Island Reef
Supporting Member
Intro
I just hit my one-year mark in the hobby, which puts me a tad beyond the newborn stage. I read somewhere about a 95% failure rate of new reefers in their first year, but I persevered. No amount of YouTube, podcasts, and scouring forums can substitute for digging in and learning from mistakes. The most significant issues I struggled with in the old tank were GHA, keeping coral happy, high nitrates/phosphates, and an overcrowded sump cabinet.With my first go last year, I invested in decent equipment but went cheap with the tank, with the plan to upgrade the DT and reuse the equipment should I survive a year. It was a 75-gallon Petco special. I drilled/painted the back and plumbed it into a custom-built cabinet with a 20-gallon Trigger sump. All was well until I hit the mother of all hair algae outbreaks. At its peak, it looked like a glass box with Chewbacca stuffed inside. The fish didn't mind, but the coral did. I recovered from that and vowed never to let it happen again.
I just finished a carefully planned migration to my new Forever Tank. It went surprisingly well, although I can't believe how hard it is to catch certain fish (I'm looking at you tangs).
The OceanGuard 605
This package scratched me right where I itched. The size is just right for me, and I really like Aquaforest's cabinet quality and sump design. Uncrating it was quite the experience. The sump is packed sideways in the cabinet, which is packed in the tank, like super-heavy Matryoshka dolls. I rigged up an 8:1 overhead pulley and had two others help unnest the whole thing. The plumbing is nice, but I want to add a ball valve after the gate valve in the downflow to shut down the sump without messing with the gating, which took me forever to get just right. There's a media sock just downstream from the filter sock, which I filled with carbon. The ATO reservoir is huge, at the expense of the main compartment, which is already filled with stuff.The Migration
Luckily, I could set up the new tank right next to the old one. I first set up the new rock in two towers on the left and right sides, courtesy of BRS's BF drawing (hint: I'm pretty sure they look for good comments rather than randomly draw--this was my second year in a row getting picked). I had a heated Brute of saltwater plus a 20-gallon bin ready to go. I pumped half the water from the old tank over, then disassembled and reassembled all the live rock and coral into the new tank. I glued the rockwork into five separate modules that appear as one continuous piece, so it will be easy to rearrange things later--another lesson learned from the monolithic glued structure I had before. I poured in the sand--fine-grained Bahama sand, which I like much better than my old gravelly stuff. After triple-checking that the temperature matched, I transferred the fish over, which only took 10x longer than anticipated. I then pumped more old water in and slowly filled it with new water. Everything survived the move, and my two shy fish quickly picked out their new hiding places. I made plenty of hiding spots with the new rocks cape. Out of paranoia with all that new water volume, I tested for ammonia and nitrites for the first two days. Zero. Nitrates and phosphates were also both at zero, so I overfed for a few days to get those up a bit.The Livestock
All my fish and inverts from High Tide Aquatics.Fish
- Bristletooth Tomini Tang
- Firefish
- Exquisite Firefish
- Pajama Cardinal
- Ocellarus Clownfish (x2)
- Lawnmower Blenny
- Yellow Coris Wrasse
- Pygmy (Cherub) Angelfish
- Black Cap Basslet
- Orange Stripe Bristletooth Tang
- Filefish
Inverts
The urchins were my MVPs in cleaning up my GHA--now I need to feed them. Out of the 40 or so trochus snails I used to have, I'm down to two because the crabs ate them all. Apparently, my crabs are escargot connoisseurs.- Tuxedo Urchin (x2)
- Pincushion Urchin
- Blue leg hermit crabs
- Emerald crabs
- Trochus snails
- Sand Sifter seastar
- Fire shrimp, Cleaner shrimp, Peppermint shrimp
- A tiny hitchhiker Seastar
Coral
I lost quite a bit of coral in the old setup, so I'm focusing on keeping coral healthy going forward. Still healthy are:- Zoanthids
- GSP
- Xenia
- Duncan
- Flower Pot
- Hollywood Stunner Chalice
- Hammer
- Finger Leather
- Gold Torch
- Sinularia
The Equipment
- Aquaforest OceanGuard 605 Aquarium (114 Gallon) Limited Edition Carbon with AF 605 sump (46 gallon)
- Neptune Apex
- Reef Octopus Regal 150SSS (a huge upgrade from the useless Bubble Magus I had before)
- Tunze MAR-3181 Macroalgae Reactor with chaeto inside
- Maxspect XF330 Gyres
- Maxspect Jump 65W LED lights
- BRS 300-watt titanium heaters x2 (primary and backup, Apex controlled)
- Neptune COR-15 return pump
- Neptune AFS + Eheim AF (got to have redundancy on everything)
- Aqua UV sterilizer
- BRS GFO/Carbon dual reactor
- BRS CO2 scrubber
- Cheap little ATO pump controlled by Apex
- BRS dosing pump
- Neptune 4" LLS (to trigger ATO) and 15" LLS (to monitor ATO level)
The Journey Continues...
Four days in, I've got much of everything up and running. I have a return pump gate valve on order which I will plumb into the GFO/carbon reactor (I planned on using a separate pump, but there's no room left). I hacked the chaeto reactor so the pump is now mounted on it to save space and cycle the output of the chaeto reactor through the UV sterilizer. I think I may need to add some powerheads in the rear quadrants--these corners are dead spots that the gyres don't reach. I should have everything I need equipment-wise after that, at least for a while.I'm going coverless for the first time, which makes me nervous. I find myself looking for fish on the floor every morning. I've read that fish usually won't jump through a turbulent surface, so fingers crossed.
I'm still working on the most time-consuming part of the whole setup: cable management. My old tank was a spaghetti mess and became unmanageable. This was one of many lessons learned to fix this time around.
I want to add an RBTA before I glue down the coral, but I'm still pondering this over after reading horror stories of anemones going into gyres. I aim to fill the rock with more coral before adding more fish. One step at a time, and I'm in no rush.
I have a light kalkwasser mix in the ATO. I will add a heavy-mix kalkwasser reservoir that will dose at night to supplement the ATO mix. I'll probably be testing alk and calcium daily for a month to get the combo dialed in.
Comments/criticisms welcome--I'm here to learn.
