SpringFever's 40 breeder

[SpringFever]

Greetings!

I live in Eugene Oregon and have been in the hobby since 2008. I've taken breaks here and there, mostly after moves. Since I've begun reef keeping I've lived in San Francisco, Seattle and now Eugene. I built this tank, stand and canopy myself in 2013. Well... the tank was stock but I built the internal overflow and drilled it. Everything else was custom. First light setup was a custom built 2x 150 halide with custom CRE LED supplements. My custom LED fixture sucked so I swapped it for a custom 4x 24" T5. The ballasts for the halides crapped out a little over a year ago so I switched to 2x kessil A360s (old model) I bought used. That's what's currently lighting the display tank (Kessil/T5 combo). Frag tank is lit with 2x T5 and 1x Reefbright strip.

The tank is a 40 breeder mixed reef. I have a 20L sump and 20L frag tank plumbed into the system for a total estimated volume of 70 gallons. I set the tank up again in November 2019. I had a catastrophic crash in November of 2020 while away on vacation. I came home to a tank full of milk... My tank sitter was oblivious that anything was wrong. Lets just say I've automated myself out of a tank sitter.

Anyway... My filtration philosophy has changed over the years. Currently, I run an oversized skimmer, perform 10% weekly water changes and run carbon intermittently. I have a GFO reactor but RARELY use it. No refugium, no carbon, no socks, no scrbbers. I feed heavy and the skimmer/water changes keeps my nutrients low, too low...   

My parameter targets are as follows:

ALK: 9, CAL: 450, MAG: 1380, Salinity: 35, Nitrates 5-10 (currently zero), Phos: .05 (currently .01

I dose tropic marin three part using three 1.1ml/min BRS dosing pumps hooked up to my old-school reefkeeper controller. I dose Kalk using a high output BRS doser. I feed a mix of Rod's food and Reef Roids 1-2x daily and spirulina flakes 1x daily. I dose aminos once in the morning, Lugal's once per week and strontium once per week. Flow is provided by 2x MP10 (gen one)

Fish in display: baby Foxface ill trade out when too big, flasher wrasse, pair of wheeler goby, coris wrasse, royal gramma, pajama cardinal. Frag tank: algae blenny, clown fish, six line wrasse. 

Inverts: reproducing trochus snails, conch snails, cleaner shrimp, porcelain crab, feather duster worm, emerald crabs, urchin (move back and forth between frag and display tanks).  

so... that's my tank. If you've read this far thanks. I'll try to reward you with some pictures. I consider the tank one year old and only recently started adding SPS. Hopefully they'll grow in soon. 

 

Edited December 18, 2021 by SpringFever

[SpringFever]

This hobby is full of challenges. That's why I love it. I did my first ICP test recently which uncovered a lot of room for improvement. My Aluminum and tin levels were astronomically high. So was the sillica reading in my tank and RO holding tank. I replaced rusty cabinet hinges, old MP10 wetsides, removed a marine pure block and added a silica specific DI stage to my water make-up station. I also replaced the home depot braided tubing connecting my frag tank with medical grade tubing that doesn't leach tin. I haven't sent off another ICP test yet but I'm hopeful those number look much better this next go around. I've certainly noticed an improvement in my coral.

ICP also showed that my salinity was really, really low. I've always calibrated my refractometer using RO water. After seeing how low my salinity was I bought a 1.026 calibration fluid. My refractometer was calibrated to 1.023. Oops. That might have explained some of the trouble I've had with more sensitive SPS in the past. Oh well. Live and learn. 

I'm currently trying to do three things:

1) get rid of bubble algae. My old emerald crabs died off and bubble algae took hold when I went on vacation and auto-fed pellets for the first time. I got new emeralds and the foxface several months ago but the algae is outpacing the critters. Or the critters don't care to eat it.

2) raise my nitrate and phosphate levels. They have consistently been at zero for the vast majority of my time in the hobby. I've had bubble algae in years past and beat it with vibrant, but, I think, because my tank runs such low nutrients dinos and this weird greed mossy algae took over when I quit vibrant. I'm using vibrant again now but just started dosing nitrate and phosphate so that by the time the bubble algae is gone I can stop dosing vibrant without dinos taking over again. That crap was awful. 

I would love anyone's feedback about my approach with vibrant. I'm hoping to avoid the dino outbreak I experienced last time.

[DaveZ]

Hey @SpringFever. Thanks for sharing! I love seeing other 40b displays as I have one as well. I’ll post a pic below. 
 

The setup looks great and interesting to hear about the algae still taking hold in such low nutrient system. 
 

My 40b has the Trigger Crystal 30 sump, so not quite as much water volume but I tend to struggle with keeping nutrients up as well and also oversize the skimmer (RO Classic 150sss. Currently offline while I deep clean it and let nutrients climb a bit). It’s been up for a year and a half and acro dominant. 
 

It would be fun to chat more on the 40b setup as it does not seem that common for people to really customize these tanks. You seem to have a great handle on the setup and doing some really cool things. Be great to learn from your experience. Shoot me a dm if you want and can exchange numbers there. 

[SpringFever]

Thanks for stopping by, Dave. I sent you a DM. Good to see another 40b out there. And it looks like I would be the student between the two of us! I think auto feeding pellets is want gave the bubble algae a foothold. I set the auto feeder up the day before I left for vacation. I manually put a pinch of pellets in when I got back and none of the fish ate them. I think it all converted to dissolved organics which fueled the bubble algae. 

I just stopped my vibrant experiment after 3 weeks with mixed results. Bubble algae started to pale and disintegrate, but diatoms/dinos/cyano started to grow in the sandbed. I have been keeping my nutrients at nitrate: ~5 and phos:~.03 using brightwell neo nitro and seachem flourish. Im having to dose the equivalent of .03 phos per day and 1.5 nitrates per day to keep levels in range. 

Vibrant thinned the bubbles out. I saw my foxface and new emeralds going after the raining bubbles. I added prodibio and STOPPED vibrant hoping the critters get the bubbles back under control. The dino outbreak I had last time I dosed vibrant was terrible. I'm hoping I stopped dosing early enough to avoid it this time. Prodibio is in hopes of bolstering a "normal" bacterial population, outcompeting dinos.