madmac's Reef

[madmac]

Hello fellow reefers. I'm staring this thread to document my progress... journey in the world of reef-keeping.

Objective : to attain a beautiful looking reef as possible without too much loss in livestock, and time & money.

Tank specs : 36"x18"*18" glass tank

Volume : 45G or 170l

Lighting :Weipro (lookalike) - 2 x 36W blue + 1 150W ushio 20kk MH; supplemented by another dymax 10kk 150W clip-on

Filtration : 2 canister filters, one teed to the chiller while the other a FR (200g of rowa)

Chiller : 1/4 HP CL-650 "Avers Aquatic"

Skimmer : Weipro 2011 - 1000 l/h external pump

Wavemaker : 1* eden 228, rotating powerhead

In tank: 3" of beach sand and No.3 sand mixed together and 30-40kg of LRs

4 Fish : 1 maroon clown; 1 Purple Tank, Potteri and Golden dwarf angels

Corals : SPSes, 1 dying green brain coral, 1 green cup coral, 1 leather mushroom (toadstool?)

Water Specs: pH : 8 to 8.4

Salinity : 1.025

Temp : 26ºC to 28ºC

Ca : 360 to 420 (Tropic Marin)

dHK : 7-9

NO2 : 0.02 (Tropic Marin)

NO3 : 5 (Tropic Marin)

PO4 : untested

Mg : untested

Future Plans : if this little experiment works well, I hope to have a chance to upgrade my lighting and maybe even acquire a CLabs' CR.

Thanks. Comments are most welcome. Full tank pic incl.

[madmac]

Full tank pic... taken w/o flash, blue lights over-exposed.

[madmac]

qt movie of pics... hope it works. thks.

Reef.mov

[penyu]

Nice set up. I really like bend tanks like yours..

[penyu]

Oh, there's a video...Nice video pics!

[madmac]

Pic of cabinet stuff, nothing exciting, there's a partition in the middle, very difficult to install a sump with a setup like this.

Penyu: Thanks. Just that sometimes there a lot of reflection and it hinders your view... also certain portions look a bit magnified.

[madmac]

Wow, this has become a semi-annual update now:

The major events:

Mid october 2004, I got myself a Red Sea Regal Angel, it was pretty fish, sickly though, I thought I could nurse it back to health, the price was also too good to pass off, so in the bag it went after some demo that the fish could eat. I did some initial research on as well beforehand... the short story was it proved too difficult. The fish was too shy in its new environment and remained in the back so often. During feeding time, I had to overfeed to get her to take food, and I also tried different types of fish feed. I didn't QT the fish as I read that for this particular fish, many lost their fish during QT.

The result was an overfed tank that led to all kinds of parameter spikes, the fish wasn't getting any food as the other fishes were even faster, even the C. Shrimp wasn't doing its job... The Regal suffered from what i believe is Lymposytis on its skin and tail, kinda of like a white cotton, fluffy stuff. It had a hole in the left cheek and more smaller hole in middle of its body, tails were fraying. After 3 weeks, the poor fish starved to death. This made her the 2nd fish lost under from starvation in my care, the first being a Copper-band Butterfly.

Hair algae grew where it once was gone... I didn't realized how much i missed them until they appeared and the trouble I went to rid them, 7 months or so. That became my next objective, jus to keep an eye on w. parameters again.

[madmac]

In December '04, I finally had the parameters and the hair algae back to levels I like, so its time to look for that elusive fish again... the chance came again in Jan '05, another batch of RS Regals came in. When the time came to go down, only one piece was left. This had lesser injuries than the first, spots on the tail and 1 worm-like wound at the 6 o'clock of the left gill. She could eat as well. A discount from the LFS was all it took to get her in the fish bag.

The Pygo did well after I removed the last original fish tt came with buying the tank, a maroon clown, who was too possessive and territorial, she attacked the Regal as she started to 'warm' around the tank after 3 days or so. Now she's a good citizen of the tank, a very graceful fish. That makes the total no of fish to still 6, with the MClown in a QT tank now.

I hv the following : two pygmies, (1 potteri, 1 golden), 2 Pajamas Cardinals, 1 Purple Tang and the Regal Angel in the 3 ft tank.

[acidjazz]

bro, i tried your set up 4 years ago with caninster filter and all. Conclusion: tank crashed. so here i am again. . having a second go at marine but learnt from my expensive mistake. .

[madmac]

I'm keeping a tank that primarily SPS as I personally find them easier too keep than LPS. If anything goes to show, my record at keeping LPS alive is quite poor. I'm appalled that such beautiful animals just cannot survived long in captive, at least under my husbandry... those that I have tried and have passed away are 1 plate coral (green wif pink tips), 1 elegance, 1 green brain, 1 orange sun coral and 1 black sun coral... I still have one red blasto, originally with 7 heads, now left only 4. Their skeletons are kept as reminder of how delicate the creatures are.

To me, they probably can be kept, it is just that you need excellent husbandry skills, and a great deal of dedication. Besides keeping water parameters in good condition, they also need to be hand-fed and thats why I think good LPS keepers are truly advance reefers in this hobby. You are akin to a zoo-keeper, to those out there, my sincere salutations.

So its just sps for me, in my 3 feet. I watch with joy and sadness when these corals grow and colour and not grow and brown out, R/STN. But somehow the loss doesn't seem so painful... it questions me and allows me to re-act to the situation. Sometimes its still not too late. I don't dose amino acids or use the 'Z-stuff'... my lights are 2 150W MH... so this is a general pic what I get...

[madmac]

I think my hair algae in under control, but whats telling these days are the cyano, a red-brownish patch of slime thats coming out everywhere... I'm not sure how it got here but one of the contributing factors is my tap-water topup.

They are pretty difficult to get rid off. Here's another pic to show you what I mean.

[madmac]

So during my weekly maintenance of 25l water changes, (I buy NSW), I siphoned out the old-water first, with some of the top sand, there was this particular patch of jus black sand directly under the top layer, near the rocks, the blackness was not jus under the surface, but the deeper I push the tubing, black sand still continued to be sucked out. I think its some kind of sulphur... whatever it was its no good, not everywhre had it, it was spotty... I think this is due to poor flow areas. My sand bed was 3-4 inches deepest, at other points, they're bare, due to two pistol shrimps.

I've been reading in RC about bare bottoms or is it bare-bottom... anyway, BB seem to be the way to go. So guess what I did over the weekend? This pic below show the start...

bro, i tried your set up 4 years ago with caninster filter and all. Conclusion: tank crashed.  so here i am again. . having a second go at marine but learnt from my expensive mistake.

acidjazz: Thx for the warning ... I've have them 18 months running and so far so good... i dont think the dreaded tank crashes are more due to canister filters than and other filters/equipment/sump or even DSBs... what do you use now? I'll still be using them.

[madmac]

The conversion started at noon Saturday, the short idea was to remove the corals, the fish, the rocks, sand and water, then in reverse order on putting back, minus the sand. I had to replace quite a bit of water, in actual 6/7 of the tank water was changed using NSW. The next pic show the middle rocks, not he base corals, I had to chisel away some of the encrusting ones to separate them.

[madmac]

The base-rocks were last before the fish and shrimps go. Some of the waters were removed before to ease the catch.

[madmac]

The nxt pic shows top view of the QT, with the maroon Clown in side, I've test this as a BB concept for one month and I quite please with... waters extremely clean/clear. If you see theres no equipment except an eden rotating PH connected to a surface skimmer. I had to use it to temp house some of the corals during the change.

[madmac]

I underestimated on the time required as the tank walls were extremely dirty... it took quite a bit of scrubbing to get them out, took out the skimmer also, but left the canisters as I was afraid that I may lose quite a bit of nitrifying bacteria with the sudden loss of the sand. The hardest fish to cathc was the potteri, so i left it there until the water was 2 inches left. Its a very hardy fish, and also my net size is less than 3 inches.

this pic shows 4.30 pm

[madmac]

I had to clean the base rocks and using a PH, I 'shish and swash' it around, several times for each rock. This is the same container as the earlier pic... I don't know which is cleaner, the rocks or the sand.

[madmac]

Finally the base rocks could be placed back... I wnted the arrangement to allow maximum flow towards the bottom of the rocks so the rocks were arrange top heavy. I replaced the rocks with water along side... waited for 1 hour, and strengthen with a dose of kalk, dinner, and went out to buy more water, underestimated on the water part too.

[madmac]

top view arrangement at middle segment.

[madmac]

I started releasing the pistol shrimps first, they seemed confused,... "hey where did our playgound go?". This pic shows a mated pair... the female is carrying eggs and is at the bottom of pic, their pair of claws is opposite of each other. Everytime release the pistolets, there will be a spike in as my fishes don't eat at nite. I found them at Changi beach.

[madmac]

I know I lost quite a bit of sand, but oddly, I didn't find I needed the middle rocks and so had about 1 layer of it as spare... I'll be 'rock cooking' them. I'll post the progress along this thread. Tis pic shows the initial preparation. I'll need about two months to complete it.

[madmac]

the last pic show the initial completion, with some corals still displaced. I didn't use a starboard as what most reefers in the US used. I dn't knw whr to order one, besides, this was a quick decision to cnvert.

The plan:

the streams are alternating and ar meant to direct such that any detritus will be front-cntr of tank... this will facilitate for easy siphoning out. The weipro 2011 is tuned to wet, (like real, huh) The photo period will be cut to 4 hr/day for the current 7. Topups as usual, baking soda, and Ca Adv. weekly water changes as usual.

The canisters will still be operational, for another week or so... I feel quite ok turning them off and just relying on the rocks and the skimmer....in this case I'll in-line the chiller output to the input of the skimmer OR I may still keep the canisters running, dont' know...they have serve me so well, in the absence of a sump.

Any thots or views or further warnings, is and will be sincerely appreciated.

thx to all.

ps : pic taken without flash, jus the 150 20kk ushio and two blue ligths

[madmac]

This last pic, taken with flash, jus a different angle. Don't know, it looks lonely....? Anyway its finally bed-time now.

[LaW]

keeping SPS with canister and weipro SA2011 only.

salute u mate.

[weishun]

Very nice tank bro. Love your sps man.