Chris2500dk's 47BB (in progress)

[Chris2500dk]

This is my first ever reef tank, I've had fresh water tanks for about a year, but decided that I wanted to try reefkeeping.
After spending a lot of time studying online I opted to go for a bare-bottom setup, it just seems like a nice way to run

The tank itself is 47 gallons footprint of 40" by 16" and 18" high, a 150W MH light system with 2x30W T8 arctinic, around 60# of live rock.



The wooden panels aren't finished yet, I need to decide on a color

Closeups of the tank, I'm still playing around with the stacking of the rocks, the high stack on the left is perfect I think and the larger stack on the right will probably change as I get corals on their own rocks.





The overflow is a Tunze outlet which seems to be working just fine (should at that price too!)

I bought the rocks second hand and they've been shedding quite a lot during the 3 weeks they've been in my tank, I've siphoned it out regularly.
I was lucky enough for the rocks to contain some Xenia which seems to be growing nicely, I even moved one to a rock fragment and it's looking good.



I have a 15 gallon sump with a 500 gal/hour return pump and a Beast Skimmer 400P (rated for 400 gallons).



I've ordered some cheato to put in the sump to help export nitrate and phosphate, but so far neither seems to be a big problem.

So far no fish, I'm having a lot of trouble deciding which to keep so I might start a thread on that in the near future.

I'm also trying to decide on which powerheads to use, I'm thinking about two Seio 1100 streams, or maybe if I have the patience I'll wait for Tunze Nanostreams. The dream setup would be 2 Nanostream 6055 with a multicontroller, but that's a wee bit expensive.

Comments are welcome of course

Chris

[Viv]

Hi Chris! Nice to see another coming to BB. I'm pleased with the system so far, I think you will be also. I see you decided not to cook your rock first. There's gonna be a lot more shedding which will take some time. You ordered the cheato, you will probably not need it down the line...this system (since your removing the detrius and DOM via syphoning and skimmer) really doesn't lend itself to having any. Personally I'd wait for the rock to complete its shedding, and go for the Nanostreams. Tunze's are fantastic, IMHO, and give great movement of water. They are worth saving up for! (Even if it takes a while) Besides, I think if you wait for that rock to shedd, you'll have the time. Many will cook the rock 3-4 months even before putting it in the tank. There is a thread about rock cooking-check it out... I like your rock structure and the Xenia looks cool and healthy!

[Chris2500dk]

Yeah I was thinking about cooking but I don't really have anywhere to cook them and the tank was just standing there empty so...

[REEF-DADDY]

Looks good, how much flow do you have?

[Chris2500dk]

Not much right now, which is why I'm looking at the tunzes or seios.

[Leonardo's Reef]

Nice to see another European Tank Buy the Tunze online from germany, that will save you some Euro's... You will love them.
Very nice tank, is it from Akva-Stabil? Rockwork looks awesome!

keep up the good work!

Leonardo

[Little Luey]

Nice tank, welcome to the forum!

[Wiskey]

Looks good.

A word of caution, you don't want to drop the nutreants too low if you are going to keep softies, they like a dirtyier tank. The good part about a BB tank is you can run it dirty or clean depending on what you want to keep (you are in control not the sand).

If I were trying to do this I would not skim too wet, or syphon too much. I would run the skimmer just wet enough to keep algae at bay, and your Fuge will help with this too because of alopathy.

HTH,
Whiskey

[Chris2500dk]

Thanks for the welcome and the advice

The tank is indeed an Aquastabil, I bought it to keep cichlids and figured it'd make a nice reef tank instead. I sealed the aluminium trim with silicone before starting up.

I'll see how the algae develops and adjust the skimmer if I'm getting too much, right now (3 weeks after first starting up) I'm getting a bit of hair algae but nothing major really.

I was reading on Reefcentral and a guy from Tunze said that the Nanostream 6055 (the controllable one) most likely won't be in the shops until December so I might look for other options. I'm a bit worried that a Stream 6000 will be too obtrusive, it's quite the lump of plastic. How much of a difference to the total flow of the tank is having a variable speed stream? I'm thinking maybe to put a single Tunze 6000 with a Seio 1100, two 6000s is definetely out of the question.