40 breeder clam paradise.

J

jsanchez

Member
So I shut down my 20 gallon lagoon tank and decided to upgrade to a 40 breeder with a 20 long sump.

Originally I was going to run the tank with biopellets, hi-cap gfo, rox 0.8, and my skimz sm143 DC skimmer.
Well I've ditched that idea and am instead going to run the skimmer with the rox and a waterfall style algae scrubber.

Lighting will come from a 6x39w aquatic life t5 fixture. Bulbs are 4x blue+ and 2+ coral plus. I might switch out a blue+ for a true actinic bulb for more coral pop.

Flow is from 2x Jebao rw4 running max power on alternating mode. More flow will be supplied from my Jebao DC 9000 (2000+ ghp) return pump running somewhere around 900gph.

Stocking:
1.5" Frostbite clownfish
2" Wyoming white clownfish
.5" Blue hippo tang. Rescued from petco, was covered in ich all over and had a horribly pinched stomach. I was able to convince the manager to give me the tang. It is now fully quarantined and 100% recovered.
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2.5" Flame angel

I also want a either a tiny copperband/Niger trigger/ dwarf golden moray. I know those guys will all outgrow my tank but with my new job I've tripled my income and will be upgrading to a 220 within the year.

Coral will be 3/4 sps and 1/4 LPS. I'm also going to have 5-7 clams. So far I have two 5" maximas one blue the other green with blue and gold mixed in. One 1.75" purple/blue maxima and a 2.6" derasa.

So let's get to the actual build. Sorry for yapping on.

Here is how I've painted the tank.
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Originally I used acrylic paint but that crap sucked... So I switched to krylon spray paint. Looks great and with no mess. I wanted to go black but my fiancé said if I was going to add another tank that it would have to be blue.

I got my overflow from eBay. It measures 18"wide x4"deep x5" tall
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I went for a herbie style overflow but added a third drain incase I wanted to do a bean animal. Figured if I stayed herbie style I'd at least have a 2nd emergency drain. This was my first time drilling a tank and man I was scared. It wasn't hard at all but like the idiot I am on one of the return lines (3/4") I started the hole with the 1" bit. I only went in 1/16" so hopefully it doesn't leak.
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Had the tank filling and testing for leaks. Found a leak in each return line. I forgot to use tape in the threads.
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Tank ran leak free and I started working on the algae scrubber. I took my gfo and biopellet reactor offline and placed the scrubber. I'm running the scrubber off of my return manifold.
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Today I'm going to replumb the sump since the way I have it set up I can't close my doors with the lamps in place.

My skimmer is working like a champ! This is only after 2 days of being on
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Here is the tank filled with the contents of my old 20g inside of it
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And here it is as of last night.
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You can see a little cave next to each big clam. I plan on placing 2" pvc pipes at each cave and have them connected under the sand bed for when I add my dwarf golden moray. I also have two more openings behind the larger rock work that will also be connected. I'll need to add another 30 lbs of sand to make it look good.

I'll be needing to add a ton of corals to get this tank filled in. I might buy marine cultured sps colonies instead of overpriced named frags. The sump layout if different in pics since I was playing with it quite a bit over two days.
 
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Becareful with the return since u drilled it first with the 1 inch i know u said u didnt go deep but u gave it a breaking point kinda like how the cut glass sheets the score it then it cracks at that line aka weekest point . Looks good not fan of blue but women always win besides be covered in coraline in no time lol
 
What a cool pic of the blue tang -- its only as big as one knuckle! Great rescue story nice job with him.

Did you free-hand the drill or use a guide?
 
I wanted black since my overflow is black and I'll never clean it haha. Yeah I'm a little worried about the return but so far it's holding water. I love this little tang. Don't know if I can give her up so I'll have to rush my 220. She should be fine in the 40 for a year.
 
That is a cool story about the tang rescue. I don't think I'd be able to part with it after your hard work of quarantining it! Good luck with it and your build.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
Yeah dory (typical huh? Again the lady picked it) was only 9/16 of an inch when I got her she is now a whopping 13/16. She's cute and will actually swim into my cupped hand and let me take her out for measurements.
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Took over 2 months to get her ich free. I tried paraguard at first which did very little to help. I then switched to cupramine at .4ppm to kill the ich. That finally worked. I was scared to use copper since she is so small.

Updated 2nd post with new pictures of progress. Tank has been running for 2 days now. I was just behind on the build thread.
 
The little girl is flying all around the tank picking at the rocks all day long. She constantly has a very large bulging stomach. I've contemplated cutting back feeding since she eats so much.
 
Hey jesus.
Not sure if its the foto. But if your ats is as shown on the photos.
From what i see. If i am wrong then this post is useless and counts towards my useless posts count.

So, your ats canvas looks clean. Too clean. And smooth second to most important is to rough up the canvas to allow algae to grab hold and start to grow . Tipically leaving 1 to 2 in of smooth surface to allow the water to flow across the canvas. I have a ball valve on mine to controll flow. Photos for reference.

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Anyway. If this cluttered your build. Pls ask josh to delete the comment.

Thanks
 
Hey man appreciate the feedback! I'll post an updated picture later. This was the screen before I roughed it up. I ended up removing about a cup of fluffed up screen. It is already growing some brown algae and that's only two days in. I'll post a picture after 7 days.
 
jsanchez said:
Hey man appreciate the feedback! I'll post an updated picture later. This was the screen before I roughed it up. I ended up removing about a cup of fluffed up screen. It is already growing some brown algae and that's only two days in. I'll post a picture after 7 days.
Click to expand...

No, thank you. At first it seemed like it wasnt rough even while the water was flowing on your 2nd post photos. But then you said the ohotos were alittle backed up from the build.
If its roughed up and is growing brown then your on your way.
Curious.

I still run my gfo a chamber b4 the ats. Im not robbing from the ats. Do you plan on not running the reactor at all? Are you running the ats opposite of your photo period?
Heads up. If by the 3rd week its still only brown. Increase flow. I had to widen the slot on my pvc the 1st time. On my previous build.
 
My end goal is to run just my GAC and scrubber, taking the skimmer off line as well. For now I'm considering dosing carbon and adding some gfo to my brs mini reactor. If after 3 weeks its still brown, ill increase flow and double the lighting while cutting back the photoperiod. I run the scrubbers lights on a 9 on 3 off cycle. It's on most of the night when my tank lights are off. Times are 10pm on --- 7am ---off ---10am ---on 7pm off.
 
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