StinkyReeferWI
New Member
- Joined
- Nov 3, 2026
- Messages
- 5
- Reaction score
- 6
- Location
- Appleton, WI
- What state or country do you live in
- Wisconsin
Hello everyone,
This is my first post on R2R, and I wanted to share our first tank.
My girlfriend and I set this tank up in June of 2025. So, it has been running for about 1.5 years now. I've had freshwater tanks for 5+ years but was always drawn to saltwater as there seems to be endless options for what you can keep.
It was certainly a great learning experience, and I still feel like I know very little about what makes a reef successful! Many mistakes were made along the way and unfortunately many lessons were learned the hard way.
The tank is a 15 gallon Hello Reef AIO. Almost all of the equipment is stock and is what came with the Hello Reef kit. I'm far from an expert but I thought the Hello Reef kit and experience was phenomenal for setting up our first reef tank. We did add a few things to help.
Equipment
- Bubble Magus Mini Q Nano protein skimmer
- Tunze 3152.000 Nano ATO
- 1x Drews doser to dose magnesium
- 1x Drews doser to dose alkalinity
- 3D printed random flow generator nozzle for the return pump in the last week
- Hanna testers for - magnesium, alkalinity, calcium, phosphate, nitrate, and Hanna thermometer
Parameters
Took a lot of trial and error trying to figure out what's going on with the parameters and how to manage them. We went through a few different kinds of salt but are currently using Red Sea Blue bucket salt.
Salinity - 1.026, Nitrate - 3, temp - 79, Alk - 8.3, Mag - 1310, Phosphate - .1, Calcium - 433
Experimenting with different salts and becoming lazy at times led to some pretty big swings in our numbers. Lately we've been much more diligent about testing and keeping things stable. For 6+ months only magnesium was dosed as the other parameters seemed to stay steady with just water changes. Still unsure if this did anything or not. I was previously using the Red Sea black bucket salt which elevated the numbers significantly.
Today we dose about 1.5 mL of mag a day, and while I'm still attempting to lock down alkalinity. The tank seems to consume it so slowly that I've been dosing less than half a mL of alkalinity a day. Some days I skip it entirely if the test is showing a higher number. Still really trying to figure out what is and isn't needed in terms of dosing.
Current Stocking
- GSP on back wall (trying to fill that out more and more, started with a piece about the size of a quarter)
- Clove Polyps (that are spreading all over the place)
- Rose Bubble Tipped Anemone (lots of growth on the BTA bought it over a year ago and was about an inch in size at that time)
- 2x Zoanthids (Can't remember their exact names, have had pretty significant growth since starting with them. They started with only a few heads on each)
- Duncan
- Burst Hammer
- 2x Frogspawn (one of which has been having a very rough time)
- 2x Toadstool Leathers
- Acan
- 2x Clownfish pair (we named them Moo and little Moo as they're the white/black breed of clowns)
- Yasha Goby
Pictures below
Full tank shot
Zoa in the front of the tank on his rock island. Trying to get him to cover as much of the rock as possible.
Leather near the top of the rockwork.
Was told this is a Rose Bubble Tip Anemone from a local pet store.
Acan that was added in the past week.
Duncan
Thanks for checking out our first tank!
This is my first post on R2R, and I wanted to share our first tank.
My girlfriend and I set this tank up in June of 2025. So, it has been running for about 1.5 years now. I've had freshwater tanks for 5+ years but was always drawn to saltwater as there seems to be endless options for what you can keep.
It was certainly a great learning experience, and I still feel like I know very little about what makes a reef successful! Many mistakes were made along the way and unfortunately many lessons were learned the hard way.
The tank is a 15 gallon Hello Reef AIO. Almost all of the equipment is stock and is what came with the Hello Reef kit. I'm far from an expert but I thought the Hello Reef kit and experience was phenomenal for setting up our first reef tank. We did add a few things to help.
Equipment
- Bubble Magus Mini Q Nano protein skimmer
- Tunze 3152.000 Nano ATO
- 1x Drews doser to dose magnesium
- 1x Drews doser to dose alkalinity
- 3D printed random flow generator nozzle for the return pump in the last week
- Hanna testers for - magnesium, alkalinity, calcium, phosphate, nitrate, and Hanna thermometer
Parameters
Took a lot of trial and error trying to figure out what's going on with the parameters and how to manage them. We went through a few different kinds of salt but are currently using Red Sea Blue bucket salt.
Salinity - 1.026, Nitrate - 3, temp - 79, Alk - 8.3, Mag - 1310, Phosphate - .1, Calcium - 433
Experimenting with different salts and becoming lazy at times led to some pretty big swings in our numbers. Lately we've been much more diligent about testing and keeping things stable. For 6+ months only magnesium was dosed as the other parameters seemed to stay steady with just water changes. Still unsure if this did anything or not. I was previously using the Red Sea black bucket salt which elevated the numbers significantly.
Today we dose about 1.5 mL of mag a day, and while I'm still attempting to lock down alkalinity. The tank seems to consume it so slowly that I've been dosing less than half a mL of alkalinity a day. Some days I skip it entirely if the test is showing a higher number. Still really trying to figure out what is and isn't needed in terms of dosing.
Current Stocking
- GSP on back wall (trying to fill that out more and more, started with a piece about the size of a quarter)
- Clove Polyps (that are spreading all over the place)
- Rose Bubble Tipped Anemone (lots of growth on the BTA bought it over a year ago and was about an inch in size at that time)
- 2x Zoanthids (Can't remember their exact names, have had pretty significant growth since starting with them. They started with only a few heads on each)
- Duncan
- Burst Hammer
- 2x Frogspawn (one of which has been having a very rough time)
- 2x Toadstool Leathers
- Acan
- 2x Clownfish pair (we named them Moo and little Moo as they're the white/black breed of clowns)
- Yasha Goby
Pictures below
Full tank shot
Zoa in the front of the tank on his rock island. Trying to get him to cover as much of the rock as possible.
Leather near the top of the rockwork.
Was told this is a Rose Bubble Tip Anemone from a local pet store.
Acan that was added in the past week.
Duncan
Thanks for checking out our first tank!
