McJaeger's Red Sea Reefer 250 (Pic heavy!)

[McJaeger]

Hey everyone! I figured I'd start a build thread for this new tank I just started, seems to be what all the cool kids are doing these days . I've been keeping aquariums for around 10 years now, most of which have been freshwater planted tanks. After running a few high tech tanks I decided that freshwater turned out to be too easy to keep my interest long term, so I tore down my tank and set up a Fluval Evo 13.5 in the spring of last year. And like most people who start this hobby I immediately realized how quickly you run out of room in nano tanks, so it's now time to move to something larger. I managed to snag a deal on a Reefer 250 v3 at my LFS and I had to jump on it, good timing too considering all of this mandatory free time I have on my hands now. My equipment list is pretty basic at the moment, but I figure as long as what I get is reliable I can always upgrade to better things later on. I'm planning on setting this tank up as a primarily LPS tank with some easy SPS, so I don't need to get too intense with the equipment.

Fish & Inverts

• 1x Royal Gramma
• 1x Lawnmower blenny
• 1x Banggai cardinalfish
• 1x McCosker's flasher wrasse
• Loads of corals (Softies, LPS, some SPS)
• 10x blue leg hermits
• 10x trochus snails

In-Tank Equipment

• Return pump: Jebao DCP-3500
• Powerheads: 2x Jebao OW-25s
• Dosing pump: Jebao DP-4
• Lights: 2x AI Prime HDs, 1x AI Hydra 26 HD.
  • I picked these up on facebook marketplace for pretty cheap, lots of people tearing down nano tanks on there.
• Skimmer: Reef Octopus Classic 110-INT
• Tank Monitor/PAR Meter: Seneye Reef Monitor
• pH contol: DIY CO2 Scrubber
• Heater: Hygger 300W Quartz heater
• Mechanical filtration: 1x Red Sea Reefer filter media cups with poly fil and Chemipure Elite. Using the filter sock that came with the reefer 250 in the other slot.
• Tank cabinet lighting: 16.4 ft dimmable LED strip w/ adhesive backing
• Rock: Nature's Ocean dry rock
• Sand: 40 lbs of Carib Sea Arag-Alive Special Grade
• Bacteria source: Coralline Algae in a Bottle

I also wanted to give myself as much space as possible in the tank cabinet for reactors, dosers etc. that I'll probably add in the future, so I picked up a cabinet on wayfair and modded it with white shelves from Home Depot to display the controllers for all the various pumps and powerheads. Ultimately it came out super clean looking and way better than I expected.

Equipment cabinet

• Display cabinet: Jace 2 door accent cabinet
• Shelves for the wiring box
  • These were cut down to size using a circular saw and a jigsaw
• Magnetic catches for holding display board in place
• VHB tape for mounting the sides of the wiring box inside the cabinet
• Grommets: 6x 1.5" furniture hole cover
• Power strip: PC-100A power strip
• 8x 6" plug extenders
  • These aren't the exact ones I used, but I plugged one of these into the back of every switched outlet on the power strip.

I didn't want to wait for return line plumbing to be delivered, so I 3D printed some! The links for the files I used are below. This ended up saving me ~$70 in plumbing equipment and a week of waiting for the delivery, so if you have a 3D printer and black PETG filament laying around it's definitely worth a shot.

3D Printer files for return plumbing & light shade

• Note: Everything was printed out of PETG on an Ultimaker 2 with 0.1mm layer height and 100% infill. No supports.
• Loc-line links and random flow nozzles (Printed at 1/2")
• Loc-line adapter for Red Sea Reefers (Printed at 1/2")
• AI Prime HD Light shade (custom design)
• AI Hydra 26 HD Light shade (custom design)

The tank is officially cycling, with a fill date of 3/28/20. I'm using deli shrimps as an ammonia source and I'll be adding some purple helix bottled coralline once it gets delivered. Overall I'm taking the cycle nice and slow and will be following BRS' four month cycle. If I'm going to do it, I might as well do it right.

I'd like to see what everyone thinks about my rock layout though. I spent a few days with a chisel, aquarium epoxy, fiberglass rods, and superglue molding the rocks I had into some structures but I'm not sure if I'm sold on it. I think the overhang may be a bit too straight and high up. But maybe that's just my inner perfectionist speaking. If anyone has any questions about anything, feel free to ask!

 

[ndrwater]

Excellent start!!! Make sure to go into your prilofile to get your "Build Thread" badge!!
And #WelcometoR2R !!!

 

[Mastiffsrule]

Welcome indeed.

love the rock work. Keep updating as you go.

 

[powers2001]

@McJaeger great start !!! I'm doing an IKEA mod on my Reefer 250 build thread although the IKEA cabinet is a bathroom hanging cabinet and I'm going to bolt it to the side of my Reefer stand. It's only 8 inches deep. Click on the link in my signature line and see my build thread.

 

[Phil D.]

Congrats on the bigger tank! I have the E-260 and you will find that the Primes won't give you the amount of light you need. You may want to switch to Hydra 26s. Also, be careful on how low you have the output nozzles as they will siphon the DT .

 

[McJaeger]

Congrats on the bigger tank! I have the E-260 and you will find that the Primes won't give you the amount of light you need. You may want to switch to Hydra 26s. Also, be careful on how low you have the output nozzles as they will siphon the DT .

Good point about the nozzles, I had a minor flooding issue with that this week and have raised them up a bit in the water column. I actually found someone willing to part with their old hydra 26 hd and have added that to the center of the tank. I also modified the shades on the primes to give them a tighter fit and fitted them and the hydra with light diffusers to reduce the discoball effect on the sandbed. With all three lights at around 70% intensity I'm getting a PAR range of 50-360 depending on the location, so that'll give me some flexibility with corals since I'm planning on setting up a mixed reef.

 

[McJaeger]

Got another update - the tank is officially cycled and stocked! I finally hit zero ammonia, nitrites, nitrates, and phosphates after starting a makeshift refugium. I added a golf ball sized clump of chaeto to the front chamber of the sump and lit it with a full spectrum 6500k grow light on an 8 hour photoperiod - it went way better than I expected. In two weeks the chaeto grew 5x in size and dropped the nitrates (20 ppm) and phosphates (0.25 ppm) down to zero. I've also installed a Reef Octopus Classic 110-INT and a bag of Chemipure Elite to one of the filter cups. This will by my first time using a skimmer considering all of my previous tanks have been nanos, so any advice on how to tune them or use them properly would be appreciated.

I should also mention that I designed and printed a diffuser for my hydra 26 hd. This one is a bit cleaner than other ones I've seen online and took a few tries to get right, but I'm a fan of the final outcome.

 

[McJaeger]

Livestock! Right after detectable ammonia and nitrites dropped to zero I took a trip out to my LFS and have been adding fish/inverts slowly over the last few weeks (shout out to the guys at @WWC - your team is super knowledgeable and willing to help out!). As of now I have the following animals cruising around the tank. They're all pretty shy still, but we'll see how things progress.

• 1x Royal Gramma
• 1x Lawnmower blenny
• 2x Banggai cardinalfish
• 10x blue leg hermits
• 10x trochus snails

 

[dwair]

Very nice! Wish I knew how to 3D print lol

 

[Brent Behringer]

Great build. Tank looks super! Following along. Just started my Reefer 250 build. Waiting for parts to arrive.

 

[kartrsu]

Any update?

 

[McJaeger]

Any update?

I've got plenty of updates! Just haven't had time to write them out. The long and short of it is I've got it fully stocked with coral and I've been adding more equipment along the way. I'll try and write it up tomorrow.

 

[kartrsu]

I've got plenty of updates! Just haven't had time to write them out. The long and short of it is I've got it fully stocked with coral and I've been adding more equipment along the way. I'll try and write it up tomorrow.

Awesome! Looking forward to it.

 

[McJaeger]

Updates! So yeah, this build has been going super well so far. I'll start with livestock updates- over the last few months I've been raiding the bargain bin at my LFS, have picked up some frags from local reefers, and have transferred most of my corals from a failing nano tank over (tank is infested with dinos). I picked up a Seneye Reef on a whim and it's been super useful at making sure the par requirements for each coral are being met. The zoas and mushrooms have grown noticeably since their additions to the tank and I'm getting really good extension with all my LPS. Only issues I've had are with the few SPS frags I added. I've been working at stabilizing the water chemistry and I've had a monti and two acros bleach on me with pH swings. Live and learn.

For the fish, unfortunately one of the cardinals didn't make it. It never fully acclimated to the tank, spent most of its time hiding, and wasn't eating. When it died I replaced it with a McCosker's flasher wrasse and it's quickly become my favorite fish, it's super active and inquisitive. I'll also be adding a clown pair from my other tank at some point in the near future and that will likely round this tank out when it comes to stocking.

 

[McJaeger]

On to the equipment updates and water chemistry. With the relatively rapid coral addition I was noticing a steady decline in alk so I've incorporated jebao DP-4 to dose Red Sea Foundation alkalinity (3 mL/day), calcium (as needed), and acropower (5 mL/day). The water parameters as of today are below and have been relatively stable over the last few weeks:

• Alk - 9.3 ppm
• Ca - 470 ppm
• Mg - 1750 ppm (super high, think it's this batch of reef crystals)
• Nitrates - 2.5 ppm
• Phosphates - 0 ppm
• pH - 8.1 - 8.3
• Salinity - 1.026 sg

I also mentioned in my previous post that I got a Seneye. I've seen them get mixed reviews, but it's been super useful for me. When I'm not using it as a par meter I have it sitting at the bottom of my overflow box and hooked up to an old windows tablet I had laying around. Since it's continuously monitoring pH and temp I was both able to determine that the thermostat on my heater is 1 degree off from actual temp, and that my pH was sitting between 7.8 and 8.1 which was a bit too low for my liking. So I built a diy CO2 that's plumbed into the air intake of my skimmer. It's nothing too complex, just an old bottle filled with soda lime pellets and some holes drilled in the bottom of the bottle for air intake. It's been working great, pH gets to 8.35 during the day and falls to 8.1 at night. Only downside is how fast it depletes the lime pellets, which aren't cheap. I've been having to change the pellets at least once a week. At some point in the near future I'll work out a way to recycle the air coming out of my skimmer to extend their life.

A quick point on nutrients. After a few weeks of using the refugium on an opposite light schedule to the display I noticed I was bottoming out my nitrates/phosphates and my LPS were staying closed. I tried reducing the time incrementally all the way down to 1 hour per night, but ultimately leaving the fuge light off altogether has yielded the most stable nitrate levels and the happiest corals. The chaeto in my sump is still there and it's still green, so I'll leave it in as an added measure if I get a nitrate spike at some point in the future.

One last addition is the UV bulb in the return chamber. I had a brief run in with ich (The wrasse brought it in. Had to treat with copper for two weeks. Luckily I caught it early) and wanted to prevent it from spreading, so I picked up a cheap UV bulb off amazon. It's actually worked pretty well at keeping the water clear and I haven't had any other ich issues so I assume it's doing its job.