College kid setting up his first octopus tank!!!

Wait..so are you going to display the sea horses? Hey D, speaking of refugiums etc, where can you get macro algae? Culturing and establishing an infinite food supply of brine shrimp is difficult for me. They filter feed on macro algae, and yeast (bakers not brewers if your wondering:sly:) doesn't do so well as a food source.
 
My first thought was to have a refugium on this tank for kicks and giggles and for the experience (since my job is to set up custom tanks for people) When the last of my jellyfish died after having them for 2 years I just decided to use the 20gallon marineland half moon tank since I had it empty and needed a tank. My girlfriend isn't the biggest fan of my big predator fish and wanted fish like a mandarin, seahorses, bangaii cardinalls, etc...

So My display refugium slowly turned into a combination of a her person tank, and a refugium. I have 50lbs of fine sand and lots of macro algae to cultivate pods for the seahorses and green mandarin.

The main display doesn't need any pods and the sol purpose of the refugium connected this tank is the remove nitrates which I have a small problem with but not to bad normally around 20-40ppm. and since I do feed the seahorses so heavily its handy to have that tank connected to a larger tank and sump running 2 skimmers to keep up with water quality.

Just got them in at the store


Swimming around at the store, while I made sure they were eating before taking them home


Living in their first home my 5.5 gallon fluval edge, which is now my sps tank
 

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In between me being in the hospital again, the many thesis papers/test/projects that comes with being a grad student for two different fields, and work. my octopus tank project has taken a bit of a back seat. I've given the measurements to a guy in the reef club who builds custom stands and canopies and with the fact that him and his wife have pretty much adopted me in the reef club that should be done pretty soon. I currently have the new sand and about 60 lbs of what was once dry live rock in the tank running with a hob skimmer and koralia for flow. However I still have to drill the tank so I am going to have to empty it to drill it. That is the main thing I've been pushing off doing :smile: Then all I have to do is plumb it into my existing system and I"m good to go : )

Current pics taken from my 29 biocube right before I moved them over to the fuge


 

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Reidis? Sometimes I miss keeping seahorses but drag myself away from them when I remember all the work :wink:

I would like to experiment with a top overlfow fuge but the only tank I have where it might be practicle for a small one is a dedicated octo tank and open tops don't work well. The small DSB I kept for years on the large tank did lower my nitrates after a little over 2 years. A larger area might have been productive sooner but with the added food, I don't know if you will ever see an effect on the larger tank. Ultimately, I emptied it in favor of more sump room (for ease of maintenance, I won't combine a sump and anything else again).
 
Yeah, other than the fact seahorses require top notch water quality the hardest part about keeping seahorses is providing the food for them. I have tried to make infinite brine shrimp food source in a small separate tank many times, but even providing the food for food is even more challenging. I really need to go back and look at the food chain for a moment :oops:

D do you remember the how many gallons the small tank was compared to the bigger tank?
 
When I first got them I had 4 brine shrimp hatcheries going constantly. They have been eating frozen baby krill, brine, and mysis now for 3 months and along with the mandarin, bangaii, and red flower sea Lilly. The good thing about have 2 roommates who also have saltwater tanks is someone is always home to feed. I feed in the morning after class, right before I go to work and after work. My roommates and girlfriend fill in when I'm sick/busy/vacation etc...

I have 2 skimmers on the tank making for a combined rating of 950 gallons. In a system that currently holds 190 gallons with only 7 large predators and the fish in the fuge putting off any bioload, since I haven't plumbed in the octo tank yet.

My pod population is out of control, and with the addition of a 9 inch v-tail grouper (so almost twice as much feeding now in my big tank) my nitrates have dropped probably 10ppm since I got the fuge up and going, dont know if it was because of the fuge or just the tank finally breaking in a bit. I have considered vodka dosing but didn't know how that would affect the octopus in the long term?
 
My sump is only 20 gallons and the DSP was just 6" (maybe 5.5"). The main tank is 145 gallon tall pent. If/when I try another fuge it will be a top overflow style with miracle mud or something equivalent and only be used as a refugium.

That being said, I was not suggesting any problems with converting a planned fuge into a display tank, only that it stops functioning as a refugium once you start adding waste. I think a lot of people end up doing this because a fuge is boring, if not ugly and the sump fuge (the route I tried a couple of times and have displensed with) was born.

The discussion has me thinking though ... :goofysca: I have a nano that I might just be able to play with and the results could only be beneficial ... hmm.
 
Thats funny, recently I added a 2.5 gallon sump to my fluval edge, and was considering plumbing in a 1 gallon tank I have as a refugium for it just for kicks and giggles.
 
At the moment I don't have any spending money for experimentation but I keep thinking about what I might have that I could (or sweet talk Neal into) convert to something that would hang on and overflow into the sump. We dispensed with the stock lid long ago and the new cover has a removable piece over the sump area so access is not a problem and I surely have a pump or two around but I have not "remembered" a container that would work. I have several glass tanks but that would require a stand rather than a hang on attachement. The tank gets overfed and would be a good experiment for a mud fuge, the only inhabitants being Hulk (a gorgeous and extremely aggressive antler anemone who often has me bathing in vineager when I think I can sneak around it to clean), a candy coral cluster that has to be moved from time to time if Hulk discovers its location, a gorgonian and three sexy shrimp. Eventually, I would like to put a frog fish in it but I am not sure where I would rehome the little shrimp. The thing does not filter well (it is one of the original "nano" tanks) so your thread has me actively trying to get creative.
 

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