Back in the hobby after almost a decade out. Building a red sea max 130d.

[Rusty_L_Shackleford]

Than

Love your collection of frags!!

Thanks! Iol im litterally typing this from the passenger seat while my wife and i are on a mini road trip to check out a couple LFS in another city that have cheap frags. Most of them were $5-$10. We went up to $25 for a few we really liked. Most of my gear was bought used. You dont have to break the bank to have a nice tank.

 

[dlaird76]

Hopefully find a few bargain beauties

 

[SeahawkMom]

This is a great thread! I still have my original Red Sea Max 130 that I purchased when they first came out, and still love it! Christmas 2019 I finally retrofitted the Steve's LED's in my hood. I switched to an Aquamaxx WS-1 skimmer, but kept the original as a back-up. I still use the first upgrade return pump Red Sea sent me. I added JBJ Mini Arctica Chiller 1/15 HP external chiller, and Tunze Nano 3152 ATO, and Red Sea ReefDose 4. I love the curved glass corners and the fitted hood. I keep looking at upgrading to the Reefer 200 G2, but then go back to old 130 because it looks so nice without the corner seams and has the closed hood. I do mainly LPS, and have old Fiji Rock from when I first started in the hobby over 25 years ago. Here's a video of my tank. (No Tang police comments please, I know I need to rehome my chubby Tang, he's grown in the past 3 years.).

 

[Rusty_L_Shackleford]

This is a great thread! I still have my original Red Sea Max 130 that I purchased when they first came out, and still love it! Christmas 2019 I finally retrofitted the Steve's LED's in my hood. I switched to an Aquamaxx WS-1 skimmer, but kept the original as a back-up. I still use the first upgrade return pump Red Sea sent me. I added JBJ Mini Arctica Chiller 1/15 HP external chiller, and Tunze Nano 3152 ATO, and Red Sea ReefDose 4. I love the curved glass corners and the fitted hood. I keep looking at upgrading to the Reefer 200 G2, but then go back to old 130 because it looks so nice without the corner seams and has the closed hood. I do mainly LPS, and have old Fiji Rock from when I first started in the hobby over 25 years ago. Here's a video of my tank. (No Tang police comments please, I know I need to rehome my chubby Tang, he's grown in the past 3 years.).

Thanks! Im loving the tanki love the fitted hood. Im not a fan of the open top and haning lights trend. Do you have the okd style steves leds? What percentage do yoy run the leds at? Currently have mind at 45%. Just introduced a couple starter sps up high but have a bunch of lps frags from midway down. My wife says we need another possibly bigger tank to go with this one so were passivly in the market fpr the right tank. Theres a red sea max 250 for sale not too far away that ive been eyeing but stuffing lights in the hood is a bit of a sticking point. I have a gen 3 radion but dont think it would fit without carving up the hood. I got really lucky with a used steves led retrofit from a fellow member here. Yours looks amazing btw.

 

[Rusty_L_Shackleford]

The tank is humming along. Im working on getting my auto doser dialed in now. I also added the yellow half bar goby ive had in QT. I have been buying up used equipment for a vage future build. The first batch i was just gonna buy the 3 wavemakers off him but then he offered to sell me everything for 175. Now im on the way home from picking up 4 x AI hydra 52 HD that i got for $150. I dont even really need it, but fortunately my wife is on board with picking up cheap gear and hoarding it for a future biggwr build.

 

[Rusty_L_Shackleford]

Recent tank shot

 

[Rusty_L_Shackleford]

Well, the wife I went a little over board at myrtle Beach frag fest last weekend and ended up coming home with over 20 frags. At one point we brought frags home, put them in the tank, then went back for more. The tank is looking pretty full. Good thing i just got a great deal on a 32 biocube and am in the process of setting it up.

 

[dlaird76]

Any updates? Hope its still going well

 

[Rusty_L_Shackleford]

Any updates? Hope its still going well

Here's a picture I took last night. Corals are starting to take off and grow well.

Work has had me extremely busy since we got back from the aquatic expo but everything is just kind of chugging along. Fortunately between the auto top-off and autodoser I don't absolutely need to tinker with the tank every day. The tank is a bit overcrowded at the moment, so waiting on my wife's tank to be ready for coral and then a good bit will be moving into her tank (I need to start a build thread for hers too). We're also going back home to Hawaii for almost 2 weeks at the end of August so I'm trying to plan and get stuff ready for that too. My LFS is going to come by every few days and put eyes on the tank and I have someone to call in case of emergency Planning to get a Webcam as well. Now if only I can scheme a way to get my hands on an apex for cheap somehow for additional monitoring....

 

[dlaird76]

Excellent. Thanks for the update. Keeping your hands out the tank is a good idea lol. Enjoy your trip to back to Hawaii

 

[Rusty_L_Shackleford]

The trip is approaching fast. We're a week away and it seems like I still have so much to do. I've pretty much got my tank ready I think. Right now I'm in the process of making sure the tank is ready and honestly I'm nervous about it. My local lfs is coming by every 3 days to check up on it and I have the inkbird controller, auto-doser, auto-topoff, and I finally got the autofeeder fitted. The Webcam arrives today. I'm also disassembling and cleaning the pumps today, and I got the glass scraped this morning which I've honestly been super lax about one of the sides was almost completely covered in coraline. Which I also siphoned out as I scraped it and dumped it into my wife's biocube. I also started moving frags into her tank as well so mine have some breathing room now lol. I'll try and get some photos up once I get everything cleaned up.

 

[Rusty_L_Shackleford]

Still got a bit to do, but got the tank shined up. The right side had so much coraline on it that I couldn't even see through it.

 

[Rusty_L_Shackleford]

Well I've been back from vacation for about a week and the tank pulled through without intervention (we were gone for 2 weeks). I had the lfs stop by every 4th day just to put eyes on the tank and feed some frozen and they didn't have to do anything besides pick up a couple of frags the turbos knocked over. I did have 1 favia that's mostly receded and a millie that is probably toast (but thats from being upside down in the sand in the back). I also had an anacropora that strait up vanished (I'm sure knocked God knows where by a turbo). Oh and my neon goby has disappeared. I haven't had a chance to take everything out of the back compartment and look, I've been slammed at work since I got back and am now under the weather a bit. But hey, the tank came out of it looking pretty good overall, so I'll call it a win.

That said, the tank looked good, but not great. Some of the corals didn't look bad, but didn't look as good as I feel like they could have I felt like. I was having some low nutrient issues before I left, but I didn't want to make any changes and then leave for 2 weeks. So I've been feeding more. On testing the magnesium was also a bit low. I've been feeding more frozen and boosted the calcium to 1360 and things are moving in the right direction I feel like. I really hate the nitrate kits since have a super hard time reading them (I'm colorblind). I really want a hannah tester but it's not quite in the budget ATM. But I'm driving up to my favorite lfs tomorrow to do a little shopping so I'll have them test my water anyway and go from there. I may have to start dosing some nitrate and phosphate until I can add some more fish and get my bioload up. I've also started moving frags into my wife's biocube to free up some space and it's starting to look pretty good too.

 

[Rusty_L_Shackleford]

Current picture. Few of the corals are kinda ticked since I just got done scaping the glass.

 

[Gumbies R Us]

Current picture. Few of the corals are kinda ticked since I just got done scaping the glass.

Love the variety of coral that you have!

 

[Rusty_L_Shackleford]

Love the variety of coral that you have!

Thanks! I have pretty eclectic tastes in coral (plus a few are my wife's lol). Thank goodness for the $25 frag rack at the lfs lol.

 

[Rusty_L_Shackleford]

My wife's biocube is humming along nicely, so I got a bunch of frags moved into her tank and suddenly the tank looks empty. I mean not really but I can see the sanded now lol. The tank is hitting about the 8 month mark and is starting to hit its stride I feel like. Before going on vacation I knew my nutrients were low (nitrates and phosphates at 0) but I didn't want to make any changes and then leave for 2 weeks so I set up the autofeeder with flake and had the lfs stop by every 4th day to feed frozen. So, after getting back and a little testing and dosing my parameters are thus:

Salinity: 1.026 (tropic marin high precision hydrometer)
Alk: 8.6
Ca: 450
Mag: 1360
Nitrate: 0
Phosphate: .25

I usually test a couple times a week and have my lfs run a test every couple weeks to verify my results (always a good idea, this is how I found out my calcium kit was going bad and replaced it) So I have some stuff that is doing ok but to my eye just looks a little starved. My fish load is pretty light and i target feed anything thatll take it 2-3 times a week. So I think I'm going to have to start dosing nitrates (and maybe phosphates too now that im backing back off the flake food). Most stuff is doing very well so I'm not about to start making any drastic changes or start dosing something I can't test for. I'd like to boost the nitrates to 5-10 to start with. I'd prefer the phosphates to be lower but I dont want to change multiple variables at once so I'm thinking get the nitrates up first, see how that goes then adjust phosphates if needed. Maybe then run an icon to see where I'm on on stuff like trace elements.

But for the most part I am very happy with how things are going. Coraline is exploding to the point of being almost a nuisance, and I have microfauna EVERYWHERE. If I move a frag or piece of rubble there are microbrittles, pods, worms, etc shooting out from underneath, stomatellas are breeding like crazy. All the fish are fat and happy, I just need more.

 

[Rusty_L_Shackleford]

Low tide on water change day

 

[Rusty_L_Shackleford]

Overall, I'm really happy with how the tank is coming together. Everything is growing well, etc. Although I'm running out of room for new frags lol.

 

[Gumbies R Us]

Overall, I'm really happy with how the tank is coming together. Everything is growing well, etc. Although I'm running out of room for new frags lol.

Tank is coming together nicely!