November Tank Of The Month

[TBR701]

Jamie,

Your tank looks great. Impressive. Do you use any additives besides the calcium reactor? If so, what do you use and how often?

TBR

[Ger]

Jamie, I love all the colors in your tank. I just recently read about your system in the book "Ultimate Marine Aquariums". You mentioned you decided to get rid of your Ecosystem type refugium. May I ask why you chose to use a bare bottom sump?

[ReefRaf]

Jamie, I'm curious about your opinion on night time polyp extension being a sign of coral health; can you explain further?
And I'm sure you're getting sick of me saying it, but again, awesome job!!

[dwall174]

Great job setting your system up! I noticed that you’re using an IceCap 660 ballast with the 40-watt Phillips 03 actinics. I read about running the NO bulbs on the 660 ballast HERE & it sounds good to me! Do you like that set-up? BTW where do you get the Philips 03's

[thedogofwar]

Congratulations. Great tank. very well deserved

It's your stand that does it for me
Very Very cool idea. The matching equipment cabinet is also very nice.

[Acro]

Hey Guys
Thanks for the nice remarks.

TBR, I do not use any additives. Regular water changes and the reactor work great.

Ger, I removed the sump style refugium for a few reasons. #1 I first removed the DSB from the main tank. I was experiencing unwanted matting type algae over the bed. I attempted for a better part of a year to deal with it with no success. Which in the end caused the removal of the main tank dsb. #2After it's removal and with a planned move ahead of me I thought it was a good time to remove the one in the sump as well. The sump dsb was much younger the main and did look very healthy. I just thoughts it was best to remove it. After the need to remove the main tank dsb I was thrown on the anti DSB train of thought. I find the corals looked and look healthy under both styles. Only now the algae is gone and growth has improved but that was I believe do to the exhaustion of the main dsb.

Brad, Ah another loaded question J. Over the years I’ve spent a great deal of time inspecting late in the night. Working afternoon shift helps. Keep in mind I’m referring to Acropora more then other sps type corals. What I have found that though insignificant daytime polyp expansion can be accepted. If little to no nighttime expansion is witnessed, the corals health is in jeopardy. If this is the case for to long the coral will in time lose it’s tissue and die. What I have experience is the larger I can get the ntpe the healthier more colourful and faster that coral seems to grow. I can pretty much tell you what coral is doing well in my system and perhaps other systems from simply grabbing a flashlight and inspecting the corals for their ntpe. The cause for unacceptable expansion can very greatly from many stressor including too much or too little current, pest or predator irritation to water chemistry issues.

Doug, Yes I do like this set-up. The NO’s are cheaper then the VHO’s. I’m using the fluorescents as supplementation. If they were the main light source I’d probably use VHO’s. I purchase the Phillips tubes threw. www.jlaquatics.com.

[ReefRaf]

Jamie, on the ntpe, do you have a specific time after lights out, or do you look anytime after dark?

[Acro]

Brad, You name it I've checked it For the most part though usually around 2:30ish.

[dwall174]

Ah Canada! That may explain why I can’t find them anywhere here in the states.

I also like your stand/skirt idea I will have to remember that when I start another tank project

[auto_loader]

Jaime,
Your tank looks great.
Can you explain how you used the egg crate and PVC to elevate the rock above the substrate? How far above the substrate is the rock. You cant even tell it is elevated by looking at the pictures. How did you accomplish this.

[Acro]

Thanks,auto_loader

Ok I'll do my best here All I've done is cut and drilled 12 pieces of 1 1/2 abs pipe. Then evenly spaced and stood them upright into the sand prior to adding water. I then cut to size 3 pieces of eggcrate to rest on the abs pipe. The important thing here is to make sure not to make the table to large. You still need room to hind it behind some rocks which need placing in front and the sides. Once happy with the "table" place a few rocks on the eggcrate so once water is added they don't float. Or zapstraps will work too. Maybe this picture will help explain better.
underside The picture was taken from the side which I've left veiwable just so I can see whats happening under there.

[Trewan]

Hi,

First of all , congrats for your such beautiful tank.

With a few friends, we wonder how you succeed in maintaining such "pale" or "clear" colors in your tank.

I mean, you have "whitish" blue or pink acros, which is quite uncommon here in Europe. Our Acro's often turn plain blue, when it's not plain green , plain purple or even brown

So what's your secret? Is it the lighting? Anything else?

Regards,

Eric

[Acro]

Thanks Eric,
Great question! The short answer would be: Do to lower then normally seen zooxanthellae population within the host coral. Now why this is the case result in the long answer It is believed the coral has the ability to host as many or as little zooxanthellae as needed for their supply of photosynthetic energy. This coupled with, zooxanthallae use nitrate and phosphate for their energy. Leads me to believe the reasoning behind the lower population to be :
#1 very low nitrate and phosphate levels with in the system.
#2 very clear water from the use of carbon. Allows the light source to provide as much PAR as possible to the coral and their algae friends below. I don’t believe the particular lighting to play into this as I’ve produced these results under other lighting choices. Secrets out

[Edveder9]

I love your stand design.. What size is the Aluminum tubing that you used? Is it sturdy.. Do you have any more details of it or a schematic of the metal frame I was intrested in building one like it but Wanted to talk to someone who had one..

[Acro]

Edveder9, When I built the aluminium stand I had access to the aluminium at no charge. Also my last stand was made of steel, which left some nasty stains on the carpet. So these two factors helped make my decision to build the stand. I do like the stand but if I had to pay to get it made I wouldn’t. Instead I’d make it out of wood. Which is what my next stand will be made from. Side to side the stand is very stable but front to back it can sway some if bumped. This might have been corrected with some more side bracing. Anyways those are my thoughts. As for the stand it was made from 2� hollow core 1/8� thick square tubing. If you’re still interested in the idea I can take some pictures and email them to you

[steshell]

Hi Jamie
I live in the UK, Just had to say how good your tank looks. I would
give anything to have my tank looking half as good.
My tank has hair algae at the moment, any idea how to get rid of it.
Once again great looking tank.
Steve

[Acro]

Hi Steve and welcome to reefcentral
I appreciate your kind words. If you don't mind please take the time to give some info on your set-up and a picture or 2 would be nice. I know algae problems have taken it's share of hobbiest out of the hobby so lets see if we can find your problem. Please list things like:
Tank size,sump size,lighting,refugium,skimmer, carbon or other mechanical filters, rate of water changes other maintenance including how often you change out any addition filtration. How long the tanks been running, fish load, feeding both fish and or corals, any deaths in the tank lately, any additives, system current, sand bed, no sand bed. Pretty much everything is needed to really understand your system first.

[quaterback-killer]

hi jamie love the corals but i read the whole post and no one ask if your selling any frags if so i would love to buy any frags out of your tank it would be a pleasure to have a pice of rare animal post up either way QB_killer still-balling

[steshell]

Hi Jamie
Thanks for your reply, my tank is 48x24x24, no sump, lights twin 250watt m/h plus twin acintic, m/h on for 5 hours, acintic 6 hours.
My skimmer is a aqua medic turbo flotor 1000 multi.
cal reactor, rowa phos reactor are also running. A fluval 404 full of filter wool, cleaned or replaced every week. 40 kilos live rock. temp is controlled by a chiller at 26c. I change 10 galls per week with r/o water. my power filter goes through a uv filter. my redox is controlled by a computer and reads 450mv. my calcium is 460, nitrite 0, nitrate 5ppm, phosphate 0, mag 1350, ph 8.1-8.3, kh 9.3
alk 3.5. My water is moved by a wave controller with 3 power heads. my stock is only 1 yellow tang, 1 algae blenny, 1 scooter blenny, 1 clown fish with anemone. I lost all my fish when we moved house last march when a heater stuck on in the bucket which had the fish in.
I have about 12 leather corals which I propergated myself, also
have some hard corals. Forgot to say no sand bed, just enough for my open brain coral. corals fed with live phyto every day, fish with brine shrimp once a day. hope this helps.
Many thanks Steve.

[Acro]

Hey QB_killer Thanks for inquiring. It really isn't something thats an option for me being I live in Canada.

Steve, Sounds like you have a very nice set-up. Also appears like you put the time in and take care of your reef very well. Nothing really jumps out at me other then. Sounds like you feed heavy phyto. Which I'm not sure there is a need for unless you keeping sensitive softies. Again some picture would be great Also I find with out a sandbed your system is more sensitive to overfeeding then if a dsb was incorporated. I almost hate to say dsb in a thread as that brings up a whole can of worms Oh also what would you say your total volume of water is being moved through powerheads ect. in GPH? I would tend to think with no sump you'll want to make sure you have good flow or you'll be more likely to get ditritus settling out. Other then that making sure you clean the skimmer at least weekly perhaps cutting down a bit on the phyto aswell draining your fish food prior to adding to the tank might be a good idea. Again algae problems can and will be a problem at some point for beginners to veterans alike for many years to come. Keep pluggen away

[R.Allard]

Hi Jamie ,
Awsome tank..I just tore down a 110show and am in the process of setting up a 150RR oceanic . My question is how did you put your DI unit on a Timer.
Im going to have my Di unit going into my kalk reactor and then into a float valve in my sump and yes i know the float valves fail
and plan on relpaceing them every 6 mo or so. So the added
security of having it on a timer would be a great addition to my
K.I.S.S. Reef.
Thanks
Robert

[Acro]

Hi Robert and thanks ,
All I’ve done is hook up a sprinkler solenoid to the line into the ro/di. This is then hooked up to the timer with the use of an ac adapter. Which then only allows water to feed into the ro/di for the set time. Also for the solenoid to work you need to down size the in and outs to the same size of line you feed the ro/di. If you’d like me to attach a pic to help on the visuals let me know

[R.Allard]

thanks for the insight... thats a great idea. please post a couple of pictures... you know .. men and visuals..

[Acro]

Robert,
Here are a couple pics for you.
first
second

[R.Allard]

thanks for the pics ... my only question is are there any metal parts in the unit that might put metals in the waterflow??? also what type ??rainbird?? etc..