120 Clown Herem Tank

S

SaphosBro

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For quite some time after following mobert's thread on reef central, Marvin's reef clown tank, BRS and several others I have been wanting to setup a clownfish herem tank of my own. Over thanksgiving decided to pull the trigger and start the build. Being that its 2 months in I have not made a ton of progress but most of the initial decisions have been made and I am getting close to filling the tank.For the tank I went with 120 gallon SCA eurobrace tank. I was a little hesitant about using an SCA tank but after getting the tank and looking it over my initial thought are very positive. Time will tell if it holds up. I can say initial communication with SCA has been extremely good.I really liked the planet aquarium crystalline stand - i could not find anything that I felt was adorable so I decided to try and build a stand myself and think it turned out okay, not perfect but if someone spends all there time looking at my stand and not the fish i have another problem for sure. My biggest requirement was that it be framed with 2x6's so that I did not need a center brace under the stand and could remove the sump without moving the tank/stand.For the sump I went with the Marine depot branded 36" trigger systems sump. It looks nice and had most of the features I wanted in a sump. Skimmer will be the vertex 180i. Flow will be a various-6 and 2 neptune WAV pumps. I did not want to buy a second apex so i ordered a 100ft apex cable and ran it though the wall into the new fish room and will have an eb832, pm1/pm2 and all the other typical apex add ons like the atk and afs. For rock i have 200lbs of BRS dry Pukani. I soaked the Pukani for 2 weeks in bleach, dried it out and then soaked it in RODO and dosed Prime over several days and have now been soaking it in saltwater for about 7 weeks. I have been dosing phosphate RX weekly and for the past two weeks phosphates have been hovering around 0.07 so the rock is getting close.For the lighting I had a hard time making a decision on but end up going with the Aquatic Life T5 Hybrid LED fixture. I have the hybrid fixture but have not ordered LED's I am torn between 2 primes or 2 kessel a360's - I am not going to grow any coral in this tank so i need to do some more reattach on what would be best for the anemones. Any advice is more than welcome.The plan is to mount the lighting from the ceiling this weekend and give the rock another week to soak and both aquascape and fill the tank next weekend to start the cycle. I will do the normal large shrimp rotting for 3 days to cycle the tank and once its cycled ill start phantom feeding to get the bioload up for at least an additional month or two before adding the livestock.The anemones will most likely be a mix of RBTA and GBTA. The specific clowns I will use fort the herem are still up in the air, I would love to do something exotic like 30 of the new storm clownfish or the even newer mocha storms that will be out in the next few days but not sure i want to spend that much on clowns - so I may go with the premium picasso or the mocha gladiator - I have a month or so before i need to firm that decision up and get an order/FYI in to the breeder so they are ready when I want/need them.Anyhow I most likely bored everyone with to much info for a starter but if anyone sees any massive issues with what I have done or any room for serious improvements I would love to hear. I will post pictures and updates over the next few weeks and months as this progresses. I figure its 3-4 months out before it really starts to get interesting and I have both clowns and anemones in the tank and maybe longer. I am going to take my time and go very very slow with this build.View attachment 4120View attachment 4119View attachment 4118View attachment 4117View attachment 4121
 
Not bored at all, very interesting read! Great choice and I can't wait to see it all come together, Everything sounds good to me. On the light I think either option is going to work just fine for you. I have the Steves LEDs in my biocube and my anemones just keep getting bigger, along with the clowns feeding them. I would go with which mounting option would work best for your setup. Looking great so far, keep up the good work and keep the updates coming. :) Thanks for sharing!
 
I have not made a ton of progress this week but i did manage to change the t5 hybrid LED's but they need a bit more work to be perfectly level on the suspension cables - that turned out to be a bit more of a pain than i expected. I also ordered a kessil h380 for the fuge and the new BRS triple DI to run cation, then anion followed by a mixed bed resin. We will see if it makes any difference but would always love 'more pure' water for this new tank and cut my overall DI usage.I thought I had an eb832 die on another tank but turned out to be a flash chip in the brain unit going bad so I keep mixing and stealing parts from this tank to keep the other tank up. Hopefully by this week I have have the parts I sent in for repair back from neptune to finish wiring this tank. They did offer to sell me an extra stand alone base unit/brain if i wanted it for backup or to split my tanks and run an apex on each tank. I like the idea of a single apex for all my tanks but not sure anymore if thats a great idea or not, as it stands my apex has 24 modules between 2 tanks so maybe it would be better to split them, anyone have any thoughts? The new brain was around 375 so not horrible if i want to split this tank off the other system.For the past week the live rock has been reading 0.00 phosphates every day when i test so I think the live rock is ready now but I will give it another week.Hopefully by next week I will have some better photos of the plumbing and electrical and be very close to ready to fill the tank.View attachment 4215View attachment 4216View attachment 4217
 
Hey Chris,Thanks for the prod I really need it, I am a bit ashamed its taking me this long to finish everything up... This is the worlds slowest build for sure - i keep leaving the country for work and putting off finishing the tank - I have 3 or 4 hours of prep work and ill be ready to fill the tank.[ ]The only good thing about my delay is the pukani rock has been cooking for 5 months now so hopefully it wont add any phosphates to the tank after this much time.[ ]My plan is to finish the wiring this weekend and fill the tank next - I will be in town for the next month so I should have time to get everything going. The extra time has given me time to spend more money - unfortunately- and to change a few components up. I changed my return pumps to 2 COR pumps from the Varios-6's i had and so far I am very happy with the choice.[ ]I also originally bought some AI Primes for the T5/LED hybrid setup and was not happy at all with them so I swapped them out for 2 Kessil a360w's. The other major change was that I was originally going to run Calc and Alk dosing pumps but have decided since I dont plan to have coral in this tank to run a Kalk stirrer and dose saturated kalk. I dont plan to top off with the kalk but rather dose to hopefully get the calc and alc as close as possible to where I want to keep them.I do have piles of extra parts I bought and did not end up using like the pumps, ai primes etc so if i ever finish this build another will be in the future.Hopefully by the end of the weekend i can post some photos of everything done but the rock and water.I was going to add a few new photos  tonight of the sump and all the new equipment to show some progress but every-time i attempt to upload i get a file upload error from the site so ill try again later and see if its working.Shane 
 
Everything is a work in progress, glad your still working on it! Sounds like you have some great ideas and nice upgrades. Will definately be neat to see once all setup! Sounds like your getting close, keep on truckin!
 
I am officially ready to fill the tan this weekend but in todays mail i got my custom clear view lid I ordered from artfullyacrylic. They really did a fantastic job and it looks amazing!  View attachment 5007
 
Okay i know this has been the slowest build up ever but i did finally fill the tank yesterday and turned on the pumps since I did not have to travel over a long weekend.I will note this is my first time to use on of the new Neptune COR pumps and so far I have been really really happy, its dead silent. I have a reef octopus varios 6 and a vectro m1 on other tanks and they are quite but i can hear a slight hum from them, i hear nothing at all from the COR20 so for now I am impressed. I tossed 4 medium shrimp in a bag and tossed it in the tank this evening so the cycle is officially under way. in 2-3 days I will check the ammonia and when i hits 1-2ppm I will pull the shrimp and let nature do its part. The rock has been cooking since November so hopefully it will be a fast cycle but regardless i will ghost feed for 4 weeks after the cycle 4 times a day with the auto feeder to build up the bioload for the clowns so lets see how it goes...I still need to build the manifold to run the UV and Carbon of the COR15 but I am not in a hurry to get that done since they are not needed until after the cycle.  I also need to install the neptune DOS sometime this week - i am going to run the kalk stirrer from the DOS. I plan to dose fully saturated kalk not as part of the ATO rather on a schedule to maintain levels. Should be pretty easy to maintin since i dont plan to have coral in this tank.Other wise everything is looking good. I will be happy when i can start flipping some of the switchs on the apex to auto and my dashboard does not look so sad...To be continued... View attachment 5121View attachment 5122View attachment 5123View attachment 5124
 
Just a short update... My cycle finished this week, today i did a 25 gallon water change and tomorrow ill start ghost feeding 4x a day the max feed feed size on the apex AFS for 5 more weeks then it will be clown time around the first week of August.Only thing i cant decide is if i should ghost feed into a media bag so i dont have to try and get all the food out of the pukani which will be imposable.View attachment 5362
 
I started ghost feeding today in to a media bag but it did not seem to make any difference... I am feeding the Sustainable aquatics hatchery diet and after a few hours it more or less turned to mush and with the high flow in the tank it melted out of the media bag so i gave up on the media bag. I will have to do a serious water change in 5 weeks but I will make that work. In the brs build I'm modeling my build after they did a 100% water change before adding the clowns so ill do the same.I have also started growing some cheato in the fudge so we will see how that goes.On another fun note I have started another tank build to replace my reefer 170. I picked up a used reefer 425xl for a killer price so im building that out in my office. I wont kill everyone with two build threads at the same time but its moving along really fast since im replacing an existing tank with the 425xl and its keeping me busy.
 
Just a quick update, Ghost feeding is underway, I am running the apex AFS 8 times a day 3 rotations each time and its set to the second lowest food dispensary spot.  I saw an initial ammonia spike but it came down in about 2 days and has stayed down, no2 has been holding at .25. We are almost 2 weeks in so we will see what it looks like in another 2-3 weeks. Hopefully this 2 month cycle works as I hope.I also set up my kalk stirrer tonight and tomorrow ill start dosing once it clears up. Its being fed from my DOS and not as part as ATO.View attachment 5491On an unrelated note i setup the new Reefer 425xl i mentioned at the office and its started its cycle. I am really happy with how it turned out and this is the first time i have used the dry special grade sand. I really really like this sand, not to big, not to small and does not seem to blow around much at all. If it would not be a nightmare i would change out the sand in the ClownFish tank for special grade.I used the pukani i had lefter over from the Clownfish tank to aquascape the 425 and hopefully this weekend i can go around and get some tonga branch to finish it out. Also tossed about 40 marine pure cubes in the sump.View attachment 5489
 
Hey Chris,Any chance you would mind sharing a photo of your Kalk stirrer in action? Mine is still slightly cloudy this morning and I honestly expected the water to be crystal clear. Its not so cloudy i cant see my hand if i i hold it behind the stirrer but its not clear like RODI water. Wondering if this is normal for the stirrer or if I am doing something wrong. I do see most of the kalk has setteled to the bottom.
 
I am also using the old BRS Kalk i bought about a year ago and never used. Yours looks much clearer than mine so maybe with some more time. I have been running the stirrer 24/7 maybe i should try having my apex shut it off every few hours to see if that helps.Thanks as always for the photos and advice sir!
 
Today i plumed in a apex flow sensor on my return line and I am not sure if I am glad I did or not but I am super disappointed after getting it setup. Earlier i posted i swapped my return pump out for a COR20 and i loved it because its the quietest pump i have ever owned, and thats true, but my flow sensor is reporting 189-191 GPH flow on a 2000 GPH pump running at max flow. I did expect to see some loss from head pressure and I used 1" pvc v/ 1 1/4 as my tank was drilled for 1" but the flow numbers I am seeing are way to low for a 120gallon tank. I really want to see 5-10x turn over an hour so not sure what i will do just yet.I emailed apex support to make sure I am reading everything correctly but if so I guess ill need to start looking for a new return pump.View attachment 5529
 
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