My Red Sea aquarium

[buzz1ightyear]

Hey all. I wanted to do two things by starting this thread. First show off my aquarium. It a Red Sea reefer 200xl. I bought this tank a while ago and had it set up for a few years. Ended up taking it down and now after moving have restarted it. Second because I don’t want to just start a is my tank gonna leak thread I tried searching for Red Sea failures and noticed that I only see larger tanks failing. Has it not been a problem with the smaller tanks. Mine is a 42 gallon display.

So far two clown fish and 4 Zoa frags.

 

[Fish Fan]

Looks like a great start; good luck with your build!

 

[buzz1ightyear]

So I think I’m gonna try to do a weekly update on this tank here. So here are the details.

Aquarium- Red Sea reefer 200xl
Lighting- ai prime 16hd
Wave makers- ai Nero 3 (2 of them)
Skimmer- eshops c-120
Heater-don’t remember
Return pump- don’t remember

Started with dry rock that I used around 5 years ago been dry since. Fishless cycle using dr Tim’s and ammonia. Caribsea sand

Livestock
2 clowns- added 10/26/2026
6 reef hermits
3 snails

Corals
4 zoa frags
Kryptonite candy cane(3 heads)
Hammer (don’t remember the type)
Red monti cap

Parameters (stable for now)
Ammonia- 0
Nitrite- 0
Nitate- 20
Alkalinity- 8.3
Calcium- 460
Magnesium- 1290
Ph- 8.0
Temp- 78
Salinity- 1.026

More pictures to come

 

[buzz1ightyear]

 

[Fish Fan]

Looking good, I like the future Zoa garden rock!

 

[buzz1ightyear]

Figured I’d do another update.

Parameters.

Everything has been stable. Since I’ve set it up I’ve had to dose for alkalinity and magnesium. Doing it by hand but have got levels where I’m happy.

Salinity-1.026
Calcium-460
Alkalinity-8.3
Magnesium-1380
Nitrate-5.0
Ph-8.2

I test these every day right now to make sure they stay consistent. I plan on purchasing dosing pumps when my corals start to demand it.

New additions are
Gold tip hammer
Red planet acropora
Bubblegum digitata
2 benji cardinals.

Only loss so far is one snail.

I know m adding in a lot of these corals pretty fast before my tank has a chance to mature but I’m wanting to see if I can successfully do it by keeping on top of everything.

Last update I added a kessil a350 I had laying around. So now running the kessil and a ai prime together to hopefully get enough light into this tank. Lighting is going to be my next upgrade.

 

[buzz1ightyear]

Figured I’d update just for my own records.

Aquarium has still been stable. I’ve had to hand dose alkalinity and magnesium but other than that parameters have been very stable.

I’ve had some ugly stage algae show up but have been mostly letting that run its course. I also have coraline showing up in spots all over the rock work. So happy that the system is happy enough to show that after only a month and a half of water being in the tank.

Corals have all been happy. I have a mariculture Acro in there now and other unknown acro that are the newest additions. I’m pretty sure I’ve seen the zoas adding new heads or at least the tiny ones starting to get some size. I can swear I see some new growth on the red monti cap.

The bad today I noticed a couple really small aptasia on the drag plug of my gold hammer. Will see if I can stay on top of that.

Future additions hopefully to come soon are some torches I also want to get some lower light corals that don’t grow like weeds to place on the lower sections on the rock work. Then let everything grow into place.

 

[buzz1ightyear]