colony and partially nuked another).

Well that pretty much takes me up until this point. I do 40g weekly-ish water changes and keep the QT tank in full operation now and am QT all new additions, coral and fish. My typical water parameters are as follows:

NH3 - 0 salifert
NO3 - 0 salifert
PO4 - 0.00 salifert and hanna
CA- 480 salifert
Alk - 8.4-8.6 salifert and hanna
Mg - 1500 salifert (i have some Mg in the CaRx which im assuming is keeping the mg high)
pH 7.9-8.0 salifert and profilux probe
Temp- 78F
Sal 1.025

Pics! Not exactly in order and with some different camera equipment but a reasonable approximation of the tanks timeline.











































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Old 01-02-2015, 08:32 PM
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Old 01-02-2015, 08:33 PM
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Old 01-02-2015, 08:48 PM
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Well, looks like you are well on your way. Tank and pics look great. Thanks for sharing. And best of luck.
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Old 01-02-2015, 09:13 PM
Coral Hoarder Coral Hoarder is offline
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Looks great love the watchman Gobi
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