ecyoung's Red Sea Reefer 250

[ecyoung]

Hey everybody! I just moved from the Midwest to California and finally have the ability to setup a moderately large reef tank (I already have a 14g BioCube that I took with me during the drive).

I just started cycling the tank with controlled doses of pure household ammonia and BioSpira since I wanted to try something different this time, and it also seems like it'll be faster than the shrimp-and-wait method.

I'm still waiting on a few pieces of equipment to arrive, but the final parts list will be as follows:

• Red Sea Reefer 250 with LED strip lights in the cabinet
• 40lbs Arag-Alive special grade reef sand (~1.5" bed)
• 50lbs Reef Cleaners dry reef rock secured with IC gel
• 2x Kessil A160 Tuna Blue with gooseneck mounts and spectral controller (will switch to arm mounts eventually)
• VarioS-4 return pump (adding manifold to run media filter off this as well)
• Aqueon 250W heater (will add Finnex titanium heating element + controller later for safety)
• Felt filter socks
• Maxspect Gyre xf230
• Koralia nano 240 (for extra sump circulation)
• Reef octopus 110INT skimmer
• BRS dual reactor w/ carbon and GFO

I plan on stocking a mix of all types of corals (variety is the spice of life!) and the following livestock (eventually, of course):

Fish:

• 2 black ocellaris (moved from my nano, had them since they were fry)
• Starry goby
• Orange stripe prawn goby
• Royal gramma
• 2 Banggai carfinalfish
• Leopard wrasse

Inverts:

• Red banded snapping shrimp
• 2 skunk cleaner shrimp
• Red tuxedo urchin
• 2 sexy anemone shrimp
• Fighting conch

And the only part people care about: pictures!

 

[Bob Escher]

Looking good

 

[HgrReefs]

looks great!

 

[JoshH]

Love the rock scape!

 

[trinisteve]

Nice aquascape.

 

[ecyoung]

Big update! Finished the sump area with a manifold, got the tank cycled + 90% water change before adding a 6 line wrasse yesterday. Things are coming along nicely and I'm super happy with the RSR 250. I also added a Randall's goby (aka orange stripe prawn goby) to my nano that will eventually move to the 250.

 

[Mandrew]

Love your aquascape

 

[Daniel@R2R]

That's a really nice scape!!

 

[1bitereefer]

Any updates to your tank?

 

[ecyoung]

It's been quite some time since my last update thanks to grad school starting, but I'm finally back! Very long and overdue update with pictures coming this weekend after I receive a few more things. The stock list is as follows:

Corals:
5 assorted zoa colonies
1 candy button coral
1 green birds nest (seriatopora hystrix)
1 purple stylophora
1 green pocillopora (I think)
1 green pachyseris
1 orange pavona
5 tiny heads of frogspawn rescued from my nano
1 yellow finger gorgonian
1 green toadstool leather coral
1 yellow polyp turbinaria (cup coral)

Fish:
2 black ocellaris (living in my anemone, working on getting them to spawn)
1 flame angelfish
1 firefish
3 blue/green chromis

Losses since last update:
6 line wrasse and Randall's goby jumped overnight [emoji17]

New equipment:
Artfully Acrylic custom aquarium top (coming in about a month)
2 dosing pumps+containers from BRS

Feeding:
Frozen mysis (2x daily) also spot fed to anemone and frogspawn few times per week
New Life Spectrum sinking pellets (occasionally in place of frozen mysis)
Algae sheets for flame angel (and some crabs usually)
Coral frenzy+snow biweekly

Dosing:
2-part solution (Ca/kH)
Lugol's solution (iodine)
Occasional magnesium/strontium supplements

Parameters:
1.024 salinity
400ppm Ca
10 dkH
0 ammonia/nitrates/phosphates

I was actually able to go about 6 months without doing a water change with all parameters remaining good. I did a 40 percent change recently because I got a huge shipment of new corals, but other than that, my tank seems to be pretty self-sufficient (with only dosing for corals). No problems with algae whatsoever. I might need to start doing regular water changes again since I've increased the amount of coral feeding I'm doing while keeping an eye on phosphates/nitrates/ammonia.

Future plans:
Set up tisbe copepod culture and get a green mandarin
Get a yellow or yasha goby + red banded snapping shrimp
Get a few more inverts (pom pom crab probably)
More corals (obviously)

Taking any recommendations on corals/inverts to get in the future. My wishlist right now contains cyphastrea that won't take over my tank, a gold euphyllia (torch), possibly a clam, orange leptoseris, some chalices, and some more acropora. Considering adding GSP to encrust the back glass but I'm trying to avoid adding anything that will take over my tank.

Thanks for reading and stay tuned for pictures this weekend!

 

[ecyoung]

Well, I'm a bit late on the pictures I promised, and now they're here (with even more corals than my last post!).
Added:
Bam-bam zoas
Palythoa grandis
Knopia (daisy) polyps
Purple mystic montipora (rescued in poor health)
Orange ricordea mushroom
Jack-'o-Lantern Leptoseris
Green psammocora
Pink montipora setosa
Miami orchid acro
Rainbow montipora

I also installed my dosing setup to maintain 450 ppm calcium and ~9 alk. Still manually dosing magnesium bi-weekly and iodine weekly. Ammonia/nitrites/nitrates/phosphates all undetectable, but I'm trying to raise phosphates and nitrates slightly (need Hanna test kits before I start dosing). I'm spot feeding Reef Roids every 2 days to all corals and twice a day to the yellow gorgonian. Coral snow every 3 days an hour after dark.

And now for pictures galore:

 

[ecyoung]

More pictures:

 

[ecyoung]

Testing my new S9+ camera

 

[Bob Escher]

Very nice

 

[powers2001]

Can we see more pictures of the fish? BTW, I have a RSR 250 too!!

 

[FredsNJReef]

stunning!

 

[ecyoung]

Can we see more pictures of the fish? BTW, I have a RSR 250 too!!

I'll try to get some more pics but my flame angel is quite camera shy!

 

[ecyoung]

I'm absolutely in love with my rainbow montipora. Easily my favorite coral so far! (my phone camera is pretty sexy too)

 

[powers2001]

I'll try to get some more pics but my flame angel is quite camera shy!

One thing I've done to a lot of shy fish is to load one of those baster-like coral feeders with brine and wait until the fish are hungry, sometimes skip feeding the day before, and very slowly release brine into the water column. Do this every time you feed frozen brine and before long they'll pick brine right out of the tip of the feeding tool as you very gently squeeze the rubber bulb, just releasing two or three of the shrimp at a time. You can then introduce your free hand into the water slowly-but-surely and with a lot of patience they will be eating out of your hand someday!!
https://www.bulkreefsupply.com/skimz-coral-feeder-2-pack.html

 

[ecyoung]

One thing I've done to a lot of shy fish is to load one of those baster-like coral feeders with brine and wait until the fish are hungry, sometimes skip feeding the day before, and very slowly release brine into the water column. Do this every time you feed frozen brine and before long they'll pick brine right out of the tip of the feeding tool as you very gently squeeze the rubber bulb, just releasing two or three of the shrimp at a time. You can then introduce your free hand into the water slowly-but-surely and with a lot of patience they will be eating out of your hand someday!!

My clownfish and damsels are already like this but the flame angel is taking a bit longer to acclimate