Arvin's 45 gal mixed reef

[Arvin R]

Hi everyone! I'm from the Bay Area, CA. Got 4 salt tanks and a few fresh water tanks. My main reef tank is a 45 Gal mixed reef. This has been one of if not the funnest hobbies I've gotten into. And that's saying a lot as I have plenty of other hobbies that I've blown money on lol.

Equipment list:
45 Gal rimless w/ 20 Gal diy sump
Skimz sn123 skimmer
Jebao DCP-5000 return pump
Kamoer X1 dosing pump (2x)
kessil a350w tune blue (2x)
Ehiem heater w/ink bird temp controller
Generic fuge light
Two little fishies phosban reactor
Nero 5 powerhead

Livestock:
Percula clown (2x)
Bangaii Cardinal (2x)
Canary Wrasse
Purple stripe dottyback
Lawnmower blenny
Atlantic blue tang (small)
Yellow belly blue tang (small)

Inverts:
Cleaner shrimp
Fire shrimp (2x)
Emerald crab
Hermit crabs
Various snails

 

[jhuynh]

as a BAR member myself and not the "tang police," welcome.

 

[Arvin R]

Update photo:

Got a bit of cyano I need to deal with. Probaby going to do a dose of chemiclean pretty soon.

 

[Humblefish]

 

[Arvin R]

Finally got around to redoing the aquascape on the left side of my tank. Petsmart had a sale on Caribsea south sea base rock so I ordered 2 10lb boxes. Only use a little more than half of the rock I got, threw the rest in my sump. Here's the end result.

I'm pretty happy with the results and am definitely not going with real reef shapes for my next tank. Now that I've had a bit more experience with the hardscape and how to optimize for coral, I definitely will be using something similar to south sea and molding smaller pieces of rock together to create what I want.

Next steps is improving flow and MOAR CORAL!! #allmymoneygoestocoral lol

 

[Arvin R]

Tank is doing great aside from gha outbreak on the left rock work that came with those live rocks I got from someone along with the coral with it. Sps/acros are growing really well. Not sure of the names on most of them as I usually just buy what I like the looks of at the store and forget to ask what the name is. I'm sure some of you can probably ID most of them. This tank will hopefully be transfered to a 100G once I get a stand built up and silicone together the glass for the 100G.

I had to take out the purple stripe dotty back as he was wreaking havoc and chasing around my diamond goby all day. I also rehomed the atlantic blue tang as he decided to start being agressive to my blue hippo tang.

I gotta get around to making journal's for my 6 other tanks too..lol

Here's a little teaser pictures for my low boy frag tank I'm working on setting up.

 

[Arvin R]

Sorry for the low quality pic. I'll get my dslr out this weekend and get some nice shots of everything. My (PC rainbow?) New growth is starting to color up!

I got some new sticks in. Jason Fox Solar Flare, Pink Cadillac, one unknown and a tri-color stag transfered from one of my 20gal IM Nuvo tanks that I'm going to switch away from sps and go LPS/softies. Much easier to consolidate all my SPS into one tank for now to grow out until I can turn some mini colonies to distribute through the others.

 

[Arvin R]

Tank is still cruisng along well. I won the 13 head green branching hammer in a raffle online and added the blue wall hammer in the middle too. I couldn't find a better spot for the wall hammer as flow is too high anywhere else on the sand bed for it. I'm debating about getting rid of the giant green nepthea in the middle and adding more rocks work for sps.

I was able to remove a frag rack from this tank now that I have the 50gal low boy going and removed my eshopps feeder. What a difference it makes clearing up the dt and not having it cluttered with racks or magnetic feeders.

still battle gha on the back of my left rockwork but it has been steadily going away and I pull ah much as I can while I'm doing water changes.

This tank will be 1 year old this August.

 

[Humblefish]

@Arvin R Your tank looks really good!

 

[OZ_SPS]

Tank is still cruisng along well. I won the 13 head green branching hammer in a raffle online and added the blue wall hammer in the middle too. I couldn't find a better spot for the wall hammer as flow is too high anywhere else on the sand bed for it. I'm debating about getting rid of the giant green nepthea in the middle and adding more rocks work for sps.

I was able to remove a frag rack from this tank now that I have the 50gal low boy going and removed my eshopps feeder. What a difference it makes clearing up the dt and not having it cluttered with racks or magnetic feeders.

still battle gha on the back of my left rockwork but it has been steadily going away and I pull ah much as I can while I'm doing water changes.

This tank will be 1 year old this August.View attachment 70809

Beautiful

 

[Arvin R]

@Arvin R Your tank looks really good!

Beautiful

Thank you!

 

[Arvin R]

Well that scape didn't last long as beautiful as it was. Maintenance day and I noticed quite a few aptasia. I got them with aptasia X and decided to pull out the 2 arches on my left side that I got from a fellow reefer with a bunch of cloves, gsp, gha and apparently some aptasia. I've been struggling getting the gha under control as just when I think it's starting to fade away it comes back overnight with a vengeance. None of my other rock work has gha anywhere close to these. I pulled off the finger leather and the other white leather and put them in my frag tank. The rocks are sitting in buckets and I will make a ton of frags with the cloves and see if anyone local is interested in the gsp. I have plenty of live rock sitting in my sumps so I went to rescaping that side of the tank. I was able to keep the huge nepthea in this tank after some rearranging.

Gotta love when simple waterchange turns into a whole day working on your tank!

Results below.

Left third

Middle third

Right third

Good news is now I have tons more room for sps!

 

[OZ_SPS]

Well that scape didn't last long as beautiful as it was. Maintenance day and I noticed quite a few aptasia. I got them with aptasia X and decided to pull out the 2 arches on my left side that I got from a fellow reefer with a bunch of cloves, gsp, gha and apparently some aptasia. I've been struggling getting the gha under control as just when I think it's starting to fade away it comes back overnight with a vengeance. None of my other rock work has gha anywhere close to these. I pulled off the finger leather and the other white leather and put them in my frag tank. The rocks are sitting in buckets and I will make a ton of frags with the cloves and see if anyone local is interested in the gsp. I have plenty of live rock sitting in my sumps so I went to rescaping that side of the tank. I was able to keep the huge nepthea in this tank after some rearranging.

Gotta love when simple waterchange turns into a whole day working on your tank!

Results below.
View attachment 70889
Left third
View attachment 70890
Middle third
View attachment 70891
Right third
View attachment 70892

Good news is now I have tons more room for sps!

Still looking good man.

 

[Arvin R]

Took some closeups just now with my phone.

 

[OZ_SPS]

Beautiful all around. Great job!

 

[Arvin R]

Decided to add an Xr15 pro (gen3) I had laying around to this tank as I'm leaning into going sps heavy for my coral stock. I was able to ghetto DIY a mount for it to sit inside the aquatic life hybrid t5 fixture. I'll have to snap a pic of when it's on tomorrow.

The bbq skewers are tied into each other so they can't slip out the side and drop the light.