Luke’s Reef

Luke’s reef · Aug 29, 2020

Evening all, its been a few weeks so I thought I would give you a little update on how the tank is going at about three weeks in. So if you have been keeping up with my build you would know that I decided to use the Red Sea reef mature to cycle my tank and its so far done one awesome job. So as per the instructions I added the CuC and fish bang on the days it told me to and I am happy to say they are all thriving and keeping the tank relativly clean from algae. So whats in the tank so far - I started off with a pair of clown fish and a cardinal and shortly after that I introduced the survivors from my old tank a foxface, blue spot gobby & blue cleaner wrasse as for clean up crew I currently have 2 huge super turbos, 2 fighting conch, 5 cerith snails, 5 narsissus snails, 5 bumble bee snails, a cleaner shrimp, a pom pom crab and a pistol shrimp and they are all living happily together.

I also added a few of my old corals which I dipped in AF protect dip just in case it had any injuries and to kick a few pests, so I now have my old sarcophyton leather coral along with three ricordia mushrooms and what i have been thinking for ages is a Acanthophyllia but no one I know not even my LFS knows exactly what it is and ill see if i can snap a pic tomorrow when its open. Now parameters wise the tanks not doing to bad as ive been away for around 5 days and have not been dosing what the program requires, but I have over the past two days been adjusting and dialing everything back to normal. As it stands:
Ammonia - 0
Ph - 8.2
KH - 8
No2 - 0
No3 - between 30/40
Mg - 1200
Ca - 385
Salinity - 1.024
Temp - 25.5 Cel

Ive just installed my new return pump (maxspect turbine duo) and had to readjust everything which sadly caused an overflow on my skimmer and leaking out if the cabinet quite a bit. When I got home from work and noticed about 5L or so of water was under and behind the cabinet, towels out and dried what I could then readjusted everything and I am hoping to god that the cabinet does not swell.... So whats next, well I am waiting to go to the store next week and buy a few meters of hose so I can finally hook up my chiller/media reactor to the manifold I made and hopefully using a mix of zeo lite, carbon and nitra phos minus all by Aqua forest will bring down the nitrates to around 10 ppm.

I am still waiting on my Tunze fuge light to arrive hopefully next week and that will also allow me to start running my refugium with chaeto and cualerpa to control nutrients. So far I am loving this tank and think #RedSeaAquatics have done an awesome job with the tanks even though they could do with tweaking a few things to make life easier.

I will try to post a few pictures/video tomorrow to show the progress.

Happy reefing!

Luke’s reef · Sep 3, 2020

Evening all, so here is the photo I promised lets see if any of you can id this LPS which I think is an Acanthophyllia. Also got a frag of zoas and two Other new corals today, a small frag of stylophora and a montipora blue/green plating see how they do in the tank

Also added a decent amount of caulerpa and teo small balls of cheato to my fuge. Still looking to find some red grape for the display as it give the same colour movement and food for fish.

hope you enjoy the photos, glad to have some of my old coral back. I look forward to seeing what you folks think the coral actually is.

Luke’s reef · Sep 14, 2020

Evening all, thought id give you an update on how the reef build is going so far. This week ive been seeing more and more dinos around the sand and some rocks no idea why, I have done my tests multiple times and using a few of my different kits and I am truly confused as i get consistent results but between kits the results are mind boggling.

with red sea test kit.

salinity 1.025
Temp 25.5
Ph 8.2
Kh 8.5
No2 0.5
Ammonia 0
No3 30/40ppm
Cal 375
Mg 1360

With aquaforest

salinity and temp same.
Kh 7.2
No3 5ppm
Cal 380
Mg 1200
Phos 0

with hanna
Cal 434
Kh 7.5

any one have any idea what I should do to correctly dose and adjust parameters??

Currently doing weekly water changes of 25L plus dosing aqua forest pro bio s + nitraphos minus, cleaning out filter socks and wool every other day also added AF zeo mix to the media cups. Im starting to think that my dual large bio blocks and rock in my tank are in sufficient as far as filtration goes. Massive buildup of slime on filter socks and wool every two days ‍

revhtree · Sep 14, 2020

Luke’s reef said:
So today was the big day, went for my order and they forgot to mail me my return pump and refug light. Oh well, got to do the scape and I must say it turned put good considering I have very little creativity for these things lol. I made a few attempts at using AF stone fix to get the rockwork Done but no matter how long i left it to cure or what consistency I used even following their video it was very brittle. Ended up using a mixture of the AF stone fix and some two part epoxy hope it holds up when wet.....

So tomorrow I think ill fill the tank with water and get the salt mix ready and see if i can borrow a return pump from a friend so I can atleast start to cycle the tank.

So thoughts on the products ive used today. D-d natural reef rock is awesome, very nice look and feel to them and very clean albit a little dusty they stack very well come in a nice variety of shapes.

Af stone fix left a lot to be desired, it harderned very quick and it did give me enough time to bond rocks a little at a time but found it was very brittle, maybe its best if left for 12/24 hrs Instead of the 15mins it states or the hr i waited. Sad really because I love AF products.

AF bio sand is absolutely spectacular, incredibly white and has a few purple/brown spots which give it an awesome look. And as an added bonus bring two bottles to make it live sand.

Marine pure bio bricks were absolutely massive and I had to stack them in the skimmer compartment just before the return pump, it feels very porus hoping it will become a massive bacteria hive very soon.

More to come soon, for now ill leave some pics of todays work hope you all enjoy.

Looking good bro!

Luke’s reef · Sep 14, 2020

revhtree said:
Looking good bro!

Thank you very much, slow and steady does it. Having a little trouble lately as im starting to doubt how efficient my filtration is and if I should trust my tests or not.

Luke’s reef · Oct 7, 2020

Good evening all so a little update on the tank, I sadly started loosing my chalice which started to peel its skin off. I have a massive bacterial bloom and my whole tank is currently white with a diatom bloom also happening, after testing out my water I think this has all happened due to phos being 0 and nitrates at 2ppm meaning water is to clean. I have bought a small Jebao UV to eliminate the suspended bacteria (bloom) and clear that issue out, as for the phos I will either try to buy some food grade and dose it or see if I can some how afford to buy a few extra fish this week and feed more often.

Test results as follows:
Temp - 25.5
Salinity - 1.025
Ph - 8.4
Nitrate - 2
Nitrite - 0
Kh - 7
Ca - 410
Mg - 1360
Phos - 0
Phos ULR - 8

I am also contemplating removing one of the media cups I have and putting my carbon sock in it as I am currently running two media cups with Aquaforest zeomix which could be to effective for my current bio load.

As for my setup changes, I have added my old teco TK 1000 chiller/heater combo and will be adding the UV light tomorrow. Sadly I am still waiting on my fuge lighting that I mentioned a few posts back. I will try to get you guys a few photos tomorrow.

Good night and happy reefing!

Luke’s reef · Oct 31, 2020

Ok so a quick update on how the tanks going as its been a few weeks since my last post. The Uv sterilizer I installed has almost removed all the cloudiness I was having in the tank and I can thankfully now see from one end to the other with little cloudiness. I have gotten a few new fish which are doing well, a hippo tang, india kole tang, pair of mandarins and a malanarus wrasse all of which are gettting along and eating nicely.

I sadly almost had a fire whilst I was out of town for two days as my TK 1000 chiller malfunctioned and caused the heater to literally burn the inside of the chilling section. Lucky enough my homes circuit detected the surge of current hitting the water and made the fuses jump and turn off thus saving my house and livestock. So im done with chillers and ill be switching to fans next summer and will try getting a thermo controller to work with a new heater.

The middle red see reef led 90 also stopped working and ive found this to be an overheating issue with the powersupply leading to a burning smell and will no longer turn on. Thankfully I contacted red sea support team and they have shipped me a new power supply which will hopefully arrive from France some time next week. Must say it was taken care of in just under two days brilliant customer service I must say.

As to the dinos, well that is still an ongoing issue due to the fact that I cannot get my No3 to go up and is stuck on 0 no matter how much feed or how long I leave the skimmer turned off same goes for Phos as its currently at 0.04. Next option would be to start manually dosing no3/phos using seachems fresh water products as ive been told they work, I will test them in small daily doses and see if it works and what effects I see after I use them. Will keep you all posted.

As for the overall stability of the tank, I must say it is fairly stable even without a dosing pump (have one just need to replace the white tubing which is being a nightmare to source locally). Having to manually dose daily is starting to be a pain so ill see if i can get a replacement asap. Looking at getting a BTA for the clowns next week along with a few SPS/LPS frags and see how they do.

Good night, happy Halloween and happy reefing!

Luke’s reef · Jan 15, 2021

Good afternoon folks,

well its been some time since my last post and man along with covid 19 what a rough few months its been so where to start....

well lets go with the worst part, I managed to get a bargin on a hippo tang from a local reefer who was at the time taking down his tank. Went over to his house saw the baby tang in other wise perfect looking shape eating well ect. So i went ahead and bought it for €20!! Fast forward a week later and yea ich appeared followed by the hippo stop eating altogether. Two weeks later ich developed into velvet... yes i know AT your fish but at my house that is not possible as i have absolutely no space for it.

Emergency dosed cupramin as the little amount of corals i had did not outweigh my fish stock. Two days later hippo died, few days after clowns + yellow eye kole tang died, two days later my foxface and pair of dragonets died. All that was left was a cardinal, 8 line wrasse, blue cleaner wrasse and a white sand sifting goby along with my pistol shrimp and skunk cleaner.

lesson learned and not buying from individuals only LFS as i have no way of setting up QT.

now for the lesser of two evils. After about a month with no signs of the dam parasite I have removed all traces of copper from the tank and added two new clowns who are eating and are otherwise looking healthy. But and here come the but... the GHA has almost completely disappeared and in its place is a clumpy grey mass which is fairly easy to blow off the rocks and pumps with a turkey baster but appears again over night... i cannot find anything online that looks similar so ill post on a few fb groups see if any one can assist but I am thinking its bacterial?? I stopped dosing no-pox last week and Back to using AF -np pro using bacteria instead of carbon source to lower no/po which are atm close to 0

The tank in its self has never looked better the water is crystal clear, something which i have never been able to achieve and am quite please about, but now this stramge thing is taking over and starting to smother my lps and zoas.

Tanks param’s

temp: 25 cel
Salinity 1.025
Ph 8
Ammonia 0
Nitrate 0
Nitrate 0
Phos 0.012
Ca 410
Mg 1180
Kh 7.7dkh
Silictates 0
Copper 0

Luke’s reef · Jan 15, 2021

Oh and the tank is only on whites for the photos, its usually very very blue and only 30% whites.

Luke’s reef · Apr 9, 2021

Evening all, well its been a while. I can happily day that I no longer have the issue with that strange goop which I am convinced was bacteria colonising on the rocks due to nopox. Few weeks after I was told by a friend to stop dosing it and bing the dam thing started to die.

Got a few sps frags that were doing really well till wife went into labour and I completely ignored manually dosing on the tank for about a week lol lets just say ive lost most of the new corals i got due to having the kh drop to 6.5 and a few of my old lps are starting to recede

After whats happened I replaced my old broken doser with a new one by coral box and I must say it is dam accurate, happy so far.

Now the next task at hand is getting a monitor system BUT I cannot decide on which, really love the dam apex but again the GHL is also interesting however requires a ton more space for the needed equipment. Also looked at the spanish made xepta autobalence but it doesn't finish convincing me.

At the end of the day I want to properly monitor CA, MG, PH, KH, Salinity and temp as I use the aqua forest balling method the trace is added with the three main parameters so I don't care about monitoring that...but the ION director on that GhL looks to do no3 which would be another test I could stop doing manually.

any tips guys been looking at tons of stuff for the past month lol