My 55 gallon reef to be.

[swank1975]

Hello there. I have a 55 Gallon glass tank overflowing to a wet dry sump. In my sump I have a coralife super skimmer that outlets into my home made refugium. I have ran an overflow back from the refugium to the sump in case the return pump cannot keep up with the skimmer pump but really they balance very well. I have a 5watt UV clarifier on my tank return line. In my tank I have 2 koralia power heads mixing things up. I run my heaters in the down below so they aren't in the tank. I have approx 75lbs of live rock and about 50-75lbs of sand (really not sure on this number I have about 2" in the tank and about 2" in the filtration down below).

In the tank have a handful of hermit crabs and various snails (turbo, nassarius snails), a tiger cucumber, and arrow head crab, a cleaner shrimp, and a peppermint shrimp. For Fish I have a yellow striped maroon clown, a hippo tang, a 6 lined wrasse, and an algae blenny. In my live rock I have quite a few of those little worms (I think they are bristle they are red or white colored and fuzzy on the sides and kinda flat) They come in and out of the rock for feeding.

I just picked up a bubble anemome that my clown instantly hooked up with. The clown has been a riot ever since. You'd think the anemone was Hefner's girlfriends and the clown was a 15 year old boy.

Here are my latest water test results (taken with aquarium pharmaceuticals test kits).

PH= 8.2
NH3/NH4= 0ppm
Nitrite= 0ppm
Nitrate= 0ppm
Phosphate= 0ppm
Calcium= 360mg/L ca2
KH= 7dKH
Salinity= 1.024
Temp= 82F

I have been using a little buffer to keep the PH over 8.2 for the Anemome is that a good practice? Is my water in pretty good shape? My algae is pretty under control and it is all pretty clear. I purchased this setup off a guy on Craigs list about 90 days ago and it has been running pretty well since. The rocks have been stacked and built up from the glass up so hopefully nothing shifts and falls.

Here are a couple pics.

Front view. You can kinda see the clown and his new best friend.


Side View. You can see our pretty tang and the rock setup.


Here is the down below pic where you can see the sump, skimmer, and fuge. My guess the Fuge has about 4 gal of water in it most of the time with live sand, a piece of rock, and some caulerpa algae. The fuge is lite ont he off hours to help keep the ph balanced.

[OneDummHikk]

Be careful with the Hippo Tang. Tangs need a lot of swimming room and it won't be long before he outgrows a 55 gallon tank.

[Loverotties]

Looking good.Temp is a little high and I agree with Randy the tang has to go(to small of tank).

[swank1975]

From what I understand the tang has been in there a couple years already (from the guy we got the tank from). I have ambitions of moving within the next year. When we get a more permanent home I'll prolly get a larger tank.

Working on getting that temp down.

Thanks much for the replies so far.

[swank1975]

New pic.

[OneDummHikk]

Looking nice. Since the tang has been in there a few years, it is settled but just know that it is going to eventually out grow the tank and will have to be moved.

[sasquatch]

Hi Swank! looks like a very nice start! Where is your water coming from tap,store,ro/di? The cyano may require a little rowaphos, phosphates are very hard to detect with a normal test kit, they dont read low enough levels and the cyano sucks it up as fast as its produced, what and how often are you feeding? Looking forward to more pictures, Steve

[swank1975]

I'm feeding once a day (I just added coral frags so things are now changing).

I feed a bit of freeze dried cylopeeze and a cube of frozen mysis.

I got me a salifert dkh test kit and we calibrated my instant ocean hydrometer against store water that was checked at 1.025 with a refractometer. I was reading 1.024 so I have not adjusted to that.

I got my new skimmer (cpr one with a vacuum pump keeping bubbles out of the siphon tube. I like it. I had to drain the tank about 2/3 of the way to move it out 1" from the wall so the bigger overflow would fit. DOH.

I ended up doing a 10G water change and put the rest of my old water right back in.

Oh yeah the pics of my frags. I cannot remember what they all are I am sure I will learn fast. I have started slowing dosing calcium and dkh buffer to bring those levels up for the coral. Calc is at 260 and dkh is 8.3 right now. Going for 350-400 calc and 9-11 dkh.

Below are pics. I constantly get this build up of bubbles. My 2 koralia's are not blowing bubbles, my sump return is not blowing bubbles, and I cannot see anything else to be creating them. I had a shinny hard bubble (assume it's bubble algae) stuck on a rock that I was able to syphon off tonight in one piece. It wouldn't break and actually plugged my syphon tube I had to drop it into bucket (it got flushed). Are all these other bubbles algae related?

[swank1975]

Got my maxijet mod today. With the bigger impeller it threatened to turn my tank into a blender. LOL

Put the small impeller in there and after finding a sweet spot everyone seems to be liking it.

[Dentoid]

Hi Swank! Looks like you are on your way to a great reef. Those bubbles you see appear to be coming from cyanobacterial growth on your rockwork. Generally caused by high nitrates and/or high phosphates. Even though your tests are reading zero for these elements doesn't mean that they are not there. The phosphate test kits don't test for all forms of phosphate and the cyano could be using it up as fast as its produced. Perhaps you'll want to look into cyano control.

[swank1975]

I have been trying to figure out what in the world those bubbles are front. They can form up in a few hours.

Sweet thanks for the tip. Would me just running a RO unit and not a DI unit after my RO unit lead to this problem?

[swank1975]

Oh yeah. I am working on getting the bio balls out of my sump one handful a week (suggested to me by guy I bought frags from). I was told not to just take them all out at once because it might be too drastic of a change for my system. I figure get those balls out of there and just get more live rock going in there.

My snail and hermit crab count is also getting a bit low which I imagine will help with any uneaten food. I'm going to get the DI unit to add to my RO system.

Today is also the first day of having my mini Jet ski stuck to the wall in my tank (maxijet1200 with mod running the smaller impeller). Shoudl this help with circ? I will up my water change pace. I'm lucky to do 5 gallons ever 2 weeks. Should I go to 10G every week and try to slow my feedings down?

Is this an effective start at cyano control?

[Dentoid]

Yes , all of these things will help. Other things to consider are feeding amounts, detritus build-up and removal techniques, and age of lighting bulbs. The first cyano outbreak occurred in my tank about 10 months of age. Nothing I did would get rid of it. I used ChemiClean and it would get rid of it, but then it would come right back. I did 3-4 WCs/week, didn't touch it. Then someone told me about spectrum changes in old light bulbs. My bulbs were 10 months old. So I changed my bulbs and Voila!...my cyano went away.

You said you got the tank from someone else, do you know how old the bulbs in the light fixture are?

[swank1975]

I replaced all my lamps in March so that shouldn't be it.

To this point I have cut my lights back some.

I am feeding some cylopeeze (little on tip of butter knife mixed into jar holding tank water) with a frozen cube of mysis shrimp daily. Is that too much? Should I feed less each day or the same every other day?

If I add more crabs and snails will it offset the feeding much? Thinking of getting an emerald crab this weekend. Is it safe for my corals and fish I have?

[swank1975]

So when my lights were off I had no bubbles this morning and after they came on today around noon they started forming. Do I have this right? Photosynthisis is releasing o2 from the algae?