Our Tbs

[jezzeaepi]

Is there a common name for MgCl? Where do I get it?

How do you guys have your flow set up? While trying to set up proper flow for my open brain, it occured to me that I had wayyy to much flow. No matter where I put the brain You could see that the flesh on it was being blow too hard. It was being compressed against the skeelton, and it didnt look too happy.

**The blue squares are seio 620's. The red lines represent the approximate flow stream from the PH. The blue rectangle in the later pictures is my mj1200. The green areas indicate areas of cyano growth on the substrate.**

Heres my flow when I first set up the tank. So we have 1240 gph flow at this point. The Problem here was that I had excessive cyano growth in the areas covered in green on the diagram.



After a few months I got sick of the cyano not going away and thought it had something to do with my flow being too low in those aeras.


I re-angeled my Seios so they were pointing more towards the corners. This worked much better for the cyano along the sides, but there was still cyano growth along the back wall of the tank.

I then added a mj1200 to flow along the back wall of the tank. Now we are at 1500gph.




This was working great for the detrus and my TBS corals, but once I added the brain it appeared to be too much for the poor guy, even at the bottom with rocks surounding him partially to break some of the flow. The solution was to simply remove the seio closest. Now we have 900gph and the flow pattern is like this.



Do you think this is good? Creates a lower flow in half of the tank for some of the inhabitants, while ealving a high flow areas for the others.

[BrianPlankis]

Jesse,

I think that flow should work fine. But it doesn't really matter what I think keep a close eye on your tank inhabitants and see how they adjust to the new flow, that will determine if it is good or not.

Cheers,

Brian

[jmait769]

Brian – I forgot to measure that 80 gallon tank but managed tonight. It is 48” wide – 18” deep and 22 ¾“ high. It was purchased at PetsMart.

I have been putting together my sump, it is not ready, but had to put the pump into use. Thought you all would like to see a Mag18 in action. I live in Las Cruces, New Mexico about 45 miles north of El Paso, TX. You may have seen it has been flooding. Well, Las Cruces was not immune and my neighbor’s back yard filled up within minutes after a storm and it was putting a lot of pressure on my stone wall. The water actually got higher then this but these are the only pictures I was able to take. It took the mag18 and my wife’s pond pump (Quiet One 3000) about 4 hours to bring down the water to a safe level!!

This is my daughters boyfriend, Aaron, helping me out!! Took him out to dinner the next day!!






Jay

[techreef]

Jay,

Here are a couple pics of my CL, finally. Sorry it took me so long. If you have any questions, fire away. Oh, and re: the pic of the supply line leading down to the Sequence Marlin pump (sitting on the floor), I also obviously plumbed a return line back up from the pump to the 90-degree elbow shown in one of the other pics, which connects the return pipe to the manifold sitting on the top of the tank. My return line has a ball valve true union in it, like the supply pipe shown in the pic.







two creatures I'm becoming VERY familiar with. Found 2 more mantis shrimp (couldn't get the 1/4" one out of the rock, even w/ seltzer) and one of my base rocks has 5-6 gorillas still in it. And I hear clicking that sounds bigger than the 1/4" mantis.... sigh.

[jezzeaepi]

It has been about 4 months since the first part of the package went in. I am still batteling a few algea patches and cyano. The only things that have been added to the tank other then what TBS sent me are the open brain coral, and a tubinaria peltata.

Heres the "pic goodness":

Full tank:


Left side:


Right side:


Random shots:




cont..

[jezzeaepi]

Close up of one of the many tbs colonies:


My newest addition:



Peace

[jezzeaepi]

There are another 4 or 5 rocks with decent sized coral colonies running along the back wall.. Too much stuff too be able to have it all on the front.

[Alatriel]

Our 55 TBS reef sprang a serious leak at 3 am. We drained it and put all the rock, corals, anemone and fish into tubs. All the sand went into buckets.
We have powerheads circulating the water and tomorrow I'll be moving the lights over top the tubs. It might take a day or two to get everything back up due to the massive cleanup of the floors. How long can they be in the tubs without causing problems? I'm worried about the cup corals and anemone mostly.

I'm just glad I went to check the front door to see if it was locked up.

[BrianPlankis]

Originally posted by Alatriel
Our 55 TBS reef sprang a serious leak at 3 am. We drained it and put all the rock, corals, anemone and fish into tubs. All the sand went into buckets.
We have powerheads circulating the water and tomorrow I'll be moving the lights over top the tubs. It might take a day or two to get everything back up due to the massive cleanup of the floors. How long can they be in the tubs without causing problems? I'm worried about the cup corals and anemone mostly.

I'm just glad I went to check the front door to see if it was locked up.

Oh wow! Sorry to hear about this I'm not sure how long things can stay in tubs, I've heard that water movement and stable temperatures are more important than lights for at least the first couple of days. Good luck in the recovery!

Brian

[jmait769]

techreef - Great! Thanks. Did you use 1” pipe for the manifold? Looking at the size of that pump, is there to much flow? Did you have to throttle it back some with the ball valve? For my setup I’m trying to manifold the return and then setup a closed loop something like this from Melev's site: Closed Loop

jezzeaepi – Awesome pictures!!

Alatriel – Everyone’s worst fear! Hope the cleanup goes quickly. I upgraded to a larger tank and I used the tubs for temporary storage. I went a few days with no lights. Like Brian said, I just made sure there was good flow and maintained the temperature.

Jay

[techreef]

Jay,

Yeah, my CL is a mutant of Melev's setup from that link. I didn't like the idea of a wavemaker device in the CL though, 'cause 1)i don't need more crap to maintain/clean in this hobby, 2)i get nice random flow by using more outflow nozzles that collide w/ each other, and 3)my setup has no moving parts, ie the KISS method. The entire CL is 1" pvc. (all the black pvc in the pics) The pump is pushing around 1800gph, or would be, if I didn't have it throttled back a bit w/ the return line ball valve. (not pictured, but same as supply line ball valve) I would like to run it wide open, as it gives me near 20X turnover in the tank, but the noise, while quiet, is just too obtrusive for our living room. (The Marlin pump gets quieter as you throttle it back. I think it also uses less electricity, but i'm not sure if this feature is included in the Marlin pump. other Sequence pumps do this, for sure.) I'll just have to accept it and get stuff that doesn't need huge flow. With so many outputs, the flow is nice and random, as I've pointed most of the outputs so that the water flows collide w/ each other and create life-like randomization of the currents in the tank.

If you're interested in using black pvc, www.savko.com sells it in several different diameters. Any pvc fittings you see in my pics that are white is because savko didn't sell black versions of those fittings.

[jmait769]

techreef – Thanks, I agree on the KISS method!! This gives me some ideas and I appreciate it. I will post some pics as soon as I get mine up and running. I’m having a heck of a time getting this sump completed. I ordered a new skimmer and they did not send the pump! This has set me back a week. The final (I hope) plumbing pieces showed up Friday.

Post some pics of your whole tank with the TBS when you can. From the pictures you posted it looks like a nice setup!!

Jay

[jezzeaepi]

That sucks about the leak =( Good thing you caught it before it was too late. Thats why I went with an acrylic tank this time around. Ive had two tanks spring leaks on me in the middle of the night. I dont trust silicone anymore.
Kepp the flow good and the temp stable and they should eb fine for a few days. If you are moving your lights to your tub make sure they are not that much closer to your corals then they were on the tank, or that could cause more harm then having the lights off in the first place. Not having light will stress them a little, but it happens from time to time in the wild(i.e. storm). However, should the light intensity be stepped up all of the sudden that could cause a lot of stress.


Its too bad most of the corals closed up when I shut off the pumps to take pictures. They all are so pretty. Some are just brown, but some have some flourscent greens and reds in them.


What all do you guys feed your tanks, how much, and with what frequency?
I consider giving everything in the tank the food it needs a great challenge. With coral colonies, hermits, porcelain crabs, shrimp, snails, cucmbers, brittle stars, pods, etc, it seems like theres a lot of mouths to feed.

Lately Ive been mixing some reef chili(2 scoops) with some formula one(1 cube) and frozen mysis shrimp(1 cube). Ill throw in a few pieces of cut up shrimp as well for the brittle stars. I do this every 2 - 3 days. I was also adding a half dose of DT's pythoplankton every day till I ran out.

[Safir]

I was feedign everythign seperate and it was driving me nuts and i was having a hell of a time with hair algae, so I took all my fish foods, including favious frozen seeafood, reef chilli sweetwater's zooplankton, and a phytiplankton (micro-vert i believe) and made up my own food, threw the seafood and some RO water in the blender and ground it up nice and small, then threw in some of the rest and froze the whole shebang into ice cubes - i throw one cube in my sump a week and everything pigs out on it, feeding off pods, algae, etc the rest of the week - the algae has begun to subside big time and everything else seems to be doing fine. the only things i spot-feed anymore are the "big predators (anemone and serpent star) who get a piece of shrimp or krill each a few times a week.

My tbs corals dont appear to be doing any worse than when i was feeding fish food daily and filter feeder food every 2-3 days, the onyl thing suffering is nuisance algae - I say doing any worse because under my MH lighting many of them have been slowly declining from day 1

[jezzeaepi]

Ive been struggling with cyano and hair algea as well. My nitrates started at 30~ish after my cycle had completed. Weekly water changes of 5 gallons left the nitrates pretty stagnant. Even if I stopped feeding the nitrates didnt seem to drop much. I gave up and just started doing two water changes a week(about 3 weeks ago). I have them down to 5-10 now. Hopefully they will be gone in a week or two.

After reading Eric Bornemans take on feeding the reef I was a bit suprised by his expereinces with "heavier" feeding. This is what originally inspired me to feed more often. I figure I can test for nitrates to know if I'm over feeding, but theres no way I can test for underfeeding.

[Alatriel]

Thanks everyone.

Spent the better part of the day cleaning up the mess and getting a new tank.

Been testing tubs every 6 hours to make sure params stay normal. So far so good. We decided to use the fuge light instead of the big light due to heat issues and coral bleaching. Feed sparingly for the next few days and keep up with the testing. The fish, anemone, and corals will be keep in the tubs until I make sure any mini cycle is over.

It looks like the bottom silicone seal let loose. I guess the old tank will be resiliconed and used at a later date for a bigger sump or refuge for the 125.

Nothing more that I can do to insure that everything survives except waterchanges if things start to go bad.

[Safir]

I'm sure you could find foster homes or babysitters for your livestock in your local reef club if it looks like you'll be stuck waiting a while for the new tank to be ready...

[jezzeaepi]

Cyano has been the scourge of my tank. After batteling 20+ nitrates for few months, I finally got them down to 4 or 5. The cyano is still growing. I decided to check the tanks phosphate levels and found they were rather high, 0.5. I tested my water source, nothing. I tested my mixed SW, nothing.
What steps can I take to safely reduce them? Ive read that the "phosphate" media tends to cause other problems in the tank when used.

[drk70]

Run a phosban reactor.

I do and I think most people that have TBS rocks do.

[techreef]

I received Part II this weekend, and Richard outdid himself yet again. He sent a hulking mutant of a rock weighing 50lbs just by itself in my Part II package. It looks like shale in that it's very smooth and flat, measuring about 2' long by 1' wide. Of course it has sponges and corals on it, yet to be ID'd. But here is the good part: Richard was worried that I may not be able to fit this huge rock into my tank, so he packed an additional 20lbs of smaller rock in my Part II shipment just in case. That was super cool.

Will post pics soon. I asked Richard not to send me any anemones, as I'll be keeping slow-moving fish like a mandarin in the future, and didn't want to accidently feed the anemones. So instead, Richard was great and sent me 1) a porcelain crab, 2)3 shaving brush plants and 2 halimeda plants, 3)a BRIGHT orange tree sponge, 4) a beautiful purple gorgonian, 5) a white branching coral w/ purple polyps, and 6) a tiger goby, to keep my Part I hitchhiking tiger goby company.

Richard, thank you very much once again!

On to aquascaping. And more aquascaping. And again....

[BrianPlankis]

techreef,

Sounds like you SCORED! What an impressive collection of extras he sent you Please post pictures

Brian

[dazld]

Hi you guys, I haven't popped up for a while but keep up as time allows. I hope I'm not asking something thats already been answered but here goes. Last summer I bought a 90 gal tank with sump that had tbs rock. Thats what I wanted and it just came up in the local paper. Plus I was happy to think that any pests would have already been caught. Wrong about that, so after a few months I had a friend help me unload all the stuff out of the tank to catch gorilla crabs (we brought in a 55 gal to do this, took 6 hrs start to finish and was exhausting). We got four and I thought it was done. I realized a few months ago that there had to be another one in there. This past week I actually saw it. So, short of pulling this tank apart again, does anyone have a suggestion of what I might do to get it out? The nice young fellow at the lfs suggested a yellow coris wrasse, but they were out of them that day. Any thoughts on that, or some other remedy. OH PLEASE!

Next question, I have been trying to put together a plan for making my own RO water for a long time. Could anyone suggest the best system to buy and the best place to buy it? And, since I have the 90 gal and also a 12 gal nano, I need to harvest a lot of water. How are those of you making your own RO collecting and storing water?

I have more questions but have been interupted since I started this and it is late.

Thanks for any help.

Patsy

[Red_Six]

I cannot offer advice on getting rid of you crab. I control my crab population with mantis shrimp.

I would recommend Air, Water and Ice for your RO/DI system. They have good prices and carry every kind of system to meet your needs. One tip I can offer that will extend your DI filter and give you better water is to manually bypass the DI filter and waste the first 10 minutes of water that is filtered. It takes a few minutes for the RO membrane to start working good and you will find the TDS levels start out higher than desired and then slowly tapper off. I set up a Rubbermaid 44 Gallon Brute trash can in my garage as a collection tank. I use a float valve on the trash can to automate the filling, and I plumed a Rio pump on the inside to circulate the water and allow me to pump into a bucket through a header.

[techreef]

Thought that I'd liven up this thread a little bit with the first pics of my tank, after I aquascaped it and installed the fan in the canopy, which allowed me to finally reassemble my tank and canopy.




Does anyone know what kind of coral this is? It was a freebie.

[techreef]

Jeez, sorry about the extreme close up pic before of that coral!

I have some bad news to report. Yesterday, I spotted and netted a cirolanlid. Brian, how long do i need to keep my tank fish-less in order to insure that no cirolanids survive in my tank?