Jake's 150 Gallon Cube Build

[maxst2]

Looks awesome... any updates? Been a few months now.

 

[Ziggy953]

Awesome build!!! Lets see some updates!

 

[jcarlilesiu]

Alright, it has been awhile, so I will update everybody with a short read.

Things have been going pretty good. We have reached our bio-load for fish, and now have:

3 anthias
3 blue-green chromis
1 Randles Goby
1 Midas Blenny
2 Percula Clownfish
1 Foxface Rabbitfish
1 Blue Jaw Trigger
1 Blonde Naso Tang
1 Sailfin Tang
1 Copperbanded Butterfly
1 Lemark Anglefish

Since setting up the tank, I have always wanted a copperbanded. We got one early on, and it suffered an infection of ick and passed within a couple of weeks. We were leary to try again, but picked up one that was eating in the store almost a month ago. A bit smaller than the first one and has been doing and eating beautifully in the tank.

We also tried a few SPS corals which didn't do too well. Both were birdnest, one pink and one green. They both died mysteriously within just a few days and bleeched completely. Ironically, our montipora is doing great. They were in opposite sides of the tank, so it is unknown what happened.

We have picked up a couple of small candy cane corals, a trumpet, finger coral, a lobo, acan frag, and an open brain coral. Our zooanthids are all doing well as well as our large leather, galaxia, favia, frogspawn, and GSPs.

The wife decieded that she didn't like the 14K metal halide bulbs because of the blueness. We ended up changing them out with 10K after about 8 months. The lower kelvin rating makes everything brown out to a degree. We are hoping that either the color of the coral adjusts for the lower spectrum of lighting and looks less brown.

Recently, I made the mistake of lightly stiring up my sandbed. I really like the bright white, and after several months with some finely crushed coral on top growing coraline, the sand looked dirty. So I lightly mixed the fine crushed coral in with the other sand. Looked great for about a day, and then the stupid diatoms made a return. Stupid diatoms. You can see it in the pictures below.

Lastely, we accidently bought regular salt for water changes, and not the reef kind from coralife. I think it might have contributed to a little bit of algae growth since we changed water with it for about a month before realizing. That and we were having some trouble keeping our calcium and alk up. Finally we realized that the salt was incorrect and we plan a 25 gallon water change tomorrow with the reef salt. Hopefully this helps to keep our perameters better in check and reduce so minor algae.

I feel like I have been talking mostly about bad things. Overall though, the tank has been going very well. The coral are growing and spreading out, there have been a few minor and unknown deaths in the coral but all of the fish have been happy and healthy for some time now.

Here are just a couple of pictures I just snapped off. (Sorry about the diatoms. Patience is a virtue)

 

[Jason7894561230]

Beautiful tank well done!

 

[maxst2]

Looks freaking awesome!

 

[Ziggy953]

What is your Calcium and Mag at??

If you are having issues with them staying at a good range you may want to consider dosing with B-Ionic, parts A and B. This will help keep your Calcium levels up, eventually you may want to add the Magnesium supplement as well. I used these products on my reef with great success and my tank was heavily SPS dominated.

 

[jcarlilesiu]

Thanks for the info ziggy. I might give it a shot. I am leary about any supplemental dosing. I am scared of doing more harm than good.

On a side note, yesterday I realized that I we have an infestation of red flat worms. The really really little kind, like 1mm long.

With the diatoms, they are hard to see, but looking at the sand against the glass I can see them. I saw some huge patches of them before, and thought they were cyno or another type of algae. On second glance, they are not algae at all, but little tiny flat worms.

I don't know if this is better or worse than having algae. Looking closely at the photos I just posted, you can see little brown flat circles on some of the rocks. Thats them, and they are everywhere.

Any advice?

 

[Ziggy953]

Flat worm exit does the trick. I suggest siphoning them out before dosing it though. Well siphon as many out as you can. I've used the product on my reef before and had no issues.

Dosing B-ionic is not a bad thing. I used it 3 times a week on my 120 and I had a 55g frag system plumbed in as well. It does help bring levels into line and keep your corals happy. Just make sure you test your levels at least once a week to make sure things are balanced and in line with what you want them to be.

 

[jcarlilesiu]

Flatworm exit worked its wonder. Took two doses.

NEW VIDEO!

YouTube - 150 Gallon Reef

 

[Zer0]

Dang now that's a lot of swimming going on in there! LOL. This tank really grew out to be amazing. Great work.

 

[jcarlilesiu]

I can't walk up to the front of the tank without all of them thinking its feeding time. They get very active and excited when they see me.

 

[PrettyFishies]

Beautiful tank. For what it's worth, we're proud of your efforts. It's gorgeous. I like the music of the first video best. But, great job. You have set a bar for me and my 125

 

[Smitty]

The tank really looks fantastic! Great job in getting it put together and the success of keeping it going!

 

[Joyler]

I am dying for this tank! Outstanding!! Love the depth, makes you feel like you are really snorkeling up to an outcrop, an get surrounded by it! Beautiful!!

 

[Just.A.Bit.Salty]

Great job looks awesome!

 

[jcarlilesiu]

It has been some time since I last updated this build. It has been over a year and a half since it was set up. There have been numerous improvements over that time. We went ahead and upgraded the following equipment:

1) Upgraded the 4 korelias to two synced wireless vortech MP40s
2) Upgraded the lighting to 4 of the AI Sol LED fixtures
3) Added an apex aquacontroller

We also got a new sony A33 DSLR camera, and thought that I would provide a few pictures.

 

[jcarlilesiu]

 

[Smitty]

Looks absolutely great!

 

[Ricksreef]

Great looking tank.Curious,how often do you have to add cal. or Alk. If at all.

 

[jcarlilesiu]

Great looking tank.Curious,how often do you have to add cal. or Alk. If at all.

We have recently been making the switch to more SPS coral than LPS & SPS. We have also added a decent sized clam.

I know there are varying opinions on how to maintain large tanks, but I like to employ the KISS principle. Keep it simple stupid.

Dosing makes me nervous. As such, we do weekly 30 Gallon water changes. Its quite a bit of work, but I just like to change water I guess and rely on the salt mix for most of the macro and micro nutrients the coral require.

As of late, we have still been struggling to keep our Alkalinity and Calcium in acceptable ranges even with such large water changes.

As feared, we got a little out of balance at one point with Alkalinity getting to low to allow calcium uptake and as such our calcium was too high. We dosed KH at that point to try and get things back into ideal readings.

Since that time, we have been having some trouble keeping both alk and calcium up and have started adding kalkwasser to our ATO. This has helped though we are planning on investing shortly in a calcium reactor.

Sorry for the long response.