It’s a beauty!My display tank is a Red Sea Reefer S 850 G2. Here it is today, so obviously this is an “already built” build thread.
Equipment—ReefMat 1200, Red Sea skimmer, Vectra M2 return pump, 4-head dosing pump, Tunze ATO with an IM 15 gallon ATO reservoir, and four MP40 pumps. My opinion on most aquarium equipment is that if you look at it too long it stops working, usually the night before you’re leaving on vacation, so I don’t intend to add anything unless I absolutely have to.
The lights you see in the pic are 3 Radion XR 15 G6 blues and 2 Radion XR 30 G6 blues.
There is a refugium that holds reef rubble—no macroalgae. I started out growing chaeto there but after the third time I had to pull out the skimmer and take it apart to clean chaeto out of the pump, I drained the sump and got rid of the chaeto. That stuff is like pieces of a Brillo pad getting sucked into your pumps. Right now I’m trying to get a population of pods going in the refugium.
I don’t have many photos between when I filled the tank in April 2023 and now. None that I care to post anyway because the tank went through every nuisance algae blight known to man (or woman) for almost two years. At one point I had dinos growing on top of gha. Nice.
I won’t go into my algae battles here. Lots of good information on this site on that subject. I will say during the past two+ years Reef2Reef quickly became the second most visited site on my laptop, surpassed only by Amazon. I’ve always taken the approach of letting the tank reach a balance rather than experimenting with any algae reducing additives, even though at times that approach took more patience than I knew I had.
If someone starting a reef tank were to ask me for just one piece of advice it would be do not start a tank with 100% dry rock. Based on my experiences and the experiences others have posted on this forum, dry rock soaks up and in turn releases the nutrients algae love and use oh so efficiently for a very long time. I’m still battling this crazy situation of no detectable phosphates or nitrates…so dose aforementioned…get algae…get rid of algae…get dinos…get algae and dinos--and so on and so forth.
I also believe that while starting with dry rock and bacteria in a bottle allows us to add fish to our tanks quickly, it neglects other biological processes we may not fully understand but need.
A few months ago, I removed some of the Marco rock I started with and added about 60 pounds of live rock to the display and some live rock rubble to the refugium. The results weren’t miraculous, but I think I’m gaining ground in the algae battle. And the tank is maturing so I have that in my corner. The current challenge is maintaining levels of phosphates and nitrates that work for my tank.
Enough of the narrative. The “mostly pictures” I mentioned appear below. I’ve hit pause on adding any more fish or coral for now, focusing instead on stability. Currently I have 16 fish--
--7 Lyretail Anthias
--Yellow Tang
--Potters Angel
--Swissguard Basslet
--Fridmani Dottyback
--Leopard Wrasse
--Yellow Wrasse
--2 Marine Bettas (very camera shy)
--Goldheaded Goby (a mistake and the reason I keep a turkey baster next to the tank)
That’s it, for now anyway. Ask me any questions about the tank or its inhabitants. And, yes, I maintain it myself.
Happy Reefing!
Thank you!!
Thanks!
Maybe I’ll keep it off of the list for the time being lol. When you said turkey baster I thought it might have been a feeding issue. Thanks for the info.
well planned not bad for a woman. great plateaus for coralMy display tank is a Red Sea Reefer S 850 G2. Here it is today, so obviously this is an “already built” build thread.
Equipment—ReefMat 1200, Red Sea skimmer, Vectra M2 return pump, 4-head dosing pump, Tunze ATO with an IM 15 gallon ATO reservoir, four MP40 pumps, and two BRS 600 watt heaters with an Inkbird controller. My opinion on most aquarium equipment is that if you look at it too long it stops working, usually the night before you’re leaving on vacation, so I don’t intend to add anything unless I absolutely have to.
The lights you see in the pic are 3 Radion XR 15 G6 blues and 2 Radion XR 30 G6 blues.
There is a refugium that holds reef rubble—no macroalgae. I started out growing chaeto there but after the third time I had to pull out the skimmer and take it apart to clean chaeto out of the pump, I drained the sump and got rid of the chaeto. That stuff is like pieces of a Brillo pad getting sucked into your pumps. Right now I’m trying to get a population of pods going in the refugium.
I don’t have many photos between when I filled the tank in April 2023 and now. None that I care to post anyway because the tank went through every nuisance algae blight known to man (or woman) for almost two years. At one point I had dinos growing on top of gha. Nice.
I won’t go into my algae battles here. Lots of good information on this site on that subject. I will say during the past two+ years Reef2Reef quickly became the second most visited site on my laptop, surpassed only by Amazon. I’ve always taken the approach of letting the tank reach a balance rather than experimenting with any algae reducing additives, even though at times that approach took more patience than I knew I had.
If someone starting a reef tank were to ask me for just one piece of advice it would be do not start a tank with 100% dry rock. Based on my experiences and the experiences others have posted on this forum, dry rock soaks up and in turn releases the nutrients algae love and use oh so efficiently for a very long time. I’m still battling this crazy situation of no detectable phosphates or nitrates…so dose aforementioned…get algae…get rid of algae…get dinos…get algae and dinos--and so on and so forth.
I also believe that while starting with dry rock and bacteria in a bottle allows us to add fish to our tanks quickly, it neglects other biological processes we may not fully understand but need.
A few months ago, I removed some of the Marco rock I started with and added about 60 pounds of live rock to the display and some live rock rubble to the refugium. The results weren’t miraculous, but I think I’m gaining ground in the algae battle. And the tank is maturing so I have that in my corner. The current challenge is maintaining levels of phosphates and nitrates that work for my tank.
Enough of the narrative. The “mostly pictures” I mentioned appear below. I’ve hit pause on adding any more fish or coral for now, focusing instead on stability. Currently I have 16 fish--
--7 Lyretail Anthias
--Yellow Tang
--Potters Angel
--Swissguard Basslet
--Fridmani Dottyback
--Leopard Wrasse
--Yellow Wrasse
--2 Marine Bettas (very camera shy)
--Goldheaded Goby (a mistake and the reason I keep a turkey baster next to the tank)
That’s it, for now anyway. Ask me any questions about the tank or its inhabitants. And, yes, I maintain it myself.
Happy Reefing!
Thanks! Yes the gobies are fun to watch and do their job keeping the sand clean very well. Don't think I could catch mine if I tried so just have to keep the turkey baster handy!
Love at first sight.
Beautiful picture and coral!Biota cultured "Sprung" pink-tipped elegance coral added last week. Tried keeping a wild caught one not long after I set up my tank but it slowly died and I vowed not to do that again. Then saw these.
