220 Reef system Diary

It's been a while since I've been around, but I though I'd comment on your new set up. It's good to hear that you are keeping your eye on the prize, I know how large disease out breaks can really make us question our motives and expertise. What do you think your total turnover in GPH is? Can you give some specifics as to pumps and what GPH they pump at? I find it pretty interesting that you found it necessary to reinforce your floor, how did you come to this assumption? I am very interested in your set up, as I am setting up a 220 gallon tall tank, no floor reinforcement, with about 6000gph which equals about 27 times turnover per hour. I'll be filling my 220 up with water next week (sitting half full right now) I can't wait! How are you returning your water to the main tank? Is it with a manifold, seaswirl, etc? Sorry for all of the questions, but I would love to see how you chose to solve some of the problems that come with a tank of this size.
 
OK time for an update :D

Here is the tank as it is of tonight. The hood is now in place and hides the glare from the halides. The tank is still open top but at least we dont h ave to wear shades in the house anymore :D Still need to do some work on the hood but its getting there.

(before the hood)
tanklightshot.gif



After the hood
tankhood1.jpg


The left hand side of the tank,
newleft.jpg


The center
newcenter.jpg


My new pair of clowns
clowns.jpg


Orange zoos
orangezoos.jpg



Crocus boring clam
crocusclam1.jpg



Venusta angel
venusta.jpg


hope you like :)
 
amazing tank! and i thought my 5ft was big.. :X

its looking real good and full of life. Hopefully i can get to this stage soon :)

can you list the equipment/ system that is running this please :D
 
Full of life... hmm.. Well after the tank wipeout all that remains are my 2 purple tangs, a flasher wrasse and a couple of chromis.. oh and 2 clowns that came this week. If you sit in front of it i can assure you that its not full of movment
:sad: However, time is on my side and patience is the important thing. I have 3 more purple tangs arriving in about a month and this will complete my shoal. Then i will concentrate on the powerheads and get some tunze streams hopefully.


As for the equipment on the tank....

4x Aquaclear 3000 powerheads
2x Ehiem Ocean runner 3500 pumps

All of these are purely for water flow.

1x 100mg Ozone Unit connected to a Redsea Berlin Skimmer

1x Deltec MCE600 Skimmer (not connected yet but will skim from the sump.

2x 150w Halides (20k)
1x 400w Halide (10k)


Things to do...

Install a new Mineral mud sump
Install a new topup resovior

Build base decor to hide the stand

Fit the plumbing for hte sump

Purchase Tunze streams

Get more liverock (about another 20kg)

hope this helps. ;)
 
Dam I love this tank :wub:

Any chance of a update or some more pics on progress?

Did you complete your to do list?
 
Thanks for the comments :*)
Err my to do list... nope not one of them! :p There is good reason for this however!

OK an update.
As some of you might be aware, My tank has had an invasion of Majano and aiptasia, not small occurances here and there but full scale invasion that have caused havock with my setup.
I have lost my Gorgeous Deresa clam only a few days ago to these pests, and many of my other corals have been stung and are badly damaged :grr:
Basically im fighting a losing battle on at least one front at the moment and until i am on top of these pests i really dont want to add more corals or even liverock only to have them populate this also!

So what have i done to try and fight these critters??

Joes juice, Antiaiptasia, Vinegar. All work great but when you see the size of this tank and the enormity of my invasion you will see what i am up against! I can go through an entire bottle of Joes juice and this will be only 1 large size bit of liverock! SO how much joes juice/vinegar etc must i use to eradicate the problem and how can i do this without effecting water perameters on a large scale? For example.. My Deresa clam was nearly 1ft in length! A good size for a clam that i have had since it was no more than 5 inches. I had majano growing on its shell and stinging the mantle! I got rid of these of course easily but when trying to re-locate the deresa there was nowhere in my 7ft 200 gallon system that i could put the clam without it being in contact with either an aiptasia or majano :-( I did clear a space for it but sadly it never recovered from the initial stings and died only this weekend :-(

Next step in my defence... Peppermint shrimps! These seemto be doing the trick on the aiptasia even if its a bit of slow work at the moment as i dont have many in the system. THey wont touch the large aips of course but smaller new ones are not around for long. So on this front i feel i can say with a degree of certainty that i am winning the war (even if very slowly).

Peppermints however wont touch majano and these are as fast growing as aips are. Finding a natural predator for these critters is not as easy either :/ I have taken a few calculated risks over the last couple of weeks too as my desperation is growing. I initially purchased an emperor angel as these are known to munch on zoo's, button polyps and majano. Sadly it died soon after introduction.

Since then i have purchased a Tiger Cowrie.. NOT REEF SAFE and are known to munch on anything that they stumble across. I really dont mind to be honest as the coral that i do have can be transferred to a smaller tank should it munch on these. So far my gamble on the cowrie hasnt worked. It is currently happily munching through all my tunicates and sponges that are on view! I am willing to accept these losses in the hope that it will eventually run out of this food source and want something else.

I have also purchased a Long Nosed Yellow butterfly. Again NOT REEF SAFE. This was an even larger risk for me as i know these fish mainly feed on polyps. So far its not touched my corals (which im very greatful about) But it has eaten just about all my tiny tube worms that are on view (i know the tank has plenty of tunicates, tubeworms and sponges where the cowrie and fish cannot get at them so i wont lose them all). Again these are acceptable losses to me as long as it will divert its attention to the majano and aips at a later stage (they are known to eat them).

Lastly...
My latest secret weapon will be a NEW Emperor angel arriving this weekend! Its from a friends tank and its outgrown his system. Now i have high hopes for this fish as its a proven majano muncher! It has eaten all my friends majano in this tank so i know it has a likeing for them. As long as it acclimatises well im hopeful that within a month or so I can report that the tank is well on the mend again.

I havent any recent photos but i will post some over the weekend as i am going to a large meeting this weekend and this is when i was planning to post an update.

As a side note however...

The wife has finally upgraded her 10 gallon Nano to a 23 gallon Mini reef. I would have posted this in the Nano section but her tank is too large to post there now :p Again i have not posted any photos of this tank either but i do intend to do so this weekend after the meeting as i am sure she will have new things to show off in there!

Thanks to all of you who are following the thread and my appologies for not keeping it updated but things have got me slightly sidetracked lately. I will re-address the situation howver this weekend and post fresh picys :*)
 
Thanks :)

They are so demoralising to be honest. WHat is hard for me as a hobbiest is to see your hard work being destroyed before your eyes! Its not very good for motivation and i will be perfectly honest, if it wasnt for the sheer size of the system and the work involved in getting it into the house, I would probably have jacked it all in by now and just downgraded to a tank half this size. :*)

They say that larger tanks are easier to maintain and this is true in my instances. However its also very easy to miss things like these pests and before you know it the tank is overrun!
 
You have kids don't you, why not set one or two of them down at the tank at night with rubber gloves on there hands and syringes fll of Kalkwasser, its not as reliable a killer on big anemones (more than two inches tall) but on things smaller it works well, and its cheep, and it helps maintane Ca and CO3 levels
 
My kids!!! I know where they have been!!! I wouldnt let them go anywhere near my tank water with their hands :sick:
 
Can I borrow the Emperor after it's eaten all your mojanoes? Will it fit in a 40g?

Kidding of course, good to see you're making some headway in the fight against the pests and nice to have a big Reefer back - too many puddles around these days :p
 
23 gallons in my books is just FINE to post in the nano section. Bring on the missus' tank. SH
 
Sorry to hear about this Nav, your tank is beautiful. Hopefully your hardwork will payoff and then you can carry on building up a great reef tank.

I found an Aiptasia on one of my LR pieces and after about 2weeks there are now 2 of them. After reading this i will diffently be picking up a peppermint tommorow to get rid of them before they grow and reproduce :crazy:

Goodluck

Dan
 

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