40 Gal Breeder Frag / In-Between build.

[XtraKargo]

Just building a setup to house some corals, and hopefully clean up some of them before putting them into a new 90 build. My 65 corner tank has a couple of things that I consider undesirable. Scratches in the front glass, vermetid snails, along with an invasive blue polyp coral. So I am getting a few things gathered and getting some corals wet this week.

I found the tank on FB with the stand and rinsed the sand, then cleaned the tank. Built the frag system with the typical light shade/ egg crate from the big box store and some PVC for legs. I am trying two different tiers, and I'm leaving enough room for my siphon to get around the sides of the tank.

I had a sump on hand that will work for most of it. I wanted to add a filter sock below my overflow so I opened up tinkercad for the first time and started coming up with a design. I have printed several things in the past but not a lot of my own designs.

Once I finished that up I had a float I wanted to add for the ATO. Trying to simplify this setup but the plastic set screws could not bite down properly, so back to the printer again. I was able to make a spacer to set in place and now the set screws can bite down.

 

[XtraKargo]

I didn't like the way the Overflow box and the Return were just able to "float" around along the rim of the tank. I was able to design and print a set of spacers and lock in these two items.

After getting those lined out I then added a cover above the sock and to hold the overflow as it dumps into the sump.

 

[XtraKargo]

And lastly I was able to setup the lights. I purchased a pair of Ecotech Radion XR15 Pro g4 used on R2R. I was getting a little trouble from one of them. I broke them down and cleaned the dust, the cooling fins, and redid the thermal past on the LEDs. Once both were cleaned they have powered up with no troubles. I then printed up some spacers for the aluminum rails I made to hold them up. This allowed me to be able to access the buttons on the top and tie in the color with rest of the printed items. Once I got them hung I was able to tune them with Mobius, not sure I set it up quite right, but I think I have the AB+ on a 30 day acclimation going.

Once I got the pump plumbing complete I did a 38 hour leak check, added salt ( switching over to Tropic Marin Reef Pro) Seed and MicroBactr7. Then took some live rock I had curing in the old sump, along with a filter sock that had 3 days of use into this tank.

Then moved some of my corals for testing.

Wish me luck.


Later Days,

XK.

 

[Northern Flicker]

Looks great dude. Off to a good start.

 

[Gumbies R Us]

Tank is looking great!

 

[XtraKargo]

Hit it hard over the weekend and began pulling stock out of my display tank and trimming it down. I realized that I will need to get some diamond wheels for my dremel after seeing the Fragbox video on youtube. The fiber cutoff wheels for metal barely make a dent in torch stems.


I printed half a spool for each of the light mounts to clean up the excess cable hanging loose.

We moved over a group of teensy rock flower nems that spawned in our main display. We set them in a plastic cup so they wouldn't get blown everywhere, and one was already on the move last night.

Some of the starts for the next tank so far.

And full tank shot so far. I printed a frag rack for those corals that like to sit lower in the tank. Over to the right, low on the glass, you can see the RF nem on the move. This morning it was MIA.

I hope you all have a great week!

 

[XtraKargo]

So this week I added a few snails. They seem to be tackling the diatoms nicely. I had one of my pumps go out on the wave maker. So I ordered a couple of Sicce pumps from the BRS sale last week and will be putting them in this weekend. I was hoping to have the last of the wiring dressed in and finalized by now so I could concentrate on the next build/tear down. (I also picked up a 32 gallon BioCube LED that will be going sometime soon... Looked at the wife and asked "What's 32 more gallons, right?" ) As well, the diamond wheels showed up from Amazon yesterday. So hopefully this weekend I can try my hand at fragging torches and frogspawns. Fingers crossed.

Here it is before I made some trades. You can see where I'm using an MP10 temporarily for the second wavemaker powerhead, and the difference in the snail tracks on the frag racks.

I took these in to my LFS for trade. Got some more plugs, and some glue, and some store credit for the next time.

And I also maintain my Uncle's 90 twice a month. So these were added to his tank.

Have a fine day, everyone. Thanks for stopping by.

 

[XtraKargo]

Hey there folks. Just another update. I did water testing this past week and ammonia, nitrate, and nitrite were all @ 0.

I took the Dremel and fragged a torch of nearly 4 heads and got it sorted down to 3 plugs.

FRESH TORCHES

I was able to print another wall mount for a basket to hold some nems for the time being.

We picked up a coral beauty that's intended for the 32 Bio Cube. Eating good and a little shy.

And for the week here is a Full Tank Shot.

And a quick hardware update. The wavemaker appliance I think took out the initial powerhead, because within about 3 days the new one started rattling from BRS. So I removed it and just left both on, then left the MP10 in there to add some randomized flow.

Have a great week! Thanks for stopping by.

 

[XtraKargo]

Well interestingly enough I had an "event" this week. I was a few days late on my water change and the tank had gotten cloudy. I added filter floss to the overflow box, scrubbed all the glass down, and did a 10 gallon water change, and added a bit of carbon to the sump above the bioballs. I also setup a 10 gallon tank with some chaeto above the display. I asked my wife if a sump is above the display what do we call the tank above it? She says it is the "Dump" instead. ;-)

Maybe it's because it looks like a dump now! Hopefully this is all quite temporary and I can find a better solution for it in the future.


Once the cloudiness cleared I noticed there is one torch showing some stress. This one in particular was much happier in the original tank before moving it to the in-between tank.

In the dancing torches video it is the one on the right. This was the previous tank of course.
DANCING TORCHES


Here it is today. I will run some more tests today but before the water change the only thing that was abnormal was nitrates started to go up.

I still have my lights in acclimation mode, and I may have dropped it while moving the racks to clean the bottom. For now I am not going to fret too much, and just move it lower in the tank with a bit of mild flow.

The coral beauty now has a name, and is doing great! Fancy (My wife sings a bit of Reba each time she says hi to Fancy.)

Thanks for checking in as always! Have a great weekend.