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Ken Hahn
06/07/2011, 10:49 PM
It's not a normal reef tank. It's not a normal shallow tank. It's not a tide pool tank. It's not big enough to be called a pond, so I’m calling it the reef puddle tank for lack of a better name. I am putting it here in the general forum since though the overall tank is 300 gallon in size, it holds less water than that.

First a little background: I have been in the reef hobby on and off for a very long time. After a major tank crash on my 225g SPS tank a few years ago, I decided to take a break and fiddle with freshwater.

My freshwater tank was setup as a paludarium which is designed as though you are looking into a cutaway of a river bank. I had a custom tank made which is 72” x 36” x 27” high. The overflow is set for a 12” water depth. Since I was not filling the tank very full, I made the tank out of slightly thinner acrylic and kept the top bracing to the smallest possible for easy access. Because of this construction, I decided to keep the water level depth the same in the reef tank. I also wanted to preserve the ability to look down into the tank as well as view it from the front which I though would add another dimension to my viewing pleasure, especially with clams.

The tank is built into the wall. The backside of the tank extends into the garage on the other side of the wall.

Here is a picture of the freshwater setup when it was initially setup before it was moved into the wall. The tank at this time was a 225g which I had the opportunity to upgrade after a helpful father-in-law shot a nail gun through the side of the tank when we were building it into the wall. When I upgraded, I made the tank another 6" front to back and a couple of inches taller which brought it up to about 300g in capacity.

http://www.reefcorner.com/Reef%20Puddle%20Pics/Freshwater%20Tank.jpg

When I decided to do this, I wanted to keep the tear-down of the freshwater and initial setup and stocking of the reef to one week which is not the typical timeframe for setting up a reef tank. Sort of an Insta-Reef type of thing. There were a couple of reasons for this tight timeline, but I also felt that with the right approach, the rapid approach would work fine and I wanted to test that concept a bit.

My previous reef tanks had all been the more typically ‘several month to initial stocking levels’ types of setups. Memorial day weekend was when I targeted to have the basic tank up and running and I started on the project the previous weekend by tearing down the freshwater setup.

Ken Hahn
06/07/2011, 11:02 PM
Week 1:

With the freshwater tank, I had built complete foam backdrops that gave it a very natural look. I debated about doing something similar on the saltwater and add plants above the waterline, but my wife voted for just keeping the black acrylic as the backdrop, so that’s what I did… gotta keep the wife happy! I also was a little concerned about the backdrops creating detritus traps behind them plus they take up some tank depth. I also couldn't really think of a great look to create with them anyway. Given the tight timeline, I basically took the easy way out.

I decided to build the background look below water using dry lace rock with some some of the rock extending above the water line a bit. I had some rock from the freshwater setup, plus I wanted to try to build a tide pool looking rock in the tank somehow. Lace rock seemed like the best bet for that endeavor. The rock got a weak bleach bath for a couple of days and then soaked in fresh water for a day to clean it from its stint in the freshwater tank.

I found a fairly large rock at the local decorative rock store and built it up into a basin shape by cementing several smaller pieces to it. I also used the cement to try to plug the spots where the rock was leaking water.

The cement I used is the Quikrete Hydraulic Water Stop which I got from HD. Here is the information on it: http://www.quikrete.com/ProductLines/HydraulicWaterStopCement.asp

http://www.reefcorner.com/Reef%20Puddle%20Pics/quikrete.jpg

This stuff works well and is safe for drinking water. The good news is that it hardens fast. The bad news is that it hardens VERY fast. They state a 3 minute work time and I think that is stretching it. I had to mix small batches at a time to do my work. I tested the tide pool several times and kept finding leaks. I tried filling the leaks with underwater epoxy or the cement but I could never get the leaks completely stopped. I didn't want to just make a concrete basin, so I left well enough alone.

My original plan was to have the tide pool completely above the water level with water flowing into and then out of it into the main tank, but since I couldn’t get it completely water tight, I was worried about the life in it if I had a power failure and it drained slowly. For this reason I decided that I would mount the tide pool mostly submerged in the main tank so that it would maintain a consistent water level, but still give a tide pool feel.

Here is a picture of the tide pool rock in process. You can see the seams a bit where I bonded the rocks together, but it’s not too noticeable as it dried. Note-to-self: next time don’t do concrete work directly on the black carpet!

http://www.reefcorner.com/Reef%20Puddle%20Pics/tide%20pool%20construction.jpg

Ken Hahn
06/07/2011, 11:08 PM
I then played around a bit with the basic rock layout for the tank. My deck benches are just about the right size to simulate my tank. I decided to line the back and part of the sides of the tank to get plenty of places to mount corals on the back. I also wanted a couple of separate rock islands built up in the middle of the tank which would be out of live rock rather than lace rock. (yes, I know my deck needs some new stain, I'll get the wife right on that :D).

http://www.reefcorner.com/Reef%20Puddle%20Pics/Lace%20Rock%20Layout%20on%20Deck.jpg

Here are the rocks moved into basic position in the tank. I polished the acrylic out a bit by hand to remove the haze that had formed below the water line while the tank was fresh water for a couple of years. Came out looking decent, but I only put about an hour worth of time into it.

http://www.reefcorner.com/Reef%20Puddle%20Pics/lace%20rock%20in%20tank.jpg

(Please note: The Bud Light in the above picture is NOT mine. I live in Portland OR and nothing but a microbrew or a good Mexican beer for me.)

yehchien
06/07/2011, 11:14 PM
Nice... This is going to be a cool tank. Subscribed.

Ken Hahn
06/07/2011, 11:15 PM
Misc Equipment:

The sump is a 50 gal glass tank that I had originally built for my previous 225g reef tank. I had glued baffles into it to form 3 chambers. Skimmer > heater, misc > return pump.

I bought a new 4-stage RO/DI setup from my LFS to replace my old one since it was heavily abused while I was running my freshwater setup. I decided to mount it on the back of the tank stand for easy access. I also picked up two 32 gal Brute trash cans for RO/DI and saltwater storage.

For a skimmer, I dug my old Precision Marine Bullet 2 skimmer out of storage. I upgraded it with a new Beckett air intake that I had bought but never got around to installing back when I had my old setup. Since the sump is not drilled, I set the skimmer in the sump using a stand to raise the level and I'm running it off of a Mag24 pump.

For the return pump, I reused an old Mag18 pump that I had laying around. I drilled the tank for two small ½” return lines. I also had two small 3/8” lines running into the corners of the tank from the freshwater setup. I left these in place and run them into the tide pool on the right side and another rock on the left side. Total flow through the sump is hard to estimate, but the T's that I have in the current setup in several places is very restrictive and I would guess I have about 600gph through the sump. I am not a big fan of moving a lot of water through the sump, but I will increase this a bit with improved plumbing and add some power heads in the tank.

For a heater, I bought a new JBJ True Temp controller with 800W Finnex titanium heating element. So far it seems to be working OK. It does have a fairly wide temperature swing of about +/- 1.0 to 1.5 degree around the set-point. It would be nice to see this swing a little smaller. They claim a +/- 0.5 degree accuracy. I do like the notion of having a separate temperature sensor which can be placed upstream of the heater. I see that there have been a lot of complaints about the quality of the heater controller, so we'll see how mine fares. For the price, it 'should' last a while.

Here is a picture from the garage side during setup. The garage is a couple of feet lower than the bar area on the other side of the wall.

http://www.reefcorner.com/Reef%20Puddle%20Pics/Construction%20view%20from%20garage%20side.jpg

For lighting, I decided to go with two SE 400W metal halide lights. While the water is shallow, the lights are about 27" above the water, so I wanted a fair amount of punch. The bulbs are Hamilton 14K. The reflectors are Sunlight Supply Lumen Max type which I had laying around. I bought some new Galaxy switchable electronic ballasts to replace my old PFO ballasts.

I also added two Sunlight Supply Ready Fit 2-bulb 60” t5 fixtures for a total of 320W. The bulbs are two Giesemann Pure Actinics and two Giesmemann AquaBlue+.

Overall the lighting gives the tank a very crisp white light with a clean slight blue tint to it. I'm pretty happy with it.

The lighting is just mounted to some wood cross members that span the tank and set on two 2x4 beams on either side of the tank so that they can be slide back and forth if I want for positioning or access. Somewhat ghetto, but works well enough for me. If the lighting needs to be lowered for more PAR, I might have to do something fancier.

There is an exhaust fan in the space which runs continuously and vents to the outside world.

This is the basic equipment list to get the tank up and running. I have more stuff that I will be adding in the near future as parts arrive.

For sand I used six 20lb bags of the Nature’s Ocean Bio-Active live sand #1. This is a fairly small sand of 0.5 – 1.7mm size. I dumped this into the tank with no cleaning at all including the water in the bag. I then filled the tank with saltwater. I am using Kent salt.

The tank started out very cloudy due to the sand, but the skimmer started pulling a wet foam almost immediately and the tank was almost completely cleared by the next morning after pulling about a ½ gal of skimmate. Here is the skimmer doing its job after most of the cloudiness has been removed from the tank.

http://www.reefcorner.com/Reef%20Puddle%20Pics/skimmer%20setup.jpg

Ken Hahn
06/07/2011, 11:22 PM
For live rock, I originally thought about using real live rock, but after checking with the 3 local LFS that are close-by, all live rock that was selling for up to $10/lb looked like what we used to call base rock. Perhaps things have changed in the last couple of years that I have been out of the hobby, but I wasn’t impressed.

I also wanted to create an insta-reef without waiting for a couple of months for shipped in rock to cure, so I decided to order in 60lbs of the cured man-made live rock from Fish Heads. I ordered it through my LFS.

This stuff is interesting. Weight-wise it is about the same as good quality live rock. Seems fairly porous as well. Pieces are random in shape and size. My LFS told them what I wanted and they hand-picked what I wanted which was medium size flatter pieces. The color is artificial, but is well done. It looks likes very well covered purple coralline algae rock except to an expert eye. The picture makes it look redder than it is due to the flash. It is actually very purple. As can be seen in the video below, they run these in tanks with fish so they should be populated with bacteria. You don’t have to worry about introducing pests, but you also aren’t introducing the biodiversity that you would get from ocean sourced live rock either, so I'll be looking for other ways to add that.

It came well packed in a strong wax coated cardboard box and wet paper. It was shipped counter-to-counter overnight. I had some amount of rubble from what looks like one smaller rock that broke apart in shipping since it was all in one spot in the box. Overall I am happy with it.

Here is what 60lbs worth in a 45 gallon tub looks like along with the rubble in the bucket. That is a quart size container I think.


Here is a link to some more information on it: Link (http://saltwateraquariumsecrets.com/live-rock/video-of-worlds-best-live-rock-and-its-aquacultured-too/)

http://www.reefcorner.com/Reef%20Puddle%20Pics/live%20rock%20in%20tub.jpg

I stacked the live rock into 2 islands. The one on the right side of the tank is destined for SPS type corals primarily and the one on the left for LPS and clams. The 60lbs turned out to be about right. I put a few pieces along the side as well.

Originally, I built the islands smaller around and taller, but it didn’t looks as good as building them wider and shorter which helped to maintain the front to back look of depth to the tank.

The SPS island also got an old Koralia power head I had laying around pointed towards it to increase the water flow along with what it gets from one of the returns for now.

Ken Hahn
06/07/2011, 11:50 PM
For initial stocking, I placed an order with Pacific East Aquaculture on their Memorial Day sale. As usual the stuff arrived the day I specified (Friday). They even called to confirm that I received it OK since they could not see a delivery confirmation on their end.

Everything came triple bagged and well packed. The only casualty was one scarlet hermit crab. Their frags tend to be on the small side which I knew going in.
Stock list included:
Mini maxi anemone for the tide pool
Polyps for the tide pool.
Several small Acan frags
Yellow-eyed red Goniopora
Red Micromussa colony
Red Blastomussa frag
Ricordia
Green Wellsophyllia
Red and Lemon Trachyphyllia
A few Scarlet hermit crabs and Margarita snails.

I also made field trips to my local LFS and picked up the following:
Orange Montipora Digitata colony
Blue tipped Acro colony
Yellow tipped Acro colony
2 Crocea clams, one blue and one brown
Coral Banded shrimp
Fluorescent green candycane
Orange and purple rimmed plate corals
Orange plating montipora
Green Favia
Orange/Gray Lobophyllia

I wanted to keep the fish bioload low and build that part slowly for obvious reasons. For an initial pair of fish, I went with a female Redtail Tamarin Wrasse Anampses chrysocephalus and the male which is typically called a Psychedelic Wrasse. I relied upon the LFS to tell me about them since I was not familiar with them. Unfortunately once I got home and did some research on them, they appear to be somewhat difficult to keep, mainly due to feeding considerations.

The good news is that the fish have no competition in the tank for food and they have my full attention. The tank has lots of hiding places to make them feel secure and a soft sand bed to dig in, though it's not very deep. They seem to be taking frozen cyclopeeze and frozen daphnia very well. They are also picking at mysis shrimp pretty well, though it is hard to tell how much if any that they are actually consuming. They taken it in, chew it up and then spit it back out, then pick at the smaller pieces.

I also bought some live Tigger Pods at the LFS to throw in for them which they seem to enjoy, though I can't see serving these up in quantity long-term due to cost unless I can find something cheaper. I will be experimenting with other small size food as that seems to be what they are used to in the wild.

I did order in some live pods to seed the tank from Reefs2Go on their 2 for 1 deal for biodiversity and to supplement the wrasses diet. I was happy with the diversity and amount of pods I received. Most were amphipods of medium to large size.


Here are some pics of the tank.

Bad top shot that shows the basic layout of the rockwork

http://www.reefcorner.com/Reef%20Puddle%20Pics/Top%20down%20shot2.jpg

Here is a front view. The tubes and wires will be hidden later once I sort the final water motion out.

http://www.reefcorner.com/Reef%20Puddle%20Pics/tankfront1smaller.jpg

This sort of shows the tide pool on the right. Water is coming in from the top and flowing out through an opening on the front of the rock.

http://www.reefcorner.com/Reef%20Puddle%20Pics/Tide%20pool.jpg

Here's a top-down view showing the clams, etc.

http://www.reefcorner.com/Reef%20Puddle%20Pics/Top%20down%20showing%20clams.jpg

SPS corals
http://www.reefcorner.com/Reef%20Puddle%20Pics/SPS%20Initial%20stocking.jpg

The fish

http://www.reefcorner.com/Reef%20Puddle%20Pics/fish2.jpg

This is a pretty bad shot, but it sort of shows how the tank is setup behind the bar area. The curtain things at the top are a work in process.

http://www.reefcorner.com/Reef%20Puddle%20Pics/bar.jpg

chaynes
06/07/2011, 11:55 PM
Pretty phat, I'm digging it.

needmore-reef
06/08/2011, 02:02 AM
Looks cool. I think it works because of the 36" width. Will look cool with acropora tips coming out of the water.

mwladdicted
06/08/2011, 05:15 AM
I think you should add some magroves into the background to give it more of a tide pool affect. Still looks good and is a great idea non the less. I like how u have an easy top down view all the time. Keep up the good work!
Cheers,

y0ung0ne
06/08/2011, 06:42 AM
great idea and love the clams and fish........nice job and idea.

Korrine
06/08/2011, 07:24 AM
Really cool! You are very creative :)

BlueFyre
06/08/2011, 07:56 AM
This is an amazing tank. I love the lace rock. Can't wait to see more pictures.

allsps40
06/08/2011, 07:56 AM
cool idea

Chris Lakies
06/08/2011, 07:59 AM
Wow very cool!! May inspire me to immitate when i upgrade :)

LOTUS50GOD
06/08/2011, 08:26 AM
I like it... let me know how your psychedelic wrasse does.. They have a poor success rate due to internal parasites.

Ken Hahn
06/08/2011, 09:12 AM
Thanks for the comments everyone.

I have heard that the males (psychedelic wrasse) are harder to keep than the femles but have not heard the parasite theory before. I'll have to do some more research on them. So far they are eating very well at least which I have heard is a problem for some of them.

crobattt
06/08/2011, 09:20 AM
I like the clownhead :D

KafudaFish
06/08/2011, 11:10 AM
That looks great. I really like the different POV.

I used water stop too for a build.

Mine was much smaller like pico but I found out that you can extend the length of work time.

I used a spray bottle to rewet the cement and it would become workable again. It would go from mash potatoes to pudding after a minute and I could finish what I was doing.

If you have to add a layer on top of one spray the first one place the second, spary and use a finger or something to mash it down like working with clay. It will form a bond pretty well. To strenghten it you can sprinkle some additional cement on the surface and blend. The extra water will wick through and form a nice uniform rock.

Just some FYI.

Do you think you will do anymore rock work on the walls to fill it in?

4deepwater8
06/08/2011, 11:12 AM
That is a great idea and very cool to see in action. Will be watching.

ccalabro
06/08/2011, 11:59 AM
awesome build...tagging along.

Prince916
06/08/2011, 12:03 PM
Nice, creative, and different.

evsalty
06/08/2011, 02:27 PM
Very nice. That looked really good as freshwater as well.

jhentr
06/08/2011, 04:00 PM
Thanks for sharing. During my FW years, I always wanted to setup a paludarium too. I remember I might have in a small scale way with my two-red ear slider at the time.

Anyways, this reef puddle is awesome too. I like the mangrove suggestion and maybe...just maybe a crab or two crawling on and out of the rocks (ala volcano tank guy).

Otherwise, great setup and funny sense of humor!

Niven
06/08/2011, 04:16 PM
The bar is too far away, should be right up against it!

Ken Hahn
06/08/2011, 09:47 PM
Yeah, I think I'll put a mangrove in the back corner to provide some vertical interest. The thing will be able to grow quite large in my setup. Kind of wonder if the roots are very invasive if it gets to be 3-4' tall in the tank. Anyone know if that would be a concern?

I'll probably look for a crab or two that would take advantage of the rocks above the waterline. Not sure if a Sally Lightfoot would do this or not.

Ken Hahn
06/08/2011, 11:01 PM
Week 2 Update:

Since I am running a little behind in getting this posted, here is the update from last week.

Additions
Christmas Favia
Green multicolored Wellsophyllia
Pom Pom Xenia
20 additional assorted snails added to the 10 Margarita snails that I had before.
Decorated Goby

Not surprisingly, I had a visit from the brown algae fairy. Only on my sand and live rock, leaving the lace rock untouched. After about 2 days, it was getting fairly heavy and stringy with bubbles, so I added 20 assorted snails to the tank. Within 24 hours they had the rock pretty much clean and within 4-5 days total the brown algae cycle was completely over which is faster than I am typically used to.


I added a Decorated Goby to help turn over the sand and to clean up after the wrasses. I have always like these fish. They aren't real flashy, but they are pretty dainty in their sand sifting so they don't typically pile sand on your corals and they will take prepared food, so they won't slowly starve to death like many if not most sand sifter gobies do. Great addition to a reef tank in my opinion.

http://www.reefcorner.com/Reef%20Puddle%20Pics/Decorated%20Goby.jpg

I received and installed a BRS Carbon/GFO dual reactor that I ordered. It is driven off a Maxijet 1200 throttled down with a ball valve. I am running a cup of the basic GFO and a cup of ROX.8 carbon to start. Seems easy to get the right flow through the GFO and since the carbon is captured between a couple of foam pads, it doesn't tumble around. Some people don't seem to like this setup, but so far I'm liking it. I plan to change both every 2 weeks to start. A Phosphate checker is on my list of things to get pretty quick so that I can add some science to using the GFO.

http://www.reefcorner.com/Reef%20Puddle%20Pics/BRS%20reactors.jpg

I added a small house fan that blows down across the water surface of the tank to keep the temp in the range of 78-82 or so. Might need to invest in a chiller later. Since the back of tank and the sump sit in the garage, it might be hard to keep the temp in check when it gets hot in summer. Before the fan, the temp got up to 84 which is the max I like to see my tanks at.

I changed about 20g of water. I plan to keep doing this size of water change on a weekly basis for now. The Kent salt mixes up to about 550 Cal, 8dKh Alk at 1.026 salinity using the API test kits. I tried the approach of leaving the sump running, but pumping the water out of the skimmer area and down the drain while simultaneously pumping the new water in near the return pump. Made the water change easier than I remember and I can do as big a change as I want rather than being restricted to what is in my sump or exposing corals that may be near the water surface.

I built a shelf above the sump area to hold a Kalk drip setup using a Kent drip system. I am using the BRS kalk in it. I have been very impressed with how well the kalk dissolves, though I am just using about a heaping ts per gallon of water. Evaporation on the tank is pretty high at around 4g a day. Since I don't have a lot of stuff in the tank, the Kalk drip will work for now and I'll probably continue to use it even when I add a calcium reactor.


Speaking of calcium reactor, I did receive the stuff that I need to get my calcium reactor up and operational. It is a Precision Marine CR622 from by old reef setup. Since I am going to be gone on a business trip next week, I'll leave that until I return in case there are any problems. I wanted to make 2 improvements this time around. I bought 2 10lb CO2 tanks so that I could replace and refill at leisure. I also wanted to have a better way of controlling the reactor than I had with my old setup.

Here is a teaser pic. I'm looking forward to see how well this digitally controlled Carbon Doser works compared to the typical regulator assembly. The Pinpoint pH controller may not even be needed for this setup once it's dialed in.

http://www.reefcorner.com/Reef%20Puddle%20Pics/Carbon%20doser.jpg

Johanv
11/15/2011, 07:44 PM
Intersting thread, any updates/pics???????? Oh and for crabs look into mangrove crabs.

zigzag1
11/15/2011, 11:04 PM
Nice! +1 for Magroves to add dimension above the water line at the back wall. JMTC & GL!