Biokabe's Unimaginatively Titled Red Sea Reefer 350

[Biokabe]

Well, I meant to start this over a year ago, but one thing didn't lead to another, and I kept abandoning it halfway. So perhaps today we'll actually get the build thread posted for real!

First, the most current FTS:

And here's the current equipment and livestock list:

Lights:
Aquatic Life T5 Hybrid (48") with the floating wall mount, currently running 2x ATI Blue Plus, 1x ATI ActinicPlus, 1x ATI Purple Plus
2x EcoTech Radion XR15 Pro G4
1x Tunze Submersible EcoChic 8831

Powerheads:
1x Neptune WAV
1x Maxspect XF230 Gyre

Return Pump:
Reef Octopus Varios2

Dosing Pump:
3x Kamoer X1 Bluetooth pumps

Controller:
Apex EL w/ Trident

Skimmer:
Red Sea RSK-300, w/ BRS Carbon Dioxide Scrubber attached

Heater:
BRS Heating Controller
300w Finnex Titanium Heating Element
150w Eheim Jager

ATO:
Tunze Osmolator 3155

Livestock:

Fish:
Tomini Tang
Pink Skunk Clownfish
Purple Firefish
Sapphire Damsel
Forktail Blenny (Biota captive-bred)
Six-line Wrasse

Invertebrates:

Trochus Snail (Uncountable)
Dwarf Cerith Snail (Uncountable)
Cerith Snail (Uncountable)
Nassarius Snail (Uncountable)
Nerites Snail (Uncountable)
Asterina stars (benign and uncountable)
3x Money Cowries
3x Fighting Conches
1x Pincushion Urchin
2x Purple Pincushion Urchin
1-2 Hermit Crabs

Back in the Before Times (before COVID made things like this challenging), my LFS, Barrier Reef Aquariums in Renton, WA, held their annual anniversary sale... and the price was just too good to pass up on a Reefer 350. It wasn't really an impulse purchase - I'd been saving for it since we bought our house in 2016 - but that was what helped me finally pull the trigger on it.

Took a few weeks for the tank to arrive from the distribution center, and then I was in for the third-most harrowing drive of my life. I decided to see if I could fit the tank and stand:

Into my 2009 Scion tC:

(Photo and Car belong to someone else... don't have a good picture of my actual car on my phone).

Anyhow, turns out it fit! Just barely. The front seat had to fold down, and I had absolutely NO visibility out of my right-hand side. In retrospect I should've just rented a van, but where's the fun in that?

Long story short (too late!), made it home safe and sound, and after much wrangling got it into the house.

Little bit of time putting the stand together with my trusty assistant...

Taking shape...

Finally, it earned his seal of approval:

(Insert obligatory catfish joke)

Then, after thoroughly leak-testing it, it was time to get rid of the old tank and put the Reefer into the place of honor. Thankfully, my wife is a patient and long-suffering soul who, I think, secretly enjoys the tank more than I do. To say it was messy would be an understatement:

Finally, after much work and trial and tribulation, success!

If only it had stayed like that... But more on that in the second post.

 

[Biokabe]

So, after moving the old 55g tank (build thread here) into the new Reefer, I'd like to report that everything was smooth sailing... but unfortunately, 'twas not the case.

Right away, I started having some problems - and, ultimately, a mini-cycle that would prove very destructive. Looking back, I think my fundamental problems were two-fold:

1. Not having enough freshly-mixed saltwater to go into the tank
2. Taking too long to complete the transfer, which is really just a consequence of the first part

Regardless of the reason, I lost a lot in the move. Among the fish, I lost:

• Bartlett's Anthias
• Gold-headed Sleeper Goby
• Carpenter's Flasher Wrasse
• Lubbock's Multi-colored Wrasse

And for corals... well, pretty much all of them. Some of it, I lost because of the problems with the move. Others, I would later lose because of a problem with my Alk/Ca dosing. And others became a snack for a foolishly acquired bristletail filefish. And I had some nice ones:

So, yeah. Pretty much everything except for a couple of fish (pink skunk clown, purple firefish, and sapphire damsel) and a good chunk of my clean-up crew didn't make it. So the moral of the story, of course, is:

Plan, plan and plan some more whenever anything is coming up. With a better plan in place, including more containers with saltwater, more heaters, and more powerheads, the mass death that followed the tank transfer might (probably wouldn't) have happened.

 

[MW319]

Very nice setup. Sorry for your loses though.

 

[Biokabe]

Very nice setup. Sorry for your loses though.

Thanks. It's always a gut punch to lose something, especially a coral that's been growing nicely for months or a fish that hasn't lived anywhere near its full life. And, speaking of - just went to check on my two new acros (doing great for a change), and the sixline had apparently perished some time after lights-out. Sigh. And I'd had some optimism, too.

 

[Biokabe]

Well, I haven't had too many up-close pictures of corals or fish, so here's the current tank roll-call:

So here we have my WWC Aoi zoas, a wild green goni, some pink zoas, and some orange zoas. I think the orange ones are Utter Chaos, but I got them from my LFS' unlabeled zoa section, so your guess is as good as mine. There's also a green and purple acan lord that likes to fold up on itself during the day; it has been stressed by previous problems with the tank, so it's slowly in the process of recovering. There's also a purple and white acan, though I foolishly mounted it so that you won't really be able to see it until it gets bigger.

My forktail blenny, pink skunk clown, and one of my two acros. I'm hoping I can keep it around - it and my other acros have been in the tank for about three weeks now without losing tissue and even seem to be growing, which is a marked change from what had been happening to acros. So yay.

Just to the left of the other picture, another unnamed zoa colony and some rust-red acans. These ones have always been super fluffy, and they beg for food every day starting around 9:30 PM. Not the most stunning of acans I've ever seen, but they're hardy and growing.

Another zoa colony. Never used to like zoas, and in fact for the longest time I couldn't manage to keep them alive... but these days I've joined the ranks of those who both enjoy them and find them almost bulletproof.

One of my torches. Nice pale green tips with orange tentacles that are more vibrant in person.

My other torch, with one of the hermits photo-bombing. For a little while I thought that this one was going to be a goner, but it's been recovering over the past few months and has managed to re-grow some of its previously damaged tissue.

My final acan colony, this particular colony is stupid bright in person; like the rust-red colony, it's very greedy.

My second acro, this one doesn't photograph well at all. It's a pale yellow/golden color with tiny red polyps... a very subtle beauty in person, but in the photo it's a little tough to tell the difference between it and the acro skeletons.

 

[Biokabe]

Bunch of new additions to the tank... My LFS had their anniversary sale these past couple of weekends, so I did my part to keep them in business.

Two new additions... a nice teal-and-orange acan lord, and a melanarus wrasse. Hopefully he can get the flatworms under control!

An ice tort and a hydnophora, and removed one of the old acro skeletons that was blocking flow to the tort.

Purple and orange lobo. I probably need to attach my second torch to a rock somewhere... it's been in the sand bed for a whole, but with the new flow patterns from the WAV pumps it keeps getting knocked over.

And just peaking out in the back there is my new Japanese golden hawkfish.

Finally, there's a milka stylophora.

Today I'll need to do a water change, mount that second torch, and retrieve the possibly-recovering forest fire digitata that one of my urchins ran off with last night.

 

[TheWB]

Bunch of new additions to the tank... My LFS had their anniversary sale these past couple of weekends, so I did my part to keep them in business.

Two new additions... a nice teal-and-orange acan lord, and a melanarus wrasse. Hopefully he can get the flatworms under control!

An ice tort and a hydnophora, and removed one of the old acro skeletons that was blocking flow to the tort.

Purple and orange lobo. I probably need to attach my second torch to a rock somewhere... it's been in the sand bed for a whole, but with the new flow patterns from the WAV pumps it keeps getting knocked over.

And just peaking out in the back there is my new Japanese golden hawkfish.

Finally, there's a milka stylophora.

Today I'll need to do a water change, mount that second torch, and retrieve the possibly-recovering forest fire digitata that one of my urchins ran off with last night.

Nice looking build. I always like to see new south sound builds pop up. Not many on here. Followng along.

 

[PokeFish]

im here

 

[Biokabe]

I really need to get in the habit of doing these updates more often. =)

Just a quick update before a larger update with pictures.

First off: Japanese hawkfish out, Lyretail Anthias in. The hawkfish decided that he didn't like my sapphire damsel and literally ripped him in two. If I had simply come out to find the damsel dead one morning, the hawk might have remained, but my wife saw the entire crime committed and couldn't look at the hawk anymore. So back to the LFS it went. Would've loved to have kept it, gorgeous fish with a ton of personality, but I don't want any fish-killers in my tank.

So, I added a lyretail anthias in its place. Stunning, both the way it moves and the coloration. I've had an anthias before, but it only lasted about 6 weeks before dying (probably of starvation, since I wasn't feeding as much back then). I've had my Eheim autofeeder going for a while now, dropping in pellets three times a day... and just recently, I replaced the Eheim with an Avast Plank.

It's spendy and doesn't quite work perfectly with my Clearview lid, but overall it's a fantastic product. The below-waterline release of the food minimizes how much of it goes down the overflow, and my fish are loving it. They don't have to go up to the top of the water to get food, and I don't have to worry about remembering to thaw frozen food to ensure they get something better than pellets - the Plank does freeze-dried food perfectly. So I run a mixture of freeze-dried mysis, freeze-dried brine, copepod powder, freeze-dried rotifers, spirulina powder, seaweed pellets, Hikari Marine S, TDO Chromaboost, NewLife Spectrum, and probably a few more. The corals are, for the most part, loving it as well.

All the food, predictably, did end up causing my phosphates to increase, and I had some dieback on my corals - especially my acros - before I identified the problem and dosed some lanthanum chloride to drop it down. Also, in sadness, one of my urchins bulldozed one of my torches, and the torch didn't appreciate being in the sand... put it back up, but the tentacles just slowly melted off of it over the course of a couple days. So now I'll have to find a replacement for that spot...

 

[Biokabe]

It's been a while.

Things happened, it was all very momentous, and now things are the way they are.

Rather than laboriously detailing everything that has happened, we'll just say that there was a time skip, and you can see all the exciting things that you missed in flashbacks.

That said, here is the current state of the tank:

I've made a few changes to the equipment, so we'll start with that. Currently, the following items are supporting the tank:

Lights:
Aquatic Life T5 Hybrid (48") with the floating wall mount, currently running... some 54w T5 bulbs. I forget the exact mix, and I don't feel like looking it up.
2x EcoTech Radion XR15 Pro G4
1x EcotTech Radion XR15 Pro G5
1x Tunze Submersible EcoChic 8831 (for the refugium)

Powerheads:
1x Neptune WAV
1x Maxspect XF230 Gyre
1x Reef Octopus OctoPulse 2
1x Sicce X-stream SDC

Return Pump:
Reef Octopus Varios2

Dosing Pump:
1x Kamoer X1 Bluetooth pump
1x Kamoer F1 Bluetooth/WiFi pump

Controller:
Apex A3 w/ Trident and LLS

Skimmer:
Reef Octopus 110-INT Classic

Heater:
BRS Heating Controller
300w Finnex Titanium Heating Element
150w Eheim Jager

ATO:
Tunze Osmolator 3155

Autofeeder:
Avast Plank v2

ATS:
IceCap Algae Scrubber PRO - Small

Lid:
Clearview Tsunami /w feeding lid & side cut-out for the Plank

The major changes from the last configuration:

Skimmer: I went back to the Reef Octopus skimmer from my Red Sea one. I think it was mostly for the footprint; the sump is pretty tight with the algae scrubber in it, and I didn't want to take down the refugium yet. I could just barely squeeze the Reef Octopus in, so it made the cut and the Red Sea one is dry for now. Maybe one day I'll take down the refugium and go back to the Red Sea, but the Reef Octopus has been doing the job just fine.

Lighting: I added a third XR15 in the center of the tank. This let me turn down the overall intensity while maintaining higher PAR and eliminating a couple of dim spots in the center of the tank.

Powerheads: I've actually gone through quite a bit more change here than is reflected in the current equipment list. Other powerheads have been added and removed, but not really a lot to say here. More flow is more flow, the corals seem to be responding well to it and it's all pretty silent unless a snail gets on one of the powerheads. I also had to put a nem guard on one of them.

Dosers: This continues to be a point of misfortune for me. I just can't seem to keep dosers alive. At one point I had 3 or 4 of the X1 pumps, all but one of them have stopped working. I'm just dosing two things now (Alk and Cal) so two heads is enough for now.

Controller: I upgraded to the new A3 controller with the built-in liquid sensor and salinity module. It didn't come with a salinity probe, so I still don't have that running, but the water level sensor is a nice upgrade.

Autofeeder: My love for the Plank has been well-documented at this point, especially after I had Clearview send me a new side piece to make it fit better. If you can afford it and are on the fence about it - get it. It's worth it.

Scrubber: I think I'm a believer in turf scrubbers now, but they're not a set-it-and-forget it thing. One of the big reasons that these updates fell off was that my tank developed a really nasty and persistent GHA/Bryopsis infestation - it lasted for years and still isn't completely over with. The only time my rocks weren't completely covered in algae is now, and for a 3-week window about two months after I set up my scrubber. Unfortunately I let things get out of hand again after that, so I couldn't maintain that algae-free period.

That's basically it for the equipment. In the next post, current livestock and pictures!

 

[MW319]

Pic?

 

[Biokabe]

Tonight. =)

I'd already started and lost one draft last week, so I didn't want to have to rewrite the start of the update again.

Also hoping to maybe get some pics of the newest fish, and maybe some pics of the older fish with the new camera... there are a couple that have refused to pose (my Melanurus wrasse and my two Springer's damsels).

Regardless,I'll be updating again tonight with the pictures I do have.

 

[Biokabe]

So, as promised, it's now time for the more interesting update. Who cares about dry descriptions of equipment, it's those juicy livestock photos we're after!

Alright, they're not that juicy. But I did pick up a Nikon D5500 DSLR with a macro lens, so they're hopefully a step up from my old phone pics.

We'll start off with the fish. These first fish are relatively long-tenured, all of them have been in the tank for years at this point. Up until last Tuesday, their members included:

• Blue Sapphire Damsel x 2
• Pyramid Butterflyfish
• Pink Skunk Clownfish
• Melanurus Wrasse
• Pintail Fairy Wrasse
• Midas Blenny
• Lyretail Anthias

First off, one of my Springer/Sapphire Damsels, seen here hanging out with my torch:



These have always been a favorite of mine - relatively peaceful (for a damsel), brilliant blue coloration, and they eat flatworms. Beauty and utility, not much more you can ask for. The only downside of them is that they are quite difficult to photograph - they tend to flee from the lens, and because they're a similar shade as the LED blues, it's difficult to color-correct.



Managed to get both of them, along with a shot of the algae problem I used to have. Still do have, but I used to have it too.

In all seriousness it has improved since then, but more on that later.

On my most recent camera day, when I set up to take a pic of my big toadstool for scale with the rest of my corals, a bunch of the fish decided to parade through the center of the tank, one after the other.

First was the pink skunk clown:



The melanurus wrasse decided he wanted in on the game too:



The golden trio (Midas blenny, lyretail anthias, and pintail fairy wrasse) were next up:








... and finally the Pyramid decided to grace us with his presence:



A few more shots. First, the Midas blenny hanging out in his favorite cave, right next to my forest fire digitata and one of my blastos:



And putting that shot into context, it's the left side of my tank:



That's all for now. Work calls in the morning and it's already late. With the next update, I can hopefully get some pictures of the new fish and get a few more larger-scale shots until I find a good lens for a full-tank shot.

 

[revhtree]

Looking good and I see a bunch of frags just waiting to be grown into a mature reef! Beautiful fish as well.