WAMAS Tank of the Month
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Thank you to WAMAS for the nomination! My name is Tom and this is our 70 gallon mixed reef tank. I’m lucky enough to have a wife who also enjoys the hobby (aka WWC Holy Grail Wife) and this tank is our joint venture. I started my first saltwater tank when I was 13 or 14 in the early 90s and have been keeping reef tanks ever since. My first job was at Marine Care Specialists in Rockville during high school, and I joined WAMAS in 2008 after I returned to the area following my stint in the Army and grad school. We previously had an 11.4 gallon tank, and wanted our new tank to be furniture-grade to blend in with our new home that we moved into last summer. We received the tank in September, worked on it throughout the Winter, and it finally got wet in February. So it’s a very new tank, but we are very excited to watch it grow in!
The tank is in the transition area between our kitchen and living room (we live in a condo so space is limited). We wanted a stand and canopy to match our kitchen cabinetry. I went with a canopy vice open top to contain light spill, and not to blind our guests at the dinner table. The stand is also tall at a 36” height to bring the tank more to eye level. At this height the tank is also level with our countertops, which is aesthetically pleasing.
The tank is built by Midwest Custom Aquariums. It is built of acrylic, 36” wide, 20” high and 22” deep with the back painted black. There is an internal overflow bow with two holes plumbed. In retrospect this was a mistake for two reasons. First, I thought I would have the tank firmly against the wall, so wanted the internal overflow. This hasn’t been the case, so I could’ve saved the space inside the tank. Second, I only had two holes drilled, one for the return and one for the overflow. I should’ve ordered more for a Herbie or bean animal overflow, but I just forgot. I had never heard of Midwest Custom, but they did a really great job. I sent them a picture of our kitchen cabinetry and they were able to match style and color very closely. I’m also big on having the stand interior white, which I forgot to request, so I went to Home Depot and had some paint matched and did it myself. Inside the tank I mounted interior LED lights along with a magnet activated switch, so the lights remain on as long as the door is open. Lastly there is an exhaust fan to keep all of the equipment relatively dry, and I have not seen any signs of rust in the past 4 months of operation. The main return pump is a COR 15 at 50% (nominally 750 GPH at no head) with two returns on either side, further split into 4 loc line return lines (2 per side). Flow within the tank is provided by 2 Vortech MP10s and 2 MP40s. We had the 2 MP10s, but they weren’t enough to really get good coverage on the tank. So I bit the bullet and got the 2 MP40s, which are turned down low but do provide the right amount of flow. Since it’s a mixed reef, I keep the flow on the medium side. The acros seem to be happy enough, so it works out. There are two Ecotech Radion XR30 G5 Pros over the tank. In retrospect this may have been overkill, but I wanted to make sure there was really good spread & coverage, and figure it’s better to have the power if it’s not needed. It took some adjusting to find a spot where the SPS needs were met without blasting the LPS and soft corals. Right now I run the AB+ schedule at 35% max intensity over a 12 hour photoperiod. The PAR is 250-275 and the top where the SPS is, and 50-150 on the sand bed, depending on where. These things are really, really powerful. I bought a PAR measuring module for the Apex, and it’s turned out to be a very good investment in a mixed reef. One thing I am disappointed in is Ecotech’s decision to go to only proprietary control interfaces and not having compatibility with Neptune control. The Ecotech app also leaves a bit to be desired. But overall, the light is really great. The sump is custom built by Jeff at Lifereef. Jeff has been around a long time and in my experience is very good at designing custom sump footprints. This is my third custom sump from him. The sump has a skimmer chamber, mechanical filtration chamber, 3 cannister filter reactors, a custom mount for the Neptune ATO (the magnet that comes with the ATO is pure garbage and never should have gone to market), and finally a refugium. It’s a lot to squeeze in a 30” footprint, but he did it. Each of the 3 reactors has a Neptune flow meter attached, and I run filter floss, carbon, and GFO, respectively. The skimmer is a Royal Exlusiv Bubble King Mini 160, which is just a great skimmer. In the refugium, there is about 20 pounds of Florida live rock. I did this to speed up the maturation process, add a lot more variety of life, and its just really cool stuff. I grow chaeto and other algaes that came with the rock, and I’m sure a few more that didn’t. The rock in the main tank is Marco dry rock, which I cured and then smashed to create/cement the rock structure. I also painted the rock with purple pigment from A Reef Creation, which looks hokey under all white lights but very natural under blues. Sand is Tropic Eden Mesoflakes, which I absolutely love. Big and heavy enough to stay still, but small enough to look really good and not trap detritus. Additives are ESV alkalinity to 9.0 (23 ml/day), calcium to 420 (36 ml/day), and magnesium to 1350 (8 ml/day). These are dosed via 2 Neptune Dos units, measured by the Trident and controlled by the Apex. I also add 5 ml/day of Microbacter 7, which I used to cure a brief dino outbreak when the tank was first set up, and I’ve just continued doing it. I also occasionally dose Korallenzucht LPS aminos. There are 4 fish, a pair of Perculas that we’ve had for 5 years. The female is pretty mean, will nip my hand and draw blood in the tank, and have also killed multiple other tank-mates. They don’t seem to mind the bristletooth tang, but he can also be mean. Lastly there is an algae eating blenny, who mostly escapes abuse as he blends into the rock very well. Moving forward the clowns may go to their own tank and we want other fish! There are also 2 cleaner shrimp and a fire shrimp. There are about a dozen astrea snails and 4 turbo snails. As for corals, I’ll highlight our favorite ones below, but we have lots of zoas, LPS (trachys, torches, hammers, blastos, acans, lobos, scolys, gonis, favias) and SPS (mostly acros with one monti). There is a Neptune AFS that feeds flake food 3x daily. On top of this I also feed a variety of frozen foods for both the fish and the corals. I also target feed with Reef Roids and LPS pellets twice a week. Everything seems to be fat and happy. There were a few hiccups in the first couple of months. First, bryopsis was introduced to the tank, so we had to do Flucanzole to get rid of it. Once it cleared it was followed by dinos. I was able to rid of them after about a month of pretty consistent physical removal and Microbacter dosing. During all of this, we were struck by something which killed a one-of-a-kind trachy, a couple of other trachys, and a couple of torches within a week or two. It left just about all other corals alone. It was a tough loss but I think the combination of the tank being new and the medical algae treatment may have created conditions where those LPS were more susceptible to bacterial infections. But just as fast as it struck, the tank rebounded very quickly and everything has been doing fantastic ever since. The other challenge as I mentioned before is getting the mixed reef conditions right. It’s taken a fair amount of adjustments and observations for lighting and flow, as well as correct coral placement, to make sure everything is happy. We still have plenty of room in the tank, so we are still acquiring pieces, but really the tank just needs time to grow in. We’re really looking forward to that! I’m starting to focus more on across now that the tank is a bit established, particularly trendy tenuis that look cool under blues. Also want a holy grail torch! For equipment, the only future plan I have is to potentially add a calcium reactor. There’s a spot in the sump for it, and if Alk/Ca consumption ends up where I think it will, I’d like to experiment with having the reactor contribute the bulk of the dosing with the Trident/Dos combination making minor adjustments to keep things very consistent. This is partly because I like equipment, and partly to reduce 2-part costs. I’m also very interested in nitrate and phosphate testing/dosing, so I’ll be looking to see if Neptune decides to offer equipment that handles that. Thanks again to WAMAS for the nomination, and to the team of folks who work hard to keep the club going, it really is an invaluable resource and a great community. |
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