Need Help, need ideas for new propagation room!

[Blue9]

Hey,

I have recently been lucky enough to receive a room 19 feet x 9 feet to use as a coral propagation/fish breeding room. The main interest is the propagation, and probably just three rows of tanks down the wall for the fish.

My question for anyone willing to give some advice is....where should I start. haha.

The plan is to mostly grow soft corals, zoos and such, with possibly one tank with SPS. So that is the basic idea behind what I am looking for. My idea is to have a large row of flatbeds down the middle of the room or against the other wall, with long wide and low height tanks (6 inches). I have thought about making more then one rack of them and I am sure that would be possible also.

I would also be setting up a new system for that room, so it would need it's own pumps and lights and skimmers so that it is completely separate from the other tanks in the building. Not sure what the requirements are for just propagation tanks, lighting, skimmers etc... Also not sure if I should run the row of fish tanks on the same system or on a separate one from the corals.

I guess that is probably a good place to start. It's not that I am overwhelmed by this task, I would just like to do it in the most efficient way possible to optimize the space I have, therefore I am looking to all the many experienced people on this site.

Thanks for your help and ideas.

Blue

[go4broke44]

you should just make the entire room a fish tank. get some fiberglass matting and resin, and coat the walls and floor with like 6 coats and then fill with water. haha, just kidding, although im sure thats everyone's dream to have a step-in tank. my only useful advice is just to draw everything out to scale, and design it from there. your tanks seem to be pretty shallow, and i don't know how mechanically ept you are, but home depot sells acrylic sheets for decent prices, and you could probably use 1/4" acrylic without any problems to make tanks out of.

[ALTI]

6" is really shallow. you cant fill it all the way to the rim, so realisticall its oly 5". i use 12" tanks. many corals you get are over 6" tall.

[Blue9]

The reasoning behind the 6 inch tall tanks is, the shallower the tank the more light and the more oxygen the corals will have. For an SPS frag that is 1 inch tall it will grow much quicker if it is in this shallow of water as long as you properly adjust it to it at the beginning by lowering the light down towards it.

As far as the soft corals go, six inch deep tanks isn't a problem at all, and for lighting I am guessing some 6500K fluorescence is all I will need for those.

The other things I had in mind would be a sump/refuge with Chaetamorpha culture, as well as phytoplankton reactor. Obviously live rock will be incorporated. And I am thinking about doing a sand bed in the soft coral tanks for nutrient recycling, but bare bottom tanks in the sps tanks.

Any ideas on this stuff would be great, or criticism or suggestions.

Thanks

Blue

[ALTI]

u can raise the corals with eggcrate to whatever depth u want, but if u only have 6" you dont have the option. i've run into the problem of too shallow a tank before and just want to give u a heads up. i didnt think i needed any more room, but i did.

the first system i had made plans for was in almost the exact same sized room. check out the economy fiberglass troughs from aquaticecosystems.com. they are 8'x24"x12". its a good size and a really good price. u should be able to fit one on top of each other to maximize space. i was able to squeeze 14 of these into a 24x10 room if i remember correctly.

rubbermaid tubs are a good and economical sump and refuge option.

dont bother with NO flourescents. your hair will grow faster than the corals. halide or t5 will do.

[Blue9]

wow, this is all the right kind of information I am looking for, looks like I found the right person to talk to since it looks like your occupation is frag farmer, haha.

alright, I will do that, I will go with a 12" tank instead. And you think I should use t5s and halides right away? I was thinking about that and was hoping soft corals would get away with using NO's.

As far as setting up the room with LSS and Sump and Refuge, I am not sure yet. If you wouldn't mind I would like to pick your brain a little more Alti. Is their a chance I could see some pictures of your set up, or a little more information.
It looks as though a lot of people do propagation, but not a lot do it on the scale that you or I am talking about.

Thanks

Blue

[ALTI]

here's some picks of the system being built.
http://altisreef.com/setup.html

since i had alot of space and not alot of money i ended up using rubbermaid stock tanks. they work great, but youwould waste way too much space in your room. after the new year i am setting up another system like this, but will be using the fiberglass tanks. in tthe same footprint i can fit 9 of these compared to the 8 rubbermaids i currently have. thats 144 square feet of water compared to the 64 i have now. much better use of space, but the lighting will also cost alot more.

hows your funding on this project? this determines alot of what u can and cant do. you dont have to do the whole room at one time, but u really need to plan everything out in detailbefore u start. make sure u can afford everything before u begin.

check out the thread " showoff your prop system" . it will give u alot of ideas.

[Blue9]

very nice set up!!

Did you ever think about running multi levels? The ceilings in my room are fairly high, so I am thinking I need to use vertical space as well as horizontal.

What kind of lighting do you have on each of those tanks? Looked like two halides in a spider reflector, curious as to K value, make, and ballast selection.

Also what types of coral are you growing in the tanks. Because I am planing on doing a mixture, I think I am going to need a controller, like neptune or something, with two nodes probably a ph and a temp that can keep the sps tank at around 80 and the soft coral tanks around 76, and also a higher ph in the sps tank.

My other issue is that once I go vertical, I need to somehow get my refugium even higher then the top tank in order to let gravity feed the tank....

so many questions, I feel like planning this is the hardest thing I have ever had to do, heheh

[ALTI]

in your space i would definately do multi level.

there is just 1 250 watt halide in each reflector. on the 4 softie tanks i am using 10k on 2 tanks for growth, 20k on one tank for color and one tank has 4x65 watt 10k pc lighting for frag attatching. for some reason ive always had better luck with softie frags attatching under pc than halides. sometimes mushrooms will shrivel up under the halides when i cut them, so i like to leave anything i actually cut under the pc untill it heals.

the 4 hard coral tanks have the same lighting setup. only differenced is the lights are a little closer to the water.

the hard and soft corals are seperate systems each with their own sump. u must keep them seperate. the softie cuttings release alot of slime into the water and u dont want any of that on your sps. this also allows me to keep the proper tank parameters for each type of coral.

i also recycle the water. it helps waste less salt. when i do a water change i first remove water from my rock curing tanks. then i take water from the softie tanks and fill up the rock tanks. next i take water from the sps tanks and refill the softie tanks. last i add new salt water to the sps tanks. this way i do 3 water changes only using 1/3 the ammount of new water.

[ALTI]

forget about controllers. its pretty easy to keep the temps stable on these systems since they are so big. as long as u can keep the room temp pretty stable u r ok.

i just use homemade 2 part calcium buffers and kalk(pickling lime) to raise calcium levels in the sps tank. only thing i dose in the softie tanks is a little iodine.



HUMIDITY MUST BE WELL THOUGHT ABOUT. these suckes evaporate a huge ammount of water. in your space u will need a couple large dehumidifiers to remove the water or u r in trouble.

[Blue9]

those all sounds like great ideas.

I like the idea of the pc healing tank, I can definitely see the biological reasons behind that. How do you decide what frags go under 10k and what under 20k? Simply pick the more colourful ones and let them grow slower but keep their colours?

Seperate systems eh, I was afraid of that. That increases the cost a lot. Is their a way to have seperate systems but still use one piece of equipment for both ie. skimmers, Ca reactors, phyto/refugium reactor. For the amount of water running throught these systems it is going to suck have to buy multiples of these things. On top of this I will have some tanks with fish in them for breeding, I am curious if maybe I could hook up the fish tanks and the softies and have a system just for the sps.

I like your water change method also....hmmm

[ALTI]

i have no experience with fish. i'd rather spend the money on ora fish. it will probably cost u more money to raise them yourself. IMO its not worth it on a commercial basis.

most of the equipment is going to be on the sps tanks anyway. u dont need a calcium reactor for softies. the only thing u need to buy 2 of is a skimmer.

i growout frags under the 10k's (6500k is probably better, but thats another story) and when they are 3/4 grown out i move them to the 20k.

[Blue9]

yeah yeah, I didn't mean calcium reactor for softies..oops

homemade 2 part calcium buffers eh, I would like to hear more about that.

Yeah I have been thinking about humidity as well, I was trying to think up a system for the roof that could collect the water like a gradient from one end to the other and allow it to run off back into a holding tank to be reused after thorough testing of course, heh. Just an idea

yeah I was assuming I would be using 6500k for the grow out. Are you typically cutting one inch frags for sps? What size do you consider "grown out" for selling?

[ALTI]

this is the homemade buffer recipe

http://www.advancedaquarist.com/issu...l2004/chem.htm

dont reuse the evaporation water. it picks up some nasties in the air. i use the evaporation water to cure frag plugs.

i just setup the sps system so i havnt done any cuttings yet. still working on brood stock. im trying to get larger sized corals so i can start out chopping them into 2"-4" frags and grow from there.

[Blue9]

nice,

is their a reason why you don't use 6500k instead of the 10k??

[Blue9]

also like to add, man does my head hurt.
it was my birthday last night and the boys didn't go easy on me, hehe

[ALTI]

happy birthday,

i couldnt make up my mind on the k temp so i just went with the best of both worlds. i get enough color and growth out of the 10k's. a couple of my 10k's were burning really yellow until i backed them out. i had a few customers come in and the corals looked terrible under the yellow light. they didnt touch the stuff from those 2 tanks.

[Blue9]

did you ever think about supplementing them with an actinic? Or thought it was just better to go with the 10k altogether?

[ALTI]

more bulbs=more complicated=more money. i like the keep it simple stupid approach. one ballast one bulb per tank.

start making frag plugs nowif u r serious with this project. i keep running out and waiting for them to cure is like watching paint dry.
your going to need alot. i fit like 250 in each tank so i need 2000 to fill it up. im running out of places to cure them. my friends think im crazy when i ask them if i can use their toilet.

[hail_sniper]

http://www.bostonaquafarms.com/ is a good place to get plugs if you dont feel like making them your self, decent price

lol, so you really can cure them in the toilet tanks?

[ALTI]

toilets tank cures them super fast.

bostonaquafarms is convenient but alot more expensive than making your own. it costs .25 for each one from them. most of the ones i make are bigger(2") and i can make roughly 5000-6000 for under 100 bcuks.

[Blue9]

do you use the same recipe as everyone else, the sand plus oyster shell plus concrete mix??
If not, what is your method and what do you use as your molding block? and it's something like 12 weeks for them to cure right?

[ALTI]

i use 1 part cement 4-5 parts crushed coral and 1 part sand. for 3" plugs i use an empty roll of duct tape, for 2" i use a 2" pve coupling and for 1" i use a 1" pvc coupling. i just put the coupling over a wood board, pour the mix in, flatten out and remove the coupling. for the larger plugs u dont need the nipple, they are too big to move around alot. i tried drilling holes in the wood to make ther nipple on the smaller ones but that didnt work. im going to try it with styrofoam tonight and see how that works.

[ALTI]

i let mine cure for 3-4 weeks in fresh water and then 1-2 weeks in salt water. the thinner i make the plugs and the less cement i use the faster they cure.

[RicksReefs]

switch the portland for 2 part epoxy and cure time is a few days.