Finding Sauce (a lot of tanks in a little time) RSR 250 Nem tank

Should this thread get an obituary, or turned into the nem thread?

  • Kill it with fire

    Votes: 1 5.3%
  • Kill it with Draino

    Votes: 1 5.3%
  • Merci Mister...

    Votes: 17 89.5%

  • Total voters
    19

Lost in the Sauce

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June 22 FTS Update
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April 2022
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October 2021
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September 2021
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December:
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Hi Everyone, welcome to my build thread!

My name is Brendon, Sauce, or Hey You. I answer to all.

Back in February 2021, I took over a neglected bowfront tank from a buddy that was getting out of the hobby. I created an account on R2R to access the wealth of information here because I was Clueless!

This thread has gone through many different turns in the last half a year and I wanted to make it easier to navigate here for any newcomers.

Here are some bullet points and major happenings with page numbers so that you can jump right to them if you want.

Page 1: Original Bowfront set up at my home.

Page 4: Bowfront silicone seals failing. Panic ensures.
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Page 5: after looking around at new, I purchased a long running established 120 with the full inhabitant list and all gear. I was super under prepared for this.
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Page 9: Earl has a name.
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Page 23: first coral buy from WWC
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Built out a 40b sump to replace the 29g
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Page 28: Desjardini added without QT.
Orange 30: Frag tank build starts:
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Post 593:
Marine Velvet confirmed in the 120. Set up hospital tank and started fallow period after losing many inhabitants.

Page 31
Frag tank build complete

This goes on a bit longer, and the build continues to this day. Currently working on plumbing a 180 that will replace the 120.

Come in and say hi. Spam pictures are always appreciated.

Fair warning: If you're a card carrying member of the Tang police, you should know this is not your Safe Space.







Original Post 1 Below:



Hi everyone. Although this will be more of a remediation of current factors and livestock stocking rather than a build up from scratch, I'm still going to drop this here.

Some number of years ago, a good friend of mine bought this as well as 80-100 lb of live rock. Fast forward in his passion waned to the point that the tank's been sitting mostly forgotten about for at least a year.

He recently had to move and with nowhere to place the tank I was offered to take it over and jumped on the opportunity.

This is my first foray into saltwater keeping, I'm going to be posting updates here as well as questions to the group to help me get this thing back into shape.
 
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Lost in the Sauce

Lost in the Sauce

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Here are a few pictures of the tank starting in his living room before tear down and moving to a few of the aquascapes I have moved through getting to my current setup.

I immediately removed cuz hang on back filter and the purchased a fluval FX4. Replace the existing powerhead and added a wave maker.
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Lost in the Sauce

Lost in the Sauce

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Tank equipment / livestock

Equipment:

90 g 48" x 13" sides-max18"x ?"
Fluval fx4 450 gph
Red Sea Reef LED 90W
Jabao CP-90 Wave maker 2700 gph
Koralia evo 850. 600 gph
Fluval 300W heater

Livestock

Yellow eye Kole tang 2.5"
Yellow Tang 2.5"
Mandarin Goby
Melanarus Wrasse 2"

Red Sea Cleaner Wrass
Green blue chromis x2
Bang eye Cardinal x2
Royal Gramma
Electric flame scallop
Australian Duncan Coral

CUC:
Red banded coral shrimp
Hermit crab x4
Snails x4
Nass snails x10
Fighting conch x2
 
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Lost in the Sauce

Lost in the Sauce

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Yay!! I actually got into saltwater with a neglected hand away tank as well. It's so satisfying to see the bounce back & revival once you get it going.
That's awesome. What kind of trials did you go through in order to bring it back?

I'm currently fighting super high nitrates. I've been moving the old, dirty LR around A lot in the last two weeks to settle into my aquascape and despite shaking it clean initially, there is still a lot of gunk.

My current working theory is that I am putting all the junk into the water while messing with the aquascape. Today I'm going to turkey baster, power head blast all the rock that I can see, then pull out 20g of nasty water and replace with new, clean water.

Filter will be cleaned Saturday morning as my normal schedule.

What's got me slightly freaking out is I went a little ham on the wwc flash sale last weekend and as of March 15th I will have a new tenants in the tank

Everyone is currently SUPER happy and colorful and active. I don't want to screw to the new arrivals and have nowhere to stage them if the tank ISN'T ready.


20210222_142154-COLLAGE.jpg
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danieyella

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That's awesome. What kind of trials did you go through in order to bring it back?

I'm currently fighting super high nitrates. I've been moving the old, dirty LR around A lot in the last two weeks to settle into my aquascape and despite shaking it clean initially, there is still a lot of gunk.

My current working theory is that I am putting all the junk into the water while messing with the aquascape. Today I'm going to turkey baster, power head blast all the rock that I can see, then pull out 20g of nasty water and replace with new, clean water.

Filter will be cleaned Saturday morning as my normal schedule.

What's got me slightly freaking out is I went a little ham on the wwc flash sale last weekend and as of March 15th I will have a new tenants in the tank

Everyone is currently SUPER happy and colorful and active. I don't want to screw to the new arrivals and have nowhere to stage them if the tank ISN'T ready.


20210222_142154-COLLAGE.jpg
20210222_142418-COLLAGE.jpg
I wish I had done a 100% sand change when I brought it home, but I don't recommend doing it with new residents in there.

When I got mine it was a 20g with live rock and 2 clowns. That's all. Tank was algae infested and so cloudy you couldn't see the clowns. I basically did a 100% water change and a heavy beneficial bacteria dose in hopes of saving the clowns (still have them to this day). It ran with an undersized hob and had lights that were burned out.

First thing I did after the water change was replace the lights so I could see anything happening in there. I actually threw some freshwater lights on there until something coral suited came in since there were no corals yet anyway. Next thing I did was get a better hob & a couple powerheads. Then I got an in tank skimmer. Eventually I upgraded those to the aquamaxx all in one hob/skimmer duo and that thing was fantastic.

I always had high nitrates but only got cyano and a serious algae bloom when I was able to randomly get the nitrates to drop.

I now have them all moved into the 90 and all new sand but still have high nitrates. I like to feed and my fish get cranky when I cut back. I don't bother checking nitrates or phosphates anymore because all of the corals are doing well. I have a few sticks but they're not my goal coral in this tank so w/e. I actually share water from this tank to my pico tank and my sticks grow just fine in there with the same nitrates.
 
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I wish I had done a 100% sand change when I brought it home, but I don't recommend doing it with new residents in there.

When I got mine it was a 20g with live rock and 2 clowns. That's all. Tank was algae infested and so cloudy you couldn't see the clowns. I basically did a 100% water change and a heavy beneficial bacteria dose in hopes of saving the clowns (still have them to this day). It ran with an undersized hob and had lights that were burned out.

First thing I did after the water change was replace the lights so I could see anything happening in there. I actually threw some freshwater lights on there until something coral suited came in since there were no corals yet anyway. Next thing I did was get a better hob & a couple powerheads. Then I got an in tank skimmer. Eventually I upgraded those to the aquamaxx all in one hob/skimmer duo and that thing was fantastic.

I always had high nitrates but only got cyano and a serious algae bloom when I was able to randomly get the nitrates to drop.

I now have them all moved into the 90 and all new sand but still have high nitrates. I like to feed and my fish get cranky when I cut back. I don't bother checking nitrates or phosphates anymore because all of the corals are doing well. I have a few sticks but they're not my goal coral in this tank so w/e. I actually share water from this tank to my pico tank and my sticks grow just fine in there with the same nitrates.
Very helpful, thank you
 
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Eww.. high speed low drag turkey baster blowing out neglected live rock is so gross. Chunks and chunks....

I keep reading about people saying their ammonia and nitrite are perfect but nitrates are sky high that their tanks are doing great.

Are high nitrates not as crazy of a problem as I thought? My ammonia and nitrite are near zero.
 

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@fishguy242

Re:skimmer...recommend octopus hob bh 1000 or 2000 even better ;)

I was just looking at this on brs website and it has horrible reviews but most I saw where older. Have there been changes to it to keep it from overflowing?
My experience, a lot of bad reviews are user error. They both have almost a full 5 star rating. I used that in tank skimmer on the little tank despite a "bunch" of bad reviews and it worked great because I followed directions.
 
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I've never had it overflow. They are great. I have the classic 1000. Strongly recommend.
That's good news for sure. I'm going to pull the tank out a few inches from the wall next big water change. That will allow me to both paint the back and get enough room for the hob skimmer. I've only got 2" tank to wall currently. That ain't gunna cut it.
 

A worm with high fashion and practical utility: Have you ever kept feather dusters in your reef aquarium?

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    Votes: 73 37.6%
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  • I have no plans to have feather dusters in my tank.

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