My Custom 2.7 feet closed system

[iantoh]

hi there everyone!

this is my tank: (all photos are thumbnails to full sized pictures. pls click to view)

to start off, just some background information about my tank, and me- how and why i came to design it the way it is. my name is ian, and i just graduated from NUS about a month ago. i began reefing about four years back, and have always been attracted to gonioporas. the thing is, gonioporas have had such terrible long tern survival rates that i was wary of keeping more of them. with time however, lots of reading and research, and with my second goniopora having survived to almost a year and a half in my care now, i decided to go ahead and upgrade my old two feet tank to my present roughly 2.7 feet custom made tank.

i'm sure some of you must be asking what happened to my first goniopora, and well, sadly, i must say, it died after only a few months in my hands some three years back when the lfs i used to go to advised me that actinic moon lights and no feedings would be sufficient to keep them going. well that certainly wasnt enough to keep them going. talk about a bad experience with lfs advice. ah well.

back to my tank: i had it custom made at a tank maker at hougang ave 1, near heartland mall, and it has a built in side refugium to the left side of the tank, where i initially planned to house my live mysids and grow macroalgaes, but have since decided to redo, and have a tumbling chaeto growing area with ecosystems miracle mud instead.

here are some more photos before i ramble on somemore.

[Gouldian]

Swee! Have always wanted to see your tank!

Hougang Ave 1? That's where my in-laws stays, I go there quite often but didn't know there is a tank maker there.

More..... please......

[iantoh]

hi there gouldian! thanks for viewing my tank thread. trying to figure out how to use a video editor now so i can remove the sounds and upload some videos. hahah. stay tuned for more!

cheers,

ian

[loster]

hahaha ian, finally got to see your tank pix

keep it going

[iantoh]

heres my fromia monilis starfish. the first pic is with flash, the second without.

sorry if i keep editing the posts ya guys. still new to posting up photos and it turned out way too big so all are going to be thumbnails now. by the way, anyone know how to upload videos?

[iantoh]

sigh... ive been trying to edit some videos now to reduce their size to upload as attachments, but its not working. for those who might like to check out videos of my mysid shrimps in my side refugium, or of my xenias pusling motion, pls do go to <http://briefcase.yahoo.com> log in as "ianmajeur", with the password being "password". pls do give me feedback about whether youre able to view the videos from there ya. cant figure out any other way to do that right now.

[iantoh]

back to photos then. heres a pic of my Goniopora pandoraensis colony. i think its correctly identified buti'm not entirely sure. if anyone has better clues, pls do tell me ya. i really love the shape that this branching goniopora gives to my tank, and its discernably growing back over areas where there was tissue recession previously, so yay! hahah

pls click to view

[iantoh]

i'm sure most of you might recognize that my avatar's a pic of a black cap gramma. sad to say though, i havent bought one yet. i set up this tank with the plan of keeping one gramma melacara, but i didnt have enough money to buy one when lck110 brought them in during the aquarama period, and they havent brought any in since. if any one spots a black cap, pls do pm me about it ya! many thanks in advance for that.

presently, my tank has only one juvenile sailfin tang (veliferum), and one scooter blenny (ocellate dragonet). the sailfin has only been with me about a month, being a new addition to this tank, but the scooter has been with me close to two and a half years now,a nd hes my favourtie fish as hes got quite a personality. i feed my fishes and carnivorous corals with a syringe and hard tubing, and my scooter pecks at the tubing even before i have a chance to squirt the food out. her colouration (i think its a she) has also changed alot in the course of my care, going from a molted brownish and faded camo colour to the rather distinct whitish and black stiped areas of the present.

pls click to view ya

in my previous tank, i had a mated pair of clowns along with a baby blue tang, but i decided to sell them off during the interim between my old tank's decommissioning and my new tank's set up as i tore down my old tank too early. i wanted to keep the clown pair as they were spawning, but let them go at an offer of $25. hahhaha. very good price right?? think i tan dio with that sale. as for my old tank's corals, i housed most of them, including my one year plus goniopora stokesi (bottom left gonio in my full tank shot) in my quarantine tank, but that wasnt such a good move for my sps as most of them experienced some RTN in that period, so i had to sell them off or give them to friends before they got any worse.

[diabolus]

bro,

i think LCK110 have blackcaps now.

you might wanna go and check it out.

[iantoh]

oh thanks diabolus! i shall try to check them out this wkend or give steven there a call. thanks again.

[damien]

U can zip the videos and upload here, of course try to keep the video size small.

[djviper]

beautiful... plain and simple...wish i have this type of lifestyle

[iantoh]

thanks bro gouldian, djviper, loster, damien, and diabolus for your lovely comments ya! stay tuned for more. shall post up more soon, and hopefully the videos

[iantoh]

heres a pic of one of my ###### shrimps. i have three in my tank, but my friend who came by to help me take these photos on his really good cam only took this one shot. thanks to my friend chris for all his help though.

i'm going to try to upload some videos now as .zip. pls do tell me if they work ya as i tried installing some free video editing software earlier to remove the audio track to make the files smaller and its screwed up my windows media player and i cant even view the vids myself now.

mysids_refugium.zip

[iantoh]

above is a video of some live mysid shrimps in my side refugium, and heres a video of my pulsing xenias:

pulsing_xenias.zip

[iantoh]

and heres a video of my sailfin swimming around my tank. i really hope the videos are viewable.

sailfin_tang_swimming.zip

[iantoh]

some specs regarding my tank.

tank:

its about 2.7 feet by 1 feet by 1 feet, with a built in side refugium to the left of the tank (see whole tank pic and mysids vid).

lights:

2x 24w HO T5 aqualight 10000k tubes with ten blue LED bulbs built into the casing between the two tubes, and one 11w extra daylight pl light. i intend to add two more 11w actinics but am waiting on that till i have more disposable cash.

powerheads/flow:

flow within the tank is generated by one overhang filter with attached skimmer (980L per hr), and 2x 60L per hr powerheads (one to return water from the refugium area to the main tank and another hidden under rocks. my system is really low flow compared to many others, but this is not due to a lack of wavemakers or powerheads. its just that wishing to keep primarily gonioporas, ive found that they do best, and extend their tentacles furthest in low flow, and i have thus shaped my tank to have that. ive tried placing powerheads at varying locations in my tank but it usually just impedes their polyp extension, especially of the stokesi.

to counteract the low flow issues such as nutrient buildup, detritus collection, etc, ive scaped my tank so as to allow a gradual water flow through the various coral heads. the branching gonio is actually placed slightly forward from the back glass side, and i have planted some macroalgaes there to help with nutrient export. also, i dont have as much live rock as people usually do.

skimmer:

my skimmer is the simple venturi kind that is attached to my overhang filter. it skims out a dark yellowish pee-like liquid with lot of bubbles and powdery stuff. nothing like the skimmate of a beckett obviously, but it suits my needs sufficiently without taking up lots of space. i considered getting more skimming power, but ive tried out several air stone driven skimmers and my friend's red sea prizm on my tank, and they didnt skim out significantly more effectively than my present skimmer.

sandbed: my substrate is comprised of 2.5 inches of powder fine oolithic sand, and i'm going to add a fighting conch soon to help with sand bed maintenance. does ay one have experience with them? can tell me if theyre useful at foraging for diatoms on the sandbed?

i hope to add a sump soon to my tank, to put the miracle mud that i planned to place in but have no area to at the moment, and to create a larger chaeto refugium and increase water volume, but its put on hold for now due to cost.

lastly, chilling:

chilling is provided by my six-fan set placed behind the lights (see whole tank pic). ive changed the adaptor that powered the fans at 12volts to one that runs at 7volts so as to reduce the blowing power. ideally i would like an adaptor that runs at 8 or 9volts to reduce the temp down to 26deg, but my present 26.5-27 is fine i guess, and i can save money by not buying another adaptor. thing is, i does kalk and reefbuilder daily, so the evaporation of about 0.8 to 1L per day allows me to dose the additives with distilled water for make up. if i can afford a good calcium reactor though, i think id prefer then to use a chiller to minimize evaporation.

[iantoh]

some very modest growth photos. i got this monti capri frag from bro joe_p a month back and i kind of chipped off a bit of it trying to superglue it down, but its grown slightly now. not great growth for a month i guess, but in time, maybe i will have a nice scroll shaped monti cap!

first pic taken july 2nd.

pls click on thumbnail to view ya!

second pic taken july 28 (yesterday)

hmm... the colour of my monti cap surely has changed huh? perhaps its my inferior lighting. well...

[iantoh]

another video!

heres one of my starfish righting itself after it has fallen upside down. it was climbing onto my branching gonio and suddenly fell off, and it was timely too, as my friend who came around to help me take the pics was on hand, and we took a video of it.

fromia_turning_.zip

[iantoh]

some more pics.

of my sailfin:

[iantoh]

close ups of xenia polyps; for pulsing motion and whole colony view pls do check out the videos on page one as i only have the pics my friend took for me to post, and he didnt take any shots of the full colony.

...also, i think the videos really nice, so must encourage everyone to check it out!

and my pink dendronepthya colony:

[iantoh]

and heres my balanophyllia coral! it looks like a super sun i think, but its occurs solitarily, unlike super suns that are colonial. i first knew of them through books on coral reefs, and was super excited when i found one in a small lfs in the live rock section. and i bought the piece of rock for only $3! good deal! ive seen one or two polyps at coral farm on their live rocks too but i didnt manage to buy those then. i'll definitely go scouring round the lfs live rock sections more though, once i can put aside more money for corals.

[iantoh]

my overflow box. i diy-ed this using acrylic bought from art friend that i then cut into pieces to fit, and siliconed it to the glass sides.

youll notice that i have a small sort of in-tank "betta box" thing to the left of the overflow box that spans the whole back wall area of my tank.

that was one serious design flaw to the tank i think. i was thinking that if i built in a smaller area at the top back of my tank, i could have a large permanent betta box to house the harlequin shrimps that ive always wanted to, but the idea wasnt so good in reality. sigh.. i wanted harlequin, but after much thought, i think the harlequins are better left to other reefers who can provide them more space and all, plus there's the problem of constantly buying starfishes to feed them. grr... to think i spent an extra $30 to build that area when its now compromising my overflow box. \

[iantoh]

a pic of my drip containers. i diy-ed them using the hospital drip apparatus that you can get at pharmacies for two dollars and melted a hole in the tupperware with a soldering iron, then slotted and superglued the tubing connecting to the drip. one is for dosing kalk, and the other for alk.

[iantoh]

hi everyone! thanks for checking out my tank thread. im really having fun putting all these photos and all now. ive been meaning to do so for so long, but didnt have a digi cam. pls do feel free to give suggestions or comments ya.

heres a photo of my gonio stokesi after one of the flow trials when i tried placing more powerheads to create more flow in my tank. my gf says it looks disgusting.

and this is what it looks like fully extended: