TX SPS Tank - The Maroon Lagoon

[gig em]

Howdy Chicago Reefers! I thought I would join your club and create a build thread since I travel through Chicago quite often for work and would like to trade some frags and share my tank with my fellow reefers up north. With no further ado I would like to display my 120 gallon reef tank that has been running for one and a half years.

Equipment
Skimmer: RE Bubble King Mini 200
Lights: Modified OR, Orphek Atlantik 1st gen, and T5s
Control: Apex Classic with lunar module
Flow: 2x Jebao WP-40 controlled by Apex and a Jebao DCT12000 for return
Filtration: Biopelletts reactor and BRS dual carbon/GFO reactor
Calcium Reactor: MRC dual chamber calcium reactor

Regular Maintenance
Food: I feed the fish 3 times a day with my own blend of food
Supplements: I dose amino acids, Lugol's solution as needed, and KNO3 as needed
Water changes: I only perform water changes when necessary, but not very often
Water Conditions Alk: 8-10 dKh
Ca: 420-440 ppm
Mg: 1245-1365 ppm
NO3: 1-8 ppm
Salinity: 1.025-1.027
Temperature: 78-81 deg F

The tank (Feb 2016) after it was initially set up:

 

[gig em]

Built myself a salt water mixing station over the weekend. No more individually mixing in 5 gallon buckets for this guy!!

Went back in my pictures to figure out how much growth my red planet has had in the past year. Here it was one year ago as a frag

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Here it is now

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Some other SPS shots of the tank:

GE's PCP

Acropora sarmentosa

Sunset mille

My favorite Goni

 

[Sawdonkey]

Very nice tank!

 

[Bommie]

Nice mixing station. That 5 gal mixing gets annoying after a while.

Sent from my 6045O using Tapatalk

 

[JMalone81]

Wow very nice

 

[trackfast]

Wow ! Very nice set up !

 

[Mjl714]

Welcome traveler.

Great looking tank, and the mixing station is also very nice.

 

[maidia]

Beautiful...Thanks

 

[gig em]

Thanks everyone! Traveling all the time can make keeping a reef tank difficult, but it affords me the opportunity to get frags from all parts of the country. I'm hoping I'll be able to see some of your tanks on my trips to Chi town and the surrounding areas.

 

[BradB]

Nice Tank


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[wrasse]

Nice tank.
Welcome to CR

 

[Eddie79]

Welcome!

 

[RuNvS]

Welcome- Killer tank those sticks look great!

 

[Kamreefer]

welcome and nice tank!


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro

 

[cju84]

Dang.... super nice tank and set up!

 

[gig em]

Took the time to snap some iPhone pictures

This Mille grows too fast

This Mille is finally taking off

RGB, what other colors do you need?!

Orange fungia under actinics

 

[Sahin]

Very very nice tank!

You mention your own blend of food; what are the ingredients? Is this some sort of frozen sea food blend you make?

How often are you dosing nitrate? Do you actually see a positive response/change in the SPS colours when you dose nitrates?

Thanks. And please post more top down photos.

 

[gig em]

Very very nice tank!

You mention your own blend of food; what are the ingredients? Is this some sort of frozen sea food blend you make?

How often are you dosing nitrate? Do you actually see a positive response/change in the SPS colours when you dose nitrates?

Thanks. And please post more top down photos.

I go to an Asian supermarket and get fish eggs, rinse them until all the orange food coloring is gone, and then combine that with mysis, krill, chopped up shrimp, and crumbled up sea weed. Fish seem to like it for the most part.

I was dosing PNO3 in the form of stump remover once a week, but I have stopped dosing after I reduced the skimmer level to skim less out of the water. NO3 hover around 8 now without having to dose weekly. PO4 remains below 0.1 due to GFO.

As you wish friend!

Old school pink jade

Oregon tort

 

[Sahin]

Good to see some old school corals. Oregon Tort is the best and nothing else looks as good IMO (being a single colour coral more or less).

 

[gig em]

Visited Unique Corals while I was in LA last week and picked up some jewels. I've had them in QT for a week now and I noticed today that my Pink Floyd was dying from the bottom up. No clue why, so I dipped him and his friends and put them in the DT, which has much better water quality and movement.

Pink Floyd with most of the dying base covered in glue. In the picture it looks like I didn't get the top line, but I'll keep an eye on it and reglue if it looks worse.

Hard to tell since the lights were turning off, but diagonally from the Pink Floyd to the back right is 1. Pink Floyd 2. UC Blue Ogor 3. UC Teal Tort and 4. Ultimate Blue Stag 5. To the right of the Pink Floyd is the UC Bali Shortcake