Scaramanga IM 80 Bare Bottom Restart

[scaramanga]

Official restart Thread Started

Available Equipment
Chambers (Plans)
Far left: Big Media bag with Ceramic Rings in the bottom. Then Custom holder with Carbon bag and Filter floss on top of it.
Far Right: Big Media bag with Ceramic Rings in the bottom. Then Custom holder with filter floss
2nd chamber to the left and right: Heater only
Middle Shared Chamber: 2 Mighty Jet return pumps for the 4 returns. 2 Big Bags of Ceramic Media and Rubble Rock

When needed. Algae Scrubber to middle chamber. If more export needed. Skimmer to left 2nd chamber

Equipment
- 2 x Noopsyche K7 III Pro
- Noopsyche K7 IV Pro
- 2 x 100w Jager heaters
- 2 x Jebao MCP - 120 Gyre
- Tunze 3155 ATO (Not Online)
- Jebao DP 3 Doser (Not Online)
- 2 x Mightyjet 538 Return Pumps
- IOAOI Skimmer 80g Hang on
- Algae Clean Scrubber Hang on Sump ACS-7-Elite-G8 W/ Algae Tear Drop Flex Screen (Not Online)


Livestock(Plans)

- 2 x Ocellaris Clownfish (Round 1)
- Starry Blenny (Round 1)
- Carpenter's Flasher(Round 2)
- Pink-Streaked Wrasse(Round 2)
- Fairy Wrasse (Round 3)
- Royal Gramma (Round 3)
- White Tail Bristletooth Tang (Round 4)
- Blue Mandarin Dragonet (Round 5)


Flow

- Return's fully open
- Left Gyre to 30% Pulse Mode, horizontal.
- Random up to 100%. Mounted vertically bottom along the back wall. Top Part Slightly pointed towards last rocks.

Light Settings w/par
Pic with par. Settings are 90,90,20,90,90,20(Green and Red are the 20)

Future


Equipment and Stock List To be updated here

 

[scaramanga]

Painted the bottom with some ultra white ceiling paint I had leftover.

Rocks are in the final phase of bleaching. Rinsing the bleach out then will bake them dry. The bleach process was so insanely easy and all rocks literally look brand new.

Wife gave me a spot in the house where to put it. Ideally I would love to put it in the other room, but there is carpet in there and I have a bad track record of making a mess. So until we remove the carpet this is the spot. Plus once I remove the carpet I can justify a bigger tank for the other room since there is a ton of space!

 

[Deleted member 20245]

Looking good - while sterile rocks look cool and free of pests, you’ll pay for the ugly phase(s) and stability later. Have you considered getting some LRs from another tank and out in the sump? Or consider doing 50/50 LR/dry rock?

 

[scaramanga]

Looking good - while sterile rocks look cool and free of pests, you’ll pay for the ugly phase(s) and stability later. Have you considered getting some LRs from another tank and out in the sump? Or consider doing 50/50 LR/dry rock?

I am still thinking about it. I reached out to @joseserrano and was going to see if anyone wanted to split a 44lb live rock for $396 when it came time. Worst case is I'll go with the original plan of media bags out of my 15g and put them into this one.

 

[Jimbo327]

So it begins!

Nice! Get the tank wet, and put the rocks in there to start the curing process and cycle. The 15g media bags will do well to start the biome.

 

[drexel]

Get the live rock or at least a free pounds to seed it all. There’s no bacteria in a bottle that can do what actual live rock can do. You don’t need a ton, just enough to get it started.

 

[ndrwater]

Get the live rock or at least a free pounds to seed it all. There’s no bacteria in a bottle that can do what actual live rock can do. You don’t need a ton, just enough to get it started.

100% this...^^^^^^^^

 

[scaramanga]

Scape done. I don’t think I’ll ever pile rock again. So much work but the satisfaction is like no other

 

[Jimbo327]

Nice job! I'm still stacking rocks because I don't have the patience or skills to make structures.

 

[scaramanga]

Nice job! I'm still stacking rocks because I don't have the patience or skills to make structures.

Patience and a good pair of gloves. Some close calls where the gloves melted vs my skin.

 

[Capricious]

Looks nice! I was super paranoid setting up my 120g from prior experiences of pests so I opted with a fresh start too with acid/bleached rock. But for some reason my ugly phase and stability took way longer to establish than I anticipated.

 

[scaramanga]

I actually filled it 7/8. While I was out I grabbed 2 1/2lbs of live rubble from a local established tank.

Dosed Ammonium Bicarb 55g/450. Roughly 3ml = 1ppm nitrate. First dose on Sunday of 6ml. Then 3ml daily until yesterday. Tested Ammonia levels with saliferts and it was 0. Did a 12ml dose and will test later tonight when I get home. Assuming its all consumed. I'll check my nitrite levels. Dose another 18ml. Test again later in the weekend.

Going to go the route I did with my work tank, as that was all dry rock. Lights are going to be off for awhile, probably close to 5 weeks(will be based off testing and stability). No corals. Seed tank with Pods. Let that go for a week or so. I did do the Purple and pink coralline algae in a bottle in that tank, but I think I'm going to forgo that this time. See if I can grab an empty frag plug or a snail with a coralline shell in my work tank and use that to seed the coralline. The amount of coralline in that tank is crazy!

Plan is to come up with a semi stock list today. Figure out what rounds I want to add them in at.

 

[Jimbo327]

Don’t waste your money on coralline in a bottle when you already have it in your office nano. It’ll do just fine. Save the money to stock it with cool corals and fish.

 

[mescobar]

Nice scape, how many pieces was the final rockwork? how did you manage to get the scape in the tank in one piece? lol

 

[All Delight]

rockwork came out great! can't wait to see what this looks like in 6 months.

 

[scaramanga]

Nice scape, how many pieces was the final rockwork? how did you manage to get the scape in the tank in one piece? lol

I didn't count how many pieces I ended up using. It was quite a bit of gluing. Went through roughly 8oz. Harbor Freight had .1oz 10 packs for $2. So I only spent like $16. I originally bought 14 packs lol.

I scaped it into 5 sections that equally wouldn't tip over. Then moved those into place in the tank. Placed a folded paper towel under it to catch glue drip and extra sand. Then glued the 5 pieces together.

Funny story. Another thing I managed to forget when doing this was ,when I traced out the tank for size. The tank was upside down and I forgot about the sump chambers. So I had created the scape based on the dimensions of the entire tank vs the actual scapeable tank. Luckily I went super generous on how far I wanted to stay away from the sides and was able to manipulate it to fit perfectly.

Updated planned stocklist in the first post and order of which I plan to buy.

Was thinking of doing a snails only tank for the bare bottom. Anyone have thoughts on this. Was thinking trochus, Astraea, and Nerite. Maybe a couple peppermint shrimp. Urchin? Anyone have any opinions or recommendations on crew for a bare bottom?

 

[mescobar]

Smart for building the final structure in the actual tank itself.

I love urchins, they are workhorses and even helps manage coralline algae once it starts to grow out of hand. You'd probably be fine with snails, not sure if a peppermint would help other than eating leftover food.

Also, have you considered using Starboard for the bare bottom? If I were to do a BB tank, I would be cautious against cracking or scratching the bottom glass.

 

[Jimbo327]

I always thought the superglue was only temporary hold, and you should add epoxy or e-marco to the joints (large overhang branches) to permanently hold the structures together. But I've never done a NSA scape, so I will defer to others on what is the way to do it.

 

[scaramanga]

*Updates

Flow

- Changed the Left Gyre to 30% Pulse Mode, stayed horizontal.
- Changed Right Gyre to Random up to 100%. Mounted vertically bottom along the back wall. Top Part Slightly pointed towards last rocks.

Lighting

Ran Par Tests see below pics or Top.

Parameters Testing

Ammonia 0
Nitrite 4
Nitrate 34.4
Phosphate .46
Alk 10.1

Turned on skimmer. Set Lights for 6 hours today and going forward. Moved a couple of the live rock pieces from the sump to the main rock work.

Future
Water change tomorrow about 40%.
Ordered Copepods and Phyto Arrives Thursday next week
Add hardy corals to tank from office tank.
Add 2 x Mollies

Thoughts
Not quite sure how Phosphates are so high. Kind of a welcome as I thought I was going to have to dose. Depending on how the phosphates and Nitrates come out I may do a bit of carbon dosing. This should super charge the bacteria as well.


Pic of Tank will all gear setup and lights on

Pic with par. Settings are 90,90,20,90,90,20

 

[drexel]

Did you bleach that dry rock? Might be bound PO4/organics from the dry rock.