Frag tank to Mini Reef

GregAW

GregAW

AC Members
Aug 25, 2008
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Sacramento, CA, USA
Well, as some of you know I bought a 30 gal. frag tank. It is 2' square by 1' deep. I had set it up with a bare bottom and egg crate to hold coral plugs. I had 2 Koralia 4's in it for water circulation and was running fine. SG was good and all the other tests came out good. What would you expect from a new set up, the water can't go bad if there's nothing in it.

The coral frags showed up and the tank had been running for a few days. I had added in a HOB filter and then all hell broke loose. ALGAE started to grow. The tank started smelling really bad and my wife was about to "Break Glass" and there was no fire. Well, I took the tank down and completely cleaned everything. Then it struck me, why not make it a mini reef tank until I can get my display tank up and running. So it began, while the corals, 5 snails, 2 emerald crabs, and a Yellow Tang and Tomato Clown were in the Rubbermaid holding container, with heat and good water circulation, I started to set up the frag tank as a mini reef.

Now I know I'm going to catch heck from a lot of you but then, it's my tank and my money that is going into this hobby and I was pressed for time.

I scrubbed down the frag tank with the dirty water that was still there, just to break the algae loose. Then I pumped the rest of the water out into a 5 gallon bucket (several trips) and dumped the old salt water on a bush in the yard I hope will die. Using fresh tap water, I continued to clean out the tank until I had it as clean as it could be.

Now the fun began, rinsing sand for the bottom. I'll say this, I'm sure glad I'm not on a water meter. I think it took several hours to get most of the cloud out of the water, cleaning 40 or so pounds of Aragonite sugar size sand. Lots of duct ended up in the gutter in front of the house. Kind of looks like it snowed.

Well, I started layering in the sand to about 1 1/2" deep. Looks good so far. Then I had some rock that I had been keeping in another Rubbermaid container with heat and water flow from an old Marineland 402 power head and a low wattage heater. I don't know if this did any good but it didn't hurt, and the aqua-scraping began. I started stacking in the coral rock chunks I had and using the old "tap it" method of making sure they were pretty well set and wouldn't fall over very easily I built a small reef cove. All of this was done without water in the tank. The rock was well soaked so it shouldn't float.

Once I had the sand and rock in place, it was time for water. Got the hose hooked up and ran to the tank. You can beat me up again here as I hooked directly to my tap water from the service porch. Got the temperature adjusted pretty close to what I wanted in the tank and started filling. Filled to about 80% and covered the power heads with water and stopped. I started adding in the salt, Instant Ocean Synthetic Sea Salt for Saltwater Fish Tanks. Don't believe the information on the bad. 1/2 cup is NOT enough for a gallon of water, closer to 1 full cup but, I didn't go so far as to actually figure that out. I turned on the Koralia 4's and them run, stirring the salt and sand at the front of the tank until dissolved. The I got out my NEW refactometer and checked the SG, this is when I found that the amount of salt needed for a gallon of water was wrong, really wrong. I added more water and brought the tank up to about 2" from the top and started adding in salt and letting everything circulate. Over a period of about 8 hours, I was able to get the SG up to 1.025 or 1.026 and was happy with that. The other tests, after 36 hours are as follow:

KH = 214
Ca = 420
PO4 = 0.5
NO3 = 5
NO4 = .5
NO2 = .02
NH3/NH4 = 0 < .25

These are all the test kits I have at the moment.

Well, according to what I can find, things seems to be ok. Any feedback would be helpful.

Photos to follow.
 
So you used tap water to fill a frag tank that will have SPS corals in it? IMO that is a disaster waiting to happen. You may get by doing sofies and maybe LPS corals that was for a short term (1 week tops) but I am pretty sure SPS corals will be dead in a week if you use tap water because of the phosphates in the water.

Next, frag tanks + sand do not work well. If you are really turning this "frag" tank into a mini reef (please tell me your not putting a yellow tang in a tank that small) then you will also need everything else that goes along with that, meaning 1lb live rock per gallon, good sump setup w/ good skimmer and phosban reactor.

IMO, SPS frag tanks are even harder than an SPS reef tank because your are stripping out vital elements in a frag tank, like live rock. It can still be done, but A LOT more work, like daily dosing of vodka to keep algae at bay, and major water changes (talking at least 90% weekly, we do 90% 2x a week at the store in the back room frag tanks, and still always on the edge of crashing even after a year).
 
Oops, Too late and everything is doing just fine. I'll let you know if anything dies in a week. So far the fish are fine and eating like horses, the corals are all out and doing their thing and the snails keep on moving and the crabs are crawling around on the rocks. I will keep a close check on the water parameters.

Vodka? I'll take a shot or 2 every day just to make sure I'm ok. :D
 
Just going by my experience.. I tried a frag tank out of a 10G and one out of a 29G with using good water and most of the SPS corals were near death after 30 days. They have all come back since. I used a HOB filter with surface skimmer, live rock rubble + chemi-pure Elite in the filter, 2 koralias, and T5HOs. This was not nearly enough to keep water "pristine" like SPS corals need. First 2 weeks they looked really good and I thought I was doing good.. then the next 2 weeks they went downhill fast and algae started to take over the frag racks and corals.

For an SPS frag tank I think one would need the following:
Tank (size isn't important)
Sump (big enough to hold a good skimmer and media reactors)
GOOD skimmer, one 5x overrated for the size tank
Media reactors for carbon and phosphate removal
Good lighting - T5HO or MH
Lots of flow, random if possible, and no sand (the only thing sand does and depths below 3" is form a "nitrate sponge" and you have to stir it frequently to keep clean. The stiring/water parameter spike is not condusive to what SPS corals like "SPS=Stability Promotes Success" is a term a lot of reefers use. That means keep every parameter as good as possible and don't let anything fluctuate.

Vokda is a "Carbon dosing" method that has become more and more popular in recent months. Here is a good article on it... http://reefkeeping.com/issues/2008-08/nftt/index.php
 
I hope this works out for you, Greg, but I fear that PO4 levels of 0.5 ppm are going to fuel a serious algal bloom. Hopefully, you can keep on top of it, and try to lower the PO4 levels with some water changes using RO/DI water to mix with your salt.

The smell and onset of algae was probably the tank really starting to cycle. In all honesty, cleaning it out and scrubbing it probably did more to hinder the process than to help it.

In my experiences, it takes four 1/2 cup scoops and one 1/4 cup scoop to make 4 gallons of 1.025 - 1.026 sw with Reef Crystals, so it wouldn't surprise me if Instant Ocean also requires more than 1/2 cup per gallon to reach 1.025 - 1.026.

What did you intend to type when you put NO4? There's NO2 (nitrite) and NO3 (nitrate), but I'm not even sure if NO4 is chemically possible. I'm guessing you might have retyped your PO4 number and just hit the 'N' accidentally.
 
PO4 = Phosphate? Will be getting a RO/DI system this week, but as I said, I was in a crunch rush to get things up and running.
 
Yep, PO4 = phosphate. In the list of your parameters, there's NO2, NO3, NO4, and PO4 (as well as the others). I was just curious if NO4 was a typo for something else.

Glad to hear your RO/DI unit is coming this week. It should go a long way towards helping you work through all of this.
 
Here's how the tank looks as of 5 minutes ago.

027-sm.jpg
 
fsn77 said:
Yep, PO4 = phosphate. In the list of your parameters, there's NO2, NO3, NO4, and PO4 (as well as the others). I was just curious if NO4 was a typo for something else.

Glad to hear your RO/DI unit is coming this week. It should go a long way towards helping you work through all of this.
Click to expand...

I'm guessing Ammonia (NH4)?
 
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