First Addiction - 30 Gallon

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Current photos are not the newest, will update these over the next few days.

This reef has been up and running without too many issue for 9 months. This is my first reef so im still learning every day.

I have recently swapped from the Maxspect razor 160 to the Radion, can really see the difference in colour after the first month and some decent growth which is a bonus. Its late so i will wrap this up tomorrow.


Specifications

Tank

• Custom 600mm x 450mm x 450mm 10mm low iron glass - rimless
• Custom made stand

Rock and Sand

• Caribsea aragonite reef sand
• Dead rock

Controller

• Neptune Apex

Lighting

• Radion XR30 Pro
• RMS XR30 Tank Mount

Flow

• 2 x Jebao RW4 (Apex Controlled)

Filtration

• Jebao DC-3000 return pump
• Coral Box DC300 skimmer
• Filter Sock
• Fuge

Heating

• 125 Watt Eheim Jager Heater (Apex Controlled)

Auto Top-Off

• Apex controlled

Dosing

• Bubble Magus
  • Channel 1: Red Sea B - Calc
  • Channel 2: Red Sea A - Alk
  • Channel 3: Red Sea C - Mg

RO/DI System

• 6 Stage custom

Livestock

Fish

• 2 x Picasso Clowns
• 1 x Bangaii Cardinals (one is in recovery currently, was getting beaten up)
• 1 x Fire fish (Orange)

Inverts

• 1x Cleaner Shrimp

Right Side

Top View

Front View

 

[JMacedo]

Beautiful!

 

[anthonywesty]

Simple and beautiful! You're doing great in your first reef tank!!

 

[Dropped]

Beautiful!

Simple and beautiful! You're doing great in your first reef tank!!

Thank you both for the comments!

Originally i wanted to edit my first post to complete the intro but it seems i cant now.

 

[MermaidTail]

Looks killer!!!

 

[Salty1962]

Awesome tank! I would suggest a screen cover so you won't loose any fish. Fire gobies are notorious jumpers.

 

[Chrisfish]

Really nice tank, love your Aqua scape and the simplicity of it.

 

[Dropped]

Looks killer!!!

Thanks mate!

Awesome tank! I would suggest a screen cover so you won't loose any fish. Fire gobies are notorious jumpers.

Yea so I've heard, although mine doesn't go near the top at all. Still wouldn't risk it just had the screen top off for the pics.

Really nice tank, love your Aqua scape and the simplicity of it.

Thanks ive had to de-clutter it a few times after coral buying sprees


Here is a picture of the sump, currently have no macro in the fuge as cyano took over so i chucked it all.

 

[Salty1962]

Thanks mate!



Yea so I've heard, although mine doesn't go near the top at all. Still wouldn't risk it just had the screen top off for the pics. Good Deal!!

Thanks ive had to de-clutter it a few times after coral buying sprees


Here is a picture of the sump, currently have no macro in the fuge as cyano took over so i chucked it all.

 

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So this could all be put down to a young tank (9.5 months old), but I thought I would ask anyway.


I’ve recently had a battle with cyano and won (yay). But now I seem to be battling green hair algae, to be honest there isn’t much but its popping up here and there and its annoying.


What I don’t get is my salifert test kits show no detectable phosphate nor nitrates, but yet I still get GHA. It has been suggested that I start dosing a carbon source, however seen has I do not have detectable levels of nitrates I don’t see the point.


I do run a fuge with macro, I also run carbon and GFO which has not been changed in a month.


Is this due to the tank being young? Are my test kits poop?

 

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I recently lost my coral goby in my nano (it jumped, did have a lid) which kind of made me give up on that tank. So i decided to move the coral over to this tank. So here is a few pictures of the tank with the new additions.









Also swapped out my DIY 6500k light bulbs over my refugium for an old beamworks 12 evo LED i had laying around in hopes to control the direction of light in the sump to reduce algae.

 

[ScottMyers123]

Good looking tank. Very clean setup.

 

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This tank has now reached the 10 month mark! Here is a photo of when it was first started vs now

 

[dbl]

Looks really great. Nicely done.

 

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I’ve been testing my ALK almost daily recently and have managed to reduce spikes and dips in ALK down to one time a week by spiriting my ALK dosing to 24 times per day using my bubble magus doser. That one time per week is when water changes are completed.

I’m currently using Red Sea Coral Pro (Black bucket) does anyone know if I switch to the Red Sea Salt (blue bucket) will this reduce my ALK spikes? Ideally id like there to be no spike ( could be ticking in the wind here, and might be pointless)

My DKH spikes about 1 DKH when I do my weekly water change and looking at the charts for both Coral pro and Red Sea Salt there seems to be about 1DKH in difference which is the same as the spike I see post a water change.

Red Sea Salt

Red Sea Coral Pro

Test results (9.6 is post water change)

Am I guessing right? Will this work?

 

[dbl]

The Pro salt mixes to a higher dKH and is causing your spike, at least in my opinion. It mixes to about 12 dKH at 1.026 salinity. If you elect to switch, just watch your other measured parameters as they are slightly different as well in the red bucket.

@Randy Holmes-Farley has posted a few times on adding something to newly mixed salt to bring the alk down a little. I couldn't find one of those posts to reference so hopefully he'll chime in here. By doing this, you could continue using the product salt but make a correction to the alk. Or Randy will correct me.

 

[Dropped]

thanks Dbl that would be great as ive just cracked open a new bucket of salt which normally lasts me three months so adding something to reduce the dkh would be good until i can switch to the blue bucket.

 

[dbl]

I ended up finding a thread on this topic. I was pretty sure it was muratic acid, but didn't want to say that without being sure. I'm not sure how much water you're making at any given time, but it doesn't take much to reduce dKH.

I'm still hoping Randy will chime in to confirm, but here is the thread...

https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/h...lower-alkalinity-like-you-can-with-ph.188293/

 

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Thanks, have read the thread and am thinking to myself it adds a level of complication I could easily mess up . Maybe ill just do smaller more frequent water changes to solve this issue so spikes are not quiet as high..