My Saltwater Planted Tank/Reef

[acbaldwin]

This was my foray back into reefing after a few years out, and the tank has changed so much since I started it in July that it's time for a new thread!
It started as a 35c mixed reef, then quickly moved to a 40b mixed reef/macros, and is now a ~60 almost completely macro/reef.

The sump and display are both packed with macros. I pulled the skimmer a couple weeks ago to see how it would do long term. I'm confident it will be fine but I'll try to put my money where my mouth is!
Also very, very lax on water changes. I did one in the last two months, and that was because I needed to siphon out some nuisance Dictyota.

I dose iron and iodide. I was dosing KNO3 when I was skimming, but I stopped dosing that when I removed the skimmer. I've since noticed doubled polyp extension on my duncans and a significant reduction in GSA and diatoms.

Live stock includes:
Md-sm Hippo Tang (which is half the reason I upgrade and will probably do a 120 eventually!)
Picasso and Percula pair
Lineatus Blenny
Clown Goby
2x Peppermint Shrimp
Cleaner Shrimp
BIG Tiger Pistol Shrimp
2x Emerald Crabs
RBTA

Misc softies and LPS:
Frogspawn
Grandis Palys
Kedd's Reds
King Midas
A few tiny misc ricordias
Duncans
Pom Pom Xenia
Nuclear Greens
Red Tree Sponge
Orange Ball Sponge
Fire&Ice

I bought a DSLR recently and need a ton of practice, don't mind the onslaught of pictures

Macroalgaes include:
G. Mammillaris
C. Serrulata
Dragon's Tongue (looking for Dragon's Breath though!)
Red Titan/Bush
C. Brachypus
E. Spinosoma
C. Prolifera
Blue Scroll
Ulva
Red Graciliaria
Cladophora sp.
Sargassum
Codium
Halimeda

Equipment:
36" Chinese Full Spectrum LED
Eheim Compact 1000 Return Pump
Sun101 (?) Koralia3 Knockoff
Herbie drains
DIY 2ch thermal controller
Eheim Jaeger 200w Heater
Cooling via 2x 120mm fans
The sump is lit with two 17w CREE LED 3000k (or maybe 5k?) PAR38 lamps

 

[cymaster007]

Looks great! Ive always loved the look of that red flame macro algae. Good photos!

 

[SanClementeEric]

Love all the macros! Trying to get more myself. Your tank's not drilled, right? Using an overflow box? Are your sump lights on 24/7 or reverse cycle?

 

[Six2seven]

Very nice collection. My first thought was "he needs a nice set of scissors" and then I saw the scissors on your stand door lol


www.LAreefsociety.org

 

[xmas_one]

Nice setup! Would be funny, just corals in the 'fuge.

 

[erictorres0311]

Looked really good

 

[acbaldwin]

Looks great! Ive always loved the look of that red flame macro algae. Good photos!

Thank you!

Love all the macros! Trying to get more myself. Your tank's not drilled, right? Using an overflow box? Are your sump lights on 24/7 or reverse cycle?

Thanks! The tank is drilled, running herbie-style overflow with a DIY clear internal overflow. My display lights are running the usual 12hrblue - 8hr daylight, and the sump is running a reverse 12hr cycle. The sump is lit with two 17w CREE LED 3000k (or maybe 5k?) PAR38 lamps.
I'm always open to trade/etc. anything I've got extras of!

Very nice collection. My first thought was "he needs a nice set of scissors" and then I saw the scissors on your stand door lol


www.LAreefsociety.org

Thanks! Good scissors are a must! Definitely beats the usual fragging tools!

Nice setup! Would be funny, just corals in the 'fuge.

Thank you! And yeah... I've actually considered running a 'display reef' plumbed into this setup, just to give the corals a dedicated place to grow! But I've promised myself that I'd only do what I can fit on one stand, under one set of lights, to keep this under control.
I've gone down the six tanks road and I'm trying to stay away from that hahah!

 

[acbaldwin]

Whoops, just realized all my picture links were broken! Fixed now. Google+ acting up.
Spent an hour today trying to wipe out hints of bryopsis that sprouted out of my nuke greens. Peroxide dipped the greens and the midas's, removed what bryopsis I could and glued a bunch of G. Mammillaris over the top of it. That trick works well for other undesirable algaes... we'll see about bryopsis. With my luck I'll just end up with a bunch bryopsis-encrusted Mammillaris!
Also tried getting rid of Dictyota... They tried to tell me it was a nuisance, I never listened. :/

 

[acbaldwin]

Changed tanks this week! Moved to a 70g that I picked up from ndrwater (thanks again man!!!)

So I was playing video games with my brother last Friday night. New tank is next to me, just put water in to heat up before switching tanks.
Cat... jumps from my chair to the upper part of my desk. Falls off the desk, lands in tank. Douses me, my computer, my couch, my laptop, everything.

So that was fun.

Halfway through transferring livestock over. Picked up a QT cube from Dieu last night too. Gonna medicate with cupramine and maybe paraguard, and I'm gonna put some of the plants through it too just to see what happens.

My RBTA that moves every day seems to have finally found the perfect solution to his wanderlust... attached to a piece of macro that was floating around the tank!

Cleaner in his new home:

And just about all of my macros all in the new tank (no scape done yet!)

Got a new macro! Haven't ID'd it yet.

And the brown Graciliaria has been taking off:

Got my little $9 pumps in, they work nicely! Start up in the right direction every time (so far), good flow (~500gph is about right), easy to position, quiet, moderately-wide flow (between an MJ and a K2). Bought four, using three in the lagoon to get a nice slow but even flow.

So... freaking... psyched... to have some actual depth to the DT again.

QT is running. It's around a 12g cube, hopefully all my fish will be okay for a while in this. Keeping a close eye on them for sure. Started first dose of Cupramine yesterday. Cat hasn't learned her lesson.

I sure hope I'm not asking for trouble... it's sitting on top of my server cabinet. :hideeyes:

Spent yesterday doing the scape, thought I would need more LR (about 80 lbs here) but turns out I don't! I tried to give each macro its own rock to take over without worrying about things growing over each other. I plan on having about 60% of the sand taken up by rooted macros. Pretty happy with the scape. Marco Rock rules. Although I'd love to get my hands on some of the cerameco stuff.

The RBTA looked kinda cool since I half-pissed it off.

Got a bunch of red mangroves in on Wednesday. Still not sure where I want to put them. They're too short for my display, and I didn't want to do a planter box if I could help it. Maybe in the rocks, but I wanted a better substrate for them. :/

No pics, but added a bunch of new macros, a small royal gramma, a porcelain crab, a little green lettuce sea slug, and a bunch more clean up crew. Still need to add some margarita snails and a few pep shrimp.

Added a tiny little Diamond Goby too. When the guy at PK tried catching him, he disappeared. We found him three tanks over!

Today I'm adding rinsing and adding sand, and putting all my macros back in the DT. They're crammed in the sump right now.

Oh, I'm going to try to keep my QT up and running at all times as a fishless-invertless planted tank, just to have it ready to go when I get the fish-buying itch. Figure I'll be better about QTing if I actually have one ready to go.
Ordered an Eheim Compact 300 to run return for the rear chambers on the QT, and a cheapie 10w COB LED floodlight to retrofit into the hood to replace the old PCs.

 

[ndrwater]

Tank looks GREAT!! Definitely much better than dry in my garage!
Keep this pix coming!
BTW, you said you got a new DSLR, what kind? I've been kicking around the idea of getting one too.

 

[acbaldwin]

Tank looks GREAT!! Definitely much better than dry in my garage!
Keep this pix coming!
BTW, you said you got a new DSLR, what kind? I've been kicking around the idea of getting one too.

Thanks! I agree!!

My wife surprised me with it one day, Nikon D3200. Using the 18-55 kit lens (meeehhhhhh) and the Nikkor 35mm 1.8 prime (woo!). It's my first DSLR and I'm loving it, although I shoot in auto for almost everything. Haven't had time to really sit down and learn this stuff yet.

 

[ndrwater]

Thanks! I agree!!

My wife surprised me with it one day, Nikon D3200. Using the 18-55 kit lens (meeehhhhhh) and the Nikkor 35mm 1.8 prime (woo!). It's my first DSLR and I'm loving it, although I shoot in auto for almost everything. Haven't had time to really sit down and learn this stuff yet.

I was tossing between the D3200 and the D5200. Interesting that you aren't a fan of the 18-55 lens. Good to know.

 

[acbaldwin]

I was tossing between the D3200 and the D5200. Interesting that you aren't a fan of the 18-55 lens. Good to know.

It's still a helluvalot better than shooting with my phone, but the 18-55 is quite a bit less sharp and clear than my 35. That might just be the nature of prime vs. zoom (at least at my barrel-scraping price point), or it might be that I just don't know enough about photography to take great shots with it (very likely!).

 

[acbaldwin]

This update is from last month but I just realized I never posted it here!

We're looking good!

G. Hayi:

Bryothamnion sp.:

Galaxaura Sp.:

Mangroves doing well. Hoping for branches soon!

New green lettuce sea slug! Cool little bugger.

I made 250 DIY root fertilizer tabs yesterday and buried them in under the mangroves, Brachypus, Serrulata, and Prolifera. Hoping to see good results with that.

The Sargassum has completely died out, took about four months of steady decline. The Codium is on the same track. Lost its fuzziness, and rigidity, and thickness. Gave away most of it to someone in case they have better luck. Still have a little but it's not so hot.

Porcelain Crab!

Lost my hippo tang and Linear Blenny to a temp spike while in QT... really bummed me out. Built a temp controller for QT to keep that under control.

Seems to be doing well in medium light and medium-low flow.
I need to learn my camera better so I can get a proper depth of field on some shots.

Got the Dragon's Breath finally! (Thanks Dieu!)

Also added Red Fern, Codium, and a bunch of others! Got Wine Glass and a few others on the way as well!

 

[acbaldwin]

And here's this week's update:

I'm moving the C. Brachypus to a different tank soon since I have no room for it and it's growing too fast for my display, and the Prolifera and Serrulata aren't liking the light so I need to shuffle those around too. The Serrulata starts to bleach under high light, but seems perfect in moderate. I probably need to remover the optics from my LEDs to get a less intense spread.

So no pictures of the display right now, until I do my scape. Also need to redo the sump, I want move compartments to separate macros and I'm going to build a reverse underrubble filter to try to nurture my pod growth as much as possible.

But I do have a sweet pic of my Blue Scroll rock that has finally grown in and colored up! This macro is especially perfect in a shallow tank since the color comes out when you look topdown at it. From an angle it's still mostly brown.

 

[xmas_one]

Looking good! What are the dimensions on the new tank?

 

[acbaldwin]

Looking good! What are the dimensions on the new tank?

Thanks! New tank is 70g, 48" x 36" x 14" IIRC. Pretty much exactly what I was looking for!

 

[Six2seven]

wow such a nice tank must be nice watching macro algaes grow 10 times faster than sps.

 

[acbaldwin]

wow such a nice tank must be nice watching macro algaes grow 10 times faster than sps.

XD It's also nice being able to watch all your macros survive while everything else in your tank dies off!! ...wait... um...

Seriously though, this is the only way to be an impatient reefkeeper!

 

[Scout]

Love the macro set up! I've wanted to do this for awhile, but instead I just use my sump... Haha