Smack's 90gal Build!

where are those pictures?

 

congrats!

I am also considering painting myu back. I recently purchased a 90 from craigslist and I wish it had an overflow builtin. My tank is drilled and has piping as the overflow and is much more of an eyesore. I am hoping that I can jazz it up though. Goodluck with the new tank.

 

Ok back!

So the cloudiness kept becoming an issue because my crab was kicking up sand like no tomorrow. Eventually with the combination of 2 carbon filters, and water clarifier, it looks good! Then came the sump.

I wanted to plug one of the two drain holes, unfortunately neither the 1.5inch or the 2inch plugs worked on the whole, and there was no 1.75inch plugs. So I decided to run a 2nd drain line, and just keep it taped up for the time being. It will eventually be used to flow water into a Refugium.

So while I was configuring my sump, my 2nd 10 gallon tank I was using to hold my YT damsel, and farm pods suddenly crashed or something. When I went to do a 30% wc on the tank I noticed hundreds of dead pods and worms. Alarmed at those guys dying, I quickly took my YT damsel out of the tank. Kept him in quarantined for the day. Checked him out and eventually weaned him over to my DT water. After about 10 hours he was showing no stressed out signs or anything. I took a risk but I decided to put him in my main tank. My reason for taking him out of the DT in the first place was because I did not want him to become territorial and beat up on smaller fish. Well as soon as he was put in, he went up to my clown fish who must have remembered him or something, and immediately started to beat him up lol. It was kind of funny. So the YT ran into the rock work, eventually coming out, but didn't both any of the other fish since then. I'm thinking the size of the tank will keep his territory in check. That was a few days ago and he's still showing no signs of disease and playing nice with the fish.

And at last, more pictures!



White tubes = Canister filter
Clear tube = Return line
Black tubes = Drain lines.

As you can see one drain line goes up. Its just duck taped to the back and pointed back into the overflow for now till I get my Refugium up and running.

The slight drip coming from the return is dripping right into the sump so I'm not concerned about an issues till I get the teflon tomorrow. Might super glue around the side of the bulk head too just in case.



The tank with the room lights out. Everyone is liking the dead brain(?) coral I picked up on the right side. It adds a nice aesthetic feeling.



Right side of the tank. Lots and lots of caves for everyone to be happy.



Left side of the rocks. About 45 lbs of LR in there with 45 lbs of Base rock, and another 20 lbs of cured LR which was previously bleached so no hitchhikers on those parts. About 105-110 lbs of rock total with 80 lbs of "live" sand. Also 10 lbs of gravel from previous tank.



Left side of the tank. Basically I wanted an open sandy area, then also a nice rubble pile for pods to grow. The rubble pile is basically gravel, with a small rock cave from my previous tank which was loaded with pods. Then some shells in the area for abby to change into now and then. A few food tests show there's probably several hundred to a few thousand pods in the tank right now. The population appears to be growing so that is encouraging.

So that's about it so far. My next plans are to get my Nitrate filter up and running tomorrow so that will be cycled within a month or so. Then I'll also be setting up my UV. Haven't decided if I will run it constantly or just some of the time. Everyone seems to have a different opinion on this.

 

So down the pipe line (several months) I'm considering two difficult fish to get.

1 - Mandarin Goby
2 - Copperband Butterfly


Yeah I know, not so easy lol. If my pod population continues to expand I think the goby would be fine. Gobies eat Amphipods as well right? (I have a lot more amphipods than copepods.)

I have a brine hatchery which I could use to wean the copperband onto frozen brine eventually too. I think I'll be up for the challenge . Again , I'm looking 4-6 months down the road on these guys, but would love to have both.

 

After reading various articles on UV sterilization. I came to a conclusion woot!

1. I will plan on running the UV 24/7. I decided this because Nitrifying bacteria by this point will have established itself in my tank. Nitrifying bacteria, which usually takes about less than 24 hours to almost double in population exists all over the surface areas of my rock, glass, and sand. Running the UV will simply prevent free floating bacteria from spawning elsewhere, though if the bacteria is already on every rock, then it will not need to float through the water to continue spreading on those rocks.

2. The majority of free floating bacteria contributes to tank cloudiness and also in that free floating water, single-cell algae will also exist. Neither of what I want.

My goal is to have and maintain crystal clear water (and do little glass scrubbing!). So far I have achieved crystal clear water (no micro bubbles w00t!), so the trick now is maintaining it. I believe the UV Sterilizer will help continue this.

Doing this along with running an Aquapure filter should allow me to limit my water changes to once a month at a smaller quantity of new water as well, just to replace trace elements. I'm not planning on having any corals till at least 6 months to a year, so I'll worry about dosing and other issues when I come to that.

 

UV will kill off free floating Coraline if you hope to be spreading that. When I run mine I definitely notice cleaner glass. But... No free floating micro's to feed your corals. I only run UV when I suspect an inhabitant has a parasite.

 

Yeah that's definitely something to consider when I start to bring in Corals, but I'm going to let the system mature for at least a year before I introduce any corals. For now its FOWLR so I don't believe any of the fish will suffer from running it 24/7. Unfortunately it looks like I cannot hook up the UV through my canister filter so I'm going to need to get another pump to place in the sump for it...blah. For now that will wait.

Anyways, other news, I installed the Aquapure filter and its running well. No noticable difference yet, though don't expect any. Nitrates are sitting at about 10ppm, so my hope is this will reduce them to at least 5ppm, maybe less and reduce the amount of water changes.

Tonight/Tomorrow I'm setting up the ATO unit so that should be interesting.

My girlfriend placed a moisture absorbing product in the same room as the tank :-X. What she failed to realize was it was sucking water from my tank! I lost almost a 1/2 gallon within a day. Had to put a stop to that. Anyone else ever try to use a DampRid product in a moist room? I mean I like the moisture because my tank stays pretty consistent, but it could lead to mildew down the road =/.

 

Update 6/17!

Oh boy, mixed news.


So 2 days ago, after getting home from work, everything looked wonderful in the tank. Chilled out for a bit, then was going to feed the fish like 5 minutes later. Came downstairs.... water all over the floor near the tank!

And it was my fault... uhg. My ATO unit was siphoning water into the sump uncontrolled...

So ATO off... and the clean up began. Seemed to be about 3 - 5 gallons on the floor. After I cleaned it up, I noticed it leaked under my floating floor =X. So this freaked me out in fear of getting mold in my new house. So I ran out, and bought a huge dehumidifier and placed some floor fans down on the area where water go underneath.

Took 2 days, but everything dried. And a later found out that the concrete slab underneath the floating floor is naturally porous. Lucky for me, the water either evaporated or subsided back into the ground. All dry now =D


So since then I haven't been using my ATO as you can imagine. I'm thinking my pump is too strong, and the tube is too wide to use in this setup. So going to do some additional research and till then I'll be topping off the tank myself. Probably gunna post some questions in the sump forums to get all this plumbing right (I'm awful at it so far).

Some brighter news... I bought 5 red scarlet reef hermits, a cleaner shrimp, and a new clown fish. More in another post!

 

So for the new additions..


The clown fish is slightly smaller than my current clown, and right away they hit it off wonderfully together. Vibrating their bodies to each other... touching tails, swimming in parallel. It was really wonderful to watch. unfortunately my YT Damsel doesn't particularly like him, but the clowns stay on one side of the tank, and the damsel on the other. Only a matter of time before they grow bigger. No name thought of for the clownie yet.

The cleaner shrimp is very active too. Already got him to walk on my hand and he comes out a lot from the rocks. He doesn't take any BS from the damsel either, standing his ground. We're going to name him Cousteau.

I also have 5 Scarlett Reef Hermit Crabs. Quite an active bunch most of the time, and very cute though one gets stuck in the sand because he's got a huge shell haha. No names for those guys yet, except the biggest one is the "captain".

So the tank is coming well. My original hermit crab has been sitting on the rocks for like 2 days now, seems like she's going to molt, so some algae has been creeping on the same where the flow is not as strong. Figured not worth doing anything since I'd probably cause more damage by cleaning it up. No biggie.

I'll post some pictures again soon!

 

More pictures:



Few of the crabs grazing



Sonic - he's actually not very aggressive in this larger tank



Neat picture of the clowns



Cousteau the cleaner shrimp



The rock peak




No more nitrates! Aquaripure really works. I've owned one for 4 weeks now, and my nitrates started at 10ppm. I haven't done a water change yet so that's pretty good.