CoralDanimal's Red Sea Reefer 425 XL Mixed Reef

[CoralDanimal]

How the build thread started...

Where I am now:

Initial Equipment:
Tank: Red Sea Reefer 170
Lights: EcoTech Radion XR30 Gen4 (AB+ Schedule) within the 24" Aquatic Life fixture (2 ATI Blue Plus, 2 ATI Purple Plus).
Return: Neptune COR-15
Flow: 2x EcoTech MP10s
Heater: Neo-therm 100W
Skimmer: Eshopps X-120 Axium with pH controlled CO2 Scrubber
Controller: Apex
Dosing: Neptune DOS
Refugium: Kessil H380

Current Equipment:
Tank: Red Sea Reefer 425 XL
Lights: 2x Gen5 EcoTech Radion XR30 Blue
Return: Neptune COR-15
Flow: 1x EcoTech MP10, 1x EcoTech MP40, 1x Red Sea ReefWave 25
Heater: 2x Neo-therm 150W
Skimmer: Nyos Quantum 160 with re-circulating CO2 Scrubber
Controller: Apex
Dosing: 2x Neptune DOS
Refugium: (no refugium currently installed)

Origin Story

Over Christmas I upgraded my Red Sea Reefer Nano to the 170. Thank god my wife is amazing and was supportive of it. The transfer took the better part of a day when it was all said and done. While the corals we're getting tight in my RSR Nano (18x18x18), the main reason for the upgrade was the little fella in the bottom right corner of the picture. It's a baby Kole tang I got about 6 months. He was the size of a quarter when I got him, but I wanted to give him more space. My wife is quite attached to him so I'm hoping in another year or two when he keeps growing it will be my ticket to a bigger tank.

Because I rent and live on the second floor I couldn't go too big. I was torn between the RSR 170 (24.5x20x20) and the Waterbox 45 (24x24x12). They're within one gallon of each other in system volume so the main factors were dimensions and brand trust. I've heard good things about WB, but I love my reefer so I stuck with Red Sea and in the end I was glad I did because I love the dimensions of the 170. I actually think the Innovative Marine 50 had the best dimensions (30x24x16), but the stand doesn't have an option in white and I didn't really feel like plumbing it from scratch.

I'll post pictures of my sump soon. Every coral in the tank was grown from a small frag and this past year the SPS growth exploded so I'm really looking forward to seeing the reef grow out and feel more natural in 2019. If you've made it this far, thanks for reading!

 

[Mal11224]

Very nice looking tank.

 

[Chilli]

Nice little tank!! for how long have you got the acroporas?

 

[nickkohrn]

I love the simplicity of your rock-work. You made a beautiful system. Keep the updates coming!

 

[CoralDanimal]

Very nice looking tank.

Thanks. I checked out your build and you have some beautiful SPS!

Nice little tank!! for how long have you got the acroporas?

I've had most of them for about a year. Here's a January 2018 vs. January 2019 growth pic:

The green monti cap on the right has actually grown the most. You can kind of see where it was at a year ago on the frag rack. The 1) coral actually had a very big chunk break off which is now it's own mini colony so the growth is actually bigger than it appears.

I love the simplicity of your rock-work. You made a beautiful system. Keep the updates coming!

Thanks! I've been following your build thread as well. Sorry to hear about the wrasses Everything else looks great though - I can't wait for it to be filled. As for the simplicity, it requires restraint to keep it that way lol. I constantly want to add more rock to house more corals, but it goes against the vision. I still plan to get everything off the glass and sand before I take my hands off and let it do its own thing. Here is some of the inspiration for the tank:

 

[CoralDanimal]

Sump update:
Not too much has changed since the RSR Nano setup. Still running a refugium and the Kessil H380. The sump isn't much bigger on the 170, but there is more room within the stand so I moved in the Neptune DOS, dosing containers, and C02 scrubber. The only other notable change was swapping the Tunze 9004 for the X-120 Axium. I love that the Tunze fit into the overflow chamber, but it's not nearly as powerful as the Axium and post tank swap I wanted to make sure anything kicked up during the transfer was properly skimmed out. This is how I had it on the RSR Nano:

And here's the 170 layout:

 

[Dodgersallday]

Can you please take a zoomed out picture of your tank with the fixture in the frame with natural lights, as in room lighting. I’m about to pull the trigger on either the t5 fixture or the single rms mount for the xr30, but I cannot find any photos of a reefer 170 with the fixture on it.

 

[CoralDanimal]

Can you please take a zoomed out picture of your tank with the fixture in the frame with natural lights, as in room lighting. I’m about to pull the trigger on either the t5 fixture or the single rms mount for the xr30, but I cannot find any photos of a reefer 170 with the fixture on it.

Sorry for the late response. Here you go (natural lighting as it is in the room):

 

[CoralDanimal]

Unfortunately my tank won't look like that for a long time. I've had issues all January and I've lost most of my acropora. It's a real shame as a number of the colonies I lost I had grown from tiny frags. Where to start...

When I transferred my RSR Nano to this new RSR 170, at first everything looked great. Growth, coloration, etc. picked up where I left off in the 2-year old Nano. Everything was super happy..for about a week. One day while looking at my tank I noticed my tiger conch was doing something odd. It was sort of launching itself like it wanted to jump out of the tank. I thought maybe it was hungry or something and didn't think much of it (in hindsight I wish I would have immediately sent in an ICP test to Triton). About a day or two later I noticed my urchin shed a couple of spines and at this point I knew something was up so I tested everything.

Only one test came back out of range which was my dKH. It was at 5.6. For the past two years I've been running the tank at around 6.5 dKH & 420 calcium so while it was low, it wasn't super low for me. Over the course of the next 24 hours I raised it up to ~7 dKH which admittedly was a little higher than I wanted to raise it in such short time. Then all hell broke loose and my acros started to immediately slime / no PE.

I've been reefkeeping a long time and this was my first "I might lose all my corals" situation. I had two theories. One was the low dKH and then raising it back up too fast. Low dKH stressed out the inverts and then raising it too fast stressed out the corals being the theory. The other theory was that the tank potentially re-cycled post move (I'll come back to this). Due to timing of raising the alkalinity and the sudden acro decline, I figured it was that. For the next week I meticulously measured the dKH 2-3 times per day to keep the level right at 6.6-6.8. Right where I used to have it and kept it stable. The tank continued to decline. 3 of my main acro colonies had very little PE and started to experience some RTN After a week of stable dKH and lowered lighting (Radion 80% -> 25%, reduced T5 schedule) I figured it must be something else.

When I moved the tank, I didn't transfer much of the sand bed. Maybe 30% of the original sand I kept and the remainder was fresh. Of the sand I kept, I siphoned it into a bucket and then rinsed it with tank water so I wasn't putting a detritus bomb into the new tank but I'd bring over some of the good bacteria (I was hoping). Maybe the sand being kicked up caused a new cycle especially since the Nano -> 170 was moving from 28 gallons to 43 gallons and when it was all said & done it was like a 70% water change. I ordered fresh Nitrite & Ammonia test kits and overnighted them. When I tested, nothing. No nitrates, nitrites, ammonia, phosphate and yet the tank continued to decline. The only notable change was a lot of brown jelly-esque algae. On the sand, in the sump. Not a crazy amount, but enough where my filter socks were clogging faster than they usually do. It was the second week of January by now and it was about 10 days into the tank slump.

I was starting to get more and more bummed as the likelihood of a turnaround was less and less. Fish + cleaner shrimp were still hungry pigs though and showed no signs of stress. I asked myself what I'd recommend to someone else if they were in the same situation: big water changes. Something is obviously wrong with the water so change it out. I proceeded to do a 25% water change every day for 3 days. I also siphoned out as much sand as possible with each water change. No improvements.

About one week ago I decided I needed to take action if any of the stressed acros were going to live. As hard as it was to do, I broke the encrusted acro colonies off the rock structure and took bone cutters to all the RTN'd sections. Effectively destroying my acro colonies into frags. It wasn't enough to save them. This morning I took a big pile of dead acros out of the tank ;Facepalm

The montis are doing ok - decent PE, less than ideal coloration, but they look like they're going to be fine. My green slimer and the ORA pearlberry are the only remaining acro colonies that haven't RTN'd. Zoas are quite upset as are the ricordea. I did send in an ICP test last week so I'll have those results soon, but for now I'm hanging tight and testing often to try and keep the tank as stable as possible. I'm open to new theories or ideas if anyone has them. I do have a bit of a bubble algae problem so part of me is thinking maybe I should just reboot with fresh rock..

 

[truepercs]

As about as perfect as an aquarium can be... beautiful.

Fantastic job, much to be proud of...
You can bring it back again...

 

[Foothill Corals]

Good job!

Clean, simple, minimalist, Love it.

 

[CoralDanimal]

As about as perfect as an aquarium can be... beautiful.

Fantastic job, much to be proud of...
You can bring it back again...

Thanks for the kind words. Now that the chemistry has stabilized I'm hoping to see the coloration / growth come back soon. I'm motivated to bring it back to that state and make it better.

Good job!

Clean, simple, minimalist, Love it.

Thank you!

 

[Nurse.Reef.Reapeat]

Sorry Double Post.

 

[Nurse.Reef.Reapeat]

Love your tank! just wanted to know what light setting you're running on your XR30? I have reefer 170 with mostly LPS, Zoa, softies and gorgonian. I have Aquaticlife t5 hybrid as well. just got a XR30 Gen 3 and would love to know your settings. Thanks!

 

[flowflezy]

Very nice and clean

 

[Andrew Higgins]

Any updates?

 

[CoralDanimal]

Love your tank! just wanted to know what light setting you're running on your XR30? I have reefer 170 with mostly LPS, Zoa, softies and gorgonian. I have Aquaticlife t5 hybrid as well. just got a XR30 Gen 3 and would love to know your settings. Thanks!

Thanks! I'm running AB+ @ 55% with a ramp-up from 9:00-11:00am, peak intensity from 1:30-5:00pm, and then tapering off until 10:00pm.

Very nice and clean

Thanks. It's very different from now and I miss the old look, but that's the hobby!

Any updates?

Yes, many. This happened: https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/6...gnose-issue-icp-test-results-included.558093/

When I transferred from the RSR Nano to 170, something destabilized the tank and sent it on a path to coral doom. Looking back on it months later, I think there are two possibilities:

• As the sandbed is part of the biological filtration and contains a lot of (hopefully) healthy bacteria, I kept some of the sand when I transferred. It's possible that there were some nasty bacteria/nutrients in there such that after I moved it to the new tank, it became a catalyst for the spiral down.
• When I transferred, it ended up being something like a 50%+ water change. It's possible the water change was so big and the tank lost a lot of its healthy bacteria which caused the tank to cycle again.

I don't know. I've been in the hobby for 15 years and neither seem like probably causes. Based on my observation, the tank destabilized and started a fresh cycle which wiped out all my SPS. The only other thing I did was dose Vibrant (I had bubble algae) and maybe that mixed with the above was enough to spiral the tank out of control.

Tearing out all the dead colonies that took two years to grow was so disheartening especially when the tank had been doing so well the past 9 months. Lesson learn - if the tank looks great, don't mess with it!

I got close to shutting the tank down, but I decided to be patient and wait out the cycle. The full cycle was longer than usual (~2 months) and 5 months in I'm just now getting to a point where I can support acropora. I'm going to try something a bit different since I have a clean slate. I'm going to try and run slightly higher nutrients (my last tank was 0 nitrates, 0 phosphates - probably due to the refugium) and do a mixed tank. A lot of euphyllia and SPS. I'll post a picture when some of the frags start to grow in

 

[CoralDanimal]

Time to update! It's been such a hard year with the tank but it's finally getting to a point where I'm willing to take pictures of it again. When I moved upgraded from the RSR Nano to 170, it looked like this:

The corals were doing great and I was looking forward to them filling out even more in the bigger tank. Then the tank destabilized and I slowly lost colony after colony and eventually nothing made it but the zoas (which ironically are doing better than ever). After two months of struggling with the destabilizing tank, I decided to embrace the situation and do a massive WC essentially restarting the tank and then I put in new rock. It took a couple of months for the tank to be ready for corals again, but here it is now:

Not the best picture - just wanted to snap one to keep the thread alive. All of the corals are happy and coralline is growing like crazy so now I just need to keep testing, stay on top of maintenance, keep the tank chemistry stable, and then sit back and watch the tank naturally grow out

As for some things I'm doing differently this time around:

• Elevated levels
  • I had seen others’ tanks running 8, 9, 10 dKH and 500 calcium. I didn’t really think too much of it until this BRS investigates. Proven faster growth rate..I’m in. I ran my last tank at 6-7 dKH and 400-420 calcium. So far I’ve kept this tank at 8 dKH and 500 calcium and intend to keep it that way. I’ve just now introduced acropora where they look happy so as they start to grow, I’ll be looking to scale how much I’m dosing and inch closer to 9ish dKH. Also, I’m going to get a trident once they get back in stock.
• Euphyllia
  • I really liked my SPS dominated RSR Nano, but it lacked movement and diversity so I decided to mix it up. I’d love a colorful sunburst anemone but I travel a fair amount and the thought of it roaming, getting chewed up by a Vortech, and killing the tank gives me a ton of anxiety. I decided to go the euphyllia route. My scape has two structures. I plan to have one be mostly SPS dominated and the other oozing with hammers, torch, and frogspawn. We’ll see how it goes.
• More fish, more nutrients
  • I battled bubble algae and hair algae with my last tank and had to resort to vibrant and fluconazole to combat it. They are reef safe, but I don’t think my corals loved those treatments. It wasn’t a nutrient issue though (I regularly tested 0 nitrates and 0 phosphates), it was a laziness issue. I should have manually removed any sign of those pest algaes the moment I saw them. Anyway, my SPS was always lighter in color and I suspected it was due to lack of nutrients. My bio load was also low so it wasn’t like there was a lot fish waste floating around for the corals to eat. This time around I want to have more fish (already achieved) to make sure I always have a couple of nitrates and detectable phosphates.
• Clarisea
  • When filter rollers first came out, I was highly skeptical. I thought it was an over-priced shiny object that was more hassle than it was worth. Boy was I wrong lol. When this new tank was maturing, I had multiple bacterial blooms (cloudy tank). I was getting sick of changing out socks and filter fleece so I decided to spring for the clarisea even though it was expensive. The setup is a bit tedious (watch their YouTube video), but once it’s up and running holy cow does it work. It polishes water like nothing I’ve ever seen. I actually took my skimmer offline for months because I worried my water was too clean. A few pro tips:
    • Make sure it’s elevated. I bought this acrylic skimmer stand to prop it up in my sump. The higher it is above your water level, the more weight/pressure there is against the roll so it maximizes the cleaning.
    • Make sure you pump enough water through it. I have a dedicated Sicce 2.0 pumping close to 500gph through it because my return plumbing is a lot less than that. The more you pump through, the more effective it is.
    • Learn how to change it without taking it out. Once you master this, then you’re grooving.
    • When I put new saltwater into the tank, I pump the water into the Clarisea so that any floating particles that didn’t mix properly can be caught by the filter roll.

I'll take the time to take a proper photo in a couple of weeks. I have a Niko DSLR and if anyone has any manual settings they use, I'd love any tips

 

[Vleis]

Great looking tanks bud OLD & NEW.

im busy refurbishing a Reefer170 to upgrade from my 5gal.

Great pointers,
Keep the updates coming

 

[CoralDanimal]

Great looking tanks bud OLD & NEW.

im busy refurbishing a Reefer170 to upgrade from my 5gal.

Great pointers,
Keep the updates coming

Thanks! I still really miss the SPS dominated tank I had a year ago right before the transfer crash. Such is reefkeeping

The tank is improving (not near the previous level though) and I'm getting happier with it by the month:

Notable updates:

• I moved the tank! My wife and I bought our first house (which is a non-trivial event in the SF Bay Area) and you know what that means...upgrade! It feels so amazing to have a tank and not have to worry about when I'm going to have to move, if my landlord changes their mind, etc. I'll probably do another post in the future in terms of tanks I'm considering.
• When I did move the tank about 1.5 months ago, I was really concerned there was going to be another transfer event like there was last year. I did end up losing some SPS frags (which might have been a separate incident when traveling over the holidays), but all things considered the tank survived the transfer and is back on track.
• I took the Clarisea offline, but not for why you'd think. I still really love it - it's just too effective. It kept my tank so clean that I couldn't get phosphates or nitrates above 0 -> corals were light colored and didn't have fast growth. I have no intention of selling it because I'm sure I'll need back online in the future.
• In addition to the above, I've tried to increase my nutrients through an increased bioload. Right now I have 2 blue chromis, 2 bangaii cardinalfish (who have broods on a regular basis), 2 mated clowns, 1 lawnmower blenny, 1 royal gramma, and 1 kole tang (yes I know, I've had it since it was the size of a half dollar and I will upgrade the tank for it). Even with all of this (and yes I'm done adding more) I can barely register nitrates/phosphates with multiple feedings per day. Why? My refugium is bonkers. I have a Kessil H380 that grows chaeto like no ones business (probably remove a big softball every week). The refugium not only exports nutrients, but it keeps my pH above 8.0 and it's created a thriving pod ecosystem for my captive-bred mandarin which lives in the refugium.
• Lastly, I bought a Trident and yea I love it lol. It's so amazing to have such a great grip on your Alk & Calcium. It's not perfect, but I don't regret buying it at all.