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Mike's Machination

Thanks, yeah, big tank syndrome is what I'll call this. Plus while the footprint screams awesome, the reality is that it is anything but, water flow is a big challenge, even though I have over 20000 gallons per hour worth of pumps inside the tank, the reality is they're kind of awkwardly placed. I can't exactly have them going full blast all the time, they leave dead spots as a result, overall it's just a bit of a mess. I was thinking about one of those MaxSpect pumps, but I'm not sure how well that would work on this tank too. If this was a more traditional tank shape (very long compared to it's width) it'd be a little easier with pumps on the back or the sides, but having 3 sides as viewable does pose problems, I've been resigned to having two pumps in the front corners, and I'm trying to fiddle a way to make a seaswirl type of sweeping motion for the pumps, but there's no way I'm paying $300 for an oscillating movement device.
 
Well I hate to repeat myself but this hobby should be about ............your enjoyment!

When overall maintenance > overall enjoyment, this hobby becomes a pain in the butt.

You don't need multiple tanks, but hey if you want that, then be ready for extra maintenance.

Consider LED's for your bubble tips? They don't need metal halide. Mine has stayed bubble-tipped and colored under kessils alone. If i want to propagate and make it grow I'm sure all I have to do is start feeding it. But I want it to stay small and single because I have a mixed reef in a relatively small tank.


Recommendation
I recommend starting over and downgrading.
  1. Bigger/More tanks = more $$$ cost for equipment and electricity bills
  2. WIll give you a fresh start with no pest animals/algaes.
  3. You get DAT GLASS :cool: seriously EFF acrylic
  4. You could use "Real Reef" Synthetic live rock = no old tank syndrome
    • The newest generation of RR rock is pretty porous
    • Depending on anaerobic bacteria for nitrate reduction is silly
  5. New tank builds are fun

While the stores in San Fran dont take RBTA's for store credit. I'm sure you could trade them in to Aquatic Collection, California Reef Co, Diablo Corals, and Neptune Aquatics. Neptune Aquatics and California Reef Co currently have a decent amount of bubble tips. Aquatic and Diablo don't really have that many RBTA's. Give them all a call and see how much store credit you can get? Maybe they can hook you up with your next tank?

Maybe consider a single 100ish gallon tank and that's it.

Keep your tank fun and enjoyable :) My 40 gallon is pest algae free and aiptasia free. I swear if you load that tank with peppermint shrimps and or aiptasia eating nudibranchs, your aiptasia problem will be GONE. Assuming you don't have fish that will eat the p-shrimps/nudibranchs, so there's always the option of keeping the tanks. Have you considered the potential that you rocks are experiencing "old tank syndrome" ? That point in your tanks life when your rocks start leaching out nutrients.

Also hobbyists on reefcentral bar are still looking for RBTA. :D and we would LOVE to have at least 2 or whatever you want to donate for the upcoming Regional Frag Swap.
 
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You don't need multiple tanks, but hey if you want that, then be ready for extra maintenance.
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I used to keep multiple tanks, it wasn't really that much of an issue, especially since my glass one (god damnit I love glass so much) was a few razor blade scrapes every week from looking brand new. Also didn't hurt that it was all soft coral, they loved a bit dirtier water, good times.

Consider LED's for your bubble tips? They don't need metal halide. Mine has stayed bubble-tipped and colored under kessils alone.
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Oh I absolutely would do LEDs for the bubble tips, currently that's what they're getting. However I think one fixture isn't enough for 3 tanks, where as one lumenarc reflector can cover them all. I would do a Kessil but I'm not running out and buying a Kessil (or 2 or 3) just for a temporary anemone holding tank while I get around to dealing with aiptasia.

Maybe consider a single 100ish gallon tank and that's it.
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Maybe, my largest issue is the fish. I currently have 1 foxface, 1 yellow tang, 1 purple tang, 1 tomini tang, 1 kole tang, 5 lyretail anthias, and 1 midas blenny (and an assortment of tiny clownfish) I would not put that many fish in a 100 gallon tank. Hence why I'd maybe want two tanks, 2 tangs in a 100g I'd probably do.. still wouldn't feel too comfortable about. I know people do it, but these are not tiny little quarter sized fish.

I swear if you load that tank with peppermint shrimps and or aiptasia eating nudibranchs, your aiptasia problem will be GONE.
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Did that, looked aiptasia free for a while, then they came back. I think the tank was just too large for them to wander everything, I do occasionally see them hiding under rocks though so a year later they're still alive.

and we would LOVE to have at least 2 or whatever you want to donate for the upcoming Regional Frag Swap.
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Consider it done, but watch out what you wish for... mwuahahahaha.
 
Sorry for your predicament. What a bummer.
After about 10 years my first reef tank started having problems, especially after some lights died and I was indecisive about upgrading so just got rid of SPS. Then by a couple years later algae had hit hard and it basically became algae plus clown tank and I felt so bad looking at it I froze and left it in that state. Big mistake was to withdraw and freeze, rather than look at solutions. It is great that you are considering your options, thinking them through and even writing them out, and seeking input. I am interested to see what you eventually decide to do.
I am so glad I was able to set up a new tank in my classroom (except I really wish it were in my home) and forgot how incredibly fun it is to set up a new system and watch it grow. You said you had separate tanks in the past - were they totally different biotopes or just multiples? Different types require multiples of equipment and I don't know about maintenance, but it's nice to not have all eggs in one basket. But then your fish need bigger tanks.
About the nems - are other areas such as Sacto as flooded with them? I wonder if a bunch of reefers from there would like to buy some and one person could make the road trip here to pick them up?
 
Ha, of course you do Mike, I'm sure you have a few systems worth of tanks just taking up space in your garage :D

Maureen, yeah, they were separate types of tanks, one tank was anemones and soft coral only, had the evil damsel fish that people seem to hate, plus a tomato clown, so a "mean" tank, also had some dwarf angels, because hell yeah, what are they going to pick at? soft corals? Go ahead! Had a really crappy skimmer on it, rarely did water changes, didn't add anything, had a few T5 bulbs over it for light. The other tank was a full SPS reef tank, nothing soft in there, had a couple tangs, a foxface, and a couple other fish that escapes my mind, had a really beefy skimmer on it, did water changes way more frequently, metal halide lighting and T5s over it, coral growth was off the charts phenomenal, I'd almost call it one of those "Tanks of the Month" except I was a bit lazy on keeping the acrylic clean.

As to other areas flooded with anemones, I really don't know. Every now and then I look at reefcentral and see one two guys selling anemones,so can't really get a feel for the supply/demand side of things. I just would rather not have a bunch of strangers coming in and out of my house all the time.
 
In terms of Aiptasia control in the future, my Australian Copperband Butterflyfish (Chelmon marginalis) cleared a HEAVILY infested 200 gallon tank in about 2 or 3 days after other controls were tried and exhausted. He/she also looked a lot better than Berhia! Good luck with whatever you decide. The 'troubles' are at least half the fun in reef keeping, but as Michael said when it gets too much it is just frustrating.
 
Yeah I thought about some sort of butterflyfish, my luck with copper bands in the past have not been too good (they just don't eat). I wouldn't mind butterfly fish, but the acans and other LPS in my tank might object. I have thought in the past of going the butterfly route, especially if I get rid of the LPS. Although most of the heavily infested parts are in my anemonefuge I'm not sure the butterfly fish will want to get that close to RBTAs.
 
I kinda feel where you're coming from Mike. I didnt have that many tanks to worry about though, just one very neglected 65g. My options were to quit or restart with as much stuff as i can to save by upgrading to a bigger tank. I opted to restart. Best decision I made, was very close to calling it quits. If you're gonna go to 1 100 galloonish tank i would love to take one of those tangs off your hand and the midas if go that route! And if when you decide to do it, and you need a hand let me know, if scheduling permits i can come by and help.
 
sfsuphysics said:
Yeah I thought about some sort of butterflyfish, my luck with copper bands in the past have not been too good (they just don't eat). I wouldn't mind butterfly fish, but the acans and other LPS in my tank might object. I have thought in the past of going the butterfly route, especially if I get rid of the LPS. Although most of the heavily infested parts are in my anemonefuge I'm not sure the butterfly fish will want to get that close to RBTAs.
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Yep, note that the Aussie copperband is a different species to the common C. rostrum. They are much easier to feed. Mine mixed it up with the triggers to grab food as soon as it went in the tank. It was fine all LPS for two years, then overnight he took a shine to acans, favias, and favites. Left all my other LPS alone though.
 
Ok, temp moved all the anemones into 3 tanks. Even though the tanks are all janky, I have to say the metal halide over them makes it look real nice! Unfortunately I only had 5 clownfish left, and a day later I had 2 clownfish left. So that great experiment died out, I don't know if it was a feeding issue trying to feed so many clownfish in such a large tank might not be very practical, it was actually easier when smaller because I could target feed around where they all were, however as they got a bit bigger dumping food into the tank to make it's rounds may have left some fish without food. I wondered why I never saw bodies too, even the 3 I just lost (mind you these are still small clownfish), and I thought perhaps the anemones were eating the bodies (which I'm sure is possible) but I also found 2 good sized bristleworms last night (checking on a noisy pump), managed to grab them with tweezers and tossed them into the main tanks sump where hopefully they'll eat up whatever detritus, I know they typically only eat dead stuff but they were a little too close for comfort to the anemones made me think they were actually predators, needless to say yanked them.

So now I can see the mess though, lots of algae, poofy green stuff, bubble algae, and oh the aiptasia... I need to figure how to go about dealing with it. I'm really tempted to try to remove all the anemones (even if it means chipping them off the rock) and then just nuke the rock in bleach/oxyclean or muratic acid (it's really nice sized stuff that I don't just want to throw away), but removal will be the largest PITA ever.

On the other side of things I picked up a 40g breeder at Petco "$1 per gallon" sale (closer to $1.25/gallon because they apply taxes to the pre-discount price which is $120). It really is a neat little tank, feels a lot bigger than 40 gallons suggests too. I found an old bookshelf made of particle board that is roughly the right size of the tank, I built a platform for it so the entire tank rim is sitting on something, and the honest truth is the bookshelf probably shouldn't even been holding books, but I'm basically using it as a jig and just building the frame that'll really be holding the weight around it, the "jig" just might stay in place because hell at least it'll be some lateral strength. Going to rig up a some pipe on the backside and bend it to make a light hanger for a LED fixture, as nice as the metal halide looks now, 250 watts is too much light for a tank so small, I figure maybe 50-100 watts of LEDs is good enough though. Not sure what I'm going to do as far as tank stuff though, I don't really want to drill it, I may want to put some false back and do kind of an all-in-one style, but not sure how well that'll pan out, I might simply leave it naked, and just deal with the fact that ugly heaters and HOB skimmer might be visible, or hell maybe no skimmer at all just do a HOB filter or something. Either way, I think this will be the new anemone housing digs, along with all those weedy soft corals no one loves :D 2 clownfish can keep things in line in there.

Now just need to figure out that sump issue for the main tank. Anyone want 4-5 fancy tailed gold fish? (current inhabitants in my greenhouse pond aka the tank I want to turn into the sump)
 
@Enderturtle suggested to me in another post the peppermint shrimps from California Reef Co does great work on aiptasias. They even demonstrated them eating the aiptasia to me while i was at the shop, exactly how enderturtle stated. I had a mini infestation on a rock tower of mine with most of it being underneath the rock. One of which was the size of a nickle. I bought 3, 1 died shortly after being placed in, but the 2 that are alive got rid of all the aiptasias!!! I am a happy camper.
 
Long due updated, thanks Jim :p
Lets see, bubble algae out of control, green hair algae a bit out of control, aiptasia a bit out of control, cyano not out of control but the fact it's in the tank... bleh. I have 4 tangs (yellow, purple, kole, flame tip) and a fox face but none of them seem to give a shit about cleaning it up, my first foxface I had way back when would literally clean a rock in an hour of all algae, not sure why this one is like this, I've gone back to feeding less just to make them graze more.

First bill of new year, 1012 kWh of power, that puts me into the 360% over baseline category, part of this is due to really cold winter so heaters are on more my gas bill shows this as well, but also less electricity production from my solar panels, and while I do expect that to drop as the weather warms up I really don't want to go into that territory again.

Really teetering on the fence of giving up right now though, or at the very least scaling back. I have an immediate idea which lets me keep a good sized tank, but not as big as I have and it's free but I need to explore that, another idea is just to bite the bullet and buy a glass tank so I can happily razor blade the crap out of the glass whenever it gets dirty, but either way I need to downsize I think.

So free 375 gallon acrylic tank to anyone who wants it, 5 feet width, 6 feet front to back, 20 inches tall, dual overflows, all the bulkheads and other good junk. I still need to work on transferring livestock to holding tanks and what not and with baby coming this might be tricky... but send me a PM if you're even moderately interested.
 
Downsizing is always sad. All those dreams ....
But probably the right decision. I often wish mine were a bit smaller.
It gets to the point where the hassle outweighs the fun, and that is no good for a hobby.

Note: You could split tank in half, and make half of it a sump/fuge. Each 5'x3'
Put a big black/blue acrylic partition right down the middle.
Gets rid of a ton of stuff, including all the plumbing mess.
And since sump side is a bit lower, total gallons would be around 275G or so.
 
Hahaha, didn't even think about chopping it in half, I do know that when Gus gave it to me he said "take it or I'm taking my saw to it to make spare acrylic" I might do the same thing if no one wants it:D

I'm kind of leaning towards turning my 8' x 3' sump into the tank instead, a bit of the long and "skinny" approach, it's about 270g, and was said mentioned "cheaper" option of not actually buying anything (except maybe wood for a stand).

Definitely want to grab me some muractic acid and try nuking a few rocks with the unholy trinity of pests on them (aiptasia, algae, hydroids) to see if it will actually be effective.
 
To clarify: I didn't really mean "chop" so much as partition to sump + display.
You could do the same with the sump. 5'x3' = display end, 3'x3' = sump end.
Basically like the all-in-one type tanks.

Also, there are two ways to downsize.
One is changing the whole tank size of course.
But another is just reducing bio-load, lights, etc.
Nothing but water and equipment in the sump.
Half the main tank goes dark, with nothing much back there.
It might look kinda cool, as background fades to black..
Half the fish. Half the coral.
Perhaps add acrylic boxes or rock to displace water.
* The key to that plan is you can quickly change your mind back.
 
Awww well I don't like your version of partition as opposed to mine of chop :D

The 8x3 tank currently has a partition about 22 inches from the back, never thought of doing an all-in-one type of setup, mostly because I would think the overflow wouldn't work well being all on one side of such a large tank. As to bioload, I think I have 9 fish in the tank, 5 large ones (tangs and foxface) and 4 tiny ones (anthias, 2 clowns and a blenny), I can't exactly go too much lower.
 
sfsuphysics said:
Awww well I don't like your version of partition as opposed to mine of chop :D

The 8x3 tank currently has a partition about 22 inches from the back, never thought of doing an all-in-one type of setup, mostly because I would think the overflow wouldn't work well being all on one side of such a large tank. As to bioload, I think I have 9 fish in the tank, 5 large ones (tangs and foxface) and 4 tiny ones (anthias, 2 clowns and a blenny), I can't exactly go too much lower.
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Overflow could be the entire 3' width. Should work great.
Especially if you have a gyre flow that pushes surface water that direction.
That gyre would also push bottom detritus toward the front, where it easier to clean.

With those fish, yes, hard to go much smaller. You really want 6'+ of swimming length and near 200G.
 
sfsuphysics said:
Long due updated, thanks Jim :p
Lets see, bubble algae out of control, green hair algae a bit out of control, aiptasia a bit out of control, cyano not out of control but the fact it's in the tank... bleh. I have 4 tangs (yellow, purple, kole, flame tip) and a fox face but none of them seem to give a shit about cleaning it up, my first foxface I had way back when would literally clean a rock in an hour of all algae, not sure why this one is like this, I've gone back to feeding less just to make them graze more.

First bill of new year, 1012 kWh of power, that puts me into the 360% over baseline category, part of this is due to really cold winter so heaters are on more my gas bill shows this as well, but also less electricity production from my solar panels, and while I do expect that to drop as the weather warms up I really don't want to go into that territory again.

Really teetering on the fence of giving up right now though, or at the very least scaling back. I have an immediate idea which lets me keep a good sized tank, but not as big as I have and it's free but I need to explore that, another idea is just to bite the bullet and buy a glass tank so I can happily razor blade the crap out of the glass whenever it gets dirty, but either way I need to downsize I think.

So free 375 gallon acrylic tank to anyone who wants it, 5 feet width, 6 feet front to back, 20 inches tall, dual overflows, all the bulkheads and other good junk. I still need to work on transferring livestock to holding tanks and what not and with baby coming this might be tricky... but send me a PM if you're even moderately interested.
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Say it isn't so Mike! There's not too many BIG tanks left on the forums.
 
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