New to Reefing

[yveterinarian]

Good Morning all!

I joined this forum last night after making a search for forums in Southwestern Ontario.  I have had a freshwater tank for over 20 years and upgraded to a 65 gal bow front tank approx 7 years ago.  It is well established and needs little maintenance. 
Just over 2 years ago I decided to indulge in my dream of keeping seahorses and have a 35 gal tall hexagon tank for them with a 25 gal refugium/sump.  It has been an uphill battle to obtain seahorses that were actually true captive bred and not corralled into a large tank in the ocean and converted to eating frozen food.  Despite the setbacks, I still love them and am trying again. To this end I am a member of Seahorse.org.
During my quest for seahorses I got bitten by the reefing bug and purchased a 90 gal corner tank to begin my new interest.  With this tank I have a 35 gal refugium/sump setup.  I have plumbed this setup completely separate from the seahorse setup to minimize any cross contamination of bacteria or disease.  I recently moved both setups to the basement and cut holes in the wall they are on into my laundry room so that my refugium/sumps can be in there.  The advantage is no more bending and crawling into cramped space to maintain the refugia and empty the skimmers.
With the 90 gal setup I have a Corallife 125 gal protein skimmer, two Koralia 550 GPH circulation pumps, a Supreme Mag Drive 9.5 pump, a K.E.Y. E7848-D-TC fully programmable LED lighting array, 100 lbs of Marco rock, many pounds of Aragonite substrate to 5" deep and some Chaeto macro algae.
It has just finished cycling at the end of April and I am slowly stocking with CUC and corals.  The cleanup crew includes: Fighting conchs, Nassarius snails, Ceriths, Zebra Turbos (can right themselves), 1 Chiton and some red leg Cortez hermits.
Currently, I have a beautiful yellow finger gorgonian, a red fan gorgonian, various small Zoas, a very small (approx 1/2-3/4" across) plate coral that came with a zoo frag I purchased and some mushrooms and rics.  All of these I purchased when I only had the seahorse tank and I started with very small frags that were inexpensive so I could see if I could keep corals without them all dying.
So far the Gorgonians are doing very well and a couple of the zoas are thriving while the others are trying.  The rics are doing OK and the mushroom looks sad.  All are recovering from being kept in a 10 gal tank while the 90gal cycled and then being transferred to their new home.  I also have a spotted Garden eel who has been with me for 2 years now and has been very forgiving of me and my struggles to learn about saltwater tanks.
The tank is going through a diatom bloom at present but it is now subsiding with the addition of Purigen. Once the bloom has ended and the corals are looking better I will post a picture of the new aquarium. For now, I am attaching pictures of the new arrangement downstairs and the rock formation I went with.  I am so looking forward to my experience with this forum and meeting some people closer to my area who can help me troubleshoot while I embark on this journey into reefing!!

 

[Poseidon]

Hey there!
welcome to fragtank.ca....
its always nice to see knew members and if you know of anyone else in the hobby don't hesitate to recommend us!.
I myself live in mount elgin, about 10 min away from Woodstock, so im close
i joined this forum less than a month ago and its been truly incredible what ive missed out on...
Wish you luck with your tanks and hope to see some more pics!

 

[teebone110]

Welcome to the forum! This place is great.


As Duke mentioned in your other thread, If your interested in seahorses, try to get in touch with RayJay from London. He should be able to help you out.

 

[yveterinarian]

Welcome to the forum! This place is great.


As Duke mentioned in your other thread, If your interested in seahorses, try to get in touch with RayJay from London. He should be able to help you out.

Thank you for the welcome.  I am already in touch with Ray and he is helping me get some from a LFS in Toronto who imports True captive bred but they are having trouble getting any in at the present time.  Ray's horses aren't breeding at the moment.

 

[spyd]

Welcome to the hobby!!! This is a great forum to learn and evolve!

Your rock work looks really good. I will comment on it a bit though. Using dry Marco rock is fine, but you need something in your tank to get the bacteria colonizing. Add a few pieces of some nice live rock to get the bacteria going in the tank. Another method to try is using a product like Dr. Tim's One and Only nitrifying bacteria. You just need something to get bacteria in your tank as that is the most crucial of all ingredients for a healthy tank.

A 5" deep sand bed (DSB) will really help things. What type of argonite is it? Hopefully, it is a really fine particle sand as that is best for a DSB. Again, I suggest asking a reefer in your area for a couple scoops of their live sand. This will have the right bacteria in it to colonize in your DSB.

At some point you may want to consider adding more flow to your tank as well. A rough ratio is 40 (GPH) : 1 (G) of total flow in your tank. So for a 90G, you want to shoot for closer to 3600GPH from your powerheads. I am, however, not familiar with Seahorse tanks so I don't know what type of flow is needed for them... Your sump setup and refugium sound great. You will love not having the sump under your tank as they can be quite noisy. Coralife skimmers can be a little dicey, but people do have success with them.

Not trying to come off pushy here or anything but just a couple minimal suggestions to get you going. Adding bacteria in your tank is essential though and very cheap to do. You only need say 5 - 10lbs of LR ($30) and a few scoops of live sand (free) to get the bacteria going. It is a wonderful hobby and extremely rewarding. It is nice to see you are going slow with it as that is what is truly needed for success. Congrats again and best of luck.

 

[unibob]

Welcome. Looks like you are on your way to a very nice looking tank there.

 

[yveterinarian]

Welcome to the hobby!!! This is a great forum to learn and evolve!

Spyd:  Thank you very much for the welcome

Your rock work looks really good. I will comment on it a bit though. Using dry Marco rock is fine, but you need something in your tank to get the bacteria colonizing. Add a few pieces of some nice live rock to get the bacteria going in the tank. Another method to try is using a product like Dr. Tim's One and Only nitrifying bacteria. You just need something to get bacteria in your tank as that is the most crucial of all ingredients for a healthy tank.

I guess I should have clarified when I posted.  My tank is fully cycled using the \"ammonia method\" posted on Seahorse.org.  This method used a bacteria culture such as \"Stability\" to get the culture going or some live rock from someone for the culture starter.  I used the Stability. I began this tank a couple of months ago but haven't taken any recent pictures, sorry.

A 5\" deep sand bed (DSB) will really help things. What type of argonite is it? Hopefully, it is a really fine particle sand as that is best for a DSB. Again, I suggest asking a reefer in your area for a couple scoops of their live sand. This will have the right bacteria in it to colonize in your DSB.

I used a mix of the Carib Sea sugar aragonite and the slightly coarser version of Carib Sea (can't remember what it was called) so that my garden eel could build his tunnel without it collapsing.

At some point you may want to consider adding more flow to your tank as well. A rough ratio is 40 (GPH) : 1 (G) of total flow in your tank. So for a 90G, you want to shoot for closer to 3600GPH from your powerheads. I am, however, not familiar with Seahorse tanks so I don't know what type of flow is needed for them... Your sump setup and refugium sound great. You will love not having the sump under your tank as they can be quite noisy. Coralife skimmers can be a little dicey, but people do have success with them.

I was wondering myself if the flow was enough.  What would be the best combination of powerheads?  Is it best to place them on a timer to simulate change in flow in the tank? How does flow from the pump from the refugium/sump factor into this equation?  So far, the Coralife is giving me approx 1/2 - 1 cup of skimmate every two days.  Is this adequate or should it be more?

Not trying to come off pushy here or anything but just a couple minimal suggestions to get you going. Adding bacteria in your tank is essential though and very cheap to do. You only need say 5 - 10lbs of LR ($30) and a few scoops of live sand (free) to get the bacteria going. It is a wonderful hobby and extremely rewarding. It is nice to see you are going slow with it as that is what is truly needed for success. Congrats again and best of luck.

I never consider anyone to be pushy.  I asked for the help once I found this forum and hope to learn a lot.  I should have clarified what I had done so far to make it easier for you to help.  Thank you so much for the input.

 

[yveterinarian]

Welcome. Looks like you are on your way to a very nice looking tank there.

Thank you Jerry.  It has been a lot of fun seeing it come together.

 

[spyd]

For powerheads, it all dpends on how much money you want to spend... 2 - MP40's would give you tons of flow and are fully controllable. However, they will also run you $500 a piece brand new. Not the most economical but great additions. Another, more affordable option, is to go with say 3 x Koralia 1400's (Will run you $56 a piece at jlaquatics.com). Place 2 on the side walls in front of your rockwork and one on one-side behind your rock work. This allows flow all around your tank. In this scenario, I would just leave them running all the time. The 2 powerheads at the front would be facing one-another. This will create random flow as the water being pushed collides in the middle and becomes sparatic. Random flow is what you are looking for.

Basically, you want all the debris up in the water table so that it can be collected from your skimmer. With improper flow, it will settle on your rocks and sand bed causing algae issues, cyano, etc. So you are better off with more flow. The return pump you are using is just fine. General rule of thumb is 10 x the gallons of water in your tank. Although, some people are matching their flow to their skimmer pump flow for more contact time with the water... This is just a preference though with the individual. Your Coralife skimmer seems to be working fine. Just use it with caution as they tend to overflow sometimes and can make quite the mess.

As for diatoms, don't worry about them. They will kill themselves off as they overpopulate and starve out. Just really your 2nd phase of your cycle... One other tip is to blow off your rock work once a week using a turkeyt baster. It will also prevent debris from collecting and causing algae issues.

 

[Darryl_V]

No mention of Tunze products Derek?

 

[Blob-79]

No mention of Tunze products Derek?

yea I love my tunzes' 

 

[yveterinarian]

For powerheads, it all dpends on how much money you want to spend... 2 - MP40's would give you tons of flow and are fully controllable. However, they will also run you $500 a piece brand new. Not the most economical but great additions. Another, more affordable option, is to go with say 3 x Koralia 1400's (Will run you $56 a piece at jlaquatics.com). Place 2 on the side walls in front of your rockwork and one on one-side behind your rock work. This allows flow all around your tank. In this scenario, I would just leave them running all the time. The 2 powerheads at the front would be facing one-another. This will create random flow as the water being pushed collides in the middle and becomes sparatic. Random flow is what you are looking for.

Thank you for the advice.  I'll definately look into this.  I will have to wait for the next few paychecks!!  ;D  For the two posts below:  I did look at Tunze but they are a little out of my league at the moment.  I think I will have to win the lottery to get everything I really want to get. For now, I'll work my way up.

Your Coralife skimmer seems to be working fine. Just use it with caution as they tend to overflow sometimes and can make quite the mess.

Yes, I have seen this with my seahorse tank in the past and keep a very close eye on it.

As for diatoms, don't worry about them. They will kill themselves off as they overpopulate and starve out. Just really your 2nd phase of your cycle... One other tip is to blow off your rock work once a week using a turkeyt baster. It will also prevent debris from collecting and causing algae issues.

Thanks for that, I hate the look of diatoms and felt they were because of something I was doing wrong so it's nice to know they will clear up soon. 

 

[spyd]

Tunze's are great as well. So many toys out there... The Waveboxes are really cool! I don't know why I keep forgetting to mention Tunze powerheads considering I own some.... I haven't run them yet so maybe that's why. But they sure work on Darryl's tank!!

 

[yveterinarian]

Tunze's are great as well. So many toys out there... The Waveboxes are really cool! I don't know why I keep forgetting to mention Tunze powerheads considering I own some.... I haven't run them yet so maybe that's why. But they sure work on Darryl's tank!!

I agree about so many toys!  If I had my way I'd get the best of everything and a much larger tank but then reality sets in and says "take your time"  That is soooo hard to do. 

I was looking at your description of how to place the powerheads once I get them and I have a question.  The configuration that you described, is it for a corner tank or a regular rectangular tank?  Mine is a corner.  Since mine is, should I have 4 pumps with two on each short side?  One on each side would face behind the rock and one on each side should face each other in front of the rock?  My tank dimensions are 3' along each back wall, 1' sides with approx 2.5' for the front wall.  It is a diamond shape.  If this is the configuration that works best - what size pumps should I use?  Would it work using the two 550 GPH pumps that I have for behind the rock and get two 1400 GPH for the front?  That would still work out to 3800 GPH total flow. 

My water coming into the tank comes in near the bottom along one back wall and I have 3 siphon overflows as my tank is not drilled. I built them out of white schedule 40 PVC using instructions that I received from RayJay on Seahorse.org.  So far, they work a treat.  I built one extra even though Ray said I only needed two because I didn't want the tank to overflow if one failed for any reason.

On a side note the diatoms are almost gone now, thank goodness.