Rebirth of a 110 Gallon Mixed Reef

Anselth · Aug 31, 2010

Well, about a year ago my 110 Gallon system crashed suddenly, leaving me sad and discouraged. My 70 Gallon Reef continued chugging along, doing fairly well, but I didn't feel like adding any new fish to it and really just kept up the status quo. I didn't break the 110 down, however. A couple of reasons for this: I didn't have anywhere to stow it in my apartment, and as long as I kept water flowing, fed the snails that were still in there, and topped off the water every week or so, the live rock would maintain it's biological capacity.

Last month I was finally able to purchase a house, and moved the 110 down into the basement. I set up a 100 gallon skimmer/return rubbermaid tub and a 70 gallon tub to serve as a fuge, and tied the tank back into it. Once the parameters equalized, I transferred the live rock and livestock from the 70 at the apartment to the 110 on Saturday. There's somewhere in the neighborhood of 300 pounds of live rock in the system right now, along with 100+ pounds of a mixture of aragonite sand, live rock rubble, and crushed coral. During the move I got rid of the majority of both of the old sandbeds, but kept a few cupfuls of sand from each to seed the new bed. So far, everything seems to be doing well, along with the snails and corals, I have a sea cucumber, and my bicolor blenny and coral beauty angel from the 70.

Right now I don't have internet access at the hous, but here's a photo of the new setup. Quality isn't the best, but you can get a rough idea:

(Clickable thumbnail)

I promise to take and upload better photos once I can access the internet from my home computer.

jpsika08 · Sep 1, 2010

The tank is looking great, glad you could mount it again, good luck, hope to see more updates soon.

Anselth · Sep 17, 2010

So far, so good. Everyone seems to have adapted well to their new home and nothing is leaking, thankfully. I've got a temmporary setup operating my auto topoff and have reworked some coral placements and added new residents, including a sizeable new CUC. I'll do a major update a bit later this weekend, with real pictures and everything.

Anselth · Sep 19, 2010

The setup of the tank is pretty straightforward. It's a non-drilled Oceanic 110 gallon tank with a dual tube lifereef overflow. The overflow feeds through the wall to two rubbermaid tubs, a 70 gallon and a 100 gallon, which act as the sump and refugium. I'll grab some photos of the filtration system setup later on, once I get the area straightened out some, I have parts from my 50, 70, and old 110 sytem littered around the fish room as I try to get everything in the house put away and tidied up.

Lighting is provided by two 250 watt metal halides with two 46" T-5 actinic lights. I currently run the actinics for 14 hours, and the halides for 6. This was originally for heat control in the apartment, but I haven't seen a reason to change it, as all of the corals are responding pretty well to the light regimen thus far.

The tank is a mixed reef, with LPS, mostly Euphyllia spp., but with one Caulastrea head that's trying to come back. My Blastomussa is the only coral that didn't make it through the transition. I also have a Montipora, some Zoanthus spp, a few shrooms, a leather, and a frag of a gorgonian of some sort.

Fish currently consist of a bicolor blenny (Ecsenius bicolor), a Coral Beauty Angel (Centropyge bispinosa), a female Christmas Wrasse (Halichoeres claudia), and a Blue-Spotted Jawfish (Opistognathus rosenblatti). The Wrasse and Angel will school sometimes, and follow Sarah and I around the tank begging for food. The Jawfish has moved three times in as many days, I gave him a few handfuls of live rock rubble today to see if that will help him settle down.

Full Tank Shot

Frogspawn

Red 'Shrooms

Hammer

Torch

Zoa Garden

Leather

Turbinaria

Blenny

Jawfish

Anselth · Aug 22, 2011

Um, yeah. So. A year later!

Been doing a lot of work around the house itself and around work, so I didn't add much, well, anything, to the tank for almost a year. Over the past few months I've been battling a pretty bad cyano outbreak. I increased the frequency of my water changes and have tweaked my flow setup and seem to have it on the ropes now. Even so, I see a Vortec powerhead in the near future. Just not pleased with the flow patterns I'm getting with regular powerheads.

This is a view of my fish room. The overflow comes through the wall under the basement stairs and feeds the sump and the fuge. The blue container between the two hubs houses my topoff water.

One of the aquacontroller strips hangs on the wall, providing power for the return, the skimmer, the auto topoff, and the phosban/carbon reactors. We ran a brand new 20 amp circuit to provide power to the tank, as our electrical service was questionably set up, and the last thing I wanted was for a breaker to trip when we weren't home. You can see the ATO controller hanging to the left of the little shelf where the main aquacontroller panel is under the stairs. I've run internet cabling to the room, but have to attach the patch plug before I can plug the controller into my router, which is upstairs in the office.

A shot of my skimmer. Right now I'm running my old Octopus (I can't even remember the model anymore). It's plenty for the bioload I have now, but I am planning to upgrade in the near future. I had to build a stand for it as the water level is way too high in the new setup, and think not having it running for several months may have contributed to the cyano problem. Although with only three fish at the time and minimal feedings, I think my waterflow issues are more likely to blame.

Refugium, with the balance of my live rock, as well as my phosphate and carbon reactors. I'm trying to figure out a different way to place them, but the setup works for now.

I now have the RO/DI filter hanging on the wall in the laundry room, saddled into the cold water for the laundry sink. I need to run the output up into the rafters somehow, rather than across the floor, though.

Full tank shot. You can still see the cyano in the tank, although it is much, much better than before. Unfortunately, the sheets did a number on my turbinaria and Zoa colonies, although the zoas are bouncing back and the turbinaria seems to have stopped declining.

I finally found a place the frogspawn seems to like. The heads have gotten more rounded, they had flattened out before.

One of our newest residents, Gramma loreto. I have also added a horned blenny, but he wasn't feeling photogenic.

When the 110 crashed back at the apartment, this guy was one of the only survivors. No new heads yeat, but it is looking very healthy now.

I cannot get this guy to stay in one place. His current burrow is up against the front glass of the tank.

The Christmas Wrasse has gotten quite large from when she moved in.

Our Coral Beauty Angel is the last fish from the apartment.

Anselth · Aug 22, 2011