Benno's Red Sea Max Nano

[benno841]

Hi all, I set up my Red Sea Max Nano about a year ago (in 2022) and thought I would finally start a build thread to keep track of its progress and to create another outlet for this hobby so I don't bore the wife anymore.

I was brand new to the hobby, my dad had Tropical Freshwater tanks whilst I was growing up but other then that this is my first tank, so please go easy on me I am still learning.

Recent Photo(s)

Current Equipment
Red Sea Reef LED 50
NooPsyche k7 v3
Red Sea Reef Dose 4
Red Sea ATO+
Aquel 150W heater + Inkbird
Skimmer supplied with the Red Sea Max Nano
Jecod SOW-4
Jecod MCP-90
Jecod SOW-8

Currently Dosing
AquaForest Component 123+
Phyto (every other day)
Red Sea AB+ (once per week)
Red Sea NOOX
Weekly water changes (10%) using AquaForest Reef Salt

Current Stocking
2x Clownfish (1x Percula and 1x Occelaris I believe)
Springer Damsel
Yellow Watchman Goby
Tiger Pistol Shrimp
Mandarin (tank bred and happily eating TDO chromaboost pellets)

It all started September 2022 with the tank arriving and the rock scape being built. It went through a few iterations:

But I settled on this design, trying to find inspiration BRV TVs NSA videos.

Excitedly, I then added a bottle of bacteria and a pair of juvenile Occelaris clowns from my LFS.

Around the same time, I added another section at the front to create space ready for a "micromusa island".

I had also added the frogspawn and hammer coral (RIP, I accidentally dropped my Syphon on it which ripped a lot of the flesh from the skeleton) which can be seen on the right.

Unfortunately, the clownfish became riddled with Ich.

I quickly scrambled to set up a quarentine tank as neither of them were doing well. I bout a cheap 40 litre tank from Amazon, heater, ceramic media and two regular aquarium heaters. By the time the tank was setup the fish where in bad shape; I gave them a hydrogen peroxide bath and mixed up some copper solution using Copper solution following Randy Holmes-Farly's guide. I treat them for just over 30 days at the recommended amount and then quarentine them for about 50 to leave the tank fallow. Unfortunately, I lost one of the clownfish a few days in, however, the other one is going strong to this day.

That was my first reefing disaster and the lesson was learnt to always quarentine fish going forward.

After the fallow period I reset the QT tank and got a second clownfish. Except, this time I unknowingly bought Percula clown instead; this doesn't of seem to have caused an issue upto now and they're are happily paired and hosting the frogspawn. This time the clown was immediately put into QT and given a copper treatment following the same method.

Over time, I bought quarentined a yellow Watchman Goby and Springeri Damsel. I also got a Tiger Pistol Shrimp and added that to the tank. Unfortunately, I lost this first yellow Watchman Goby, it was eating fine but suddenly lost its colour and disappeared. I never found it and don't know what happened.

After that I ordered another yellow Watchman Goby and a Mandarin, both tank bred. These have settled into the tank great and have thrived over the last few months. The Mandarin also happily eats TDO chromaboost pellets. Although, I do add pods every three weeks.

Somewhere in this timeline I added some Micromussas and a Mint Shimmer Stylophora; this was before I was dosing. Here are some recent photos of them corals.

In March, we welcomed out beautiful daughter to the world. Unfortunately, it wasn't a smooth start and was quite traumatic. On the other side, they are both doing great now and I am slowly brainwashing her to be a reefer so we out number the wife and there is no limit to the number of size of tanks we can have.

This meant that I neglected the tank for the a couple of months, Nitrates over 40ppm, Phosphates over 0.4ppm and Alkalinity all the way down to 5.4dKH.

In the months that followed I got the tank back on track doing regular water changes, adding KH buffer and added the doser; which I started dosing small amounts of AquaForest Component 123+ and Red Sea NOOX.

My parameters have now been fairly stable, with Nitrates around 5ppm, Phospate around 0.07ppm and KH around 9.6dKH (I was aiming to run high KH but have decided to let it slowly drop to the salt mix level).

A few months ago I added my first acropora, a cheap browned out Bali Green Slimer from my LFS.

Whilst it doesn't look the best it and most people wouldn't of picked it up I really wanted to challenge the tank and see how it would do with its first Acropora before I took the plunge to get some more expensive frags. It seems to be fairly happy and has based out loads and started to colour up; I will post an update this weekend when I get chance to take some more photos.

My long term plan for the tank is to create an Acropora dominated tank and grow them to (mini) colonies over the next couple of years whilst I save for a 5ft tank. It is safe to say I have rapidly developed an addiction.

Thanks for reading this far. More to follow.

 

[MoshJosh]

Love the scape!

 

[Gumbies R Us]

Some great looking progress for one year!

 

[benno841]

Hi all, a quick update.

I feel like my Acropora is growing (well basing) out pretty well. First frag so I aren't sure how fast it should be growing but I would say it has grown just over an inch all around in around 3 months. It is starting to colour up but very slowly, the way I have mounted it means the front is sort of shading itself which isn't ideal.

July 2023

October 2023

My Stylophora also seems to be showing some good growth, it seems to be shooting out of a new spot on its base and it seems to be showing growth tips (I hope). The polyps/flesh on the shaded side also seems to have regrown and it is showing great polyp extension.

I am very excited for the coming week. I have a trip to Signature Frags, which is a great shop in the UK that sell higher end aqua cultured Acropora's, planned at the end of the week. I am going to collect the frag pack my wife ordered me for my birthday and to maybe pick up an extra frag or two. The frag pack contains six classic Acros the picture below contains the six frags (WYSIWYG) from left to right, top to bottom Red Planet; Red Devil; Hawkins Echinata; Candyland; Rainbow Loom and Strawberry Shortcake. I feel like a nice yellow Acro such as a Mustard Milli would complement them quite nicely.

I am very nervous to be adding so many Acros at once so any tips would be appreciated; my tank seems fairly stable and I am hoping the progress with the Bali Slimer is a good sign. I have stocked up on Alkalinity, Calcium and Magnesium test kits and plan to test every day as they are added so I can adjust my dosing amounts.

Here are some other photos from tonight:

As you can probably see from some of the photos bubble algae is my current nemesis; a couple of months ago I did a dose of flux RX and have been manually removing it but by the end of each week it seems to just explode. I feed quite heavy normally so I have cut back a little and increased the amount of NOOX being dosed slightly. I introduced two emerald crabs but they don't seem to be making much of an impact. I feel like my hands are a little tied with it being a nano tank so my plan moving forward is to remove as much manually from areas that are visible and hope that as I introduce more corals it doesn't spread as much or as quickly. If anyone has any other suggestions that would be great.

 

[benno841]

I finally got to visit Signature Frags and collect my birthday present! The weather was horrendous and it ended up taking over three hours to get there, luckily we had set off earlier with the intention of doing a little shopping before - much to my wife's dismay. The shop/farm was amazing; it is almost impossible to pick out a reasonable number of corals as they're all stunning. That goes for both SPS and LPS, the Micromussas and Gonis were very hard to say no to.

The frag pack is exactly as described, the frags were practically identical to the WYSIWYG photos; possibly as close as you can get from a photo. I am over the moon with them and cannot wait to get them positioned on the rock work. In addition to the frag pack, I also picked up a frag of Nebula and Nick's Sun God Millipora.

From left to right: Nebula, Red Planet, Strawberry Shortcake, Candyland, Red Devil, Nick's Sun God, Rainbow Loom and Hawkins Echinata.

My plan, following the advice from the owner, is to leave them on the frag rack and move them up half an inch every few days. Once they start showing growth on the tips then mount them on the rock work. I got them back from the shop and the polyps were still extended in the bags. I floated the bags for 15-20 minutes; I had to take a couple of litres of water out as it nearly overflowed the tank...

After temp acclimating them; I cut them open and placed them straight on the frag rack. I didn't bother with a dip as each mother colony went through extensive quarantine before entering the Signature Frags' farm. Arguably, I still should have dipped them but I thought the risk of stressing them out was greater than introducing a pest.

Here is a close up of each frag (taken tonight, aprox. 24 hours after the frags were added). They aren't the best photos. The lens I am using cannot focus well with the frag rack that close to the glass so I had to take them from further back.

Nick's Sun God

Hawkins Echinata

Rainbow Loom

Red Devil

Candy Land

Strawberry Shortcake

Red Planet

Nebula

Following the owners advice I have added another powerhead. A Jecod SOW-8 that I had left over from my previous attempt to increase flow, which is running in master-slave mode with the SOW-4 I already had. This is creating a lot of flow; they are both running opposite each other across the diagonal of the tank in wave mode.

The Micromussam Lords, Leptostrea and Frogspawn lower down in the tank don't seem to be effected by the increased flow too much and are still fully extended.

My parameters are still where I want them to be, roughly anyways, here is the comparison between Oct 19 (the day before getting the new frags) and Oct 21 (tonight).

I pre-emptively increased dosing by about 50% ready for the additions and assume that over the next week or two KH, Mg and Ca will balance out. I will be testing each night until they seem stable. I am happy with how things are going, all the frags are showing good polyp extension. Let's hope they thrive!

 

[benno841]

It was a fairly quite week this week. The corals are settling in well, showing a good amount of polyp extension during the day and a lot during the night. Not seen much in the way of growth (didn't expect to) although the Nebula frag does look like it will be encrusting onto the rack within the next week.

Pre-emptively increasing my dosing was not a good idea, I had to drop it straight back down and let my parameters settle again. However, the Alkalinity uptake seems to have increased over the last couple of days so I am hoping to start seeing some growth. My params are still around where I want them, apart from Phosphate more on this below.

I have finally decided to invest in an RODI filter after a year of using RODI water from my LFS. I am hoping this is going to help with the bubble algae.I have cut back on feeding and changed from cubes to frozen mysis. My Phosphates had gotten pretty low at the start of this week (0.01ppm) so I decided to remove the Rowaphos and in 4 days it was up to 0.12ppm. I have no idea where it is coming from, my only guess is from the LFS RODI.

I ordered a 5 stage 150 GPD system which should run 2 75 GPD membranes.

However, setting up the RODI filter turned into a bit of a nightmare. I overtightened the elbow into the second membrane housing and it snapped... I have put the housing with the membrane and am hoping it won't dry out. I thought I would of gotten away without a booster pump; but I ran the single membrane setup for 2 hours 45 minutes and managed 2 gallons. The pressure into the membrane was about 25psi so I have ordered a booster pump along with a new elbow which will hopefully arrive at the start of the week.

 

[benno841]

Hello reefers,

A few things have happened since my last post.

RODI
I got the elbow and the booster pump so my RODI set up is up and running; it is producing around 20L an hour which seems pretty decent given it is winter and I am producing it outdoors using water straight from a tap.

NooPsyche K7 v3
I also upgraded my lights to the NooPsyche k7 v3; I am really impressed with them especially for the price, the control over the colour channels is great and I am much happier with the settings. I am running them fairly blue with 11% on the white channel and 48% on the others. I have been gradually increasing them by 1-2% a week but am not sure whether to push it much further as I do not have a PAR meter.

My main motive for upgrading was spread; I was not happy with the amount of shading on the backs of some of the acros once I had placed them on the rocks. The NooPsyche has two seperate LED clusters which gives a better spread on each side. I was going to purchase two LED bars but with the eventual plan to upgrade I didn't want to spend the money on something I wouldn't be able to use on my new tank.

I am really happy with the light, the biggest downside is the app, you have to connect your phone to the lights access point to make changes. However, this really isn't an issue, at the end of the day how often do you need to modify the settings. My only other gripe is that the overspill seems to split the light, so I can see a thin band of green and red.

Jecod MCP 90
I also swapped out the Jecod SOW-4 out for a Jecod Gyre; I have been really happy with it so far. It has a pretty decent controller and is easy to make adjustments to. It is also extremely well priced, less than half of the price of the Red Sea equivalent.

My reasoning for not going with the Red Sea one was again due to the upgrade and when I do my next build I will be going for the RS ReefWave. I am however dreading cleaning it as there doesn't seem to be much online about the pump and there is no instructions...

Corals
I fixed all of the acro frags to rockwork, they seemed to be settling in well and have started colouring up again. Unfortunately, they had faded a little on the frag rack.

Candyland

Hawkins Echinata

Strawberry Shortcake

Nicks Sun God Milli

(this is a tiny bit that I accidently snapped off the main frag)

Rainbow Loom

Red Devil

Red Planet

The "Bali Green Slimer" (not sure it is a green slimer) has had some great growth but has not coloured up one bit which is frustrating... I also trimmed the four initial branches to see if I could encourage some growth on them, they do seem to be starting to grow again.

The stylophoara is also doing really well and has had some great growth.

I also picked up a frag of Beach Bum Montipora; I plan to keep this on the frag rack for a while and move it up slowly as I want to place it in the centre fairly high and am worried that the lights will be too strong.

And here are some shots of the tank overall.

I am still having real issues with bubble algae, I have tried to do manual removal and controlling Phosphates and Nitrates but it just seems to get worse. To make matters worse I have now got some aptasias, so I plan on introducing some Peppermint Shrimps.

 

[benno841]

Hello all,

Since my last post, I decided to send off an ICP. There was no real reason behind this, the tank has been running over a year and I haven't done one so had gotten curious. I got the results back and thankfully it was mostly good, a few trace elements came back low but everything else was spot on... Apart from salinity which came back at 36.71ppt.

This obviously was alarming, since I started in the hobby I have always used the Hanna salinity pen and I have always aimed for 35.0 ppt. Interestingly, this topic was brought up on The Prestige Reef Dork show. Where Alex (Reef Dork) found the same issue. So I followed the same steps and ordered the Tropic Marin Hydrometer.

I took the reading from the hydrometer which came out around 1.0282 S.G. I believe with the temperature offset it is around 38ppt.

I have no idea how accurate the method that the testing company (ReefZ Elements) is on salinity. But I am going to use the value from the Hydrometer as this is what I will be using going forward (and is the latest measurement).

I then used the same water and took a measurement using the salinity pen.

As you can see this is considerably lower the the reading with the Hydrometer. I calibrate the pen at least once a month but usually more frequently. To double check I opened a fresh pouch of Hanna calibration fluid and placed the pen in it.

As you can see this read just above the expected 35.0ppt. I recalibrated it in the fluid and then took another reading of the tank water.

This again read around the same as before the calibration.

I have no idea why it reads lower. People have suggested that it drifts? But why does it then read the calibration fluid at the expected value? Either way it cannot be trusted and doing a random ICP test might of just saved my tank. I would of mixed my salt water tonight at 35.0ppt, 0.6ppt higher then my tank water. This would of pushed the salinity higher again, if this repeated over the next few months then it could of wiped out my livestock.

Other then that the ICP reported that a few trace elements were low. Not really low but not at the target values (that they specify). The main ones, that they suggest are most important), were Fluorine, Iodine, Vanadium and Molybdenum. So I picked up bottles of them trace elements and have started dosing the suggested courses. I do feel like I have probably fallen for clever marketing but there we are it is too late now.

I plan to do another ICP test in a couple of months, probably end of March. I will probably say that my colouration and growth have improved (hopefully anyways) but realistically that is probably down to the corals settling in (due to length in the tank) rather than dosing trace elements. Either way it keeps me busy.