The Dr. Seuss Tank 2 | Northwest's 44 Gallon Non-Photosynthetic Reef

Northwest_Scapes_

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Intro | After about a year and a half of having my 29 gallon NPS Reef, I decided that it was time to finally upgrade! You may know that tank from this thread here (previous NPS tank) I continuously found myself running out of space and 12"in of front to back room is a pain to work with. That exact reason is why I didn't go with a 55 Gallon as it has the same amount of width. Which turned me to my next best option for what I could fit upstairs that my parents were okay with; The 40 Breeder. While it's labeled as "the 40 Breeder", it actually holds 44 gallons when you do the math according to Jason from Prime Time Aquatics. This gives me more space to put corals, more swimming space for fish, more water volume for better water quality (since with NPS the water tends to foul with an overload of nutrients from how much you need to feed), and more benefits. Currently the tank is leak testing but if it goes well, everything should be moved over by the end of the week. Which means a lot of the equipment will be the same that was used previously on the old tank. Which I'll get into now:

Equipment |

Filtration
: Fluval Fx4 Canister Filter (filters 250 gallons of water, usually used on 75-90 gallon tanks)
Heater: Aquarium Co-op 100 Watt Heater w/ Inkbird Temp Controller set to 73F.
Lighting: None since they're Non-Photosynthetic, the corals don't use light. However the tank is near a window so it will be getting some amounts of natural sunlight, and a small Twinstar LED Planted light will be used whenever I take pictures.
Flow: 1x AI Nero 3 (may add a second one in the future but the Canister pushes out 700 GPH so it's been like my "secondary powerhead")

Scape |
Rock:
35 Pounds of MarcoRock (was wanting to use some Gulf Live Rock but figured it wasn't needed for a setup like this)
Sand: 40 Pounds CaribSea "special grade" sand

Fish & Inverts |
Continuing on with the Mesophotic / Deepwater theme, the fish stocking will be the same as I had in the old tank, those species were:
3x Randall's Anthias (1 M / 2 F) (Pseudanthias randalli)
1x Yellow Striped Possum Wrasse (Wetmorella nigropinnata)

And for the new tank
1x - TBD
Currently in consideration is an Assessor Basslet, Lioporpoma Basslet, Fathead Sunburst Anthias, or Terelabrus Hogfish

All of these species are either Deepwater or do best in dimly lit setups with lots of caves.

Inverts are mainly snails as there are no Mesophotic Invert Species that are really available. Some oddball inverts such as Tunicates, smaller Cleaner Shrimp, etc will also be considered. A Green Crinoid Featherstar specifically I'm really interested in as these tend to do better in captivity than their Red counterparts. These stay more in the crevices of the rocks and seem to eat a wider variety of foods so I'm doing a lot of research on them.

Corals | will be covered more in a later post once everything is moved over. But generally a variety of Gorgonians, Sun Corals, Dendros, Softies, etc will be in the tank.

That's all I can think of for now, I hope you all enjoy this ride as much as I will! I'm going even bigger and better than the previous tank so I'm super excited. Here's a quick pic of the leak test.
20240408_223652.jpg
 

Just grow it: Have you ever added CO2 to your reef tank?

  • I currently use a CO2 with my reef tank.

    Votes: 6 7.1%
  • I don’t currently use CO2 with my reef tank, but I have in the past.

    Votes: 4 4.7%
  • I have never used CO2 with my reef tank, but I plan to in the future.

    Votes: 5 5.9%
  • I have never used CO2 with my reef tank and have no plans to in the future.

    Votes: 65 76.5%
  • Other.

    Votes: 5 5.9%
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