850 gallon reef really coming in to its stride

[14 foot reef]

850 gallon reef really coming in to its stride

Reef moonshiners results after 6 months

 

[CasperOe]

Aw man, looks fantastic!! One day I will have room for a lovely big tank like that.. Until then, thanks for letting me look at yours

 

[blaxsun]

Your fish look so... small!

 

[bakbay]

I’m impressed and following along. I believe the left & right side of the 14ft reef are equally fantastic!

Gotta ask - how can you even keep angels in a reef tank?

 

[14 foot reef]

I’m impressed and following along. I believe the left & right side of the 14ft reef are equally fantastic!

Gotta ask - how can you even keep angels in a reef tank?

They have always behaved, both the emp and the french went in as 50 cent piece size and I've always fed them well

 

[bakbay]

They have always behaved, both the emp and the french went in as 50 cent piece size and I've always fed them well

I love angelfish actually — Blueface, Emperor, French, Queen and Regal were my favs during my FOWRL days but have not been able to keep one since started reefing ~15 years ago. Glad you were able to make that work! I’m super bored if tangs now - ha

 

[14 foot reef]

I love angelfish actually — Blueface, Emperor, French, Queen and Regal were my favs during my FOWRL days but have not been able to keep one since started reefing ~15 years ago. Glad you were able to make that work! I’m super bored if tangs now - ha

I have a Regal and Venusta Angel also....HeHe

 

[Coffee Soundboard]

Nice looking tank man!

 

[14 foot reef]

Nice looking tank man!

Thank you very much

 

[FishTruck]

850 gallon reef really coming in to its stride

Reef moonshiners results after 6 months

Looking awesome and not super blue. We’ll done.

 

[14 foot reef]

Looking awesome and not super blue. We’ll done.

Thank you, that's very kind.
I Run a very modified ReefDudes AB+ - I push the warm and cool whites up near 100% about 6 hours a day I think. My tank is only blue for 1 hour in the am and 1 hour in the pm just before lights out.
I've also started the lunar programmed cycle, the second month my 40 year old carpet spawned !!!

 

[Devisissy]

What are you moonshiners using for ALK, CA, and Mag?

 

[14 foot reef]

What are you moonshiners using for ALK, CA, and Mag?

I run Kalk reverse lighting schedule dosing my 5 gallons per day in the 12 hour lights off period.
For Calcium and Magnesium I use BRS Pharma dry solutions then mix in RODI
For my Alk and ph boost I run the reverse lighting schedule dosing Sodium Hydroxide ( Lye )
My pH swing day to night 24 hours is at the most .05 - pH runs 8.25-8.30 constantly.
It has taken about 6 months to tweak the dosing to get here, but its really flat lined now.
I use Trident controlled dosing with the Ca and magnesium. I manually change my dosing of Sodium Hydroxide as I think that keeps my eye on the pH better. With the DOS from neptune and fusion, it's a simple10 second adjustments if needed.

 

[bakbay]

Love the kalk idea but it's just too messy for me. I'm curious why you're not on a CaRx yet given the water volume? I noticed that you don't have a lot of SPS colonies to suck up all the alk but coralline algae do!

 

[14 foot reef]

Love the kalk idea but it's just too messy for me. I'm curious why you're not on a CaRx yet given the water volume? I noticed that you don't have a lot of SPS colonies to suck up all the alk but coralline algae do!

Actually the other side of the tank is all sps and some colonies 12" around.
My sump is in a sump room so no mess to worry about ( I think mess is exaggerated with Kalk anyway. A kalk stirrer and you dump in a cup or 2 a week, that's pretty clean to me.
CaRx is something I don't like because it lowers PH, my entire goal is high pH so they don't work for me.
With Dosing Sodium Hydroxide and Kalk its as cost effective as possible My pH stays 8.3 and my alk stays 9.0. Exactly what I want for pennies a month in cost.

 

[flozfzx1]

850 gallon reef really coming in to its stride

Reef moonshiners results after 6 months

wow that is an awesome tank how long did your project take?

 

[bakbay]

Actually the other side of the tank is all sps and some colonies 12" around.
My sump is in a sump room so no mess to worry about ( I think mess is exaggerated with Kalk anyway. A kalk stirrer and you dump in a cup or 2 a week, that's pretty clean to me.
CaRx is something I don't like because it lowers PH, my entire goal is high pH so they don't work for me.
With Dosing Sodium Hydroxide and Kalk its as cost effective as possible My pH stays 8.3 and my alk stays 9.0. Exactly what I want for pennies a month in cost.

Sweet - totally agreed on the cost aspect +pH boost with kalk! I was doing the kalk+ATO so very unstable and messy. Glad to see that the kalk stirrer is working well for you. btw: I've observed that pH took a ~0.07 hit with the CaRx.

 

[nuxx]

Huge Bandit, how big?

Mine was only around 4, maybe 5" when I took my tank down.

He was pretty chill with my 2-3" GP though, so that was good.

Was probably still my favorite fish I kept, even though I never really wanted to keep any angels, just sort of ended up not being able to turn them down...

 

[14 foot reef]

Huge Bandit, how big?

Mine was only around 4, maybe 5" when I took my tank down.

He was pretty chill with my 2-3" GP though, so that was good.

Was probably still my favorite fish I kept, even though I never really wanted to keep any angels, just sort of ended up not being able to turn them down...

He's about 5" I've had him 5 years or more. I bet you wish you still had him, they fetch a very high price these days

 

[14 foot reef]

wow that is an awesome tank how long did your project take?

This reef has been running for 22 years, I built the custom tank in place 23 years ago last month.