Mark's "Carefully Neglected" Reefs(Red Sea 625xxl and E-170)

Mark

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I've been finding myself participating more again on the forums, so I figure I'd go ahead and document my current reefkeeping state while I'm at it. I've been keeping aquariums since I was in elementary school. The aquarium hobby is one of the few passions that has stuck with me my whole life. My first salt tank was in 1990 when I was in middle school. It wasn't a huge success. The undergravel filter grew a lot of Cyano, and I remember my tomato clown treated the cyano like an anemone. My first reef was in 1995 reusing the same tank. It had Florida live rock, flourescent strip lights, and a Skilter. I actually had good success given the time and equipment. For some reason, I had great luck with sponges in that system. Since then, I've had numerous reef tanks... And it would be boring to recap all the systems. But the highlight reel would show a wide variety of husbandry shifts, changes in types of corals, etc. A lot of that curiosity has been documented on some well known blogs, as well as some small footnotes in books. I've had seagrass tanks, reefs running original Walter Adey dump bucket ATS, carbon dosing, and true Jaubert system, berlin, you name it. Hopefully I can dig up some old pics. Anyway back to the not so distant past.....

Around 2015, I noticed my longstanding 180-gallon tank was looking rough and deemed it ready to be replaced. This was the most recent pic I could find before tearing it down:
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In it's place I upgraded to a 225-gallon, which was the largest tank I could fit in the space. The tank did well for the 3 years I had it.

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Unfortunately, I didn't anticipate that we would find ourselves wanting to remodel the main floor of the house a few years later. That meant tearing down the tank and moving it. We also liked the idea of converting the free'd up space to a play area for the kids. The good news is that we had just renovated our finished basement, and there was a good spot for a reef tank down there. The only issue was that the wall was shorter and would not accommodate the 225-gallon. So I found myself needing to downsize to a 5-foot tank. Ultimately, I settled on a Red Sea Reefer 625xxl. I really like the design of these tanks.

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In the midst of all these decisions, catastrophe struck. One particular morning, I noticed an electrical smell near the existing reef aquarium. I poked my head around and found nothing. My wife called me a few hours later at work and informed me that there was smoke coming out of the aquarium stand! I rushed home on my lunch break, and finally discovered the electrical cord had completely disconnected from the heater! I had a bare copper wire sitting in my sump surging with electricity every time the apex thermostat activated it. The water in the sump had black soot on the surface. The corals were all bleaching in the display. I was devastated.

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The only silver lining is that this didn't happen a week later when we were out of town. I made a quick run to my local fish store and stocked up on Purigen, Cuprisorb, Carbon, and Polyfilter. You could say I was throwing the kitchen sink of media at the problem. I also proceeded with 2 large water changes. I think the electrical current was causing electrolysis of the copper wire. And we all know what copper does to inverts. Long story short, I lost a lot of my corals.

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So there I was with a plan to downsize and move the reef to the basement, and an existing tank full of dying corals. I sat back in a semi-burned out state and reflected on the opportunity to start somewhat fresh. Of all the types of tanks I've set up, the tanks that I enjoyed most were uncomplicated mixed reefs with lots of diversity. I'll always get a kick out of noticing some small hitchiker or cryptic fish. And the tranquility of moving soft corals in a mixed reef is hard to beat. The heater catastrophe impacted my existing SPS population more than the LPS and softies. In a way that was a mixed blessing, as I wouldn't have had room for all the corals in the downsize and it helped steer my tank more towards that mixed reef idea. I'll dive into the build of the current tank in the next posting, but here's how it looks as of this date:

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Mark

Mark

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When it comes to running reef tanks, I tend to follow a principle of "careful neglect". Life gets busy, and I need my tank to be able to run on auto-pilot from time to time.

I think I was able to "carefully neglect" my previous reef because it was in a high traffic zone of the house. It forced me to keep the tank attractive and allowed me to quickly catch issues. Moving a tank to a low traffic zone of the house could mean that careful neglect degrades to careless neglect. This worried me. How would I keep this tank healthy in a low traffic area? My solution was technology and creating a task schedule. I've been a loyal Neptune Systems user for a long time. I had an AquaController 3 running my reef years ago, and I eventually switched over to the original Apex. My existing Apex Classic was working fine, but there were compelling reasons to move to the latest Apex version with this basement tank:

  • Power Monitoring: With my previous tank in a high traffic zone of the house, I quickly noticed when a pump was acting up. In the basement, I might not notice these issues immediately. The newer Apex would alert me of any deviation in power usage for all of my devices. If a pump dies or clogs, I'll get an alert.
  • 1-Link: I was always short on outlets on the EB8/DC8 power strips. I opted for a Neptune Core 15 return pumpand DOS dosing system. Both plug into the EB-832 1-link ports and free up outlets. Not only that, they allow for more feedback and control.

The next addition for this low-traffic zone tank was leak detection. I opted for the LDK kit from Neptune, placing a sensor next to my RO reservoir and reef sump.

Next up was calcium/alk management... Reducing the tank size by around 100 gallons meant dosing 2-part would be less cost prohibitive. I replaced my trustworthy GeosReef Calcium Reactor with the Apex DOS. I was curious if removing the calcium reactor would make algae management easier. It would me less CO2 and depressed pH. To go full lazy, I threw in Neptune's AFS autofeeder as well. This tank is about 90% run by Neptune Apex, which afforded me a lot of monitoring and automation via a single pane of glass(their fusion portal). The only things I manage separately are the lights(more on that below) and 2 Maxspect Gyre circulation pumps(which are controlled by Maxspect's Advanced Controller). Still, nothing beats visual indicators. It would be nice to be able to check on the tank without going downstairs. I was long overdue in adding a web cam. I opted for a Nest Cam, which I was able to integrate into the Apex Fusion Portal. Overall, I've been very happy with this camera. I may opt for a second cam for the sump area.

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The final piece of the puzzle was lighting. I had a rough ride with LED's in the past. Eventually I went back to traditional sources like halides and T5. But a lot has evolved in the LED space, and I was seeing a lot of successful LED illuminated tanks in person. I wanted to try it again. I picked up some used AI Hydra 52 HD's along with a single Hydra 26 HD. This combination over a 5 foot length doesn't seem to have the same harsh shadow issues I had with LED's in the past. The quality of the light and cloud-enabled control has been fantastic. It's great to be able to download a lighting schedule from someone with proven success and simply upload it to your lights! The one thing I was not fond of were the HMS mounts. I splurged on some European market D-D Slimline Designer Brackets. The cost of the brackets and international shipping could have bought me another AI Hydra, but they are worth the investment. It's a shame nobody in the USA carries them.

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For refugium lighting, I settled on the Tunze 8821 waterproof LED. I liked the magnetic mount and being able to mount it close to the water. This keeps the skimmer compartment dark, to avoid algae growth there. It also doesn't get in the way when trying to work on the skimmer or rear sump compartment. The light seems adequate, but I'm already wishing I had ponied up for the more expensive Tunze 8850. The 8850 would have made my refugium even more productive.

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Between the Neptune Apex Fusion portal, my.aquaillumination.com, and the Nest Camera with cloud storage.... I feel like I'm running a fully cloud enabled reef aquarium. 20 years ago, I would have never been able to imagine this. I am also using the Apex Fusion portal to log any changes I make, test results, and also set up task reminders for when I should replace the chemical media or service my equipment. I particularly like their intelligent data enrichment around the popular test kit brands. When I selected the test kits I'm using(Nyos), it is able to extrapolate what the titration values equate to in terms of value for that test kit. I'm debating the idea of integrating the Gyres and AI Hydra control into the Apex as well. That would consolidate all control in one place.
 
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Thanks all!

After running the last few of my large tanks barebottom with tons of flow, I was ready to go back to some substrate. Again, the inspiration was more diversity. I opted to get sand and some seed rocks from TBS in Tampa. More diversity more diversity.


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This led to some small headaches. First issue was hunting down a mantis shrimp. Traps didn't work, so I eventually had to remove the rock and do soda water dips to get him out. Then all the old fish from my previous tank became infected with ich. My old reef was ich free, the fish had all gone through CP in the past. They didn't even get ich during the heater blow up in old tank. I suspect some tomonts were present in the sand or rock I ordered. Instead of going fallow and treating the fish in a quarantine, I opted to increase feeding and add a UV sterilizer. All but two fish pulled through, and subsequent fish additions have done well.

No regrets on the TBS rock, the benefits have outweighed the negatives. Lots of interesting hitchikers. The most fascinating thing about this truly "live sand" is that I never went through the expected Cyano phase. The substrate has stayed clean and pristine.
 
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The sump and electrical is pretty straightforward. I don't like clutter so I did what I could to hide the chords and keep it clean. The skimmer is a small Seaside model with a Sicce pump. It's grossly undersized for the tank, but I wanted to skim less on this tank for various reasons. I have bigger skimmers in storage if some problem occurs that would be attributable to an undersized skimmer. So far I have stuck with ESV B-Ionic for dosing. I've always used it on smaller tanks and it works well.

reef - 1 (2).jpg

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Loved all the details, Mark. Looks excellent. That TBS rock looks really rich.
 
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Gorgeous build! That’s rotten luck with the old heater. What type was it, if you don’t mind sharing.

Thanks Kryssie! I wish I remembered the model. I went back to old school Ebo's, which seem to hold up a little better. While it sucks to lose corals, the potential risk that I could have had my hand in the sump when the heater kicked on freaks me out. I guess that is why folks advocate GFCI.

Loved all the details, Mark. Looks excellent. That TBS rock looks really rich.

Thanks NY_Caveman, the rock was insanely alive. If you look carefully, you can see a mithrax crab crawling around in that pic. Beyond the ich and mantis, the only other bad hitchhikers I've had to manage was an unidentified snail eating my lobophytum and numerous whelks. Both were easy to catch.

The hitch-hiked ich tomonts were a downer, but it was a good lesson in why I joined the camp against prophylactic treatment of fish in quarantine(I used to religiously treat all new fish with CP and Prazi). I don't want to go into historical detail, but I had an ich breakout many years ago from introducing a snail cleanup crew in an old tank. I thought that was just a freak coincidence of tomonts hitching rides on rocks/shells/sand could infect a tank. Then it happens again years later. At this point, I don't think prophylactic treatment of fish is worth it unless one is willing to keep any new rock/sand/corals in a fallow staging tank for two months. But there are plenty of threads debating the immunity approach.

Getting back to the tank, moving the corals went well. The tank had a brief dino outbreak, which I suspected was due to the new tank not being very mature and perhaps overdoing it with some GFO in the beginning. I pulled the chemical filtration and noticed things improving. Then adding the UV seemed to kill off the remaining dino's. Beyond that, I didn't really see much of the new tank 'ugly phase'. I suspect that the TBS rock/sand as well as the established rock from previous tank helped. The only documentation of the tank move was moving my family of fungias. I had a small rock with fungia anthocauli, and it would bud off fungias monthly. The fungia factory eventually stopped, which was a good thing. I got tired of having to give them away. Even now, these fungias have gotten so large they are stinging a lot of my other LPS. The interesting thing is that they don't seem to bother my treasured orange Herpolithas. I guess that is a testament to them being closely related corals.

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In this pic you can see the fungia did some damage to my favia. That favia is over a decade old grown from a single polyp. It's probably time to give away a few more fungia.

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Obligatory top down shot during an infrequent water change:

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Small update. As you can see in the second to last pic in my last post, the fungias were getting really large and stinging some of my other cherished corals. I decided to rehome them. These grew from an anthocauli rock that would pop off little fungias every month. It was fun growing them out.

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Other than that, my skimmer was acting up due to calcium deposits in the air intake and I found that my doser wasn't adding as much alk as it was calcium(I didn't get a good seal on the tubing after taking the DDR out for a cleaning). I fixed both issues, and will probably do a water change to sort out any imbalance.

While working in the sump I discovered two baby Banghai's. That was a nice surprise. I kicked off my brine shrimp hatchery, but they seemed to be faring well on just the refugium microfauna.

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You know what's better than a Red Sea tank? Two Red Sea Tanks. :)

reef - 1 (9).jpg

Awesome, what's the plan for this tank ? I have the rsm 625xxl also, I really like it so far. Am I seeing in one picture that you modified the overflow cover to mount the single hydra 26? I've been debating between trying to light my tank with 3 or 4 Kessil A360x and the overflow makes mounting the lights hard to keep the spacing symmetrical on the 5 ft tank. How did you mod the cover? Your tank looks great and I will be following along.
 

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Awesome, what's the plan for this tank ? I have the rsm 625xxl also, I really like it so far. Am I seeing in one picture that you modified the overflow cover to mount the single hydra 26? I've been debating between trying to light my tank with 3 or 4 Kessil A360x and the overflow makes mounting the lights hard to keep the spacing symmetrical on the 5 ft tank. How did you mod the cover? Your tank looks great and I will be following along.
I know you weren't asking me but I have a 5 foot waterbox. I started with 3 a360x's and added a 4th because I want to do a few more SPS this time. I have some pics posted with them up if you want to check my link. Kessil does make an extension that mounts lower on the back of your tank if you want to put one directly above the overflow.
 

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I know you weren't asking me but I have a 5 foot waterbox. I started with 3 a360x's and added a 4th because I want to do a few more SPS this time. I have some pics posted with them up if you want to check my link. Kessil does make an extension that mounts lower on the back of your tank if you want to put one directly above the overflow.

How do I find your link to see your pictures.
 
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Awesome, what's the plan for this tank ? I have the rsm 625xxl also, I really like it so far. Am I seeing in one picture that you modified the overflow cover to mount the single hydra 26? I've been debating between trying to light my tank with 3 or 4 Kessil A360x and the overflow makes mounting the lights hard to keep the spacing symmetrical on the 5 ft tank. How did you mod the cover? Your tank looks great and I will be following along.

The overflow cover has some recessed lines in it that make it look like you can pop out a rectangular cutout. But I had to cut in with a hacksaw before I could twist that section back and forth to weaken the uncut line and pull it out. Hard to describe.

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The only issue is that my light mount screws are huge on these euro mounts. And so the cover doesn’t sit completely flush. But I’m ok with that since it still does the job of keeping fish and algae growth out of the overflow box.

Regarding the smaller E-170, the goal was two fold. After tearing down the 225 in the sun room and building the 625xxl in the basement, my wife commented that she missed having a tank in the main living area(music to my ears). I have some latezonatus clowns that I keep in a beat up 40 breeder in an unfinished storage room, that I think would look great in a dedicated bubble tip anemone tank upstairs. I can’t put them in the big reef, because war would break out with my 15 year old perculas.
 

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