Bay Area Reefers

Let's get this party started shall we?

I've always wanted a 5'x2'x2' tank, those dimensions allow for some depth of viewing, while not being to much of a PITA to service. The main hangup for me was always $$$, that can really put a damper on a potential project . I was approached via pm by one of our members who was getting out of the hobby temporarily and really wanted to send all of his corals and fish to a good home, as well as relocate the tank to someone that would put it to good use. Believe it or not I was very reluctant at first as I am not one to take advantage of people regardless of their situation, but was I assured that it was the right thing to do and decided to take the plunge, I felt the offer was sincere.

As some of you that have checked out my tank thread http://www.bareefers.org/home/node/2397 know, there were far too many corals in that tank and I was running a delicate balance of trying to stabilize a tank that had many challenges. For one it munched down an entire meq/l of alkalinity over the course of 24 hrs, not a dKH, nope way more. Not only that the tank lived in a very unstable environment as we do not have climate control here on the coast, sure it's 55 degrees most of the time, but that can vary from moment to moment and without a heating/cooling system my little apartment can shift 10 degrees in a jiffy, sometimes I'd come home from work to an 80+ degree apartment and frantically run around opening up all of the windows in the place. Add that to a tank placed in several hours of direct sunlight a day, no chiller or heater and your running the gauntlet to say the least. However I did manage to grow quite a few large colonies over the course of years from tiny frags, they seemed to adapt to their situation and some of them even thrived.

Excited about the tank move, I put together an elite group of people to assist in the laborious task of carrying the tank and stand upstairs.

Bryan (seminolecpa)- Our treasurer and an experienced guy when it comes to moving tanks (I think he's retired from tank moving currently), he's moved all over the place and doesn't need to be directed as to what to do, he simply does it.

Mikey(hooked)- A contractor by trade and a problem solver, if I were to encounter an issue (like having to remove my front door to squeeze the stand in), he's on it. Not to mention he doesn't drink so that leaves more beer for Bryan and I.

Joey- You gotta have the class clown right? Plus his calves are the size of small hams and he's worked in a lumber yard so he's strong. Also, Joey does not drink as well, so you guessed it, more beer for Bryan and I.

One of the major issues in moving the tank was that the new tank was going into the same spot as the old tank, oh joy Not only that I did not take into account that a few of my liverocks that were encrusted with coral were to large to be taken out of the tank without unbolting the canopy from the wall. Not a problem right? Wrong. The bit to remove the canopy from the wall is something I do not have, and had not the time to get, so everything was going to happen at once, a prospect I was not too stoked on. Luckily I have many Brutes, coolers, buckets, you name it, all I had to do was scatter corals around into various containers with water of varying temperatures and makeup (starting to see a trend??). The actual move went well and the tank was full of water by 4:00 or so, my blood pressure was mellowing out and I'm ready to transfer my rock and corals into the new tank . You hear the saying "only bad things happen fast in aquariums"? Well it's true. After placing my most desirable and delicate pieces to the new tank I started to smell the smell, the Acropora smell, not the fresh Acro smell, the other one.... Before the move I had resigned myself to loosing everything, it can happen you know, and ALL reefers must be prepared to loose everything at any given moment. After an exhausting day I realized that I do not have the lighting in my apartment to continue working on the tank and I needed a little rest, I called it a day.

Waking up the next morning I scrambled to the tank and to my horror I had lost almost my entire false aqua delight colony that was the size of a grapefruit, and much to my dismay, Neil's tort (sorry Neil). But the horror of horrors was seeing the flesh peeling off of my A. granulosa and the Darth Maul chalice with tons of freshly exposed skeleton. Not only that the place stunk of that nasty Acro smell and the water was cloudy, not good. Corals were dropping like flies.

If you ever find yourself in my position do yourself a favor and clip and ditch, be proactive, run way too much carbon and skim wet. IIRC Vibrio is the culprit in these situations it is highly infectious and can decimate your corals in rapid style. I started clipping like crazy and throwing corals out on the front deck all the while trying to wire up the tank. Thank god for Bryan, he spent two days at my house moving, setting up, and helping me dial everything in to help the tank stabilize, without him it would have been a disaster, luckily there was some beer left in the fridge even with my attempt to consume it all the previous day. By the afternoon the tank looked like this, and was clearing up and stabilizing (it's like being a friggin' doctor ).

For the setup I used my old sump from my 40g, it's almost as large as the 40g tank and worked very well for me so why change things? I'm running an old Euro Reef CS8-3 with a brand new Sedra 5000 NW pump. I like the old Euro Reefs, they are super reliable and don't overflow very often which is always a concern with an SPS setup, one big dump can do some damage. I have a TLF phosban reactor that I am currently running carbon in and will be switching over to GFO sometime this week when the BRS box arrives. I have two returns one is powered by a Mag 7, the other by a Hydor Seltz 2, the Hydor is not the most powerful pump, but it's super reliable and has minimal heat transfer, we all know about Mag pumps by now . Circulation is provided by a Tunze nano-stream, a Koralia 4, and a tunze 6100 (?) with a controller set with a long interval and wide pulses. At some point I want to go with a 14-20 second strong pulse pushing from side to side to simulate ground swell action on a real reef

Supplement addition is very basic with 100mls of Randy's part #1 alkalinity on Drew's Eco-doser set to add at 2:00 a.m. and again at 5:00 a.m. Calcium and Mag are added manually as tested since most salt mixes have a ton of mag/cal and a balanced addition would result in whack levels.

Current fish list-

Nemo
Dory
Spot Foxface
sharknose goby

Corals-
Too many to list

Lighting is currently provided by 2 250w lumenarc ballast fired MHs with Lumenarc Minis. One side has a Plusrite 20k, the other has a Lumenarc 20k. I'm still up in the air on what I want to use AFA bulbs, I'd like to find a good 14k, but that seems to be a fantasy bulb IME, it just ain't out there from what I've seen. I'm still designing my hood and will be following the same wood combos as used in the stand utilizing Birch (I even have the same stains that were used on the stand ). The hood will have 2-3 IceCap fired T5s with an Aquablue special and one or two Blue+. The reason being I want to even out the white light as well as the blue, not only will it look better, it will make for taking good pics .

My camera is charging right now and if I have energy left after my buddy takes off I'll post some current pics, right now it's officially beer o'clock.

BTW, I'd like to thank "The King of Beers" and Corralejo Añejo for keeping me inspired during the move