Minder’s Red Sea Reefer 625 From the Ground Up Build

[minder_mano]

Late Sunday night update

 

[minder_mano]

I received my icp test results for the curing barrel water. I did not attempt to maintain the water in any way except water changes from time to time and running carbon using a hob filter. I dosed bacteria and I threw in dry and frozen food periodically. In total the rock was in the barrel somewhere between 9-12 months, I’m not certain what day I actually set it up but that is a pretty close estimate. The marinepure block was not in there barrel the entire length of time. It was in the a barrel about 6 months. The results do show a slight amount of aluminum. I’m not a chemist or do I know if it is harmful or anything like that but the levels are above the Icp suggestion. IMO it is because the marinepure blocks are very fragile and crumble easy, so those fine particles become suspended in the water column and are captured in the test vial, just my hunch at least.

 

[minder_mano]

Suns out buns out, going bare bottom! The scape was my best effort. I think I’m happy with how it turned out.

 

[AZMSGT]

I too am putting together a 625. Love your layout.. envious of your set up. Mine is going to be far more manual.

 

[minder_mano]

I too am putting together a 625. Love your layout.. envious of your set up. Mine is going to be far more manual.

Such a great tank isn’t it! It is the perfect size for me. That is what is so great about the Red Sea set ups, the customizability is endless (just like my vocabulary lol)

 

[minder_mano]

I too am putting together a 625. Love your layout.. envious of your set up. Mine is going to be far more manual.

And feel free to share pics

 

[minder_mano]

I’m not going to go in to details about the situations but I received A++ customer service from Neptune Systems and Avast Marine. Highly recommend their products and I will continue to purchase from them. Ok that’s it just thought I would share.

In other news, the shop is looking kosher. EXCEPT the cable guy left me a mess to clean up on the wall, I mean where’s the pride man! But we can fix that another day. It’s time to sit back relax a while

 

[JsReefs]

System looks awesome! Congrats![emoji106]

 

[minder_mano]

It’s been over a month and ammonia finally spiked. It took a while for the food to decay I guess but in the meantime I had a chance to set up a quarantine for the fish from my old tank using the ato container from Red Sea, I used silicone to plug the drain. I kept all the corals and inverts in my 20 gallon which will be my qt in the future. Here are some pics. When I first moved my old tank I lost all my corals except mushrooms and zoas from a silly mistake. I forgot to adjust the thermostat on the heater since the apex probe wasn’t controlling it the water got up over 80 degrees. Not my proudest moment but I will be sure to check the heaters as a crucial part of any tank set up now

 

[minder_mano]

In the two years I have had these fish, 2 clowns, Banggai cardinal and a lawnmower blenny, I’ve never noticed any ich on them. I never quarantined these fish when I got them. Do you think I should give them a copper treatment? I was just going to dose prazi, maybe metro+ in food. My blenny was having a hard time fattening up but that has since changed it appears

 

[minder_mano]

What could it be?

 

[minder_mano]

BOOM! Pisces EXO from ClearView lids and @ArtFully Acrylic

 

[minder_mano]

The last couple weeks I ordered a couple fish, I got the Zoas and inverts moved in to the dt, and set up the qt tank.

 

[minder_mano]

Coming up on 3 months

 

[minder_mano]

What a crazy weekend, but it’s all come to an end just in time for the Chiefs kickoff. I received a pintail wrasse pair and a couple tangs on Friday. I turned the lights off on apex fusion the night before so they wouldn’t be on when i added the fish. I was iffy about how the purple tang would react to the new arrivals. I added the tangs first and everything went smoothly. There was little to no aggression at all. They are swimming happily with each and all is good. I thought this is awesome! I just had to add the wrasses. No big deal right and so begins the start of my adventure. I added the pintails and within seconds they are being attacked like a missile over and over by the orange back fairy wrasse, who I thought was a sweet harmless little guy. Turns out he is a jerk. He was really going after the two new additions. He would swim as fast as he from one side of the tank and nose dive in to them. The male pintail was a little quicker and sometimes he would dodge the onslaught and the attacker would smash in to the side of the glass but that didn’t phase him enough. I grabbed my makeshift acclimation box, a hamster ball from amazon, and I easily caught the pintails in a net and placed them in. This was all just so unexpected because I was so worried about the tangs. From there I went straight online, which is where my fear of keeping multiple tangs began lol and I began to figure out how to get that jerk out. I found traps that were way overpriced and it is Friday so ordering something was going to take too long. That’s when I found the diy water bottle trap. There are videos of people catching wrasses with it so I figured it was my only shot. I set it up and began to wait and pray a little. A day went by and the only thing I could catch was my lawnmower blenny. He’s such a goof, he would be the one that gets caught in the trap. The wrasses couldn’t fit in the trap with him so I upgraded my trap to a two liter bottle Saturday night. I left it in the tank all night and put food in this morning and that silly blenny went right back in and was eating all the bait. I went ahead and put the nuisance in a bucket until this was over. I put the trap back in with a few mysis pellets. 5 minutes later the wrasse was in the trap. Yay! It’s over! Not all was well though. The female pintail didnt make it. She took too much of a beating and I feel terrible that I got his girlfriend killed but all of this was quite a learning experience for me and now it is time to sit back with a cold one and watch some football

 

[minder_mano]

2nd batch of eggs since upgrading tanks. They never laid eggs in my 30g so this is neat

 

[minder_mano]

(random jargon so I can upload pics)

 

[minder_mano]

Ok it’s been a while, time for an update in quarantine. Barebottoms take a year to stabilize and don’t let anyone tell you different. I was battling something I’ve never encountered before. I think it was a type of Cyano, but we should just call it a Cyano-flagellate bacteria now that I think it is gone. I tried chemiclean, blackout, vibrant, and finally dose nitrate and manual removal of the bacteria. I think I finally got it. I lost my first batch of sticks after dosing vibrant. Most of them were fine and growing up until this point even with chemiclean and blackout but maybe I dosed too much vibrant too fast. I just couldn’t stand the brown fungus growing on the rocks. I was a little impatient because the stuff just wouldn’t go away. Anyway got new frags in the tank and the bacteria seems to be pretty much gone after raising nitrates.

 

[shadow1013]

Any updates?

 

[minder_mano]

at least something’s still alive! It has been a long time since I have posted. A lot has been going on in my life and haven’t had the time I used to have. I wasn’t having success right out the gate like I hoped to have so the tank required a lot of my attention. Attention I didn’t have. Work, family, covid, and along with personal reasons I just couldn’t manage to find the time to care for the tank like I wish I could. The fish bowl had a gha breakout among other issues. The good news is, things have began to settle down. Winter is here. I am giving it another. I added a light layer of sand, hoping for more surface area for good bacteria to grow and flourish. Also, I believe I am in a better state of mind since covid hit. It is time to get back to reefing. Let’s see where it goes!