Here's a fish that you don't see that often

[steveweast]

Just a few T5's...most cold water creatures are non photosynthetic , yet have large enough polyps to easily feed with brine or cylclopseze......another great benefit of cold water systems.


Apparition....it's my box that also got me into cold water reefing. It has been so much easier than warm water reefing.....minimal lighting, little to no fish disease, no calcium problems or additions, no coraline algae, minimal algae blooms.....most of the plagues of our warm water systems are not an issue with cold water systems. The cold water really slows down all the things that are the bane of warm water reefing...like disease, algae, and huge power comsumption from the intense lighting. All you need is a modest tank....say a 55....a small sump with a small skimmer, and of course a chiller. It is best to have the tank custom built ,though, so you can increase the wall thickness to 1" to eliminate sweating. Next weekend, I'm off to collect the final piece to my reef....strawberry anemone covered rocks. This is what they look like...

http://www.oceanlight.com/lightbox.p...is_californica

[Detritivore]

wow, simply amazing Steve. what do you mean by "sweating"? also, how hard is it to locate coldwater livestock?

-thanks

[jwalters103]

by "sweating", i think he means having condensation form on the outer glass.

[steveweast]

Yes...condensation...the water temp is 58 - 60....and the outside air temp could be 80 or more.....it's even worse if you live in a high humidity area. Think of a glass of ice water on a summers day....SWEATING. The solution is to insulate the tank and sump. Acrylic is a good insulator.....my tank and sump have yet to sweat a drop.... winter or summer.... with their 1" thick acrylic.


Cold water livestock is currently hard to come by, but not impossible...but, as more folks venture into this arena, that will change. Right now, there are quite a few cold water animals that make it into our warm water stores...catalina gobies, wartah anemones, turbo snails, white bar boxes, margarita snails, red foot snails, several stars...oh, and those green/red rose anemones that were all the rage last summer that flooded the market....but, somehow died after a few weeks....they were collected from a temperate region in China...or so, I'm told.

[Detritivore]

do they need high flow like SPS? do you know where i could find some info on coldwater stuff?

-thanks again

[steveweast]

In general....cold water stuff doesn't need near the flow that we provide in our sps tanks......the strawberry anemones do need a bit of flow, though....but, nothing compared to an sps tank. I have a single Tunze Stream (dialed down) in each of my two cold tanks for flow....plus the sump return, of course.


You know.....there's not that much info out there on cold systems.....it's a chicken and egg kind of thing....there's no info/stock for cold tanks because no one has a cold tank.....AND....no one has a cold tank because there's no info or stock. But, it has been done for many years....just not to the point of commercial success like warm tanks. The wholesaler in Tasmania had no problem selling to me....they mostly sell to just universities and public aquariums. I think I was their first hobbiest.

[Kreeger1]

Your tank has always been in my top 3 favorites of all time, amazing
Erik

[Freed]

Will you post in this thread when you post your cold water tank? Also, what about Wartley's box fish, are they cold water? Do you have any? Are they originally from Hawaii or am I thinking of something else?

[derrikd]

very nice

[steveweast]

I'm not sure what a "wartley's box" is....do you mean a "whitley's box" ? If so, then yes, they are hawaiian...and thus warm water.

[ezhoops]

Steve be careful or your going to start a new craze, I mean trend!

[Freed]

Yes, whitley's. Sorry and thanks.

[Apparition]

Steve,

What about for the white-bar boxfish? What size tank would you recommend? Perhaps this is something I can look into. I'm sure I can't get it done in time to save the one at Coral Oasis, but it seems like it would be very interesting and a lot simpler with more simplistic lighting and design. As for the 1" acrylic, that would be easy enough to come by. Several good acrylic manufacturers down by me.

I've always been fascinated by the white-bar. Mostly from your own pictures and thought it would be great to have one some day, but when I found out it was temperate I though that might be over. Maybe not though. What about things like salinity and ph? What do you shoot for in a temperate tank?

[steveweast]

White bars don't move that much....so, they don't need alot of space. I'd say a single white bar would be fine in a 40 or a 55. Throw in about 20 catalina gobies and a few stars and you have a great, manageable display. All the warm water parameters are the same for cold water.

It's kind of funny....everyone (including me) for the past decade have always dismissed cold water tanks and their inhabitants as colorless. lifeless, and power intensive. But, with the way our sps reefs have evolved, that couldn't be farther from the truth. The more that I look into what's available, the more that I'm impressed.

[Apparition]

I think that would make a very great display. Definitely something I'm going to be looking into. I can't wait for your site to be updated with all of the info.

Thanks a lot for the inspiration.

[billblass_44]

nice setup

[kimoyo]

Steve,

I can't wait to see how you aquascaped a 120G. But what did you do different knowing you need to keep the water so cool. I had my 120G made from 1" acrylic partly for insulation as well but didn't worry about the sump (which I should have thought about). But with pumps, skimmers, uv's, lights and even just plumbing they all add up and having a 1/2hp chiller running all the time has to pad that electricity bill. Once you cool it down all you have to do is worry about your heat inputs but that can still be big.

So what did you do (especially with your plumbing and pumps)? How long is your chiller on every hour?

[steveweast]

Things that minimize heat imputs...

1) chiller is remotely located.....so, it's heat exhaust doesn't affect the tank.

2) a single Sequence pump ( 1 amp), that has an output of 3000 gph, runs everything....returns, skimmer, po4 reactor.

3) no UV...no Ca reactors....there is ozone through the skimmer though. The skimmer is Deltec 702....so, minimal heat generation there.

4) lights are just four 48" T5's on one tank and six 24" on the other.

Overall....there's not much heat additions. When I was monitoring the chiller this past summer, it was turning on for about 15 minutes....then off for about an hour. The set up is very simple...nothing fancy...just a very basic system with no where near the sophistication of my main reef.

[Meisen]

Cold tanks are a lot of fun.....I designed, built and ran a couple a little while back when I had collecting permits. They were all NE Atlantic type tanks with usual shallow water species. I always cycled with a few chick lobsters and celebrated the completion of the cycle with a nice dinner! Typical species were: juv hake and cod, flounder, killis, silversides, rock crabs, wart anemones, large red anemones (sp unknown), mussels, mole crabs, sea stars, rock urchin, pink sea cucumber and many more.

As to the sweating issue, I found a different solution for our glass tanks (as Steve has experienced, sweat isnt much of an issue with thick acrylic). We put a slotted grate around each tanks front frame and ran air over them. Each tank was also polished with Vuarnet No-Fog wax. Between the two, sweat was a non issue even on 80 degree humid days.

I will dig around and see if I have any pics.