Ivan's Red Sea Max S650 Build and Red Sea s1000 upgrade

[Blue Spot Octopus]

The aquascape looks epic, you need Roadrunner in there. I have a question about your return pump, I need one for a 120 gallon tank 4 foot head, can the pump you got be ran external? My tank cannot have high flow, poor overflow design. What size pump should I get for my tank?

 

[ibondy]

@Blue Spot Octopus Yes, pump can be run externally. I highly recommend pumps from Coral Box, awesome service and US warranty. In your case, I would go with DCA 6000. These pumps have a speed control and you can easily dial them to your exact flow. Price is awesome as well.

 

[Bato367]

This is a dream tank. Excellent work!

 

[ibondy]

After a visit to LFS my reef family is growing. Got sailfin tang, powder brown tang, flame angel, longnose hawkfish and flame hawkfi

sh. My better half picked up 4 different Zoas. Happy shopping day!

 

[ibondy]

This is a dream tank. Excellent work!

Thank you for visiting and your encouraging comment! I really enjoy this journey!

 

[Blue Spot Octopus]

Thanks for the help I just ordered the pump, it states that it is Apex ready, can I run it without the Apex?

 

[ibondy]

Yes, you can.

 

[ibondy]

Since I setup my tank, I was struggling with correctly calibrating Neptune Apex salinity and ph probes. My salinity probe was about 5 points off, and my ph probe was 0.45 off.
20 minutes with an awesome Neptune support and all looks great and very close to what other tests and meters are saying. I thought, I did exactly what the technician did, but the results speak for itself. I take his calibration skills every day.

 

[ibondy]

Few new friends made it from LFS to my tank this weekend. I really need to get a real camera.

 

[ibondy]

Tank is slowly looking better and better. Just run full set of tests and all looks OK.

• PH 8.05
• Alk 9.1 - I am using Red Sea Foundation B in the powder format and I will switch to liquid, as i am having to dose 150 ml a day to keep up and I double dosed the mix.
• Ca 450
• Mg 1400
• Nitrate .75 - Feeding heavy frozen food 3 times a day
• Phosphate 0.0 - I never registered any phosphates since starting the tank I am sure they will come and I have NoPox ready to go, but did not use any yet.

Technical report:
Getting to the end of my first Clarisea roller mat. Looks like I will get about 8 weeks per roll. Love it. Only issue I have with Clarisea is that the used roller felt really stinks and I need to find a strategy to deal with it.

I used bunch of skimmers in the past but NYOS Quantum 160 is the best one. The skim it pulls from the tank is incredible, I just need to install reservoir for the skim, as I do not want to clean it every 3 days.

I did not open Skimz Algae reactor yet, but I can see bunch of algae growing there, likely a big reason for low nitrate and phosphates.

I am having a mixed experience with NYOS TORQ reactor. I like how it operates, but I do not like how the media is secured in the reactor. Twice, I had some carbon spill into my sump. Once, when I tried to remove reactor from the base the bottom came lose and spilled carbon, second time, I tried to move reactor to the side to get to my skimmer and the top came lose and spilled some carbon. Maybe, this is a user error, but maybe there should be some kind of locking system to keep all in the place.

Neptune Apex is working awesome, as expected. Both of my flow meters stopped yesterday and I have a feeling that some of the spilled carbon got there. Disassembly and clean out should fix that. I am running WAV pumps at about 20-30% and I turned off 2 pumps on the back wall. Two reasons, I can create wave motion and different intensity in the tank with WAVs and second, I am not having any SPS in the tank now and it will be 6-8 months before I start thinking about adding SPS. Would be nice to have DC Sicce pumps in the back and create different motions, maybe down the road.

Coral Box /Jabeo pumps with a new Apex compatible interface are no problem, running one and second is in stand by mode. Getting about 500g flow on the return line, that is all RSM pipes can handle.

Coral Box Wireless dossers - so far very good, running steady with zero issues.

For Hydra 26HD I was using Red Sea recommended settings, but had to dial down white from 60% to 16%, corals like it a lot better and my wife too.

Here are few pictures, with my Galaxy 9, of the tank at 10 weeks.

 

[SPR1968]

Sounds like it’s all doing very well

I dose between 130-150 alkalinity every day, so it’s not unusual. I have a 5 litre dosing container for alkalinity (I had to get a bigger one to keep up) but I think the powder is so much cheaper than the liquid

And I just use a plastic container for the skimmer waste with a lid on. Was from a wine making kit and I have loads. It lasts weeks depending on the skimmer settings, and it doesn’t smell as the lids on with just a gap I cut out for the hose to go in. There’s a picture on my build thread if you haven’t already seen it.

 

[ibondy]

Sounds like it’s all doing very well

I dose between 130-150 alkalinity every day, so it’s not unusual. I have a 5 litre dosing container for alkalinity (I had to get a bigger one to keep up) but I think the powder is so much cheaper than the liquid

And I just use a plastic container for the skimmer waste with a lid on. Was from a wine making kit and I have loads. It lasts weeks depending on the skimmer settings, and it doesn’t smell as the lids on with just a gap I cut out for the hose to go in. There’s a picture on my build thread if you haven’t already seen it.

Shaun, you made me feel better on the alkalinity dosing. Yes, i noticed a price difference on the liquid Foundation B. I already have 5 liter and will give it try and see what the results are. I have seen your skim container and plan something similar. I have a container from carbon which will nicely fit into the center 'polishing' area.

 

[ibondy]

Sad to lose 2 fish this weekend. I found Flame Angel yesterday morning with a fin rot and was not able to save her, she was looking fine night before. This was very quick progression. While I took my lid off and dealt with Flame Angel one of my Berlett's Anthia decided to explore my carpet, I did not noticed till was too late. New rule: Never leave tank lid off with out being present and paying attention.

On the positive side, I got a few new corals and ordered Canon SL3 camera. Future pictures of the tank should be lot better, I hope. Hopefully, is the camera and not the user.

 

[ibondy]

As my tank is filling up with corals, i was wondering how the tank is getting enough light. I rented PAR meter and I found out that I had way too much light hitting my tank. 600-700 at the top and about 250-275 at the bottom. Really surprising.
I did play with my Hydra 26HD programs and this is what I came up with.

Here is the detail of peak:

Here are the PAR readings I am getting:
RED numbers are at the peak
YELLOW numbers are off-peak times

I will give it a few weeks and see how my corals will respond.

 

[ibondy]

and here is the first picture from my new Canon SL3 camera. Red Coco worm. Camera is awesome, now operator needs to get up to speed.

 

[SPR1968]

and here is the first picture from my new Canon SL3 camera. Red Coco worm. Camera is awesome, now operator needs to get up to speed.

Very nice, you can really tell the difference

 

[Blue Spot Octopus]

Hello I have the Coral Box 6000 pump, how do you use the gaskets, use two or four? first gasket between the pump and the barb, second gasket now between the ring and the barb so 2 gaskets per side? I lost my gaskets and Luke sent me 4, so I am not sure if I got two extra or suppose to use four. Thanks

 

[ibondy]

I would say you have 2 extra. I do not use anything on the intake side, and on the pressure side I use true union check valve, no need for seals.

 

[Blue Spot Octopus]

Thanks I will be running mine externally,
.
How is the Torq reactors working? I have bought the middle tube but not the motor dock as of yet.

 

[ibondy]

TORQ is OK, I like functionality but do not like that there is no safety latch on the cylinder and few times I dropped some media into the sump. Wish there was tighter fit.