Cade 1500 S2/P Build

[Hardy_Reef]

This thread will hopefully detail the progression of upgrading from my 4ish year old Red Sea Reefer 350 to a Cade 1500 peninsula.

I didn't want to have to start out this build with negativity, but here it goes, the purchasing/shipping process of this Cade peninsula has been the worst I've ever experienced. I ordered the tank from AlgaeBarn on December 29th, 2022 after confirming they had the model in stock and requested delivery around January 25th, 2023 to meet my time constraints. January 27th rolls around and I hadn't received any sort of update, so I reached out to AB. I was bounced around by customer service agents via email and usually got one response per day. Long story short, a shipping container blocked the loading dock at their Colorado facility and they were unable to unload or inspect tanks to ship. Life happens. the Customer Service manager was professional and she provided information when I requested it. AB claimed they had sent notifications out to those who ordered tanks regarding the delay (after checking my gmail over and over I found I did not receive what they claimed). Later down this line, I had to reach out to AB again after not hearing any update for about a week, they again claimed they had sent out an email updating purchasers of the situation (again, no joy on finding that email).

February 3rd, Estes and AB notify me that the tank was picked up. All good. Estimate on the delivery was between 2/8 and 2/15. AB claims 3-10 days to arrive, so no worries. Well, after Estes traversed the US at a snail's pace, the tank arrived at the final hub detailed in the shipping information only an hour and a half away from my house on 2/9. Then it sits there. The estimated delivery date in the portal disappears after they turned in over to the final shipping agent. Still not hearing anything I called the Estes hub today, got in touch with a representative and provided my tracking number. "It's in transit" was the only answer I got at first. After digging further, she told me it was in the possession of the final delivery agent and that they *should* be contacting me. She did not provide the particular 3rd party company's name.

The delivery agent reached out late Friday morning to schedule the delivery for Monday next week. The estimated delivery date has since been changed to 2/13 to 2/17.

Key take-aways I have: I understand freight transport takes time, my particular shipment weighs 902lbs and it had to move from Colorado to Florida in Jan-Feb. I take issue in the fact that it took me reaching out every single time to all of these companies for an update on an expensive purchase. Second issue- nobody took any sort of accountability, but instead blamed me, gmail and their own software for the lack of communication (I requested some sort of transcript of the automated messages to be forwarded which I was told couldn't happen). I may just be catching quite the stroke of bad luck, and I still haven't received the tank so who knows what's next. If you're considering purchasing a CADE in the USA, just be wary of this.

All things considered, I'm still excited to showcase this build, it'll be the largest tank I've owned, my first peninsula tank and the first build I've put major thought into before installation. I will also be detailing this on my instagram account @Hardy_Reef for those interested.

 

[Fish Styx]

This thread will hopefully detail the progression of upgrading from my 4ish year old Red Sea Reefer 350 to a Cade 1500 peninsula.

I didn't want to have to start out this build with negativity, but here it goes, the purchasing/shipping process of this Cade peninsula has been the worst I've ever experienced. I ordered the tank from AlgaeBarn on December 29th, 2022 after confirming they had the model in stock and requested delivery around January 25th, 2023 to meet my time constraints. January 27th rolls around and I hadn't received any sort of update, so I reached out to AB. I was bounced around by customer service agents via email and usually got one response per day. Long story short, a shipping container blocked the loading dock at their Colorado facility and they were unable to unload or inspect tanks to ship. Life happens. the Customer Service manager was professional and she provided information when I requested it. AB claimed they had sent notifications out to those who ordered tanks regarding the delay (after checking my gmail over and over I found I did not receive what they claimed). Later down this line, I had to reach out to AB again after not hearing any update for about a week, they again claimed they had sent out an email updating purchasers of the situation (again, no joy on finding that email).

February 3rd, Estes and AB notify me that the tank was picked up. All good. Estimate on the delivery was between 2/8 and 2/15. AB claims 3-10 days to arrive, so no worries. Well, after Estes traversed the US at a snail's pace, the tank arrived at the final hub detailed in the shipping information only an hour and a half away from my house on 2/9. Then it sits there. The estimated delivery date in the portal disappears after they turned in over to the final shipping agent. Still not hearing anything I called the Estes hub today, got in touch with a representative and provided my tracking number. "It's in transit" was the only answer I got at first. After digging further, she told me it was in the possession of the final delivery agent and that they *should* be contacting me. She did not provide the particular 3rd party company's name.

The delivery agent reached out late Friday morning to schedule the delivery for Monday next week. The estimated delivery date has since been changed to 2/13 to 2/17.

Key take-aways I have: I understand freight transport takes time, my particular shipment weighs 902lbs and it had to move from Colorado to Florida in Jan-Feb. I take issue in the fact that it took me reaching out every single time to all of these companies for an update on an expensive purchase. Second issue- nobody took any sort of accountability, but instead blamed me, gmail and their own software for the lack of communication (I requested some sort of transcript of the automated messages to be forwarded which I was told couldn't happen). I may just be catching quite the stroke of bad luck, and I still haven't received the tank so who knows what's next. If you're considering purchasing a CADE in the USA, just be wary of this.

All things considered, I'm still excited to showcase this build, it'll be the largest tank I've owned, my first peninsula tank and the first build I've put major thought into before installation. I will also be detailing this on my instagram account @Hardy_Reef for those interested.

Sorry to hear about the rocky start. Onward and upward from here! Looking forward to seeing this build come to life.

 

[Hardy_Reef]

The Cade will feature some recycled equipment from my RSR 350 and some new gear.
Lighting: 3 Neptune Skys
Controller/Doser: GHL Profilux 4, KH Director and 2 GHL Doser 2.1
Return Pump: Sicce Syncra SDC 9.0
Skimmer: Reef Octo Elite 150-INT
Flow: 2 EcoTech MP40s

I'm currently using TLF Accurasea-1 salt and Reef Pro A & B additives with the supplementation of kalkwasser.

 

[Hardy_Reef]

Sorry to hear about the rocky start. Onward and upward from here! Looking forward to seeing this build come to life.

Hopefully nowhere to go but up!

 

[Gumbies R Us]

Can't wait to see the progress on the build!!

 

[Hardy_Reef]

Alright, I really buckled down for the past 3 days, so strap in:

The tank arrived at around 3:30 eastern time on 2/13. The listed weight for everything was around 900lbs, but it all arrived safely in a condition similar to the photos AB had sent.



After getting the stand out of the crate and unwrapped, I noticed some loose screws behind one of the door panels, only to find that on of the doors hadn't been assembled completely/correctly. Fortunately, neither the door or the hardware were damaged and I was able to reattach it.

It took three other friends to move the tank (which I'd estimate at 400+lbs) from the driveway in through the front door of my house. The clearance of my door without taking it off was 34" wide and the width of the Cade is 30", so it was a close call. Eventually, we were able to get it inside and into place.



Once in place, I ran into some more minor hiccups. During set-up, I noticed the return nozzles provided looked more like the ones available on the traditional Cade Reef series and not the 90 degree elbows in the schematics for the peninsulas. To make matters worse, the retaining collars for the nozzles were both cracked and unusable. I contacted AB regarding the issues and received an email for replacements the next day (so that's awesome).



Before turning in for the night, I started to modify the stock Cade sump to accept a Red Sea ReefMat 1200 by removing the filter socks and baffles. I was also able to place the dry-rock aquascape made form the Aquaforest brand rock into the tank, add 90lbs of CaribSea AragAlive Fiji Pink sand and around 100 gallons of saltwater into the tank. The Ecotech RMS and hanging kit was installed a few weeks prior to the arrival of the tank, but I was able to install the new Neptune SKY.



2/14:

Woke up early the next morning and got right to work. My RODI unit wasn't able to replenish my reservoir in the garage during the 6 or so hours of down time, but I made due. As that kept working in the background, I began to transfer water from my Red Sea Reefer 350 into the Cade (in total probably around 40ish gallons). I installed the Sicce Syncra SDC 9.0 as my return (Honestly, the pump was very noisy initially, to the point of wanting to return it, however the noise subsided over the course of operation. After a few hours I had enough saltwater to begin to circulate.

**BIG ISSUE** I messed up and didn't double-check the tightness on the unions for the drainage plumbing and ended up with a moderately dripping leak. The positioning of the tank against the wall (even being 3" from the wall) made it impossible for me to reach back to tighten it. The wife came to the rescue and boom-- no more leak.



As soon as the temperature and salinity matched in each tank I pulled the live rock, corals, and bio media from the RSR 350 and arranged them in the Cade; this made catching the fish as simple as it gets.

The current fish stock list is:

Yellow Tang
Purple Tang
Powder Brown Tang
Melanurus Wrasse
Solarensis Wrasse
Blue-Green Chromis (x3)
Pajama Cardinalfish
Ocellaris Clownfish (1 Orange & 1 Black)
Royal Gramma
Firefish
Saltwater Molly




2/15:

The workload subsided a little bit. No coral (including acropora) or fish losses overnight. I spent this day knocking out the cable management and controller mounting in the integrated electronics cabinet in addition to figuring out the controller/dosing situation in the "chiller cabinet". My fresh-air skimmer line was also extended and hidden along the baseboards.




**Update** : I ended up ditching the third MP40 at the near-side and will be moving forward with the two. I'm anticipating much better surface agitation once the replacement return nozzles arrive and I add the VCA RFGs on standby.

The GHL Profilux 4, KH Director and 2 Doser 2.1s are operational. I'm dosing Reef Pro A&B 2-part which also provides trace elements as well as AcroPower. The Luna Reef Systems 5 gallon ATO visible is being used to dose kalkwasser based on pH/KH needs programmed through the Profilux. I'm also running an Ozotech Posiedon 200 Ozone generator plumbed into my Reef Octo Elite 150-INT skimmer.

2/16:

Even with the immediate fish-load, I read 0ppm Ammonia/Nitrite, 4.6ppm Nitrate and 0.13ppm Phosphate (NO3 and PO4 read by Hanna).

My wife ended up being much happier with the upgrade than she initially thought she would and offered to buy fish so I was happy to oblige. We added:
4 Bangaii Cardinalfish
1 Firefish (for our lone ranger)
1 Naoko Wrasse

 

[Super Fly]

**BIG ISSUE** ... The wife came to the rescue and boom-- no more leak.

u a lucky man, wife lets u buy such a nice large tank AND helps out with the plumbing too?!?!... so jelly

 

[Hardy_Reef]

u a lucky man, wife lets u buy such a nice large tank AND helps out with the plumbing too?!?!... so jelly

She's quite the team player. I do have to admit she wasn't totally onboard until she saw the tank in place in the house.

 

[907_Reefer]

I'm in! A Cade 1500 is on my potential upgrade list, looking great here so far!!

 

[Hardy_Reef]

I'm in! A Cade 1500 is on my potential upgrade list, looking great here so far!!

The cosmetic defects not detailed in the thread are incredibly minor and in places only the maintainer will see or notice. The entire experience after getting it into place has been phenomenal.

 

[Hardy_Reef]

Not much going on today. Most of the day was spent cleaning the old RSR 350 and associated equipment to sell. I did run my GHL KH Director through some troubleshooting because the Alk reading was consistently high and not matching the Hanna Checker (usually they're within ~0.1° dKH of one another) and this time around they're up to 0.5°dKH in difference. The probe was correctly calibrated as were the dosing pumps. I reverted back to the KH Director installation video on YouTube and found that I didn't account for the length of tubing in the dosing head and the length from the doser to the KHD this time. That was corrected.

There's still some variance of 0.2-0.3°dKH now, but I suppose I'm splitting hairs at the moment, so I'll put that on the back burner.

The incredible hammer coral my wife and I ran across the previous day really came into its own. It seems to be a maricultured piece from Bali Aquariums, but there's three different color morphs present.




Finally, here are some photos taken during the nightly wind-down taken with my phone and polyp lab lens.

 

[Super Fly]

She's quite the team player. I do have to admit she wasn't totally onboard until she saw the tank in place in the house.

I’m gonna show my wife this when I try to convince her to let me upgrade to a Cade!

 

[Hardy_Reef]

I’m gonna show my wife this when I try to convince her to let me upgrade to a Cade!

I hope that works out for you!

 

[Hardy_Reef]

I ran through a full battery of testing today to see where we're at:
pH: runs 8.2 during the day and 8.1 at night
Alkalinity: 8.7°dKH (working it down to 8)
Calcium: 433ppm
Magnesium: 1530ppm
Nitrate: 2.4ppm
Phosphate: 0.11ppm
Salinity: 35.1ppt

I'm seeing diatoms bloom in the system, but nothing too crazy.



I also added a Rose Scale Fairy Wrasse and the coolest gold BTA I've ever seen. Hopefully the clowns take to it instead of battering my goniopora.

 

[RJT]

Very nice tank. You should be really happy with the fast transition

 

[Hardy_Reef]

Very nice tank. You should be really happy with the fast transition

Thank you. I'm very pleased to say the least, it's going much better than I anticipated so far.

 

[Hardy_Reef]

I'm still waiting on the replacement nozzles from AlgaeBarn, but in the meantime I rigged them up enough to accept the VCA RFG kit for the Cade. Doing so I was able to ramp my Sicce SDC 9.0 from 24% to 57%. (It might be just me, but the fact the steps in the return pump speeds aren't in increments of 5 or 10 kind of annoys me. Oh well).

 

[Hardy_Reef]

The Cade has been wet for 10 days today. As far as algae goes, the CUC and tang gang has been phenomenal at keeping the tank clean and it looks like the diatom bloom may be subsiding.

On the nutrient side, I have been really focused on not letting phosphate and nitrate bottom out. Nitrate is sitting at 7ppm and phosphate dropped to 0.09ppm.

I'm only dosing around 200mL of super-saturated kalkwasser to keep up with demand, which isn't enough to really influence the pH I want (I'm seeing lows of 7.9 and highs of 8.15. In my old system my highs/lows were 8.3/8.1 respectively).

Operation Save the Gonis was a success. My clownfish are now hosted by the gold BTA I added and the goniopora are no longer being harassed. All smiles here.

 

[Hardy_Reef]

Alright folks, it's been 2 weeks since the Cade was delivered, so I have a few things to cover. Firstly, I regret to announce that the BTA has claimed its first victim; the Naoko Wrasse was found in the nem's mouth with the clowns bouncing all over it. Total bummer... the Naoko is an incredible looking fish and I don't run across them often.

Secondly, I run a fresh air line from outside into my skimmer, that coupled with controlled kalkwasser dosing usually keeps my pH between 8.1-8.4. It worked on my Red Sea Reefer, so I expected it to work on the Cade. One caveat, the Cade is farther away from the exterior wall than the RSR was, but only by a around 6 feet. The problem was (not that I have an extensive background of physics to appropriately or even correctly explain this) the ozone generator runs on a separate airline which draws from inside the house. My theory is: because the airline to the ozone generator is much shorter, even with a smaller hose diameter, the skimmer was pulling more air from the interior line than the fresh air line (path of least resistance).

This theory coupled with a drop in the alkalinity uptake from the corals after the transfer has exacerbated a pH issue with readings as low as 7.8. Alk was upwards of 9.5 dKH and holding steady. Because this value is higher than what I have set as my nominal value in the Profilux/KHD there is no kalkwasser dosing.

To make matters worse, I encountered a bug in the GHL Control app for Android which lead to bad calibrations of the pH probe (so in reality, who knows if my pH was really as low as 7.8).

Here's the good news: I ran calibration for the pH probe through a direct connection with my PC and confirmed the probe readings with the calibration solution. As a quick fix, I rigged an air pump to the outdoor intake for the skimmer to force-feed fresh air into the system while I ordered a double-ended 3/8" barbed fitting with a 1/4" T to attach the ozone to the fresh air line. Once the fitting was installed, I removed the outdoor air pump. The day this was implemented, I saw a pH peak of 8.3 with no kalk dosing (still trying to walk that alkalinity to 8 dKH). No more suppressed pH!

Back on the topic of livestock, I sourced 9 Dispar Anthias from my LFS and ran them through Safety Stop before adding them to the display with the exception of one, who was showing signs of some pretty bad fin rot. She's currently occupying a hasty-made 10 gallon QT tank with some kanaplex. I'm hoping I caught it quickly enough, time will tell.

Below is a photo dump of some of my largest/brightest corals.

 

[Longatto]

great build! following along! any updates?