40g breeder 'new to me' reef tank

kangy

I have two smaller (29g and 10g) freshwater planted and have always wanted to try my hand at a saltwater setup. I spent three years in Okinawa, JP and logged over 200 dives, living in AZ I miss the ocean terribly. I came across this tank on a forum for a local planted tank club. Well long story short the deal was too good to pass up. The transfer was a pain. I moved 80% of the water in three icechests with the live rock, left a couple inches and the substrate in the tank, dissasembled the stand, and bagged the fish for the hour and a half drive. Other than a few very minor breaks it all made the transfer.

When I got the tank it was already setup and established with a couple years of good coral growth. With that the back was completely covered in corraline algae, which did not make the transfer in the empty tank. When I got it home my primary goal was to get the water, rocks, and fish transferred quickly so I setup the stand and carefully placed all the rocks/corals/water/fish randmonly in the tank and got the skimmer, heater, powerheads, and filter turned on. This resulted in a complete silt out. I used a total of three HOB filters running only sponges to clean the water, still took about 24 hours to get clear. I then started the aquascape which again clouded up the water for a couple days. Just removed the two extra HOB filters and did a photo/video shoot.

Here are the specs
40gal breeder tank with black stand and glass top
6 bulb 36" T5 Tek Light w/ Acrylic shield and bracket legs
AquaC Remora/Remora Pro Protein Skimmers
4 Hydor Koralia Powerheads
Live rock with various corals and macro algaes
Livestock includes a clown fish, 2 pajama cardinals, a lawnmower blenny, a couple hermit crabs, and 2 snails.

Thoughts or suggestions? This is my first saltwater but I have been doing a ton of reading the last three weeks prepping for the tank. Here is an overall photo and a link to a video.

I want to get a couple more fish, as well as some crabs or shrimp. What are any stocking suggestions to go with the current inhabitants?

40g Salt Water Reef Tank - YouTube

pretzelsz

Welcome to the club I wish I was in

I don't personally have a running tank but based on my knowledge I just want your tank to be happy so I am going to throw my little knowledge your way in hopes it helps you get started(and hope the others join in soon).
I want to start off by saying, WOW, that is a beautiful tank you got(you have no idea how jealous I am). But if you want your coral to be happy and fully colored I recommend finding out what corals you have, identify the specific kinds and requirements, and placing them in the appropriate flow and light level to make them happy and come out.

If you don't already know the soft corals(Hammer, GSP, and polys I see) will want a lower flow(but not none) and less light. While the SPS or hard corals(you have quite a few) will want high flow and lots of light.

Thats all I have to say, good luck to you.

onefish2fish

i personally would switch the candy cane coral ( in the upper left area ) to the sand bed where what i think is birdsnest is ( in the lower left area )
if it is birdsnest it will need the rock, or even frag plug for that matter to encrust onto and not just be shoved into the sand. i mean, im sure it will grow there but hard corals will grow best with a surface to encrust onto, even if its glass.

i see a few different algaes. i suggest researching these before taking to many more steps forward. some algaes can turn highly sexual and over populate a tank.

for fish i personally would get another clown for the single one you have. then maybe one more 1-4'' fish and thats a fully stocked tank. even with just getting another clown i feel that tanks pretty well stocked. personally i like to understock my tanks as i feel thats better then one overstocked.

i suggest leveling your sand to an even level. the way it is now allows debris to settle in one area, then if the sand gets moved ontop of it, that debris/detritus is trapped under the sand in that area.

looks like a nice tank to start with.

kangy

Thanks for the quick replies. I'm in the process of trying to research and ID the coral's. I got an app for my Evo that should help organize everything. When I did the scape I tried to set it up as close to the way it was at the sellers house as possible to minimize stress to the fish but am open to change suggestions. All the corals that are in the sand bed are all attached to some sort of rock/frag, I know a few look like they are buried though due to the sand shifting.

The current in the tank is pretty strong with the 4 powerheads (same as the coral I put them back to their original spots) when I first set it up the sand was flat but higher on the left so it had a nice smooth downgrade going to the right. The current from the powerheads caused that little rivine in the front middle, it also did it in the back. I thought it looked really natural so didn't want to mess with it, kind of like natural sand ripples but wasn't thinking about the debris getting buried.

I will keep my eye on the algae, right now there is only two types that I can see, not sure what either is called though (yet)

I am going to let the tank settle back in this week and am going to add a second clown fish to ease my 2 and a half year old who is mad because I won't "let Nemo be with his daddy" so to convince her it was ok I agreed to "rescue Nemo's daddy from the fish store so they can be together". I stopped by there on Saturday and they had 4-5 different clown fish. By the video can anyone ID the specific one I have and do I have to make sure they "match"?

For the second and final fish what do you recommend to go with the current tank mates?

Thanks again for the compliments and feedback! I am so completely happy with the setup and the wife loves it (although she did say I'm not allowed to get any new fish tanks now lol)

onefish2fish

personally i would wait before adding the other clown. the tank just did a move and its going to have to re-establish itself. this may not take to long but i would keep an eye on your water parameters for atleast a week or two. amm. nitrITE and nitrATE specifically to see any spikes. i also suggest using a QT befor inctroducing new fish to the display.

i would say thats either a perc or occerlaris clown. google how to ID between the two. as for coral i see green star polyps (GSP) in the back right, possibly green toadstool leather right next to it, kenya tree, candy cane coral, halmeda algae, bubble culerpa algae, from memory. i didnt watch the video the first time and i just did, nice little tank you have.

kangy

A thought that just crossed my mind tonight, I kept the old sandbed. The seller said the tank has been running for about 5 years and the sandbed looked really dirty, dark brown spots, a few black spots, lots of tunnels you could tell were from worms, etc. So I figured the live sand should stay good since I kept it wet on the drive home. The sandbed did get stirred up pretty good when placing the rocks and doing the aquascape (2 days of a silt out, had to run 3 HOB filters with only floss to clear it up). Now that it's all settled and I'm spending more time looking at the tank I noticed the left (high spot) seems to be larger grain while the right side seems to be more of a silt and part of it started turning black. Not sure why but I stirred up this black silt a bit tonight and the tank clouded really badly, there was a piece of soft coral and another piece of hard coral in the middle of it which I assume got burried during the whole re-setup process. The pieces had a slight decaying odor to them (very slightly like rotten eggs which from my freshwater tanks I know could be hydrogen sulfide. The water while got really cloudy did not smell too bad, very slight smell (but again I figure normal from saltwater setup) but I had to barely crack the lid and stick my nose in there to even get a faint wiff of it.

What are the chances hydrogen sulfide could occur in 6 days in only 1.5" of substrate? I'm assuming there is many more buried items such as this from the move, should I pull the rock/coral/fish back into the icechests and redo the sand?

onefish2fish

it may not be a bad idea to redo the sand, at the very least rinse the sand you have now really well. before doing this save about a cupfull of the sand to add to the new/rinsed sand so youll still transfer over the good critters.
you wont have to remove much to do this, just get a fat piece of tubing and siphon the sand out.

kangy

Here are a couple pics of the tank post substrate swap/move:

jeffnsa

very nice looking tank. Be careful of the green star polyps on the rocks in the upper right hand corner, they can take over everything in no time at all.

kangy

Changed all the bulbs out for ATI this morning.


New setup from back to front
ATI Blue Plus (morning)
ATI Aquablue (day)
ATI Purple Plus (day)
ATI Aquablue (day)
ATI True Actinic (day)
ATI Coral Plus (morning)


The morning color is nearly as blue but the Coral Plus is a whiter light, kind of between the actinic and purple blus bulbs but with only the blue plus on with it gives it a great morning/evening transition. The daytime lights are very white yet the purple/actinic bulbs give it a slight bluish purple hue so the tank still has the "clear/white" look the colors of the corals and fish pop a lot more.


Overall I'm very happy with the new ATI lights and the nice balanced color/hue mixing the bulbs provides. Please keep in mind these photo's do not do it any justice.


Straight shot of morning/evening lights



Straight shot of all 6 bulbs (daytime)



Top view of morning/evening lights



Top view of all 6 bulbs (daytime)