My Red Sea Max 250 Rebuild

Bobblehead

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As some of you may have read on my introduction page, I took over this tank for a friend that was unable to take care of it anymore due to family and work commitments. He has had it running for about 12 years as far as I know so things were well established. I didn't know much about running a reef tank as I only had some experience with a planted tank but thought what the heck, lets give it a go.

Moving day was mid February, nice and cold! Loading my truck wasn't too bad as I had a couple friends help out but I did feel the rush to get things home quick because everything was in garbage cans in the back of the pickup in 5-10C weather. After a mad hour or so of setup and adding newly mixed saltwater to the old, I dumped the clown, gramma and pj cardinal into the tank, not knowing at the time that saltwater is supposed to mixed at least a few hours ahead of time. My bad, didn't research enough but they made it. Tank looked like this for the first day.

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And the next day

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What I didn't know then was that the disturbing of the sand bed was going to release a cloud of not so goodness into the water column and in a months time, the tank was covered in algae.

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My friend never vacuumed the sand bed as he was of the opinion that the organisms would take care of it. Right or wrong, I now had to do something about this so for the next month or two, I spent hours pulling rocks, scrubbing, and even used hydrogen peroxide to help. I also decided that the sand bed was too dirty to clean so I vacuumed all of it out slowly from April to mid May and added Fiji pink over the last 2 weeks of May. Shortly after adding the last of the new sand, I noticed that my alkalinity was dropping much faster than before so had to up my kalk by a fair bit. Again, at the time I had no idea why this was so but now after all the threads that I've read on here, I feel like the sand must be taking up some of the alkalinity as my dose seemed excessive for the quantity of corals I had. I also tried Vibrant in April and May, twice a week at the recommended dose but don't feel like it had much effect for me, other than causing a minor cyano issue afterwards.

As far as livestock goes, I started off with the clown, gramma and cardinal. I slowly added a clean up crew of 3 turbos, 5 ceriths and about 10 hermits. In my experience they don't do anything for the type of algae I have now. Sure I see the snail leaving its eating marks on the glass but the GHA growing on the rock is untouched and growing well. Too well. I then added a tuxedo urchin and a cleaner shrimp with the hopes of helping the snails but again, no such luck. Just recently I added a little yellow wrasse and 3 chromis after having them in QT for a month. The clown was quite aggressive towards the wrasse for the first couple weeks but he's mellowed out now other than the odd chase here and there. As our last fish, we have a white tail bristletooth tang in QT, to be added to the DT in about 3 weeks. He's my last resort to take care of the GHA, maybe he'll eat it, maybe he won't. Here's a side shot of the tank which shows the algae I have.

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As for corals, I started off with some frogspawn, mushrooms and xenia. I added some zoas, lepto and acans to start, just to see how they would do. After I saw that they were doing well, I decided what the hey, the rock is aged so why not try some acros. And seeing as my tank is not huge, I didn't want to fill it with stuff I would regret later so my first SPS purchase was an RR OP. And its doing well! I think!! All told I now have around 9 acros, a TNT anacropora, space invader pectinia, some plates, acans, torches, zoas and probably a couple others. The only coral I seem to be having problems with are the acans which seem to do well to start then slowly shrivel up. I've lost a 2 head acan like this.

Lately, maybe the last month or so, I've been noticing that the small spots of reddish slime on the GHA has been turning brown in places, both with small air bubbles under them. At times the brown stuff kind of becomes stringy and stretches upwards which leads me to think I'm starting to get dinos. I got myself a Red Sea test kit for Nitrates and Phosphates and found that the levels of both are borderline undetectable, just a hint of colour in each. And here is where I get confused...all of my corals (other than acans) seem to be doing well so I've got to be doing something right. I feed quite heavy, for both fish and corals yet the N and P are very low, which I understand is being used by the algae. I would likely have to feed an obscene amount to get measurable values in this manner. Maybe I do have to dose N and P to prevent the dinos from getting worse? I did buy a couple different products to dose but will have to do some more research before deciding on a course of action.

This is our tank as it sits today, a nice combination of fish, corals and my algae farm!

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And some growth/recovery pics of our corals

Just after dipping and now

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The second pic does look bleached but in reality its not, just lighting and bad camera
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And I suppose thats it for now, if anyone has any input, I'm all ears! Thanks for reading!
 
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Bobblehead

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Was going through some pics and thought I’ll share some progress shots of this acro. Was basically toast when I received it, and It also had pests and eggs on it. I decided to take a big chance on it so I cut the plug off, brushed like crazy, dipped the living daylights out of it, QT’d for 3 weeks and when it looked like it wasn’t going to survive much longer in my just setup QT tank, I dipped once more and put it in my main tank. I kept a close eye on it while it was in the frag rack for a month or so but never saw anything else on it. Mounted it shortly after and looks like it’s doing pretty good. I suppose time will tell if I brought in any unwanted creatures. Hope not...
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Bobblehead

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I may as well post this here too as its all part of this tanks progression, although I'm quite upset with how things turned out.

Late October I decided to dose nitrates and phosphates as per the recommendation of many on this forum. I tried this because even though my corals were growing quite well, the colours seemed just a bit muted and thought I could improve things by raising these values up from near 0. Materials were bought from an aquatic supply store, mixed per instructions and dosed with a goal of 3-5 ppm N and 0-03 ish P. I reached this goal in a few days and with eager anticipation, was hoping to see some positive changes in the corals. What I did get was an almost immediate loss of colour and subsequent death of two montiporas, and tissue loss on some acros and even a cyphastrea that is still continuing to this day. Even my space invader pectinia is starting to poke its skeleton through the skin. This is despite doing 3 x 10% and 1 x 20% water changes within 10 days.

Obviously stopped the dosing as soon as the problems started but I'm hoping for a turn around pretty soon for this tank.

This guy has taken it the worst, probably totally gone by tomorrow, was a Cali tort

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The pearlberry was hanging on for a while but in the last few days, tissue loss is getting worse

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RR Orange passion being my first acro, hard to see this one starting to go downhill...

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Cyphastrea skin starting to pull back

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And what I believe to be the skeleton starting to poke through the tissue on this pectinia. Not bad yet but I'm afraid of what will come as I still am not exactly sure what went wrong and haven't been able to correct anything other than to do WC's.

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Bobblehead

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And the bad luck continues...

I woke up this morning to the smell of burning wires. Rushed downstairs to see that the tank lights haven't come on yet, skimmer was overflowing, and heard a weird clicking sound from inside the enclosed hood. Also saw water dripping down from the cooling fan vents on the side, to the point that the rug around the tank was wet to the touch. I took the hood off, opened it up and saw this

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While disassembling the light there was quite a bit of water that poured out of the hood. I don't know what caused the skimmer to go crazy in the middle of the night but I'm guessing that when the cup started overflowing, the skimmate somehow started leaking into the hood and filled it with water. And when the lights tried to come on in the morning it must have shorted out at that point.

Now I'm using a couple of small LED strips that I had kicking around from my 10G planted tank to hopefully tide me over until I receive the ATI Sunpower that I ordered this morning. Its coming from Quebec and I'm in BC so it'll probably take at least 5 days. Fingers crossed the remaining acros make it as they're already stressed big time. November has not been very kind
 
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Bobblehead

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Wondering if my tank is ever going to turn around for the better

Tissue necrosis continues on acros and anacropora may or may not be dead, hard to tell with this thing. One thing is for sure, nothing is growing except cyano which keeps covering the dead tips so I'm sure its difficult for the corals to recover.

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My Jack-O'lantern with weird lightening of the ridges and growth edges. Sometimes I even see acro- like mesenterial filaments coming out of this thing.


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Tissue recession and cyano getting worse on the pectinia

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Water parameters are under control with maybe phosphates being a bit on the low side at .0012 on Hanna checker. Only 3 of 10 acros seem unaffected and all zoas and torches are ok. All fish and inverts are doing well. Honestly, I was hoping that the tissue recession would stop or at least slow down after doing many water changes since my dosing disaster but its showing no sign of stopping.

I do have a new ATI Sunpower over the tank using the same 6 bulbs I had in the original hood. For now, I have lowered intensity to 80% to optimistically account for the increased reflectivity of this fixture. Don't know if the new lighting can be exacerbating my problems but I figured I'd throw that out there.

I will continue to stay the course and hope for a turn around at some point but it is a bit discouraging when you think you're doing everything by the book yet still see backwards results.
 
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Bobblehead

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After reading fellow member SCiMMiA's 3 year journey in getting his/her tank to its current condition, I thought I'd revisit my build thread. I wish I could say that my tank had a similar turn around but I guess its not my time yet.

Some before and after pics

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The pectinia especially has been a frustrating one for me as its been in a really slow decline for the past year. My blastomussa, alveopora, mushroom, and some zoas have been growing but I have lost all my acros, as well as frags of acans, favias, leptos, montis, torches, and who knows what else.

At the time the major die off started, I couldn't pinpoint any one thing as being the cause. Because the tank has been not overly enjoyable the last few months, I haven't been on top of testing as much as I should have but other than the nitrates climbing to 25, there haven't been any spikes or readings out of the ordinary.

I did add a couple of anemones in a what the heck moment a while back and they seem to really like my tank as opposed to my corals. 1 RBTA has grown and become 5 and 1 little Sherman rose has turned into 2 giants

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Hoping for a turn around soon!
 

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