GAM_GAM’s Red Sea Reefer 750
- Large Build
- Thread starter GAMGAM
- Start date
- Tagged users None
GAMGAM
Active Member
well the tank has officially hit the 6 week mark and so far so good. Temp is stable at 77-78F, nitrates stable at 1ppm, phosphate seems to bounce between 0.02-0.04ppm, I’ve stabilized the PH between 8.3-8.5, and the alk is stable at 8.6dkh.
so far the acro frags are doing well and colouring up and the fish are good and fat.
have a bit of cyano here and there but it looks like some of the rocks are leeching stuff out as it’s the rocks that don’t have coraline (were probably upside down at the bottom of the old tank) buried in detritus. The bare bottom glass is growing some turf algae which the tangs and snails are appreciating.
I’ve had a couple “near misses” so far. Had the kalkwasser tubing blow itself off the holder and pump a bit of kalk on the floor. Also had the feeding line blow off inside the fridge and pump half a litre of food and water into the bottom of the fridge. Lol. I went around and super glued all the connections and grabbed a drill bit to clean out the tips during my weekly maintenance. See what happens.
the difference between the two setups is night and day. I should have made the switch years ago.
Last edited:
GAMGAM
Active Member
Tanks doing great. Acropora are basing nicely. Starting to dose some extra alk with the kalkwasser. PH is holding 8.4-8.6. Been dosing some neonitro to bump up my nitrates, at about 2.5 gonna push it up towards 5. Shut off lanthanum doser as it was holding my phosphates at about 0.015, too low I think. I’ve lowered my lights to about 10” off the water and have bumped my 8 bulb photoperiod to 4 hours, and 6 bulb for about 6 more hours.
Merry Christmas
Last edited:
GAMGAM
Active Member
today I added another Versa pump.
The pic is just the versa discharge into the sump, nothing exciting, but having an extra 5 gallons of water to add is meaningful.
My tank only has a 13 gallon ATO reservoir which doesn’t last long enough. Even dripping 2 litres of saturated kalk a night the ATO barely lasts a week (more like 6 days).
The plan with this pump is to drip 2 litres of weak soda ash and water every night to maintain alk alongside the 2L of kalk. I’ll top up the water every Friday and add soda ash to it.
I filled the 5 gallon bucket today and added only 2.5 tablespoons of soda ash and only plan to pump 1 litre to start and gradually add more soda ash to maintain my alk with a steady addition of 2L of liquid per night as I wean myself off the normal hourly alk addition.
it’s certainly a different way to add alkalinity, maintain my sump water level, and help peg my PH. I do wonder if it’s better to dose this concoction at night to help peg my PH, or to dose it during the day and help peg my alkalinity.
gonna do some extra testing this week and see where things shake out.
Last edited:
GAMGAM
Active Member
PH is now bottoming out at 8.45 at night and going up to 8.55 during the day. Alk bumped up from about 7.7 to 8.3 over the last couple nights but cut my normal alk addition in half and will find the balance with the overnight drip. Looks pretty good so far.
GAMGAM
Active Member
I’m going to call this post “lessons learned”.
So at this very second the tank is perfect. The flow looks perfect (such a pain to dial in), the water chemistry looks perfect, and the lighting seems perfect. But these “perfections” have come at a cost.
Flow, while I can’t pinpoint too much damage due to flow there are a couple pieces that were too close to the undertow/return flow to a power head and caused what looks like erosion to the skin of the coral. It took hours of playing with power head placement and direction to get good flow in the center and edges of the tank.
Lighting, I caused a lot of damage with my 8 bulb ATI sunpower. At first I started with my light about 12” off the water and about 6 hours of 6 bulb and 3 more of 8 bulb. With the first batch of sps I gave them some time on the frag rack then moved them up to where ever I wanted them. Some showed tip damage and receded from the tips. Alk was fine and stable at the time. Most survived with only a few casualties as they adapted to the light. Next batch was light acclimated better over a month by staging them up the tank and had better success. That being said I bumped up my nutrients and browned out my sps some so I thought over time I’d lower my fixture (to about 9”) and bump up the 8 bulb photoperiod, almost every sps started showing skin damage where it was in direct view of the light. Lesson learned, 8 bulb ati plays for keeps (even the coraline on the bottom glass only grows on the edges of the tank or in the shade). I raised the fixture as high as I could (15”) and cut the 8 bulb to 1 hour a day. The damage has stopped and things are healing now.
Water chemistry, two screw-ups here. Water testing, so when I was doing my salifert kit testing I was pulling water into my 10 ml plastic syringe then I’d rinse out the testing vial with some water then pull in some air and get the bottom of the miniscus right to the perfect ML needed then squeeze it in to the vial. Sounds fine right, my syringe has a tip on it 3/8 of an inch long full of water. This little bit of water caused all my tests to be off by quite a bit, almost a full dkh. Thankfully even at the lowest point it was still holding about 7dkh but not the 7.7 or 8 I thought. There were more casualties in this period. And last but not least I was dosing my alk directly into my display, I could see it dose in and cause a little cloud of white briefly fog up where it was being dosed. I was doing this at the same time as I was miss-measuring my tests so while im not sure if it was doing it’s own damage I doubt it was helping as it likely caused localized alk and ph swings. Now I’ve got the versa dripping alk into my sump over a 17 hour period (my sump has a 5000 gph power head in it so it’s well mixed).
Anyway, like I said at this second things are really good and the damaged ones are healing and the newer ones are basing and showing growth tips. Now I’ll just leave it alone and let things grow.
So at this very second the tank is perfect. The flow looks perfect (such a pain to dial in), the water chemistry looks perfect, and the lighting seems perfect. But these “perfections” have come at a cost.
Flow, while I can’t pinpoint too much damage due to flow there are a couple pieces that were too close to the undertow/return flow to a power head and caused what looks like erosion to the skin of the coral. It took hours of playing with power head placement and direction to get good flow in the center and edges of the tank.
Lighting, I caused a lot of damage with my 8 bulb ATI sunpower. At first I started with my light about 12” off the water and about 6 hours of 6 bulb and 3 more of 8 bulb. With the first batch of sps I gave them some time on the frag rack then moved them up to where ever I wanted them. Some showed tip damage and receded from the tips. Alk was fine and stable at the time. Most survived with only a few casualties as they adapted to the light. Next batch was light acclimated better over a month by staging them up the tank and had better success. That being said I bumped up my nutrients and browned out my sps some so I thought over time I’d lower my fixture (to about 9”) and bump up the 8 bulb photoperiod, almost every sps started showing skin damage where it was in direct view of the light. Lesson learned, 8 bulb ati plays for keeps (even the coraline on the bottom glass only grows on the edges of the tank or in the shade). I raised the fixture as high as I could (15”) and cut the 8 bulb to 1 hour a day. The damage has stopped and things are healing now.
Water chemistry, two screw-ups here. Water testing, so when I was doing my salifert kit testing I was pulling water into my 10 ml plastic syringe then I’d rinse out the testing vial with some water then pull in some air and get the bottom of the miniscus right to the perfect ML needed then squeeze it in to the vial. Sounds fine right, my syringe has a tip on it 3/8 of an inch long full of water. This little bit of water caused all my tests to be off by quite a bit, almost a full dkh. Thankfully even at the lowest point it was still holding about 7dkh but not the 7.7 or 8 I thought. There were more casualties in this period. And last but not least I was dosing my alk directly into my display, I could see it dose in and cause a little cloud of white briefly fog up where it was being dosed. I was doing this at the same time as I was miss-measuring my tests so while im not sure if it was doing it’s own damage I doubt it was helping as it likely caused localized alk and ph swings. Now I’ve got the versa dripping alk into my sump over a 17 hour period (my sump has a 5000 gph power head in it so it’s well mixed).
Anyway, like I said at this second things are really good and the damaged ones are healing and the newer ones are basing and showing growth tips. Now I’ll just leave it alone and let things grow.
Last edited:
GAMGAM
Active Member
It’s been a while since I posted anything. Quite a bit has changed. I got my hands on a par meter, re-did my aquascaping and built a little map of my par readings.
So here is a recent pic of the tank with the new aquascaping and you can use the map to see the par levels of the corals. I adjusted the lights and rocks to have some safe spots around 300-350 par for new frags and have the center of the tank above 400 mmol to really cook out some colors.
So here is a recent pic of the tank with the new aquascaping and you can use the map to see the par levels of the corals. I adjusted the lights and rocks to have some safe spots around 300-350 par for new frags and have the center of the tank above 400 mmol to really cook out some colors.
Last edited:
Gumbies R Us
Another Fish in the Sea
Nice new aquascape design!It’s been a while since I posted anything. Quite a bit has changed. I got my hands on a par meter, re-did my aquascaping and built a little map of my par readings.
So here is a recent pic of the tank with the new aquascaping and you can use the map to see the par levels of the corals. I adjusted the lights and rocks to have some safe spots around 300-350 par for new frags and have the center of the tank above 400 mmol to really cook out some colors.
GAMGAM
Active Member
Back in early March Canada copepod had a sale on for half price copepods. I pulled the trigger on a large “pack” and now I have a crazy amount of bugs.
all the little white spots from this pic is pods. So many little Critters have popped up
Similar threads
