Andre’s Full blown 300Gallon SPS Reeftank up within a week ;-)

PSXerholic · Oct 23, 2019

Little update of the tank.
Watch in HD plz ;-)

lbacha · Oct 23, 2019

PSXerholic said:
Little update of the tank.
Watch in HD plz ;-)

Wow very nice as always

aabjones888 · Oct 23, 2019

PSXerholic said:
Little update of the tank.
Watch in HD plz ;-)

Super nice, made my evening

MT. Reefer · Nov 5, 2019

PSXerholic said:
I think I need a good chunky frag back of this ;-) Lost my one in the Harvey flood disaster.
This seems to be a frag of either the Lighting bolt, or otherwise more likely from a UC Indo wild colony I bought once.

You need to go back to my method to allow better coloration Sir!!!
Bet you haven't done that in a while.
I have released a Handbook for the method you need to read ;-)
Things improved quite well since we spoke last time.

How do I get a copy of your handbook??

PSXerholic · Nov 5, 2019

Larry Linne said:
How do I get a copy of your handbook??

Hey Larry, well can’t really talk about this subject here to be fair to other sponsors. However, simply google for “Andre Mueller Handbook” should get you closer to what you’re looking for.

Please no product related questions or discussions!

PSXerholic · Nov 11, 2019

Getting to the point again, where fragging is a real must to do on the weekends...........
These 2 packs are leaving soon to their new owners ;-)

Also some serious fragging was done.........

PSXerholic · Nov 15, 2019

Did a comparison of these 2 ICP labs from the same water sample.
Interesting findings.
I will send another one out shortly to ICP-Analysis.com, ATI lab as well as Triton and compare them against each other.

I honestly trust and need ATI's test only, but I do see this subject coming up again and again.....
From older tests, I know that ATI and Triton usually match each other with some minor tolerance deviation, but I will see.

Just for info, I have restarted a Reef Octopus Macro Algae reactor and dose a lot of Iron, Manganese, Cobalt and Chromium on a daily basis, and the Algae is literally exploding inside.
Before I had all Chaeto dying due to insufficient metals in the tank.
However even with much higher amounts, these traces are still undetectable.

Copper is not by accident, and was intentionally dosed with 7ppb (7microgram/L) a day before the sampling.

PSXerholic · Nov 19, 2019

Some more serious fragging going on, lol ;-)

Xmas pack that went to a happy Reefer ......

Abhishek · Nov 19, 2019

@PSXerholic - amazing !!! Somehow am never too excited with all ATI Blueplus tanks that I see often . But your tank has such a nice pink/purple hue to it !!! Not windex blue !

Does it look almost the same in person as in the above pics and is that your daytime schedule? Guess you must have a little low PAR but compensate with a longer photo hours ?

Regards,
Abhishek

PSXerholic · Nov 20, 2019

Abhishek said:
@PSXerholic - amazing !!! Somehow am never too excited with all ATI Blueplus tanks that I see often . But your tank has such a nice pink/purple hue to it !!! Not windex blue !

Does it look almost the same in person as in the above pics and is that your daytime schedule? Guess you must have a little low PAR but compensate with a longer photo hours ?

Regards,
Abhishek

I run all Giesemann bulbs in my fixture.
Also it has one purple T5 bulb out of 8.
Tank looks like this most of the afternoon until 7/8pm, then it switches to all blue mostly for a few hours ramp down.
Then the tank looks like the forest on Avatar due to all the fluorescence from corals which do have fluorescent pigments active.
The pictures appear more reddish than in real in the background.

But that's how healthy corals can look like, yes ;-)

Abhishek · Nov 20, 2019

PSXerholic said:
I run all Giesemann bulbs in my fixture.
Also it has one purple T5 bulb out of 8.
Tank looks like this most of the afternoon until 7/8pm, then it switches to all blue mostly for a few hours ramp down.
Then the tank looks like the forest on Avatar due to all the fluorescence from corals which do have fluorescent pigments active.
The pictures appear more reddish than in real in the background.

But that's how healthy corals can look like, yes ;-)

Thank you for the explanation Andre! Not sure if you have run ATI coral plus or KZ New gen , but is the azure almost similar to those ?

PSXerholic · Nov 21, 2019

Abhishek said:
Thank you for the explanation Andre! Not sure if you have run ATI coral plus or KZ New gen , but is the azure almost similar to those ?

I have not used any of these, hence can’t tell ;-)
If you can dig out the light spectrum diagrams for all of these and put it right next to each other, you can compare the active spectrums. But that doesn’t tell you about Par or visual appearance.

PSXerholic · Nov 21, 2019

And here it goes again......

Silver14SS · Nov 21, 2019

Your tank is phenomenal!

For those of us too lazy to go through all 60+ pages, what's the secret to your success?

CoralWealth · Nov 21, 2019

Andre do you think fragging can help spur growth even more once corals get to mini colony (4-5 inches) and colony size (7 inches)? Such as when you frag a branch, usually have 2 or more branches start from that spot?

Also, very nice tank like always

PSXerholic · Nov 21, 2019

Demmelition4 said:
Andre do you think fragging can help spur growth even more once corals get to mini colony (4-5 inches) and colony size (7 inches)? Such as when you frag a branch, usually have 2 or more branches start from that spot?

Also, very nice tank like always

Thanks ;-)
Secret of growth is behind minerals and traces!
Liebig's law applies to the hobby! Means if anything is limited as part of all the needed ingredients, the main process is heavily limited or even inhibited.

Anyways, Corals of certain size do definitely grow faster than small sticks, which there is somewhat a bit of scientific evidence that this has to do with the larger surface the coral host has, to collect trace elements and nutrients from the water column and can internally distribute where needed.
I did for sure see the fact that fragging small colonies sometimes ignites hibernated corals or on larger corals, it indeed spurs a bit the growth.

Silver14SS said:
Your tank is phenomenal!

For those of us too lazy to go through all 60+ pages, what's the secret to your success?

That'a powerful question!

I’m a bit limited with my response so I do not break any forum rules.
However, over the years I developed my own method of Reefkeeping.
Important is health of the corals!
Health is achieved by the below more or less

The most important part is to accept the fact, that the Reef need a ton of Trace elements and normal Water changes even with good salt brands and mixes can’t replenish sufficiently the demand of a thriving Reeftank. I already run 2 Calcium reactors, and still have to do monthly corrections on a few elements.
So with avoiding to chase all sorts of numbers and still have fun to do so, I developed my own way to replenish Trace elements and keep them above natural sea water level. Once a month I’m sending a ICP out and when the results come back I do the corrections and I don’t worry about them until the next test cycle.
In addition I do dose daily Iodide, Iron, Chromium, Cobalt and most importantly Manganese.
I do that with the daily feeding routine and does not take more than a few minutes.
So the above covers basically all the important Trace elements to be kept in a good shape.

In addition I feed the tank daily with some Vitamins and Zooplankton as well as Omega3 fats in form of Selcon.
That keeps the corals happy, since I do not have many fish in the tank!

Then the biology is very important. Nutrients such as Po4 and No3 I usually keep detectable or in low ranges. But always watch for keeping the nutrients in line with the Redfield ratio to avoid larger Algae issues.
Important is to find the right carbohydrate source that keeps your nutrients low, but at the same time doesn’t cause the tank water to be cloudy. Cloudy water indicates high bacteria count in the tank which negatively impacts the tank health in numerous areas such as PH, increased pathogenic bacteria, nutrient balance issues, reduced light penetration etc. Good advice is to find the right setup for you that keeps the tanks water column almost crisp. And I do not mean to remove all the visible particles floating around, I talk about this haze foggy appearance that indicates too high bacteria count in the water. No good. Biology is so dynamic and influenced by so many factors, that it’s hard to give a spot on recipe for the right setup. I personally ditched pellets and went to liquid carbohydrates from Brightwell called Reef Biofuel, which seem to be a reasonable priced product that works way better than Vinegar, Vodka, Racing fuel or a mix of any other ones that I used over the years. It even helped to keeps occasional Cyano from taking over.

Then the PH with the associated relationship to Oxygen and dissolved Co2 in the tank is of significant importance to keep an eye on. Basically you need to avoid excessive co2 in the water, by degassing, reduced import through skimmer, aeration chambers etc. many things that can be done.
Without some devices to measure these 2 parameter most Reefer can apply the rule of thumb which is to monitor the lowest PH in the morning to be above 7.85-7-9 with a fresh calibrated PH probe and no use of Limewater, which indicates a low risk of excessive Co2. High co2 is fuel for pathogens and also negatively impacts the symbiotic bacteria’s self-defense mechanisms in the corals tissue and becomes than highly sensitive for RTN/STN or other diseases due to a lower “immune system” more or less.

A decent light you should also have, but this can fill a book. I basically not paying much attention to lights as long I have some actinics in use, and important is not to oversaturate corals with light.
At least keep a 50/50 dark/light schedule for the coral to rest and re-energize. Light saturation is achieved at one point and if you keep further feeding with light sources, the coral gets damaged in a variety of ways and internal processes are going out of whack.

So this hopefully gets you a good summary what to look out for ………