400 Gallon Reef Tank Update Jan ’24 #reeftank #reefaquarium #kalkwasser (see desc. for more info)

Jan 5, 2024, 29 months since the fish were moved into their new home. New years resolution, prune coral! It’s been a while since I posted a new video. I still find it hard to get the whole tank clean for a video but here is one now, don’t mind the unclean bits. Corals are still growing like crazy! I removed some big colonies and chopped them back but many more to go. I need to get rid of the extra coral so I can clean up the sandbed and make maintenance easier. Still running on DIY 3 part with a lot of DIY trace elements. Calcium is Brine’s brand food grade and soda ash from baked arm and hammer. Magnesium is food grade Epsom salt with BRS Magnesium chloride. I was using the Dead sea works Mag but suspect it has crazy high lithium levels hence the switch. Kalk is from Mrs. Wages. I had an ICP test about a 5 months ago and Lithium was the only thing high. System Description:#reeftank #reefaquarium #kalk - This 400 Gallon Reef tank was all hand built by me over about 5 years. The build wouldn’t have taken that long except for my busy job and some remodeling to the room that I did myself including tiling the floor around the my former 240g reef tank, moving that tank to finish the floor and moving this tank in. - The tank dimensions are approx. 60.5“ x 60.5“ x 24.5“ and is set into the stand a few inches to hide the sand bed profile. There is also an external overflow that I built into the tank. I made it mostly from 1/2“ cell cast acrylic although the top ad bottom are 3/8“ thick. - The stand structure is powder coated steel that I welded up. There are many more wooden components to the stand including hinged doors and magnetically attached panels. Wood is all poplar with the exception of the plywood under the tank. Still need to paint those parts before installing them. - The sump was designed and built by me and has a total volume of around 150 gallons. There is a frag tank on the end that is integrated as well as an ATS(Algae turf scrubber) that is also plumbed in. - The aquascape has two islands on the right side that I built up from mature live rock from my last system and the structure on the left was built from Marco rock in 3 or four parts that I conditioned in a lit and heated stock tank for a few years that was seeded with some live rock and coraline algae. - The coral all came out of my former, very crowded, 240g tank. - The fish were a combination of my fish, some beautiful fish I adopted from a friend, and some that I had waiting for the build to finish. All fish were quarantined in some petco glass tanks using protocols I got off and the new corals and aquascape were run fallow for 6 weeks at 80.6 degrees before adding these fish. 50 Ah Lithium iron phosphate backup battery that runs 3 DC air pumps and start automatically if there is a power outage. - The filtration comes from the ATS, 7“ - 10 micron filter socks, protein skimmer, and lots of rock and sintered glass biomedia in the sump. - Return pumps are 2 Coral box DCA 12000, system will run with just one but the ATS or the frag tank with loose out depending on which one goes out. Power heads are mostly Coral Box QP-16s with the Aqualink A1 Apex adaptors and run though some custom Apex profiles I made up.- The lighting is from 12 Maxspect Ethereal lights in a custom rack that I built plus one over the frag tank in the sump. -Supplementation is done with DIY 2 part plus magnesium. Kalk is from Mrs. Wages. Mostly DIY trace elements, Iron, potassium, strontium, Manganese, phosphate, Manganese, Vanadium Cobalt, Chromium and Iodine, 3 APEX doses in my garage do most of the dosing. - Monitoring and automation is an Apex classic and a KH Guardian - Let me know what questions you have in the comments. Thanks for watching!