Julie's Reefer 350 Build Thread

LovesDogs_CatsRokay · Jan 24, 2018

The hubby and I picked up a new-to-us Red Sea Reefer 350. We have wanted one pretty much since about a month after we set up our first tank, a BioCube 32, this time last year. We are so excited to get started!

Equipment list (all used except for return pump and rock):

Red Sea Reefer 350
Sicce Syncra 4.0 return pump
EcoTech MP40 QWD powerhead
Reef Octopus 152 Skimmer
Eheim 250w heater
2 x Kessil A360WE
Apex Classic with ALD and WXM modules
70lbs Marco rock
20lbs CarribSea Life Rock

We wanted to use rock from Tampa Bay Saltwater, but they are on a hiatus for a few months it seems, and we are so sad

. We were really looking forward to all the critters!

After getting it all plumbed and doing a leak test it turns out the main drain pipe has a faulty O-ring, and leaks. We have a new one on the way though! According to Red Sea the O-rings become compressed after a long time and don’t expand back to normal when you disassemble the pipe. That causes it to not fit exactly right and leak when you reassemble it.

We decided to go ahead and fill up just the display tank with water to get the cycle started while we wait. We added a couple shells with coralline from the BioCube, dumped in a bottle of FritzZyme 9, and added some of Dr. Tims ammonia. We are already starting to see some brown on the rocks a couple days later. I’m guessing because of the shells we added.

We also set up our first quarantine tank. It’s just a 10 gallon tank, with a HOB filter, small powerhead, and heater. We added a bottle of BioSpira, but it may have been bad because it was shipped during the super cold weather, so we also added some SeaChem stability. We then added Dr. Tim’s ammonia, but apparently overdosed and killed all the bacteria. We did a 50% water change and added more SeaChem stability yesterday. The ammonia is slowly going down now. We are going to try catching our ruby red head wrasse from the BioCube and put him in quarantine until the new tank is ready. He has outgrown the BioCube and is becoming a bully (we think). Our poor anthias has been hiding in the rock for weeks now and we’re worried she will starve if we don’t get the wrasse out. She will eventually be moved the big tank also.

Thats about it so far, can't wait to post updates, and we can't forget a couple pictures!!!

WWIII · Jan 24, 2018

Congrats on the beautiful new tank! Looks great so far! The wrasse and anthias are gonna love the bigger tank! Any other must have fish on the list? Corals?

LovesDogs_CatsRokay · Jan 24, 2018

WWIII said:
Congrats on the beautiful new tank! Looks great so far! The wrasse and anthias are gonna love the bigger tank! Any other must have fish on the list? Corals?

Thanks! Fish we are thinking about include a couple more anthias, a yellow coris wrasse, a midas blenny, a flame angel, a couple clowns, and a yellow tang. I know the yellow tang is iffy in this size tank, but we plan to get a small one and I've read they grow pretty slowly. We honeymooned in Hawaii, and they were soooo beautiful in the wild. My husband is all about the fish, and I'm all about the corals, so it works out pretty well. I have a frogspawn, torch, duncan, and chalice in the BioCube that will be transferred over. It will be a mixed reef tank with LPS and SPS. We are just starting to get into SPS, I'm hoping the 2 kessil lights will be enough, but might have to consider getting a 3rd one at some point.

WWIII · Jan 24, 2018

You should have no problem keeping sps alive and growing ok with 2 kessils, but eventually a 3rd kessil would help the growth for sure! SPS is awesome and extremely addictive! Easy to fit lot's of amazing pieces into a tank that size! Watching the sticks grow and change colors is easily one of my favorite parts in this hobby! My wife likes the "flowy" corals like torches and other euphyllia, but I keep telling her they take up too much room! There's a bunch in my tank, but as it matures I find myself buying more and more acropora!

LovesDogs_CatsRokay · Jan 27, 2018

Adventures in Fishing!

Last night we were able to catch our wrasse in the BioCube using this homemade fish trap. It only took about 4 hours before she finally went in. I was sitting near the tank watching Hulu on my phone waiting for her and all of a sudden noticed her thrashing around inside. I yelled to my husband HELP! We caught her! HELP! ... lol! He rushed over, grabbed the trap and transferred her to the QT tank. She was actually pretty calm waiting for us to get the trap open. Just kept eating the food we had put in it as bait.

She's only staying in the QT tank for now until the new tank is ready. She was being too much of a bully in the BioCube. She hid in the fake coral the whole night, and is now just hanging out in one corner not moving around a whole lot. I hope she's just stressed from the drama of the fish trap.

Update on the new Reefer tank:

The drain pipe and o-ring hasn't arrived from Red Sea yet, but we got this set of o-ring's from amazon, https://www.amazon.com/Performance-Tool-W5202-Assortment-407-Piece/dp/B000XW3OAI We used one of them to replace the existing ring on the pipe. Worked like a charm! No more leaks! We are now in the process of filling up the sump. Its a good thing because our rocks are already pretty covered in diatoms. The initial dose of ammonia reached zero today so I put another dose in. Hopefully it’s gone by tomorrow so we can hurry up and get our clean-up crew in there!

LovesDogs_CatsRokay · Feb 6, 2018

The tank is doing great. We got the sump all set up and the cycle finished a couple days ago. We moved our ruby head wrasse into it and he seems so much happier! He really loves exploring all the new caves!

We picked up two new beautiful fish at the LFS. A McCoskers (I think) flasher and a pin tail wrasse. Both are males and are doing great in QT. Both are active and eating well.

We ordered one of the new Red Sea lids a week ago and put that together. It doesn’t look too bad but was a pain to assemble. Took about 3 hours, and I guess we made the netting too tight because it doesn’t lay quite flat. It does the job though.

LovesDogs_CatsRokay · Feb 27, 2018

Not a whole lot to update. The McCosker's flasher wrasse died in QT after about 10 days. Our LFS gave us a deal on another one, and both fish are doing well now. We added a cleanup crew from reef cleaners (got the package sized for 40g), and added a rather large halloween hermit. We also added an urchin, it looks similar to a black long spine urchin, but it spines are shorter, it doesn't have an orange eye spot, and the blue lines on it are solid lines not dots. I'm not really sure what it is. We transferred some LPS coral from the BioCube and it all seems happy.

We are thinking about ordering 10-20lbs of rock from Tampa Bay Saltwater now that they are back open again, and replacing some of the Marco rock.

Also, we got our first clam and put him in the BioCube! We might move him to the Reefer tank when it has matured some since there's not a lot of space in the BioCube. The clam is about 5 or 6 inches across.

LovesDogs_CatsRokay · Mar 15, 2018

We received 20lbs of live rock from Tampa Bay Saltwater yesterday to help seed the dry rock in the tank. Here are a few pics. We found a handful of porcelain crabs that we kept, a handful of gorillas that we didn't keep, and a couple unidentified crabs that we decided to keep also. No mantis shrimp, but what we think is a tiny baby cleaner, and a few urchins. Lots of sponges and macro-algae!

LovesDogs_CatsRokay · Jun 21, 2018

WOW haven't posted an update on the tank in a lonnng time! I think we must have had beginners luck with the biocube, because things are not going so well with this tank.

Had a un-realized phosphate issue, and too low alk and mag. It was a busy sprint and we went way too long without a water change. Doing a water change on the new tank with the sump and everything was much more intimidating than on the biocube, so we just didn’t do it. We lost a bunch of corals, crabs and urchins as a result. We are working to get the phosphates under control with phosphate RX and actually doing water changes. And we have switched to Red Sea pro salt instead of the blue bucket.

Getting our water level stabilized has been a huge headache. It kept switching between blowing air and being super noisy. Seems like we were adjusting the valve five times a day! One day last week I came home to the pump blowing nothing but air and the water level almost to the top of the overflow box. I think we’ve got it worked now though. There were, I believe two problems. Our pump was simply too strong for the return drain, so we slowed it down a couple notches. And the ATO was not keeping up with evaporation, so we increased the flow rate on it and raised the level of the float valve to its a little bit higher.

To top it off we now have ich!

We lost 3 carberryi anthias before we knew what was happening. That was a couple weeks ago. We have decided to give Kick-Ich a try before we go the route of trying to catch all the fish and treat with copper. Our ruby head wrasse and one remaining anthias (lyretail) do not have, and have not had, any spots or symptoms. Our flasher wrasse was covered in spots but seems like his immune system saved him and all his spots cleared up in a couple days. Our midas blenny and flame angel are the only two with spots now. They are still both eating and very active. Hopefully they can recover on their own and the Kich-Ich will take care of the free swimmers.

There are a few things going well with the tank now. We have a bunch of zoas and a couple torches that are doing great. We have a BTA that we picked up few months ago at a local frag swap that is still small but seems happy. Our original urchin is also still kicking! We had to move our maxima clam from the biocube to here because it was being overtaken by a huge BTA. It seems to be doing even better now than it was in the biocube. I really hope it continues to do so. Oh! and our first spots of coralline showed up on the powerhead and back glass the other day! woohoo!

I think thats about it for now. Will post back with results on the ich situation.

Here's a recent picture and a cute video of the fish sharing some nori!

LovesDogs_CatsRokay · Jun 24, 2018

Ugh! Woke up today to the pump completely blowing air again! This time the ATO was completely full, it hadn’t run at all. We noticed there was no drip coming from the float valve. We unhooked the line and blew out a bunch of gunk. Hooked it back up and it still didn’t drip. Had to unhook the float valve itself and clean it. Turns out it was clogged too. Now it runs at a constant drip so I guess instead of increasing the flow rate the other day I should have checked for clogs first. I’m not sure if I need to slow it back down or not? As long as it stops when the valve is closed does it matter how fast it drips when it opens?

We got two new clowns. They’re currently residing in QT and are so cute and happy. They seem to have already bonded. They’re names are Killian and Emma for all you OUaT fans out there. Our clowns in the BioCube are named Snow and Charming.

00Barracuda00 · Jun 25, 2018

Having dialed back the flow on the syncra, would you recommend it for a 350?

LovesDogs_CatsRokay · Jun 25, 2018

00Barracuda00 said:
Having dialed back the flow on the syncra, would you recommend it for a 350?

Yes, I would. We haven't had any other problems with it, and it is extremely quiet. The only thing is that the return tubing did not fit the outlet of the pump. When we bought the tank it came with a different pump that had an outlet or maybe adapter on it that fit the tube. Luckily we were able to swap the outlet on the syncra with the one from the old pump. Since we bought the thank used though, I'm not entirely sure what piping comes with it new or if it had any adapters included that would make it fit out of the box. I've also read since then that we could have heated the tube to stretch it and make it fit.

00Barracuda00 · Jun 25, 2018

Thanks! I'm in a similar boat. Just picked up a used 350 and trying to find the right parts here and there. It's slow going, but tips like that really help.

LovesDogs_CatsRokay · Jun 26, 2018

Woke up yesterday to another death

our sea cucumber was hanging out of the powerhead

I had no idea those things could climb! It could have be worse though. We are lucky that it didn’t spill its guts and foul up the tank or release any fish-killing toxins.

There was a surprise too ... a huge black spine urchin that we hadn’t seen in over a month reappeared! We thought he had died but nope just hiding! He lost all his spines of course but I think he will recover and grow them back.

Yay!

LovesDogs_CatsRokay · Jul 2, 2018

Well, the kick ich isn't working. Big surprise, right? We setup a 29 gallon QT and moved all survivors there over the weekend. They were pretty easy to catch surprisingly. I held some food with tweezers and skimmed it across the top of the water, and as the fish chased after it Hubby scooped them up with a net. They must have known it was in their best interest to let us catch them

I ordered the Hanna digital tester for copper. As soon as that gets here we will start treating them. I don't feel comfortable starting with only the API test kit to go by, especially with wrasses.

We decided to keep our new clown fish separate in their own 10 gallon QT. I'm not sure if I should go ahead and treat them with copper too. Our original plan was only to observe, but now after dealing with this I'm considering prophylactic treatment might be better.

LovesDogs_CatsRokay · Jul 18, 2018

The mesh lid that's currently on the tank leaves a lot to be desired. Would love to win a new lid from Octo Aquatics! Check out their contest here! https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/the-octo-aquatics-choose-your-own-prize-giveaway.418772/

LovesDogs_CatsRokay · Aug 6, 2018

Day 37 of our fallow period ughhhhhh. We have decided we do not want to ever do this again so we set up a coral and invert QT that will remain fishless.

Our LFS owner tried to convince us to put a sixline or yellow coris wrasse in it because the coral need fish poop and they “do not get ich” but we know better thanks to this forum.

It’s a simple setup. Just a 20L with an SB Reef light, HOB filter, small powerhead, and some live rock from the LFS.

We have filled it with an awesome octospawn, some frags from the recent WWC live sale, and some inverts the LFS had on special.

Only 39 more days to go.

LovesDogs_CatsRokay · Jan 4, 2019

Well. This build thread was meant to be a running history of the tank so that I could look back over time and see the progression. Clearly I've failed since the last post was from August and it's now January. So my new year's resolution is going to be to update this thread each month with at least one full tank shot. The tank is just a few weeks short of a year old now. And it's doing alright finally. We obviously made it through the fallow period. And are finally seeing stable water params, I even have a monti cap that's actually growing. It's my first SPS to actually do well, I'm so excited! (The small things, right?)

Since the fallow period, we've added a couple feather dusters, 4 rock flower nems, a bunch of corals, a green/purple BTA, and our orange BTA split.

Current fish list:
Ruby red wrasse
Coral Beauty
White Clown Fish
Black Clown Fish
Gold Midas Blenny
3 Resplendent Anthias (still in QT)

Current pictures: