Anthony’s Red Sea XL 300 build - Mixed Reef

[anthonymckay]

Need to get a better setup for photos. The iPhone + orange lens has its limits...

Quick summary of the latest update:

• Params have been looking good: 0.04 phos, 6.7 nitrate, 8.6 Alk, 8.3 pH
• Coraline is really exploding over all the newer rock
• Added a few new SPS frags: Strawberry shortcake acro, TSA Bill Murray.
• Moved some frags around.
• Finally ditched my island covered in metallic orange mushrooms.
• Got rid of a rock that had some saltwater muscles, mushrooms, and some macro algae, but was also hosting a load of turf algae. Was sad to remove this rock, as it had such a great natural matured look. But I need this turf algae and mushrooms gone.
• Added a baby hippo tang
• Added a copperband butterfly
• Added a lawnmower blenny
• Due to PAR numbers lower than I'd like, I added my old kessil A350 temporarily as a 3rd light till another second hand a360x pops up in my local reefing Facebook group.
• Been dealing with a minor cyano issue on the sand bed. Hard to get flow up enough to prevent dead spots down low, but also not overpower the corals down by the sandbed. A bit stumped on how to solve this.
• Mostly everything seems happy, so I need to stop "tinkering" inside/outside the tank and let things settle in for a few months. This is always the hard part of the hobby, haha.

 

[anthonymckay]

It's been 1 week since I bought the copperband butterfly and I'm happy to report he's started eating really well with PE Mysis. I appreciated that my local reef shop wouldn't sell me a copperband until he 1) it had gone through his 21 day quarantine+copper treatment that he does with all his fish, and B) he could demonstrate to me that it feeds on frozen food. The last couple weeks whenever I'd go in he'd take me in the back and feed it in front of me. After it was out of quarantine, I rushed over to pickup the fish. The first 2 days it spent hiding in the back corner as I expected. Then he came out and would just swim back and forth along the glass nonstop like he was looking for a way out. He did this for the rest of the week and had no interest in food. I knew he'd need to adjust but towards the end of the week I was starting get a bit nervous. Then out of the blue yesterday he broke from his routine during feeding and started timidly pecking at some of the PE Mysis. He kept at it for about 30-40 minutes straight slowly getting a nice full meal. Then he did the same in the evening, and with a bit more gusto this morning. Happy he's finally getting comfortable. 1 downside I've encountered with him, I have to add WAY more food to ensure he has enough still available to feed on when everyone else has had their fill... keeping an eye on my water nutrients. Will probably make one of those copperband feeders out of PVC I've see on here.

 

[anthonymckay]

Snapped a few pics of some of the recent frags I’ve added in the past couple weeks.

Some kind of Alveopora

TSA Bill Murray

A Mille, not sure what type

Strawberry Shortcake acro

Another Acro, not sure what type

 

[anthonymckay]

Tested my nitrates/phosphates today (I usually test every 2-3 days), phosphate was 0.03 which is fine, but was surprised to find out that my Nitrates are nearly bottomed out... 1st Hanna test gave me 0.6, 2nd test this afternoon gave me 0.8. Then tested with Red Sea for verification and it was solidly in the <2ppm color range on the chart. I feed pretty frozen food heavily morning and evening so I was a kind of shocked. I've been running a bag of chemi pure blue, and a bag of purigen to keep my phosphates in check and remove any contaminates/smells. I pulled both of those out, and also shut down the skimmer. I've also been dosing microbacter7 regularly in an attempt to beat the light cyano outbreak I've had on the sandbed for the past month. I ordered some Focustronic equipment earlier this week (Mastertronic+Alkatronic) that will be arriving today. Once I get that setup I'll be able to keep a closer eye on parameters with more frequent/regular testing. Hopefully removing that filter media and turning the skimmer off for a few days will get my nitrates back up to the window I'd like them in (5-10ppm).

 

[anthonymckay]

The good news this update: I got my Alkatronic and Mastertronic setup. The setup itself isn’t the smoothest process ever, and the software could use some improvements. But overall it’s been quite nice and consistent and within the range I expected with test results. It also helped me figure out my Hanna nitrate checker was just way off. Go figure… Mastertronic has consistently shown my nitrates as around 7.8-8ppm, which is what I’d expect considering I was feeding frozen food pretty heavy. Alkatronic has been awesome. Seeing results every few hours, has really helped dial in my dosing. Pretty happy with these products so far.


The bad news: I did a round of chemiclean to battle my cyano. I had seen many fantastic results from that with no negative side effects. After the 3rd and 4th day, I was still getting thin mattes of reddish cyano across my sand bed. What the heck?? Well, I pulled out my microscope and analyzed a sample… something I should have just done from the start. Turns out my “cyano” is Amphidinium dinoflagellates. The ones that go down into the sand bed at night, and just cover the sand looking like cyano during the day. Aka, the hard kind to get rid of. Nooooo! Also noticed some of the much smaller types that do end up in the water column at night. So UV might still be beneficial to add at some point soon.

That all aside, my few Sps frags are encrusting nicely at the base. Everything else is looking great except my purple hornet zoas that always seem to close up for around and week and shrink some once every couple months. That have always done this since ive had them, even in my old tank. Still not sure what’s causing it, as all the other zoas always look fine. I'm sure they'll be back to normal by next week.

 

[hockeyhead019]

Bummer to hear about the dinos, hopefully you find a way to nip them!

Aside from that, the tank looks awesome man!

 

[anthonymckay]

This makes it pretty clear I need to move away from the Red Sea Coral Pro salt and switch to the Blue bucket… can you spot where I did a water change? Not liking that big spike coming from the high alkalinity of the Coral Pro salt. Also finally ordered a proper doser this week and will be switching to a proper 2-part mix instead of hand dosing All-for-reef. Its not bad, but the delay in the alkalinity boost makes it more difficult to dial in the proper amount.

 

[anthonymckay]

Mastertronic + Alkatronic have been humming along real well! Bought a 4 head Doser and installed it today. Switching from All-for-reef to a 2 part method for dosing. I just wasn't liking the uncertainty of how much to dose with All-for-reef and the delay in being able to test for changes due to the use of Calcium Formate. I think 2 part will suite me better and be much easier to dial in my needs. Also investigating using the Moonshiners system for dosing trace elements. Will be sending in an ICP test week and see what my current situation is looking like.

Also added in a juvenile Foxface this week! Great visual addition to the tank, and he got to work right away on some of my bubble algae that's been slowly spreading beyond being manageable by manual removal.

 

[anthonymckay]

Snapped a few photos of some of the corals today.

NY Knicks, Jester, and Juicy Fruit torches

TSA Strawberry Shortcake & Monti Setosa

Bleeding Apple Scoly

My sunset Monti that won’t grow

Unknown chalice type (if you know, let me know!)

 

[anthonymckay]

New tanks are as we know are a wave of ups and downs for the first year or two. Been some downs recently, but feeling like I'm starting back on an upswing in tank health

I ordered some narrow reflectors for my Kessils and ReefBrite XHO's to boost the PAR. I installed them, and two of my rock flower anemones closed up immediately. I lowered the intensity on the kessils at this point so that I'm hitting around 350 at the top, and 120-160 on the sand bed. Unfortunately those two rock flower nems released their footing overnight, and one landed in my Duncan colony, and another on top of my Acan frag. The one in the Duncan colony was hard and dead this morning with a hole through the middle of it like a donut. And the other seems like it's well on it's way out the door. My 3rd RFA has been in the same spot down by the sand looking fine. The other two were just too high up for that new light intensity. Hoping my Acans make it through this and they're not looking great right now.

I started dosing Red Sea trace elements as well. Between that, and the new ReefBrite lighting addition, everything has been looking great. Colors pop a bit more, my SPS have poly extension is looking extra fluffy, and they still continue to encrust really well! Also, my sunset montipora is FINALLY starting to show some signs of growth after 2 months of doing nothing and looking faded. The edges are growing outward a tiny bit each day now and bright orange with some tiny new polyps starting to show.

My alk has been a bit up and down lately as I've been trying to dial in the doser. I was previously aiming to keep alk between 9-9.5, but I decided to back it off to 8-8.5 and things have been looking good.

We all know the main cause of issues in our tanks is ourselves and our inability to stop tweaking things and messing with everything. Now that things are on an upswing it's time to back off and stop messing with settings on everything for a while.


Full tank shot with the new ReefBrites. I decided to only keep a narrow reflector on the left kessil where my SPS are. The right side is all zoas and LPS, so I didn't want to overpower them with light.

Forrest Fire Digi doing great! Purple monsters down below are also spreading nicely.

2 Months of growth on this PC rainbow (I think?), starting to get some color back in the tips

Rainbow Incinerator

Chong bongs

 

[anthonymckay]

Picked up this Reef Raft Pink Floyd acro from a local reefer today. Looks like it came with a bonus green montipora hitchhiker, haha.

 

[Acros]

looks like you have a Lamborghini or some super car. Cool!!!

 

[anthonymckay]

looks like you have a Lamborghini or some super car. Cool!!!

Good eye, haha. That’s a McLaren GT4 factory race car.

 

[Acros]

That’s cool! McLaren was my first guess, but the poster said Lamborghini.

Something about the side air scoop looked very McLaren.

 

[anthonymckay]

Fun discovery of the day: My conch is eating my nassarius snails! ie: My conch isn't a conch, it's a Whelk

 

[anthonymckay]

I’ve been taking photos of various frags to track growth. Since I added the reefbrite xho’s and the Kessil narrow reflectors my SPS are really improving! Here’s one of my Acros (not sure what type). Notice the past week of growth compared to the prior 2 months. Granted I’m sure some of that lei or slow growth was due to acclimation, but everything has been looking vastly better in color/growth since upgrading the lighting. So yes, kessils can grow SPS…. As long as they have some additional help

 

[Mr bigolsworth]

Looking good. Following along as I plan a 300xl soon.

 

[anthonymckay]

This week I had my wife dig out her 12 year old cheap Nikon dslr from the closet and bought a used macro lens off eBay for $100 bucks. Using a few step-down rings I was able to attach the orange lens I was using on my iPhone to the macro lens. Played around with different aperture/shutter speed/iso settings to get a feel for it. Results are pretty good compared to what I was getting with the iPhone. Can't wait to play around with it more this weekend.

My tiny Sunset Monti frag (that's finally starting to take off with growth!)

Whatever this acro is...

Was struggling to get a good stable focused shot of the Pink Floyd as I was trying to do an overhead shot by hand. Need to get an extension arm for my tripod to mount the camera overhead in a stable position.

 

[anthonymckay]

First thing, my TSA Strawberry Shortcake finally regained all it's color! Over the past 2 months the base has encrusted across the entire frag disk, but the frag stalk itself browned out and lost all its color. Then suddenly in the past week the stalk colored up again. Most likely from the upgraded lighting, but perhaps the trace elements dosing had a hand in this too. These are shots I'd been taking on my phone over the past 2 months tracking it's progress from mid-June till now. Notice how the encrusting base keeps it's color as it grows as the rest of it loses all it's color, and then suddenly the last 2 shots the whole frag regains it's color!




I've also been playing around with our DSLR camera a bit more and here's a couple shots from the past week I liked:

Picked up this wild sourced Millepora from my local shop that he dubbed the "Taste The Rainbow" Mille.

Copperband Butterfly

 

[knecht]

I just read through your thread and your tank looks amazing, and so does the McLaren. It’s good to see the Copperband in the latest photos. He looks healthy. Following