Ryan's 120 Oceanic Reef: Right By Da Beach Boyeeee

Rcunning8

Rcunning8

Premium member
Hello,

My name is Ryan and I am a coral addict.

My tank has been up and running for about 4.5 months now and I wanted to start a thread to track some of my progress and document my success and failures in this wonderful and all time consuming hobby. But first a little about myself. Im now a fourth year medical student at Loyola living in downtown Chicago and I got into the hobby late in December 2012 and haven't stopped collecting corals since! I started out with a 40 breeder, plumbed in a DIY infinity tank and then upgraded to a 75. I initially thought I was satisfied with a 75 but as I move forward in this hobby I have found that 1 tank is too many and 1000 is never enough. My 75 gallon was absolutely flourishing prior to my move to my new apartment. Upon my move I decided to upgrade to a 120. I made the mistake of not plumbing the tank prior to my move, had a health emergency during my move, had to go to the hospital and a majority of my coral perished in buckets while at the hospital over the next two days. With the help of a great friend [MENTION=2817]edin0009[/MENTION], I was able to save about half my corals and almost all of my fish and I am eternally grateful for having him and such an awesome community like CR to have put out the word (thanks [MENTION=1277]jrpark22000[/MENTION] and [MENTION=454]maidia[/MENTION]) that I was in need of help during that most stressful time. Since that time in July 2015, I have been working on getting this oceanic 120 in working order and restocking my reef to its prior glory! So lets get started!!!

Tank/sump
Oceanic 120 with 1 inch thick starfire glass, Dual overflows and Dual Return
Eshopps R200 Sump

Lights
48 inch Reefbreeder photon 10 inches above the water in middle of tank For overall reef lighting
48 inch orbit marine Pro in the back of the tank for prime time SPS lighting
http://www.marinedepot.com/Current_...D_Lighting-Current_USA-CU04110-FILTHO-vi.html
Innovative Marine 18Watt Skyye LED for refugium light
Innovative Marine 18Watt Skyye LED for ATS
Odyssea 36 Watt UV sterilizer
12 hour ramp up/down lighting cycle with Reefbreeder, blues reaching 70% for 1 hour max, Whites reaching 35% for one hour-10 inches from surface
12 Hour ramp up/down lighting cycle with Orbit Marine Pro, blues reaching 70% for 1 hour max, Whites reaching 35% for one hour-3 inches from surface
No idea what my par readings are but have been fine tuning the lights, moving corals from place to place depending on the look of things

Filtration
Reef Octopus xp1000sss
Unknown amount of liverock
Large felt filter sock
ATS on UV sterilizer output
Carbon/GFO media added bimonthly in filterbag-hoping to upgrade to media reactor soon
Chaetomorpha
Culerpa
Mangroves
Red Fungia
2 inch Crushed Coral base
2 inch Coarse Sand top

Flow
Jeabao WP40 on left Front-Pulse mode and controlled by Apex for on off times
Jebao WP25 on Right Front-Else Mode and controlled by Apex for on off times
Jebao WP60 in back right blasting through the back tunnel of rock work inhibiting detritus deposition controlled by Apex for on off times
Random 300GPH dual head pump blasting forward controlled by Apex for on off times
Mag9.5 return pump divided by 4 returns to DT

Dry Goods
Apex Gold
-PH Probe
-Temp Probex2
-Conductivity Probe
-Foscam camera for monitoring while away
-2 EB8's
DIY ATO
Jebao DP4 doser
-Dosing unknown amounts of Seachem Ca/ALK-Unknown due to recent fine tuning
-Dosing 5 ml of Red Sea No3/Po4
Kent Iodine Dosing 6 drops x 1 week
Acropower Dosing 30 ml every other day

Parameters
SG-1.02600
Conductivity-34.5
Alk-10 bringing down to 8.5
Ca-450
Mg-1400
Nitrates-.75
Phosphates-.04


Fish
4 inch Blue Throat trigger (Steve)
3 inch Ornate leopard Wrasse
2.5 inch Bluestar Leopard Wrasse
2.5 Inch radiant Wrasse
3.5 Inch Randalls Goby paid with Tiger pistol Shrimp
3 Inch Starry Blenny (Mr. Scrooge)
2.5 inch Male Blue Mandarin Dragonete (Jackie Chan)
2 Lyretail Anthias (Phil and Phyllis)
2.5 inch buckshot Clown from Booyah (Caspy)
2 inch Picasso clown from Booyah (Jesus Pronounced in Espanol)

Wanted Fish
Purple Tang
Potters Wrasse
Female Blue Mandarin

Inverts
Sunburst anemone
Orange Tube anemone
5 Inch Blue Maxima
3.5 inch raindrop Blue maxima
4 inch red linkia starfish (ariel)
3 inch sand sifter starfish
2 Ultra Rock Anemones
3 Feather Dusters
5 inch Blue sponge
Halloween Urchin
Pincushion Urchin
2 Flame Shrimp
2 Cleaner Shrimp
1 Tiger Pistol Shrimp
1 huge approx 3.5 inch emerald Crab (Lou Farigno)
Decorator crab
3 3 inch Fighting Conches
15 hermit crabs different assortments
Nessarius, Trochar, Cowrie, Ceriths, Florida Ceriths, limpets, Turbo Etc Snails

Reef Composition
Pure mixed reef to the max!
Up top we have a mix of millipora, acropora, montipora, montipora digitata, Stags, Leptosperis, birdsnest Etc
Middle to bottom we have sponges, zoanthids, acanthastrea, dendros, cyphastrea, chalices, mushrooms, rhodactis, purple tip frogspawns, Hammer corals, tachyphyllia, Acanthophyllia, candycanes, anemones, clams, feather dusters, gorgonians, leptos, leptastria, favias etc!

More Pictures to come but here is the overall look of the tank right now!

View attachment 15573

Subscribe to my thread and follow along in my reefing journey!

-Ryan C.
 
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wow nice stuff :) corals are already taking off for you haha .. and you filled that big of a tank pretty fast lol
 
Wanted to show u guys some pics of my sump, enjoy!!

Full pic
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Left side with dual overflow combining to one one inch outlet and splitting again with one going to the filter sock/skimmer compartment and other going to uv sterilizer/ATS!
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Right side showing the only non hard plumbing in my system which is the initial return pump line that is converted into hard pvc and split for dual returns. Also that orange bucket is where my skimmer drains it's gunk into, gross I know but it's almost air tight so it doesn't smell :)
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I use a jebao dp4 and I really like it so far. Also I just did a diy ATO with toms aqua lifter
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My mangrove! Just switched over to only led's in the sump last week and so far it doesn't seem to mind. I always had problems growing mangroves under led's before so I am skeptical.
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Got this cool container off eBay for 45 bucks and worth it cuz I can follow how much solution is being consumed by each dosing pump instead of guesstimating by lifting up the opaque liquid containers that the solutions come in.
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Thanks for looking!!



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Looking good Ryan!

Regarding your DIY skim bucket, you may want to consider a cut off switch to avoid a gross clean up.

Since you have an APEX, I'd suggest looking at the AVAST pressure switch...as they are super reliable and are easily wired in to the APEX allowing the APEX to shut off your skimmer and notify you when the bucket is full. I'm using their Davy jones skim locker like this and it works great.

As well as, if you have ever had your skimmer "go wild" on you, you may want to reconsider the size of your skim bucket. 5g is likely "a lot" to have quickly dumped out of your sump....as it will trigger ATO and maybe other things programmed.
 
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Today's tank shot! Everything is looking good especially with my addition of my new brs and two little fishes media reactors for gfo and carbon!!! Acanthophyllia is finally starting to look great and skirt expanding almost fully!! I think that with this new addition of carbon and the immediate positive response with my acanthophyllia the diagnoses of non expansions seems to have been Chem warfare among my corals which the acanthophyllia was not good at resisting.. Who knew!! Now I guess I'll be battling low nutrients but I guess I'll just have to feed heavy and I'm sure Steve will like that!

Happy reefing

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Hey guys!!

So a week ago I decided I would give it another go at a potters wrasse and man o man am I glad I did!! This one is about double the size of my first one and appears to be in much better shape than the other. It has full amazing color, blue, orange and yellow and is really fat and healthy looking. The other one was only one inch this one is two inches which I think is important as I have a bluestar wrasse, radiant wrasse and ornate leopard wrasse as tank mates. Of the wrasses the ornate is definately the biggest, his name is Cletus because he's pretty stupid as all he does is look at his reflection all day everyday. He has had no aggression to my new potters wrasse as I feel like he is alpha and has already established himself as top dog of the wrasses. The only one I had issue with was my bluestar leopard wrasse who picked on my potters for the first hour that I put him in. I stopped the agression by taking the advice of Lisa at underwater world who sold me the potters. She told me to place netting around the tank to confuse the fish and it worked like a charm. I placed the nets around the tank and immediately the bluestar stopped harassing the potters. After 24 hours I removed the netting and there is no agression whatsoever!! I am very pleased! I have been feeding the tank a ridiculous amount to keep everyone happy over the week since the potters addition and this thing is a ferocious eater and is not shy at all!!

I have read that potters wrasse are expert only fish as they are extremely delicate in the first month they are in the tank and only ten percent survive past the first month where other leopards like bluestars, ornates etc are difficult to keep about 40-50 percent of them survive. Since starting to keep leopards I had initial issues in the beginning but now I think I'm pretty good at keeping them successfully especially because after the initial period of captivity these fish become almost bulletproof. However I was interested in hearing some other people's experience with potters wrasse in the past and what else I can do to ensure her success in my tank. I plan on bringing down the feeding soon since my nitrates have jumped to 8 from .5 ppm since I started feeding like a maniac but I don't want to do it too soon if people out there think it's the right thing to do for the time being.

Two weeks ago I also added a girlfriend (yoko kitty) for my male blue mandarin (Jackie chan). They are getting along great and swim along eachother when the lights start to dim. The copepod population still doing great and at night time my rocks and sandbed are pretty much carpeted with amphipods. I'll try and post a pic of them together later when they start socializing!

I was also able to eliminate about 20 pounds of rock from the DT and really like the "less rock" look so far. I want to eliminate more but I can't as I need them for either structure or real estate for my coral.

Lemme know what u guys think and here are some pics of my new potters, sorry for the crappy quality it was next to impossible to get these two of her as she is constantly zipping around nipping at all my rocks!

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FTS:

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How the f do you find that many potters man haha that fish looks beautiful




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Lol. in the past 4 months I have only found two, and I bought both! The more I think about it I should have never bought the first as it was much too small and looked malnourished and destined to fail in comparison to this specimen. The way I find potters wrasses? lol I annoyed Lisa on a daily basis at underwater world and when she finally got another I flew over there in the wagon and picked her up. thanks for the compliment Tin, the fish is astronomically better looking in person, I am a very happy with her and doing all I can that I know to keep her happy and fat!
 
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