The Tentacles

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So not to long ago, I received my upgrade pack of magnets for my Ecotech Vortech Pumps. After the upgrade, I was playing with the old magnets and accidentally put them too close together. Suffice it to say, the magnets violently snapped together and were so strong that I broke a sweat trying to get them apart!

I then realized that these could be used to make my own custom glass cleaning magnets for my tank! I’m too lazy to ever take my normal magnet cleaner out of the tank, so if there was going to be a square block stuck on the outside of my tank all the time, it might as well look cool.

Here is what I put together!

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Originally Posted at TheTentacleParadox
The Tank

The tank itself is 150 Gallons with 1/2 inch Glass. Almost everything other then the mechanical equipment were custom made including the cabinet, hood, sump, and auto top off reservoir. The goal is to house and breed Sepia Bandensis in a mixed reef system. This project is an attempt to go beyond the traditional construction of a salt water system, but to make it an artistic endeavor as well. Like usual with my creations, the aesthetics are in tune with an old mad scientist feel.

System Schematic

Main Tank

The main tank is a 150 gallon Glass tank with custom wood stand and hood. Dimensions are 72.5″Long x 18.5″Deep x 28″ Tall. I drilled the back for two 1″ bulkheads for internal overflows. They are located on both sides of the tank in the rear.

The hood is two separate pieces, designed to slide out to allow me to reach all the way down the tank. It also has doors that allow for quick feeding or access to the tank. If I need to take the hood down, All lighting and wiring can be easily disconnected.

Making this a reef/cuttlefish tank requires some deviations from the typical reef setup. I have created a lot of shelf rock towers and structures to allow for a lot of varying degrees of lighting and shade. Sepia Bandensis live in reefs, but prefer lower levels of lighting. Many caves and shaded areas are available to them with my current setup. Rock design has always held a feeling of Zen to it for it will determine the water flow through the tank. My goal is to not only give shade and housing to the cuttles, but to do so by creating seamless paths for water flow. A path of least resistance will allow optimum flow efficiency to encourage all detritus to not settle and stay in the water column until it reaches the overflow to be filtered.

Lighting consists of dual 250 watt metal halides with 14k bulbs. Six 39 watt T5s are also used. Four for supplementation and two as 10k. The metal halides are on for only 3 hours a day from 4pm - 7pm. 10k T5s are on from 9am-4:30pm and 7pm-9pm. The four supplemental T5s are on from 3:30pm-12:00pm. With this light schedule, the halides are on only for a short amount of time for the corals. Most of the day it is lit with only t5s. The 28″ depth of the tank also causes a drastic reduction in PAR the further down the tank you go. Temperature will range from 72-77 degrees which will make the cuttlefish more comfortable but slower growth rates in corals due to slower metabolism.

Another deviation from modern reef systems is my inclusion of a home made wet dry system. I am using less then the typical live rock for biological filtration and with an animal that produces as much waste as the cuttlefish, I will need more filtration. As long as I keep the bio bale clean, I should not have any problems such as the nitrate buildup.

For circulation, I am running a Ecotech Vortech pump. It huge amount of dispersed flow with the motor housing on the outside of the glass is perfect for a lower temperature tank. The flow from the vortechs are very complimentary to rockwork towers for it pulls and pushes water from all sides of the towers. To aid in random flow, I am using a Wavy Sea wave maker which alternates the water flow set to about 190 degree rotation.

Sump

The sump is made from a 30 gallon long glass tank with 5 acrylic baffles. The skimmer and return pumps are plumberd externally to reduce heat. All pumps are outside of the water column, so little heat is transfered.

Equipment:

-Aqua Euro Recirculating 365 Skimmer

-Pan World 50px-x Return Pump modified with external fan to run cooler.

-Macro Algae for nutrient export lighted by a 120 watt equivalent flourescent daylight bulb set on a timer to come on at 11:00pm - 9:00am. The nightly schedule aids in reducing the PH drop that comes during the night. The refugium section is designed to tumble the macro algae without the use of any additional pumps. This allows for even light exposure.

-Auto-Top Off system connected to a Typhoon III RO-DI unit and resevoir to fill any evaporated water and dose kalkwasser. An old laboratory Buchlar Polystaltic Pump is used for slow controlled dosing of the kalkwasser.

-Custom made wet dry system with media/drip plate. This was made from a drawer system to allow easy access and cleaning.

Baby Cuttle Nursery

Wmpty with divider.

The baby cuttle section is made from 1/4″ acrylic and is 20″Long x 12″Deep x 7″Tall. It has a small overflow that will drain to the wet dry sytem in the sump. The main return pump from the sump is T’ed off and controlled by a ball valve that feeds the baby cuttle section with water. A divider can be added to this section to safely divide the nursery in half. For eggs and newborn hatching, I have also created a removable breeding net style chamber.

Filled with miracle mud with an egg tray on top left and custom made area for new borns on the top right. (The newborns are the small white dots!)

RO/DI Resevoir - AutoTop Off

Since Ive run out of room in the stand, I decided to make the auto top off resevoir look nice. A 20 Gallong tank, Buchlar Pump, and two float valves are all the functioning parts. Everything else was added for aesthetic purposed. The 20 Gallon tank has a custom made wood housing and framework. The buchlar pump was painted and placed on a custom made rotating mount that rests on top of the tank. The RODI unit is in my bathroom on the other side of my house. Tubing from the unit goes through the house and hits a T adaptor. From the T adaptor, one end will goto a float valve that sits in the sump, keeping the water level constant when evaporation occurs. The other end of the T adaptor goes to a on/off valve that then feeds to another float valve that sits in the 20 gallon reservoir. This will allow water to fill the 20 gallon to the top and automatically shut off. Once this is full, I shut the valve off that feeds the reservoir. I then place kalkwasser and any other additives to the water in the reservoir. This water is then pumped by the Buchlar pump at a rate of about 1 drop every 1.5 seconds 24 hours a day into the sump. Kalkwasser must be added slowly to the tank since its PH is very high. The amount of liquid being added to the sump from the reservoir is at a slower rate then the tanks evaporation rate, so anything that is left over is automatically filled by the rodi unit that feeds directly to the float valve in the sump. The 20 gallon reservoir lasts about 3 weeks until it needs to be refilled.

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This is the original tank setup I used when I first began the CuttleFarm Army project. This was an existing tank setup in 2002 and converted to a Cuttle tank in 2004.

Originally posted in TheTentacleParadox

The Tank
Here I will describe the setup and equipment that make up my cuttlefish factory and training grounds.

The tank itself is a 50 gallon Plexi. If I had more room I would definetly upgrade to a 150 gallon glass show tank.The hood and cabinet were custom made to match the detail and dark wood of most of my furniture and artistic creations. There are four main compartments to this system. The main tank, 20 gallon sump, 5 gallon refugium, and 4 gallon (egg/baby/juvenile) section. I will describe each of these in detail below.

System Schematic

Main Tank

The main tank is a 50 gallon acrylic. A hang on the back overflow is used to bring water directly to the Skimmer in the sump. If I ever move, I will change the tank with one that has an overflow already drilled into it. The lights are a custom setup built into the hood. I find that a combination of a 175 watt 20k XM halide and a 96 watt Power Compact 50/50 will give enough light to grow some corals and not be overly blinding to the cuttles. I notice that if I turn a 2nd 175 watt halide on, the cuttles will become less active and stay in the sand. To work in the tank, the hood is made to be lifted and suspended from chains hanging from the ceiling. This way, you can work inside the tank and still see what your doing.I use a 1/2″ - 1″ layer of sand for aesthetic purposes only. Plus the cuttles like it. I vacuum it regularly and do not care for developing a huge amount of living diversity here. I find that having good flow and having your skimmer fed directly from the overflow is the best way to keep the tank and water clean. Live rock is minimized to make it easier to keep track of all the cuttles. I use a lot of branch rock for decoration which also prevents the creation of too many caves or caverns in which your cuttles can forever hide. 2 maxijet 1200s are used to increase flow. One has a spinning output to create random flow. I place high current in the back of the rocks for two reasons. One, is to keeps detritus from settling in hard to clean places and two, it prevents the cuttles from making those areas into hang out spots. Here are some images of the Left Side and Right Side of the tank.

Sump

The sump is made from a 20 gallon long.

Equipment:

-ASM 1X Protein Skimmer (With gate valve mod and remote resevoir. Recirc mod will be installed shortly) I have this set to skim wet for aggressive skimming since this is the heart of my filtration.

-15 lbs of live rock for natural filtration.

-Auto-Top Off system connected to a RO-DI unit to fill any evaporated water.

-Various filter mediums.

-Media chamber powered by a maxijet 1200 with phosban. This pumps water up to the refugium.

Refugium

The refugium is a custom made plexi 5 gallon container. A divider can be added to the center if I need to make more sections to isolate cuttles. It sits on a shelf made from the stand behind the tank and rests against the wall. It is fed by a maxijet 1200 in the sump with a media chamber running Phosban prior to entering the fuge. I also keep some live marine shrimp for food in a breeder net. The water will then gravity feed into a 1.25 inch bulkhead feeding the baby cuttle section.

Baby Cuttle Section/Training Grounds

The 4 gallon plexi baby cuttle section was custom made by plexi glass. A divider can be added if more sections are needed. It sits in a space behing the tank on the stand against the wall. Eggs and new borns are kept in the small hanging breeder container. This is necessary to ensure accurate observations when feeding and so they do not get caught in bulkheads. This section is gravity fed by two flexible hoses. One from the main tank overflow and the other from the refugium. Gravity fed output runs through a 1.25 inch bulkhead to the sump.

The Mess Hall

One of the most challenging parts of keeping an army of cuttlefish is to keep them fed. They are demanding eaters. I have yet to be able to get the bandensis to eat frozen foods. Also, depending on the age and size of the cuttlefish, they will require different foods. Salt water crustaceans such as shrimp and crabs are the best and fresh water animals such as guppies or ghost shrimp are considered last resort. I am often suspecting that freshwater guppies are really a bad idea from a couple mysterious deaths. A large section of my closet is dedicated to housing live foods. Ive made this as compact and efficient as possible. On the left is a 10 gallon tank run by a HOB skimmer and a normal HOB filter. This holds marine shrimp. However, the maximum capacity without having them all die is about 150-200 shrimps, so I also keep some in my refugium, since I order them in 250-300 amounts. On the right are stackable tupperware drawers. I keep shore caught crabs and pods in these. You will also need to limit the amount of crabs depending on how large your space is. I have a 3 inch water level and a rock in the center. I can house about 25-30 crabs here. Pods can be kept in large amounts in an inch or two volume of water. Keep a small brine shrimp net in the drawer where the net is at the surface of the water. The pods will naturally seek out dry spots and goto the net. So whenever you need pods, they will all be sitting in the net already. Here are some images of the Crabs & Pods. On top of the tupperware containers is a glass container with a small HOB filter. This is freshwater and I keep guppies and ghost shrimp here.

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