HighChief's 225 In wall basement build

HighChiefKC · Feb 20, 2021

1ocean said:
are you running GFO reactor? I been hearing and reading that GFO reactors can release iron into the water and Chaeto do not do well in this situation.
I had a huge ball of chaeto in my current 140 refugium and when I increased the amount of GFO in my reactor alot of it turned to mush,,,, I have taken off the GFO reactor and now using it for carbon.
I am going to go with as much natural process as possible on my new 300.

I’m currently not running anything. No carbon, no GFO, and nothing in fuge. Just skimmer

I haven’t harvested anything from the pods or phyto yet, but super impressed with the company, their customer service, and the product so I think next week
I’m going to order some chaeto from them with their chaeto reactor. I like the idea of growing chaeto outside of the sump. Then I don’t have to worry about light overflow and making a mess in my sump.

1ocean · Feb 20, 2021

HighChiefKC said:
I’m currently not running anything. No carbon, no GFO, and nothing in fuge. Just skimmer

I haven’t harvested anything from the pods or phyto yet, but super impressed with the company, their customer service, and the product so I think next week
I’m going to order some chaeto from them with their chaeto reactor. I like the idea of growing chaeto outside of the sump. Then I don’t have to worry about light overflow and making a mess in my sump.

yes my refugium is a stand alone and I control the water into it by using the carbon reactor as the water feed to it and then a separate overflow pipe, returns the water from the refugium to the return part of the sump. I have a screen on the return pipe from the refugium to prevent any debris from the refugium getting into the sump
I am not a big fan of refugiums in the sumps because you can NOT slow down or speed up the water flow in the refugium with out sacrificing the water flow in the sump.
Plus cleaning a stand along refugium is so much easier and you do not interfere with running of the sump.

HighChiefKC · Feb 27, 2021

Got the Poseidon Reef Chaeto Reactor installed today. Love being able to grow chaeto and it not being in my sump. Have it hose fed from the sump to under the stand so it’s next to the phyto and pod tanks.
Silly me when I set up the phyto tank, I went out and bought a power strip and a timer to run the light in the systems. Today I went to install and the chaeto required a timer and I didn’t have one....and I thought, why didn’t I ever think to plug it into my Apex?!? Lol.
I have shut off valves coming in and going out of the tank so I can shut the flow off when I need to harvest or clean.
It looks like I have some kinda laboratory under my tank. I can’t believe the wife hasn’t noticed or said anything yet!! Lol

HighChiefKC · Mar 1, 2021

Had my 2nd harvest today of Phyto and Pods. When I done my first harvest, I messed up on collection of pods. Didn’t understand directions apparently. Great customer service set me straight. I was afraid I wouldn’t have any pods when I harvested today and I’d have to start all over. Exact opposite happened. I had so many pods the water would barely go thru the sieve! Dumped half of them back In to start a new batch, other half are spending the night in the Pod Hotel in the fuge of sump lol. I can never see pods once they get into sump or tank!
I think I’m quickly going to be producing more phyto than I can consume!

HighChiefKC · Apr 11, 2021

Tank update: don’t know what happened to my phyto production, but all of a sudden all of my cultures kept crashing. My pod production was crazy good. But I ended up shutting it all down temporarily. Going to have to order all new cultures and start over. So might wait till summer to start that up.
I’ve been battling some type of algae since I basically started. My previous nano tank was a really cheap setup and I had hair algae like crazy. This is kinda like hair algae but never got as green and long. It came off really easy with a toothbrush. Whereas my old hair algae was stuck right to the rock. I’ve about gone crazy dealing with this, and no matter what I tried, nothing was helping.
So as a last resort I started dosing Vibrant twice a week and running GFO. I even went a little light on the dose of Vibrant and I only dozed for 2 weeks and all my algae is gone! My tank hasn’t looked this good since I first put rock in. It seriously has been a miracle. After 2 weeks I quit dosing Vibrant. Tank and fish and what little corals I have are doing great. Interested to see how tank does since I stopped dosing. We’ll see. Also my chaeto reactor showed very minimal signs of damage from the vibrant. To the point where I first wondered if my vibrant was outdated.

HighChiefKC · Feb 20, 2022

Almost a year update. Lost that plate coral that was in the middle. Was great for a long time, then just started to slowly wither away. That torch has like tripled in size. Fish are doing great. I think I’m done adding fish. I liked the idea of smaller fish for this tank. Already starting to think of a second FOWLR tank when we build a new house in a few years and concentrate on larger fish!
Also a personal major moment, I’ve been in the hobby off and on for 20 years. One of my biggest goals was to have an anemone and clown host each other. I’ve never been able to get it to happen. I didn’t believe in ever trying to force it to happen. I’ve actually had a hard time keeping small clowns in this tank, I think my yellow eye Kole tang kept killing them. I never actually seen it happen, but I did see him often attack my lawnmower blenny to the point he died. But a few weeks ago I made my last group purchase of fish and tried a new place to me. I bought a flame angel that was dead by the time I got home, a coral beauty that there doesn’t appear to be anything wrong with him, but he doesn’t swim around much, and I’ve never seen him eat, but I’ve had him for like 2 months so he must be eating something. And I bought 2 black ice clowns. Being bred clowns I didn’t think they’d ever host in anemone. But not long after I put them in the main display from QT, one of the clowns really seemed interested into what that anemone thing was. This past week, I noticed the one swimming under the anemone and I could see the tentacles touching him. Then he became full blown obsessed with the anemone and caught him sucking on the tentacles. Not ever seeing this happen before I took pics and video and posted it on the BRS FB group page.
here’s a pic of that