Cali Kid Corals

My 50g "The Rock Wall" Project: First Reef Tank

A brief history... I have been up and down with a little 30 gal fish only salt tank for over 10 years. A friend gave it to me when he was moving and I loved the idea of a thriving salt tank but knew very little about what I was doing and didn't have the time to take the hobby seriously with work and staring a family and all that until COVID struck.

I had a unique "rock wall" 50 gal tank sitting in my garage that I picked up on Craigslist a number of years ago. With a lot more time at home, I drilled the bottom of the tank, drilled a few holes through my wall in my living room, installed a shed in the back yard outside where the tank sits and ran all the plumbing for a sump out the bottom of my tank, out the wall, and into the shed. I made my own ~15 gal. sump/refugium, which I think turned out pretty cool and have been cycling it for 3 months (6/20/20).

Thanks to @svreef I acquired a 48" Current LED fixture in early Sept. and turned first light on in the tank. Two weeks later and not a sign of anything green and funky, just some coralline algae beginning to form on well-lit surfaces.

All nutrient levels OK except for Nitrate still trending b/w 20-40ppm. I was Vodka dosing for a while but then I drank it all ;-). Planning on turning an old Eheim canister filter into a nitrate bio-pellet reactor (any feedback on the wisdom of this is welcome).

I have a 5-stage RO system feeding a saltwater premix trash can and an ATO reservoir (0 TDS currently).

I plan to get my Nitrates to 1.0 to .5 before I upgrade my lighting and begin to introduce my first corals... ever for me.


I currently have a Benggai Cardinal, a yellowtail blue damsel, a lawnmower blenny, a blue chromis, a yellow tang and two baby (cute-as-a-button) clowns compliments of @Cheedo contributing to the cycling process to make sure that bacteria is ready for the coral load.

Next step at this point is to figure out how to plumb the filter/reactor to feed output directly into the protein skimmer and waiting for the pellets to arrive via Amazon (Dr. Tim's NP Pearls).

Stay tuned... any sources of starter corals welcomed in the next few months as I get Nitrates under control.
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it looks great! Man, I would be so scared about running all that plumbing through the walls and what not.
But, you did a great job. I can’t wait to see it mature
Yeah I was / am also but I took my time and hopefully did it right. By design, hopefully, if something fails it will dump in the back yard rather than inside the house. Time will tell. Anyway, thanks, I'm excited to get some stuff glued up on "the wall" and watch it fill in.
 
Looks cool.
How did you build your rock wall?
Epoxy? Is there a backing plate? Just curious.
I actually found this tank of Craigslist a number of years ago and thought it was unique enough that I wanted to try a reef tank with it some day. You are correct, it is an epoxy on the back then they embedded rocks and impregnated the epoxy with gravel substrate to fill in the gaps.
 
For the record:
Nutrients as of 10/09/20
Ammonia: ND
Nitrite: ND
Nitrate: 5ppm
Phos: 0.25ppm

Added first corals ever on 10/10/20
(all frags)
Green Star Polyp
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Jack-O-Lantern (in honor of the season)
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Sunny-D (because I gotta...)
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Meteor Shower Cyphestrea (from BAR srt4eric)
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Tank Update 10/27/20:
  • Fabricated my own brackets and mounted two new A380x's
  • Glued/epoxied the first four frags (3 purch / 1 DBTC) to small pieces of rock work I could move around as I find the light they like and for fragging later if all goes well
  • V/V carbon dosing has served it purpose for the moment so have shut off the dosing pump
  • Minor case of cyano (likely due to carbon dosing) knocked out with single round of Chemiclean. Skimmer nearly blew a gasket and required numerous dumps for a few days.
  • All nutrients and mineral parameters at nominal levels for the moment
  • As far as I can tell, all pieces (GSP, Lepto, Cyphastrea and SunnyD Zoa) are acclimating well and beginning to show some growth
  • Yellow tank has been doing a very aggressive boogie dance when I approach the tank now after a recently unpleasant sand vacuuming experience, thus proving that fish do have personalities and they can get pissed off
  • Planning my strategy for being out of town for two weeks and keeping everything thriving in my absence. increasing ATO reservoir size to ~30 gal. Have an Eheim auto-feeder. Reducing feeding qty and frequency to minimize nutrient build-up... any other suggestions are very welcome
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What do you have for clean up crew? I’m trying to help you ID those unknown eggs
About 6 snails and 5 hermit crabs. Two of the crabs are new from last weekend and they are relatively large at about an inch long each. they are the new variable in the tank.
 
How has your tank temperature been the last few weeks at night? I'd imagine with the sump outside you might have some wild temp swings.
 
How has your tank temperature been the last few weeks at night? I'd imagine with the sump outside you might have some wild temp swings.
The heater is having a bit of a hard time keeping it exactly on point but I have only noted about a 3-4 degree drop early on the mornings when it has been in the 40s throughout the night. Good observation though. Was thinking of running a second heater just so I don't have to run my primary heater in the red (no pun intended) all the time and risk a premature failure.
 
Tank Update:

Livestock: Fish all doing well. Zoas, RBTA and GSP thriving. Lost my first few attempts at SPSs most likely due to water parameters swings when I was away in Maui for two weeks. So I am taking some steps to better track and control my water parameters...

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PARTY TIME !!!

Will take some time to set everything up right but feel good about increased visibility.

For the record, here is what I have so far in terms of water condition based on initial feedback from Apex as well as recent ATI ICP analysis:View attachment Analyse102877.pdf
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Main focus right now, as @ofzakaria and others suggested previously, is to bring nitrate and phosphate levels up and in balance. Stay tuned...


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
Hey Y'all - Its been a while since I have updated status. As a quick refresher, I started this tank back in June of 2020 and have been learning reefing along the way.

Current Livestock:
- Two clowns (still battling to be the woman) donated by Cheato back in the day when I first became a supporting member
- Bengai Cardinal
- Watchman goby
- 3 blue chromies
- 2 Firefish
- 1 Mandarin Dragonet
- 1 yellow tang
- 1 BTA
- 1 orange Monti (survival questionable)
- 1 candy cane (survival questionable)
- 1 very small green hammer cluster (@Srt4eric donation) which is not growing but not dying
- 1 largish colony of GSPs

I have been having very limited success with corals, fighting algae, higher-than-desired Phos which I could not knock down... basically a lot of problems and I didn't feel like asking how to fix problems I thought I knew the answers to... it just wasn't working. I have improved on some of the problems but tank is not where I want/thought it would be 16 months into operation. So I'm swallowing my pride and seeking your collective wisdom once again ;-)

Algae:
- Problem: Was all over the tank I think due to: 1) large surface area of rock (thus the "rock wall" tank) which has needed to go through its "start up blues" and cure 2) High-ish phos of bw .1-.3 for most of the last year (source yet to be determined). More algae grows on water return side of the tank if that means anything
- Fixes: 1) carbon dosing with vinegar for last year 2) Nitrates have been consistently low but Phos bw .1-.3ppm so have been running a GFO reactor and adding Phos reduction supplements to water column for last six months or so. 3) adding bacteria/Vibrant on a biweekly basis. Most recent Hanna measurement was lowest I have ever registered at a .04. Seems to be under control for the moment.
- QUESTION: Now that algae is mostly dead, it has turned into this greyish-green "dust" which is all over the tank, rocks, coral... will this stuff eventually dissolve or how do I get it out? Eheim sand vac limited success but PITA. Do I need to worry about a secondary organic spike as this stuff decomposes?

LPS/squishies will not grow and SPSs die within a week or two:
- Water conditions are about as stable as I can get them. I will post screen shots of Neptune reading in seperate post from Taptalk as its easier from my phone.
- Please look over data and let me know if you see anything of concern. Thinking of submitting some samples for ICPMS analysis to see what I cant see from conventional testing.
 
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