CADE REEF 450 - Floating SPS Build

[riley.jones01]

Small update, not a good one though.

My cat decided that the tank would be his new bathroom... cat pee and corals dont mix well. I suspect he peed in the tank a few times before he was caught, which explains why things were bleaching and i was battling algae like crazy. Tank completely crashed and all corals died. Luckily, all the fish were fine and have been moved to the rebooted system.

Tank has been relocated to a bedroom in the house that my cat doesnt have access to, so maybe this go around ill be more successful. I just threw out the old rock structure and have created a new one, learning from my mistakes the first time around. The initial rock structure was too large and too close to the sides/surface, which made it very difficult to place corals and get good flow without blasting the sand everywhere. Ill post some update pics in a week or two when everything has cleared up and settled in a little more.

For now, here is a picture of the perpetrator. Destruction is tiring work.

 

[riley.jones01]

Current FTS from my desk. Things are moving along nicely. Frags are starting to encrust, coraline algae is growing everywhere, nutrients are staying consistently at ~10 NO3 and 0.01-0.02 PO4. Waiting on the ICP to come back so i can resume my Reef Moonshiners dosing.

I added a mini fridge to store liquid food in that is controlled by my second DOS pump. Red Sea AB+ is dosed about 3ml per day and a mixture of phyto, ROE, and pods are dosed manually via a feed mode. I drilled two 1/4" holes into the side of the fridge and ran the dosing lines through it. Ill have a more aesthetic set up one the RO tubing I ordered comes in, for now this will do. The Red Sea AB+ is fine out of the fridge for a week or two, so the contents of the tubing are fine at room temp for the few days it takes them to be dosed into the tank.

I have a stir plate in the fridge thats connected to a Govee outlet that i can turn on and off from my phone to stir the mixture before the pump pulls it out. I have some coding in the apex to run the pump enough to fill the tubing plus ~3ml to the tank, then run backwards 200mL to clear the lines. The tank end of the line is elevated well above the water level and secured so i dont end up accidentally siphoning out and flooding the room.

I also added a 12" AI Blade to the lighting mount. This isnt an off the shelf option from AI, but i managed to make two readily available brackets they sell work without modification. The only thing that I had to get separately was an M4x10mm bolt/nut. The hardware the brackets come with dont fit through the channel in the mounting arm, theyre about 0.5mm too wide. I used a HMS Hydra 64 bracket and an AI Blade mounting clip. It works really well, maybe 1/4" of sag on the mounting arm. The HMS Bracket isnt resting on the front of the AI Prime, and there is space for airflow so the Prime doesnt overheart. I did a PAR test on the tank and the middle was great, 200-350PAR depending on the spot, but the front half of the tank and edges were very low, like 75-100PAR.

I plan to get a Versa 4 pack and set the reef moonshiners up on a daily dosing schedule. I cant find any other dosing pumps that have the resolution to dose in 1/10th of mL and the Versa seems to have good reviews.

 

[riley.jones01]

FTS update, my view from my desk:

I added a trio of firefish, several SPS frags, and the acan at the bottom. If the acan does well, I plan to get more and create a "garden" around the gorg.

Struggling with nutrients, nitrates staying at or close to 0. Trying to combat with increased bioload (fish) and more feedings.

Coraline growth is crazy. All the reborn media at the bottom is turning purple, i have to scrape it off the glass every day. Overall, happy with the progression.

 

[Tahoe61]

Looks fantastic. The lighting looks like it is working, corals appear healthy.

 

[riley.jones01]

Looks fantastic. The lighting looks like it is working, corals appear healthy.

thank you!

 

[riley.jones01]

Update: I have added about 15 frags to the tank after a trip down to ADG and Oceanlife in Houston.

Updated FTS pics (I am using an iphone camera so the pics kinda suck) -

I still cannot get any measurable nitrate readings. PO4 is reading at about 0.1, so I am shooting to get my nitrate up to 10 to keep the "ratio" correct using NeoNitro. Starting off slow with only 1mL per day and Ill slowly increase it until I can get consistent measurements of my nitrate. Feeding the sun coral is pretty messy so I suspect all the extra food is going to also be causing my nutrients to go up.

 

[Indiana Reefin]

Really nice tank! This may just be a coincidence, but I started getting crazy algae and started losing some corals when I added reborn as substrate. Someone did a test on here about calcium reactors and which media leached the most phosphate. Reborn was very high. I yanked majority of the reborn out an we shall see how my tank recovers.

 

[riley.jones01]

Thanks for the tip, I will keep an eye on the phosphate. So far, it doesnt seem to be leeching anything.

 

[Indiana Reefin]

Thanks for the tip, I will keep an eye on the phosphate. So far, it doesnt seem to be leeching anything.

Not saying that’s the cause. Obviously others have great success with this media as substrate. WWC uses this for most of their tanks

 

[chrisdors]

Thank you for all the info on this Cade… not many reviews or info on it out there. Do you feel this tank as configured when stock from Cade is fairly quiet when up and running? I’m looking at it for a beginner setup. Also- what stand do you use? It looks perfect for it.

Chris

 

[riley.jones01]

Yes, it is dead silent. Im using the stock skimmer and return pump. Theyre honestly some of the best nano gear ive ever used. If they sold those separately, the skimmer would probably be the number one nano skimmer on the market. It performs as well as some of the high end full sized skimmers ive used in the past and its ozone compatible. Both the return and skimmer pumps are DC so you can control the speed. The only gripe I have is the weird flow pattern in the rear chamber. The water enters through the top and bottom into the skimmer chamber, but there is enough of a drop through the weir for it to do any surface skimming and you end up with a little film on the top.

For the money, at full price this tank is absolutely not worth it. I got it on clearance from a LFS for something like $400. I believe the retail price is close to $1450, which is an insane amount to pay for a nano tank. Youd be much better off buying something like an innovative marine AIO or one of the Red Sea nanos and adding your own equipment to it.

The stand is a UNS 60C stand, which is 18x18. Its built quite nicely and wasnt too expensive. I believe something like $350 and its solid wood. I have a LFS that is a retailer for UNS so they were able to add the stand to an order to avoid paying the freight charge. If you order online from someone like buceplant.com youll pay almost as much as the stand in freight.

 

[chrisdors]

Thanks for the feedback and info, I also thought it was a bit pricey for what you get new and had started looking elsewhere... but I surprisingly found a used CADE Mini 450 S2/M on Facebook this week. Got it for a decent deal with some nice gear alongside it. Just started a build thread for it here.

 

[yelkram]

Following for your ****** new build! :)