CoralReefer's 680 Reef Savvy Build

[CoralReefer2110]

 

[crusso1993]

Loaded up on frags at Reef A Palooza. I'm sure there are a ton of people posting about it so I won't bother but just share my treasures. Scored 53 frags and 12 rock nems. Should add a good bit of pop once they all get situated. In the meantime I just racked them to see how ev

erything transitions before settling on permanent locations.

Looks like you scored a good haul!

 

[ylreefer]

Man I'm lost for words [emoji23]. I used to be in the aquarium design business back home and I have to say this is one AWSOME build. The guys you acquired to conduct this monster have certainly done a brilliant job. All details taken into account. Only problem with this build thread is its made me realise I need a bigger house and a new job [emoji30]

Thnx for sharing. [emoji106]

 

[crusso1993]

Any updates?

 

[CoralReefer2110]

Thanks for the push Crusso1993. Yeah, it's been a tricky last few weeks. My achilles tang came down with a pretty good flare up of ich and it happened to coincide with my trying to dial in my new GEO Ca reactor so I was having chemical swings on top of stressed fish.
I had to make a judgment call and decided to feed the heck out of the tank. I was literally feeding 6-7 times a day with selcon, garlic, and just about every supplement I could put on nori. He kept eating voraciously (and his tang buddies weren't opposing either). It went on for about 3 weeks and as you would expect I had my nitrates climb into the 20's so I was doing 180g water changes every few days.
Long story short I think I have the ich issues dealt with and the nitrates under control so I can get back to working on the CA reactor. That is (hopefully) the last item before we can settle in and watch the corals take off. They've stunted a bit with all of the chaos but I think we can get them back.
Corals will color back up. A dead achilles, not so much

Here's a quick FTS though to tide us over!

 

[vetteguy53081]

Thanks for the push Crusso1993. Yeah, it's been a tricky last few weeks. My achilles tang came down with a pretty good flare up of ich and it happened to coincide with my trying to dial in my new GEO Ca reactor so I was having chemical swings on top of stressed fish.
I had to make a judgment call and decided to feed the heck out of the tank. I was literally feeding 6-7 times a day with selcon, garlic, and just about every supplement I could put on nori. He kept eating voraciously (and his tang buddies weren't opposing either). It went on for about 3 weeks and as you would expect I had my nitrates climb into the 20's so I was doing 180g water changes every few days.
Long story short I think I have the ich issues dealt with and the nitrates under control so I can get back to working on the CA reactor. That is (hopefully) the last item before we can settle in and watch the corals take off. They've stunted a bit with all of the chaos but I think we can get them back.
Corals will color back up. A dead achilles, not so much

Here's a quick FTS though to tide us over!

Tank is just gorgeous !! Glad to hear you overcame the battle

 

[crusso1993]

Thanks for the push Crusso1993. Yeah, it's been a tricky last few weeks. My achilles tang came down with a pretty good flare up of ich and it happened to coincide with my trying to dial in my new GEO Ca reactor so I was having chemical swings on top of stressed fish.
I had to make a judgment call and decided to feed the heck out of the tank. I was literally feeding 6-7 times a day with selcon, garlic, and just about every supplement I could put on nori. He kept eating voraciously (and his tang buddies weren't opposing either). It went on for about 3 weeks and as you would expect I had my nitrates climb into the 20's so I was doing 180g water changes every few days.
Long story short I think I have the ich issues dealt with and the nitrates under control so I can get back to working on the CA reactor. That is (hopefully) the last item before we can settle in and watch the corals take off. They've stunted a bit with all of the chaos but I think we can get them back.
Corals will color back up. A dead achilles, not so much

Here's a quick FTS though to tide us over!

Thanks for the update and sorry to hear of the woes you had going. However, very cool you won and still have your Achilles!
Tank is still looking great too!

 

[crusso1993]

Hey there... How goes the CaRx? Any updates? Anything new and different?

 

[TX_Punisher]

Excellent work.

 

[CoralReefer2110]

Hey all, thanks for checking in. It was inevitable, it happens to all of us - we eventually push too excitedly into new territory and ultimately regret it. I'm no different. So while everything up until this point had gone according to plan, I will say I greatly regret adding the CA reactor. I've scorched a ton of my corals beyond salvage and stunted everything else. While it was not overly difficult to dial in I've experienced only bad and no good from it.

Yes, there was a lot of two-part going in but things were flourishing and I blew it. So yeah, a long way back. By no means is it a total loss. Far from it, but it hurts when your prize colonies go to sh_t. There's a reason somebody first said "if it's not broke, don't fix it". Upside, I've had some good luck with various macroalgaes in the fuge. Here's a pic!

Also - I will likely post this to the main forum but have had a serious outbreak of feather dusters. Going to need to find something that wants to dine heavily for while and pick it up!

Cheers.

 

[ReeferBud]

Just came across your build. Absolutely amazing and congrats!

Don’t get discouraged by the recent woes. I’ve definitely been there and it sucks for a while but things bounce back and the tank will come back even stronger than before.

Regarding the calcium reactor, I’d say the 618 model is likely way undersized for your system. I’d be looking at the 1218 model if I were you. It’ll take some time to figure out how to balance the Alk supply and balance with your tank’s needs but once you get it dialed in, it’s really set and forget. Also, would really recommend an Alkalinity monitor/controller. I just installed an Alkatronic and am beyond thrilled with it.

Subscribed and look forward to further updates and seeing the tank progress. Cheers!

 

[CoralReefer2110]

Just came across your build. Absolutely amazing and congrats!

Don’t get discouraged by the recent woes. I’ve definitely been there and it sucks for a while but things bounce back and the tank will come back even stronger than before.

Regarding the calcium reactor, I’d say the 618 model is likely way undersized for your system. I’d be looking at the 1218 model if I were you. It’ll take some time to figure out how to balance the Alk supply and balance with your tank’s needs but once you get it dialed in, it’s really set and forget. Also, would really recommend an Alkalinity monitor/controller. I just installed an Alkatronic and am beyond thrilled with it.

Subscribed and look forward to further updates and seeing the tank progress. Cheers!

Thanks reeferbud, I appreciate the words of encouragement. I have slowed down posting until things start to mend but slowly its coming around. I have gotten my levels pretty stable but I would expect them to start fluctuating again a bit as the corals rejuvenate and begin consuming more calcium.

I hear you on sizing. I still have my litermeter setup as a quick way to get levels in line when needed and am routinely doing 100-200g water changes (see earlier posts on that) which helps a bit with levels getting a bit of a boost.

So all in all we are getting there. I've given a good bit of consideration to actually going in and simply removing any frags/colonies that aren't doing well and clearing the real estate and simply just going bonkers on new frags altogether.

Always temptations in front of us right? Haha. Thanks for watching.....
Cheers,
Andrew

 

[CoralReefer2110]

So as a brief update. The corals are beginning to rebound but I did have to seriously prune off the burned tips and unfortunately throw out some major colony skeletons. Booo. But hey, do it long enough and it happens to everyone. So with MACNA coming to town in a few weeks it's time to move onward and upward.
While in there I also took the time to remove literally a 1 gallon bucket of small sponge balls that had taken over some of my LPS/Softie/Zoa colonies and spent about 4 hours in 'surgery' with forceps pulling them off. The night turned into an impromptu 200gal water change and full maintenance routine (carbon, GFO, skimmer cleaning, macro pruning, filter sock changes, glass scraping, wetside swaps, etc...)

That's when (and alcohol may or may not have been involved, I'm just saying) I decided to go big and got this bad boy......

Yep, I went for it. Set it up today. Love it so far. And yes, it is too early to draw any conclusions but from my experience initially Apex has done a nice job with both the physicality as well as the technical plug-n-play piece.

Because I like to try and head off all the inevitable haters I do acknowledge several things:
1) yes, it is new and likely has bugs
2) yes, it is ridiculous to pay over MSRP on the after market
(Side note, most of what we do as hobbyists can be classified as ridiculous. I mean really, what normal person pays several hundred dollars for what is in essence 1/8 inch piece of calcium carbonate glued to a porcelain quarter?)
3) If you've been following my build you know I lost a lot of very special corals to me due to adding a calcium reactor and not monitoring levels closely enough.


Therefore - ridiculous or not (read: yes, super stupid) I chose to go for it. Anything I can do to automate and ultimately manage my levels better and avoid a repeat burn episode is an investment I deem worthwhile. Hopefully as things recover my consumption levels will once again escalate and keeping close eyes on my levels will be imperative.

Or there's the other very real possibility. It's a new toy and we all love new toys. You decide haha.

Cheers, everyone

 

[ReeferBud]

Sounds like you had fun and great to hear you have the tank the full treatment!

Agree once you get burned you’ll do anything to avoid the same thing happening again and if that means getting the Trident, then congrats and no need to justify it to anyone

I had a very close call and almost lost my tank due to a CO2 regulator failing in the on position and spiking the Alk, as I was minutes from boarding a plane in Doha. Then trying to walk my wife through troubleshooting at 40,000 ft... thank gosh it was Qatar airways and not united and their WiFi worked! horrible experience and immediately bought an alkatronic the moment I got back. Been super happy with it.

Cheers!

 

[CoralReefer2110]

Hoping for some help on this one gang. I got my new Apex Trident installed and the tutorial was good. As you can see the MG/CA test is not running successfully. I have attempted the following solutions:
- Primed all 4 solutions
- Reset all 6 items
- Initialized Factory Defaults
- Restarted Trident.
- Checked/undid/reconnected the solution bottles and the unit.

The only apparent solution I haven't tried is the calibration solution but it expressly states that will not solve any problem that already exists. It is purely for fine tuning the read.

Does anyone have any idea on how to address this? I am sure it is not complex and likely user error but I thought I would reach out here as well as reaching out to the APEX team next.

Thanks anyone who can help!

 

[AiKkz]

Wow, what a build!!! Keep the updates coming!!

 

[c.poindexter]

Epic build. I looked into a Reef Saavy tank for my next build. How do you like the tank and all of your options?

 

[crusso1993]

Hoping for some help on this one gang. I got my new Apex Trident installed and the tutorial was good. As you can see the MG/CA test is not running successfully. I have attempted the following solutions:
- Primed all 4 solutions
- Reset all 6 items
- Initialized Factory Defaults
- Restarted Trident.
- Checked/undid/reconnected the solution bottles and the unit.

The only apparent solution I haven't tried is the calibration solution but it expressly states that will not solve any problem that already exists. It is purely for fine tuning the read.

Does anyone have any idea on how to address this? I am sure it is not complex and likely user error but I thought I would reach out here as well as reaching out to the APEX team next.

Thanks anyone who can help!

I am not familiar with the Trident, at all, but would highly recommend contacting Neptune directly for your answer(s). They do have a presence here, on R2R, as I'm sure you know, through @NeptunePaul . Maybe he'll chime in here directly.
Good luck!
And, as usual, things are coming along nicely!

 

[CoralReefer2110]

Epic build. I looked into a Reef Saavy tank for my next build. How do you like the tank and all of your options?

Cpoindexter,
I couldn't be happier with my tank and its build. I certainly wouldn't pretend to put my experience or circumstances on anyone else as we are all in very different spots. But that said, if you have the time to wait for the build and the means to get the size/shape tank you want from ReefSavvy then by all means you should.
I did list out earlier the information on features and while I wouldn't do anything differently I continue to rave about the ghost overflows. They have just given me so much more room in my display to work with than traditional corner overflows. I have positioned my MP's to push flow all the way across the back and I feel strongly that has really helped avoid dead spots throughout.
I have the good fortune to have had a wonderful build team and support crew throughout this process so it really is a team effort but as for the tank itself - a work of art.
A very big, very heavy work of art.....

 

[CoralReefer2110]

I am not familiar with the Trident, at all, but would highly recommend contacting Neptune directly for your answer(s). They do have a presence here, on R2R, as I'm sure you know, through @NeptunePaul . Maybe he'll chime in here directly.
Good luck!
And, as usual, things are coming along nicely!

Thanks Crusso - I appreciate the contact info. I am certain it is something I am simply not doing right but figured I might as well go to the pros right out of the gate versus messing with it myself. There is a reason they all hang around these forums and I suspect it is not boredom...