Keiffer the reefer
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- Joined
- Mar 17, 2017
- Messages
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My tank has been up for about a year now, but thought I’d go ahead and put together a build thread anyway. The majority of the livestock came from my red sea reefer 250 that was shut down when I moved. I’ll provide some photos in the coming posts, this is just the description.
The Tank
Is a standard 75 gallon tank from Petco $1/gallon sale. I had a local glass company drill the bottom of tank and I installed an overflow I purchased from modularmarine.com.
Livestock
Its a mixed reef. Acros across the top and middle. Softies and LPS along the middle/bottom. fish:
2 percula clowns (picassos)
Bengali cardinal
Purple tang (to be removed soon, too big)
Flame angel
6 line wrasse
Royal gramma
Blue line pipefish
Skunk cleaner shrimp
Shrimp/goby pair
Two springer damsels
Leopard wrasse
The Rock and Sand
I used a few new pieces of dry rock: a few flat bottom pieces for structure stability and a shelf piece. All new dry rocks are Marcos rocks. The rest is live rock I brought over from old tank. The sand bed is a plastic (I think) that came from Petco. I think it is meant for fresh water. I like the bright white color and the large grains don’t blow around. Also, it doesn’t grow coralline so the white color persists. In three years of the old tank, it was the same white color the day I tore the tank down. For the new tank, I started over with new sand.
The lights
36” aquatic life hybrid fixture. Running ATI coral plus tubes for the T5s. 4 Radion XR15 gen4 pros for the leds. Radions are on the sps ab + schedule. I use the Neptune apex seasonal schedule for the lights based on Russ’ thread on the Neptune forum. First t5 bank comes on two hours after sun starts to ramp up. Second bank comes on an hour later. One bank of t5s turn off two hours before lights out and the other is one hour before leds turn off. The moon light is not on a schedule. I just have a super low intensity blue light from radions providing moon glow for night time viewing.
Filtration
The sump is a 20 long tank with DIY sump baffle kit from Fijicube.com.
mechanical
I placed media cups in the sock holders (there are two). I put a bag of carbon in the bottom of the cups and then place small puffs of filter floss on top of the carbon bags. Every couple days, as the floss clogs, I’ll pull out one of the small puffs to improve the flow through the floss and carbon. I replace the carbon once a month on an alternating two week schedule so only one bag gets changed every two weeks. Although I call this mechanical filtration, believe the main benefit is the harvesting of bacteria from the system. I think large amounts of bacteria grow on the floss and I’m harvesting it a few times a week.
refugium
The next chamber in my sump houses a refugium. I have a shelf made of light diffuser material that props up a layer of live rock rubble. A layer of calurpa grows above the rubble at the surface of the water. Two kessil h80s light the algae bed.
Next chamber houses my heater and a small amount of rock rubble. No skimmer. Final chamber is the return pump.
Water Handling
BRS RODI filter with 150gallon per day upgrade, and three resin canisters with separated anion/cation and a mix bed canister. I have access between my sump and the crawl space under my house. The filtration and water storage is under the house near the sump. 32 gallon brute container stores my top off water. Neptune ATK performs the top off. And, there is a Neptune solenoid that controls water flow into the filter. When I run out, the flip of a switch fills me back up. There are two more 32 gallon containers down there for salt water, but I don’t do water changes so they’re just sitting there with a bucket of Brightwell’s neomarine in case of emergency
Apex
I run a full Apex system.
Flow
There are theee pumps in the system: two Neptune wav’s for turbulent flow and a Cor20 for the return pump.
apex devices
2016 model
Wxm module for radions
ATK
1Link
DOS
AFS
Trident
2x WAV
COR20
Additives
Tropic Marin CarboCalcium keeps up with calcium/alkalinity. Tropic Marin A & K mixed into the carbo calcium solution for micros. That’s it for the daily stuff. It’s hooked up on my DOS dosing pump and currently dosing about 60 ml/day. I’ve also been dosing vibrant recently to get rid of some algae issues but I don’t expect that to be ongoing. I’ll probably start dosing vinegar. I used vinegar on the last tank and feel it kept the advantage to bacteria competing with algae. Dose Mg manually as needed.
Feeding
The AFS dumps pellets in the tank for breakfast, lunch and dinner every day. I’ve been playing with several foods but will be using Reef Nutrition TDO moving forward. I also give the tank a chunk of Rod’s food mixed with a bit of benepets daily (as life allows). I feed a LOT.
Am I missing anything?
The Tank
Is a standard 75 gallon tank from Petco $1/gallon sale. I had a local glass company drill the bottom of tank and I installed an overflow I purchased from modularmarine.com.
Livestock
Its a mixed reef. Acros across the top and middle. Softies and LPS along the middle/bottom. fish:
2 percula clowns (picassos)
Bengali cardinal
Purple tang (to be removed soon, too big)
Flame angel
6 line wrasse
Royal gramma
Blue line pipefish
Skunk cleaner shrimp
Shrimp/goby pair
Two springer damsels
Leopard wrasse
The Rock and Sand
I used a few new pieces of dry rock: a few flat bottom pieces for structure stability and a shelf piece. All new dry rocks are Marcos rocks. The rest is live rock I brought over from old tank. The sand bed is a plastic (I think) that came from Petco. I think it is meant for fresh water. I like the bright white color and the large grains don’t blow around. Also, it doesn’t grow coralline so the white color persists. In three years of the old tank, it was the same white color the day I tore the tank down. For the new tank, I started over with new sand.
The lights
36” aquatic life hybrid fixture. Running ATI coral plus tubes for the T5s. 4 Radion XR15 gen4 pros for the leds. Radions are on the sps ab + schedule. I use the Neptune apex seasonal schedule for the lights based on Russ’ thread on the Neptune forum. First t5 bank comes on two hours after sun starts to ramp up. Second bank comes on an hour later. One bank of t5s turn off two hours before lights out and the other is one hour before leds turn off. The moon light is not on a schedule. I just have a super low intensity blue light from radions providing moon glow for night time viewing.
Filtration
The sump is a 20 long tank with DIY sump baffle kit from Fijicube.com.
mechanical
I placed media cups in the sock holders (there are two). I put a bag of carbon in the bottom of the cups and then place small puffs of filter floss on top of the carbon bags. Every couple days, as the floss clogs, I’ll pull out one of the small puffs to improve the flow through the floss and carbon. I replace the carbon once a month on an alternating two week schedule so only one bag gets changed every two weeks. Although I call this mechanical filtration, believe the main benefit is the harvesting of bacteria from the system. I think large amounts of bacteria grow on the floss and I’m harvesting it a few times a week.
refugium
The next chamber in my sump houses a refugium. I have a shelf made of light diffuser material that props up a layer of live rock rubble. A layer of calurpa grows above the rubble at the surface of the water. Two kessil h80s light the algae bed.
Next chamber houses my heater and a small amount of rock rubble. No skimmer. Final chamber is the return pump.
Water Handling
BRS RODI filter with 150gallon per day upgrade, and three resin canisters with separated anion/cation and a mix bed canister. I have access between my sump and the crawl space under my house. The filtration and water storage is under the house near the sump. 32 gallon brute container stores my top off water. Neptune ATK performs the top off. And, there is a Neptune solenoid that controls water flow into the filter. When I run out, the flip of a switch fills me back up. There are two more 32 gallon containers down there for salt water, but I don’t do water changes so they’re just sitting there with a bucket of Brightwell’s neomarine in case of emergency
Apex
I run a full Apex system.
Flow
There are theee pumps in the system: two Neptune wav’s for turbulent flow and a Cor20 for the return pump.
apex devices
2016 model
Wxm module for radions
ATK
1Link
DOS
AFS
Trident
2x WAV
COR20
Additives
Tropic Marin CarboCalcium keeps up with calcium/alkalinity. Tropic Marin A & K mixed into the carbo calcium solution for micros. That’s it for the daily stuff. It’s hooked up on my DOS dosing pump and currently dosing about 60 ml/day. I’ve also been dosing vibrant recently to get rid of some algae issues but I don’t expect that to be ongoing. I’ll probably start dosing vinegar. I used vinegar on the last tank and feel it kept the advantage to bacteria competing with algae. Dose Mg manually as needed.
Feeding
The AFS dumps pellets in the tank for breakfast, lunch and dinner every day. I’ve been playing with several foods but will be using Reef Nutrition TDO moving forward. I also give the tank a chunk of Rod’s food mixed with a bit of benepets daily (as life allows). I feed a LOT.
Am I missing anything?
