*February Tank of the Month*

This months TOTM goes to E30Adam - Well done on a stunning system.... over to you.

Well, what can I say? I couldn’t believe it when I opened a PM which offered me the opportunity to have my tank featured as February’s TOTM. I was even more surprised as I’ve only been a member on The Salty Box for a few months and have only made a few posts in this time.

I started keeping marines 2 1/2 years ago on an absolute whim. I have a lot of hobbies and interests and many turn out to be “5 minute wonders” as many who know me will tell you. I like to try my hand at anything and upon passing a local aquatics centre, I stopped and had a look inside. The salesman told me how far technology had come and how easy marines were to keep these days. I went away and couldn’t stop thinking about that perfect way to fill the gap in the lounge. The gap turned out to be about 5 feet long by 2 feet wide if I moved the sofa up a bit, so out I went in search of a tank.

That very weekend I found a nice 5x2x2 Betta Lifespace tank, stand and sump. I spoke to another sales guy who sold me “everything I’ll need”. I travelled back home with my lovely new tank, cabinet and a bunch of horrible cheap equipment.







I set everything up and filled the tank with RO, salted and heated it and added my sand and ocean rock. I then ordered 2 boxes of uncured live rock and cured it myself in the tank.







My enthusiasm for this was huge and still is to this day. The more I started reading, in books and online, the more I realised how useless most of my equipment was. It was only 2 weeks until I changed my skimmer for a Deltec APF600 and within a day, I was getting decent skimmate. Shortly afterwards, I upgraded most of my other equipment as well. If I could give one piece of advice to anyone starting up marines, it would be to buy decent equipment from the start. I’ve now replaced pretty much everything except for the tank itself for top-end equipment and it’s made the running of the tank easier and more reliable. When keeping a system heavily stocked with SPS, automation is the key. Talking of reliability, I’d also recommend anyone buying a Betta tank to take out the existing plumbing, throw it in the bin and replace it with some decent stuff.

I started out stocking my tank with a few cleanup crew, fish and inverts. I also started keeping a few soft corals and all went well. I then managed to pick up a brand new Aqua One MG1500 3 x 150W halide light unit for a good price because everyone tells you how halides are the lights to have right!?!?! Little did I realise, the power compacts were rubbish and the 150’s weren’t really powerful enough for SPS. It took a while for the SPS bug to bite me. When I initially started out, I couldn’t see the fascination for these sticks. I was more interested in the LPS due to fluorescence and movement of this type of coral.





I tried a few SPS frags but none really survived. Every so often I would buy another test frag to see if I could keep them and they never lasted much longer than a few weeks, always gradually withering away to a bare skeleton.

I’ve had the usual troubles associated with keeping marines from bryopsis, diatoms, cyano, hair algae to pests such as eunice worms and flatworms. I still see the occasional flatworm but my system seems to be problem free at the moment and lets hope it stays that way.




I decided to start the zeo system to try and reduce my nitrates and phosphates. They weren’t insanely high but were by no means ideal. I ran the zeo system for about a year with constant updates from the guys on the zeo forums. I read so much about the system and I wasn’t doing anything different from others yet it just wasn’t working for me. Despite the setbacks, I persisted at keeping the zeo running. I lost count of the number of times I nearly stopped using it but was always persuaded to carry on. I continued buying the odd SPS frag here and there to see if the system would keep them and they continued to die. I lost a lot of interest in the tank, I had a 2 week holiday coming up a few months later and I just couldn’t be bothered with the tank. I didn’t bother changing the water, rowaphos or carbon and literally threw a bit of flake in for the fish once a day and topped up the RO reservoir. I didn’t even test the water any more!

When I returned from holiday, I saw something that I’d never seen before. One of my half dead SPS frags had gained a little colour. It was a pink pocillopora damicornis which had half stripped and gone brown. I wasn’t sure if it was my eyes but I was sure it looked a little more pink. Sure enough, as the days went by, it got better and better. I tested the water and was astounded to see my nitrate had plummeted from 25 to 2. Superb!!!

This gave me that little bit of motivation that I needed, a glimmer of hope, a light at the end of the tunnel. It was time to get my act together, research some more and spend lots of money. I went out and bought some new salt (KZ Reefers Best), a second skimmer (KZ revolution S), a new zeo maglift reactor, a GHL dosing computer and balling salts and finally a light unit that was up to the job. I found an ATI Power Module for an excellent price second hand, it was barely used!!

I’m now absolutely meticulous with everything to do with the tank, all media is changed at correct intervals, water changes are done weekly without fail. RO is never allowed to creep above 000 TDS and my balling dosing and parameters are watched with a very close eye. I don’t like to see much fluctuation in my tank parameters and I have certain things in place to prevent this. I have a Tunze Auto Top-Up, a TC-10 temperature controller and my GHL computer for the balling mixes. These 3 pieces of equipment ensure that my tank never sees any drastic swings in parameters.

Once I’d changed over to my all singing, all dancing new equipment, I bought another tester frag and... boom... it exploded into more colour within a week and started putting on growth. The pocci had also started growing again and was a dusty pink colour. From that point onwards, I gradually started filling the tank with small frags. Then the SPS bug really bit and wouldn’t let go! I “get it” now, it all started falling into place. Being a diver, I loved the more natural reef look with the branching, tabling and plating growth formations, I loved the massive variety of colours that you just don’t get with LPS which mostly seemed green or red. Here are a few pictures of the tank as it stands now.















I started buying more and more corals and now I’m running out of space, I’m well and truly addicted. I’m going to start moving on some duplicates that I’ve got in the tank to make way for some ever more colourful corals. I’m now concentrating on colouration in my corals and am experimenting with dosing various trace elements and supplements to try to enhance certain colours. I’m also constantly on the hunt for specific types of coral with 2 vivid colours... a bright body colour with a different bright coloured polyp.

Enough of my rambling now, here’s some photo’s of my corals and fish and then some information on my system.




































































The Aquarium
Betta Lifespace 1500
60x24x24 display
41x15x15 sump
12x14x7 RO reservoir

RO Man 150GPD 3 stage RO unit with triple DI chamber and dual TDS meter.


Water Chemistry
Salinity - 35ppt (1.026) using refractometer
Temperature - 25.5 - 26.5 degrees C
Nitrate (NO3) - 0 Salifert
Phosphate (PO4) - 0.03 Hanna Checker & D&D
Calcium - 420ppm Salifert
Magnesium - 1350ppm Salifert
Alkalinity - 7.5dKH Fauna Marin

I don’t test for Ammonia, Nitrite or pH and all tests are calibrated to a reference solution.


Husbandry and Maintainance
50 litre water change every week without fail - KZ Reefers Best Salt
Clean glass every other day
Change filter sock daily
Top up RO reservoir every few days (reservoir is far too small)
Scrape back glass every couple of months
Descale power heads is vinegar every month
Clean light glass every month (more important than you might think)
Change Rowaphos monthly (200ml)
Change carbon monthly (250ml)
Change ZEOlites every 6 weeks (1 litre - retaining 0.2 litre old stones)
Empty skimmer cups once a week during water change time
Top up balling containers as required
Full isolation and cleaning of entire sump and all pumps every 6 months
Replacement of T5’s every 6 months - 2 at a time in weekly intervals


Filtration
60kg’s of live rock, 40kg was uncured and the other 20kg I gradually added cured
KZ Maglift Reactor with 1.2 litres of ZEOlites
Deltec APF600 skimming wet
KZ revolution S skimming dry
Phosban 150 Fluidised Reactor - Rowaphos
Kent Marine Fluidised Reactor - KZ Carbon


Lighting
ATI Power Module 10x80W T5 pendant
5 x ATI Aquablue Special
3 x ATI Blue Plus
2 x KZ Superblue Actinics
60 x Blue LED Moonlights

Photoperiod: Moonlights - Permanent, Actinics - 10am - 10pm, Main lights - 11am - 9pm


Circulation and Flow
2 x Vortech MP40 ES (Soon to add 2 more for functionality rather than extra flow)
Eheim Return Pump


System Regulation
TC-10 Temperature controller
3 x Quad Azoo Fans
2 x 300W Heaters
GHL Standalone dosing computer
Tunze Auto Topup

Dosing Schedule
Sodium Bicarbonate - 38.4g (384mls) per day
Calcium Chloride Dihydrate - 35.2g (88mls) per day
Magnesium Chloride Hexahydrate - 0g

Fauna Marin Trace B Elements are added to the Fauna Marin Balling Salts.

ZEObak - 8 drops, 3 times a week
ZEOstart2 - 0.4ml, twice daily
Coral Vitalizer - 5 drops daily
Sponge Power - 5 drops daily
Amino Acid Concentrate - 4 drops daily
Stylo Pocci Glow - 3 drops daily
Pohls Xtra - 3mls daily
Coral Snow - 5mls, twice a week
ZEOzyme - 1/2 tsp occasionally
Grotech Corall ABC - 30mls of each weekly split into 2 doses of 15ml

I’m also going to try dosing the following:

B-Balance
ZEOspur2
Iodine

I’m also looking at dosing Calcium Nitrate into the tank to raise my nitrate levels. If anyone’s heard of the Redfield ratio then they’ll know that in order for bacterial filtration to assimilate phosphate then nitrate must be present. As my system has zero nitrate then reduction of my remaining phosphate will not occur. Therefore, if I dose small quantities of nitrate into my system, this should allow the bacteria to reduce my phosphate to a near undetectable level.


Feeding
New Era Flake (Marine Flake, Aegis 1 and Aegis 2) - One pinch a day in the evenings
Coral Frenzy and Aqualabs SPS Polyp+ mixed together and fed 3x a week for SPS


Fish
1 x Yellow Tang
1 x Sailfin Tang
1 x Flame Angel
1 x Watanabei Angel
2 x Lyretail Anthias
2 x Percula Clownfish
8 x Threadfin Cardinals
1 x Sixline Wrasse
1 x Cleaner Wrasse
1 x Red Spotted Blenny
1 x Dwarf Fuzzy Lionfish
1 x Royal Gramma
1 x Psychedelic Mandarin

I may be removing the Sailfin Tang due to increasing aggressive behaviour and also the Flame Angel if it continues to nip my SPS. I would like to introduce a Two Barred Rabbitfish to eat some grape caulerpa that’s appeared and seems to be spreading faster than I’d like!


Inverts
Red Legged Hermits
Blue Knuckle Hermits
Halloween Hermits
Emerald Crabs
Boxer Crabs
Horseshoe Crab
Reef Lobster
Red Squat Lobster
Blood Shrimp
Target Pistol Shrimp
Banded Boxing Shrimp
Porcelain Crabs
Flaming Scallop
Tuxedo Urchins
True Mexican Turbo snails
Turbo snails
Nassarius snails
Cerith snails
Loads of stomatellas


Soft Corals
Various Zoanthids
Red Mushrooms
Green Mushrooms
Superman Mushrooms (Blue with red spots)
Ricordea Yumas
Ricordea Floridas
Clavularia


LPS Corals
Green Euphyllia divisa
Red and white Acanthastrea lordhowensis
Green Blastomussa Merletti
Heteropsammia cochlea


SPS Corals
Pink Seriatopora hystrix
Green Seriatopora hystrix
Green Seriatopora caliendrum
Green Seriatopora gutattus

Purple Stylophora
Green Stylophora
Pink Stylophora

Green Pocillopora
Pink Poccilopora

Red Montipora digitata
Red & green Montipora digitata
Blue Montipora digitata
Dark Green Montipora digitata
Light Green Montipora digitata
Pink Montipora digitata
Purple and chocolate Montipora digitata
Purple plating Montipora
Red plating Montipora
Green plating Montipora
Green & blue encrusting Montipora
Superman encrusting Montipora
Bright blue with white polyps encrusting Montipora
Montipora confusa
Montipora capitata

Yellow Porites cylindrica

Millepora dichotoma

Acropora abrotanoides
Acropora aculeus
Acropora desalwii
Acropora formosa
Acropora gomezi
Acropora grandis
Acropora granulosa
Acropora hoeksemai
Acropora humilia
Acropora millepora - Blue, Green, Red, Yellow, Green & Peach
Acropora nana
Acropora speciosa
Acropora tenius
Acropora validia
Acropora yongei

Plus lots more unidentified SPS.

Future Plans
As I get older, I want life to become easier and this includes the parts of keeping a marine tank that I don’t enjoy so much... water changes! Presently, they’re a massive chore but this doesn’t stop me from being regimented in doing them. I currently have the bottom half of a water butt constantly sat in my lounge, it’s unsightly and takes up a lot of space as do the many 25 litre containers that I fill with RO which all live in the kitchen under my breakfast bar.

To make my life easier I’ve decided to expand my system. The display tank sits in one corner of my lounge against the wall. On the other side of this wall is the aforementioned breakfast bar. I plan to build a stack of tanks under the breakfast bar and build cupboards around to hide them. I will have a larger RO top-up reservoir, a water change chamber, a mixing chamber and a cryptic zone. This will all be plumbed into the main system through the wall, I’ve just got to fathom out how to plumb it safely!!

The deeper I get into this hobby, the more fascinated I’m becoming with corals. In particular, SPS. I constantly want to learn more about them and their biology. I’m also fascinated in propagation, I can’t tell you why, but I am! For this reason, I’ve decided to build myself a frag tank which will also be plumbed into the main system via the new stack that I’ll be installing. I plan to have the frag tank on top of the breakfast bar. It will be 3ft x 1ft x 6 - 8” high. This will allow me to use minimum lighting as the corals will only just be under the waters surface. I can also use lighting which isn’t going to add more heat to the system as I don’t want then expense of having to add a chiller to the system. I’m planning on using 6.5K lighting to achieve maximum growth.

Enjoy