Josh's 150g Basement Sump Build

[gowyn]

Personally I would add them if I had to.

if you need some seeded media I have probably a dozen 1x3x6 blocks sitting in my sump. You could borrow a few to help seed

that’s a tiny load on such a large system

 

[Josh]

Have some questions regarding stocking. I am going to post a list of possible stocklist. Open to criticism and suggestions on livestock that is asking for problems.

Reminder: Tank is a 5'x2'x2' 150g.

2 - black clown (Existing)
1 - starry blenny (existing)
1 - purple tang
1 - tang (diff species / undecided)
1 - hawkfish (flame?)
1 - wrasse (Leopard? / undecided)
1 - royal gramma
2 - bangai cardinals (mated pair?)
2-3 - Anthias (type? / undecided)
1-2 - Mandarin (red?)(Mated pair?) <--- If you have ever seen mated mandarins swim together you would want 2 as well (ill keep them fed dont worry)
1 - jawfish? (compatibility? / undecided)
1 - dwarf angel (bicolor / coralbeauty / flame)
1 - Marine beta (probably not) <---- Curious if these get along with others, a family member wants to "donate" one of these to the tank
1 - Goby (Clown goby)

Edit : Also curious on order of addition, i think almost all these fish should be pretty easy going except maybe the tangs? Not planning on adding some of these for quite a while.

 

[Copperkills]

Yep tiu

Been doing a gentle cycle for about a week now. I added some bacteria kickstarter to the tank last night. I have 1 piece of liverock from 1 of my smaller tanks in the sump and the overall volume is close to 250g. Is it ok to add 2 clownfish and a starry blenny to the tank now? With my frag tank letting go im in an odd position right now and it would help alot to get those 3 moved. Normally i would do a full ammonia cycle take my time however the situation has changed a bit on me. You would think with that large amount of water volume that 3 fish shouldnt bother it much. Tonight im going to do a small addition of pure ammonia and see how the tank reacts, if its all gone in the morning then i think im confident adding fish.

You can cycle with fish, that’s how we did it in the old days lol. Just means you’ll have to monitor water quality more closely and have plans to deal with any potential spikes that could be lethal to your livestock.

 

[Josh]

Yup I think itll be ok. I added an ammonia alert and I can set my reefbot to check the ammonia regularly.

Made some additions / subtractions to stocking.

Looking at doing 4 or 5 anthias in lieu of a 2nd tang and some other solo fish.

Would I be able to stock
9 small fish considered nano 30g or smaller (3" max)
8 med fish (4-6")
1 large (7+)

I believe when added up it's about 65in of fish if everything was max size. Somewhere in the 4g/in mark. I've read 5g/in is a good beginner rule of thumb.

I considered the anthias, blenny, angel, and wrasse as medium

 

[Matt1997]

I have 3 tangs, 6 clowns, 10 anthias, 2 foxface, 1 butterfly, 2 mandarins, 1 damsel, 1 lawnmower blenny in same size tank and I do not experience any water quality issues. I do a weekly waterchange of 15%. Coral are healthy and I find they open up fuller when nutrients level raise. Strongly lps dominant tank.

 

[Josh]

First of the fish added. 1 Male Lyretail Anthias and 5 females. All eating mysis already, now to work on getting them to eat pellets as well for automatic feeding.

Becca likes to name the fish, since its 1 dude and 5 chicks she thought a Mormon name might work well here. Meet Joseph Smith and his sisterwives

 

[Poseidon]

View attachment 20267

First of the fish added. 1 Male Lyretail Anthias and 5 females. All eating mysis already, now to work on getting them to eat pellets as well for automatic feeding.

Becca likes to name the fish, since its 1 dude and 5 chicks she thought a Mormon name might work well here. Meet Joseph Smith and his sisterwives

Haha, that name is great XD

tank looks awesome! keep up the good work

 

[Josh]

Tank just got smoked by a diatom wave. Long live the cycle.

 

[Poseidon]

Tank just got smoked by a diatom wave. Long live the cycle.

pretty standard lol, fish all good?

 

[Josh]

Yeah they are doing really well. Going to try soaking pellets in garlic to see if theyll take dry. Right now they seem to only want mysis.

 

[Josh]

 

[Shooter000]

 

[Josh]

One mustn't rush corals into a tank This frag carrier i picked up was an awesome help today. Once i cleaned / dipped the frags i washed them and put them in the carrier then floated the entire carrier in the tank to get it back up to tank temp. Might grab a couple more for travelling to fragfest / stores.

 

[Josh]

 

[Josh]

Ill try to get some better photos. Added 12 acan frags, these are the first corals to go into the tank. Im working on setting up a zoa garden rock from frags in my frag tank however im super paranoid about getting bubble algae in the display. Working on getting some cap montipora to start growing out some "shelves". Excited to finally start stocking this bad boy. Ive been super patient with the whole process and so far so good.

I setup a temporary QT/Frag tank to monitor the frags ive pulled out to move to the display. So far ive peroxide dipped them. Im going to dip them a second time then go at them with tweezers. If after a couple days i dont see any bubble algae i think ill have done everything reasonable I can do. They will get a bayer dip before they hit the display as well. Any suggestions on methods to rid bubble algae from frags would be great, most of them have almost none visibly but ive fallen for that trap before lol. The hopes is to remove manually everything i can see and home the peroxide takes care of the tiny/impossible to see ones. *fingers crossed*

 

[Josh]

Added some more coral the other day. Just testing spots to see where everything is happy. So far its been pretty simple.... Zoas/acans both like the bottom for the most part though i have 1 frag of zoas that i think might want to be a bit higher up. Water quality is pretty much exactly where i want it. Ill eventually aim to lower both nitrate/phosphate however for just adding corals and finishing up a nice long cycle im happy with how things are going. GFO is slowly taking care of the phosphate. The Alk test reads lower than it actually is but its super consistant in its readings so im torn, do i care that it reads 0.8 dkh off every single test? There are better alk test options from what ive read but i mostly just want to see the useage of alk graphed so i can set my dosing once i start adding some SPS. I have a hanna alk to check my readings if im worried however its always been 0.8 dkh off. Every other test has checkd out vs manual testing so maybe its something to do with the red sea alk.

 

[Josh]

Photo skills are a work in progress lol

 

[Shooter000]

Noice

 

[Josh]

I lost my anthias' last night and my starry blenny that ive had for 4 years. I dont really know what happened to be honest but i found my sump "foamy" this morning so i checked my skimmer because it looked full and it was very watery. I am wondering if the skimmer went crazy for some reason and overflowed all the skimmer gunk into the system abrumptly and nuked the tank. My clowns are still alive.... Thats some good news since they were my first 2 fish and ive had them for 6 years. Ive been automated testing the tank fairly regularly so i dont think its a parameter issue but i will see when its done testing.
nitrate - 5-10
phosph - 0.04-0.08
calc 460
alk 7.3

I put some carbon in and ive started water testing, i had an unopened ammonia alert and it shows no ammonia. I did a 20g water change yesterday and siphoned out some cyano. I barely stirred the sand and i use a gravel vacuum on the sand fairly regularly so i do not think it was a release of nutrients. almost 250g of total water volume is alot of water for 5 anthias 1 blenny and 2 clowns.

I admittedly do not know much about cyano but i know bacteria blooms can cause skimmers to go crazy so maybe me siphoning out a bit of cyano caused the skimmer to go nutts and overflow.

Thoughts?

 

[Josh]

Oh and other than looking "slightly annoyed" all the coral is completely fine. Makes me wonder if oxygen levels had a play here.