lickyricky
Red Sea Max E-170
Hey everyone,
I decided to start this thread mostly to document my progress but feel free to chime in!
I've been on R2R for a while but took a five year hiatus from the hobby, mostly due to my frustration with my Biocube and partially because I moved from Boston to Miami and could not make the tank move work logistically.
Anyways I am back and wish I would have started this from the beginning. Today is day 8 for my build and I've already made lots of add ons and adjustments to my RS Max E. Looking back I should have purchased the Reefer instead of the Max E because I have already decided that some of the Max E stock items needed to be upgraded anyway. I do really like the Hydra HD though which does not come with the Reefer so no harm no foul. My Hydra runs on a preset I found online but there is really no way to tell if it works well for what I am going to have in the tank yet.
Let me catch you up to where I am now. I started adding water to my tank on 8/15. On my old Biocube I was constantly worried about heat (even in Boston! never mind Miami) and nitrates so those are the biggest two things I wanted to avoid with this build. When I started in the hobby I really wanted a Red Sea tank but simply could not afford it which is why I saved up to purchase this Max E. I also learned very quickly in the hobby that you would not start off without a decent sized budget if you really want to tank to look and feel like you want it to. This time I started with over $3,000 (I only spent around $500 setting up the Biocube) so needless to say I am very excited.
Before the tank came I purchased my RO unit since the LFS is a little out of the way. When I first moved to Miami I thought reefing would be a breeze with plenty of awesome LFS's all around...well guess what, in this beautiful tropic location surrounded by reefs there are hardly any good LFS! This is mostly the reason why I have waited until now to start back up.
I purchased the Aqualife Twist in RO system mainly because it was small enough to fit under my wet bar and I liked the idea of the easily replaced filters. I did have to do a bit of work here adding a pressure gauge and TDS meter myself. So far so good here with a TDS reading of 153 down to 0 leaving the unit.
Let's go back just a second and talk about the two problems I wanted to avoid this time around; nitrates and heat.
Nitrates - I determined that most of my problems with nitrates were caused by the Bio Balls in the back of the Biocube. After doing a lot of research I am pretty sure this was the main contributor to my problem. That plus I did not have a decent skimmer. The Red Sea solved both of these problems for me as it came with a skimmer and there are no bio balls in sight.
Heat - I bit the bullet here and purchased a JBJ Arctica 1/10 chiller. Being in Miami I wanted to be sure I would keep the temp under control and not have the constant stress with fans and running my lights at night or whatever else I attempted to do back in the day to lower my temp.
I purchased the MAX E-170 at my LFS and went right home to start setting it up. No time to waste, need to get that cycle started! The cabinet build was easy once we figured out that the top portion of the cabinet was packaged UNDER the tank (who knew! I thought I was going crazy). Did it right this time and laid my rock out on the floor before moving it to the tank. Also decided to add my rock first and then place the sand (Caribsea live sand) around the rock instead of putting the rock on top of the sand thanks to some advice from fellow R2R members (thank you!).
It took me a while to make and mix enough RO to fill the tank...set an alarm to wake up every 2 hours and switch the buckets and add the previous budget into the tank. Needless to say it was mid morning the next day before I had enough water in the system to start the pumps but what an exciting morning it was!
Of course the tank was cloudy for the first day and a half but once it cleared up and I was impressed with my aquascape! (pics below). The following day the chiller and heater arrived and it was a breeze to install (minus having to go to my LFS to get the correct sized tubing) using the Red Sea chiller bracket on the back of the tank. Man am I glad I got this chiller! It runs quite frequently keeping my tank at 78-79 degrees. I also installed the JBJ True Temp heater. The last thing I added was a Aqamai wifi powerhead since my LFS gave me a pretty good deal on it. I had never heard of it but I guess its the same company as Hydor which I know of.
The first few days were rather frustrating as I "broke in" the skimmer. Lots of over skimming and emptying the collection cup. Now its running much better so patience was the key.
Over the short few days I have had the tank running I have already spent up the rest of my budget on a few ad ons to the tank to really make it the dream tank I have always wanted.
First off I knew I wanted to add a sump. I looked at the Red Sea one but I really did not fall in love with it. It's small and had no place for a fuge (which I really wanted) so I started research alternative sumps that could fit in the Red Sea cabinet. It wasn't easy but I finally settled on a Trigger Sapphire Cube which just barley fits (well actually I haven't gotten it yet so we will see pretty soon!). I relocated the Red Sea power center to the wall behind the tank to make as much room as possible in the cabinet (I actually like this setup better than having it under the tank). It will be a tight fit for sure and I wont have room for much else. I also decided to buy a Reef Octopus 110 to replace the Red Sea skimmer. Not that the skimmer is bad or anything but it specifically states in the manual that it is designed for the back sump and needs a very high water level so instead of dealing with that I bought a new one that wouldn't have any trouble in the sump. I will have more to post on Friday with the sump and skimmer install. I have already purchased the Red Sea pipework for the sump so hopefully all will go according to plan.
After the tank settled down and ever since I have had pristine water quality! With the exception of tons of micro bubbles while the skimmer was breaking in. I solved that pretty quick with some filter floss on the bottom rack of the media basket because for some reason the Red Sea sponge was not doing anything to help the matter.
I decided to use Red Sea Reef Mature pro kit. I have been following the instructions to the tee and as of yesterday my water parameters were the following;
Temp - 79, SG - 1.024, Ammonia 0.10 PPM, Nitrite 0.25 ppm, Nitrate 20 ppm, 11.2 dKH.
Did a 5% water change yesterday per the instructions with the kit.
Today when I get home I am going to retest the dKH because my old test showed 7.5 a few days ago. I switched to the Red Sea Pro Test and got a 11.2 yesterday so I want to verify that result. I did dose the tank with the KH booster so this is not out of the realm of possibility I guess. Today I will also test Ca and Mg for the first time just to get a feel for my levels. I am using Red Sea Coral Pro salt so I am curious to see how that turned out.
I have had zero algae growth as of yet and my sand, rock, and water is still immaculate.
I have included all the pics I have taken so far below and will be posting more when I install the sump and new skimmer. I have also purchased all of the Red Sea chemical dosing elements including Ca, Mg, KH, and trace colors.
Thanks for tuning in and check back for update! I am sure I forgot to mention something so I will update this thread as it comes to me.
I decided to start this thread mostly to document my progress but feel free to chime in!
I've been on R2R for a while but took a five year hiatus from the hobby, mostly due to my frustration with my Biocube and partially because I moved from Boston to Miami and could not make the tank move work logistically.
Anyways I am back and wish I would have started this from the beginning. Today is day 8 for my build and I've already made lots of add ons and adjustments to my RS Max E. Looking back I should have purchased the Reefer instead of the Max E because I have already decided that some of the Max E stock items needed to be upgraded anyway. I do really like the Hydra HD though which does not come with the Reefer so no harm no foul. My Hydra runs on a preset I found online but there is really no way to tell if it works well for what I am going to have in the tank yet.
Let me catch you up to where I am now. I started adding water to my tank on 8/15. On my old Biocube I was constantly worried about heat (even in Boston! never mind Miami) and nitrates so those are the biggest two things I wanted to avoid with this build. When I started in the hobby I really wanted a Red Sea tank but simply could not afford it which is why I saved up to purchase this Max E. I also learned very quickly in the hobby that you would not start off without a decent sized budget if you really want to tank to look and feel like you want it to. This time I started with over $3,000 (I only spent around $500 setting up the Biocube) so needless to say I am very excited.
Before the tank came I purchased my RO unit since the LFS is a little out of the way. When I first moved to Miami I thought reefing would be a breeze with plenty of awesome LFS's all around...well guess what, in this beautiful tropic location surrounded by reefs there are hardly any good LFS! This is mostly the reason why I have waited until now to start back up.
I purchased the Aqualife Twist in RO system mainly because it was small enough to fit under my wet bar and I liked the idea of the easily replaced filters. I did have to do a bit of work here adding a pressure gauge and TDS meter myself. So far so good here with a TDS reading of 153 down to 0 leaving the unit.
Let's go back just a second and talk about the two problems I wanted to avoid this time around; nitrates and heat.
Nitrates - I determined that most of my problems with nitrates were caused by the Bio Balls in the back of the Biocube. After doing a lot of research I am pretty sure this was the main contributor to my problem. That plus I did not have a decent skimmer. The Red Sea solved both of these problems for me as it came with a skimmer and there are no bio balls in sight.
Heat - I bit the bullet here and purchased a JBJ Arctica 1/10 chiller. Being in Miami I wanted to be sure I would keep the temp under control and not have the constant stress with fans and running my lights at night or whatever else I attempted to do back in the day to lower my temp.
I purchased the MAX E-170 at my LFS and went right home to start setting it up. No time to waste, need to get that cycle started! The cabinet build was easy once we figured out that the top portion of the cabinet was packaged UNDER the tank (who knew! I thought I was going crazy). Did it right this time and laid my rock out on the floor before moving it to the tank. Also decided to add my rock first and then place the sand (Caribsea live sand) around the rock instead of putting the rock on top of the sand thanks to some advice from fellow R2R members (thank you!).
It took me a while to make and mix enough RO to fill the tank...set an alarm to wake up every 2 hours and switch the buckets and add the previous budget into the tank. Needless to say it was mid morning the next day before I had enough water in the system to start the pumps but what an exciting morning it was!
Of course the tank was cloudy for the first day and a half but once it cleared up and I was impressed with my aquascape! (pics below). The following day the chiller and heater arrived and it was a breeze to install (minus having to go to my LFS to get the correct sized tubing) using the Red Sea chiller bracket on the back of the tank. Man am I glad I got this chiller! It runs quite frequently keeping my tank at 78-79 degrees. I also installed the JBJ True Temp heater. The last thing I added was a Aqamai wifi powerhead since my LFS gave me a pretty good deal on it. I had never heard of it but I guess its the same company as Hydor which I know of.
The first few days were rather frustrating as I "broke in" the skimmer. Lots of over skimming and emptying the collection cup. Now its running much better so patience was the key.
Over the short few days I have had the tank running I have already spent up the rest of my budget on a few ad ons to the tank to really make it the dream tank I have always wanted.
First off I knew I wanted to add a sump. I looked at the Red Sea one but I really did not fall in love with it. It's small and had no place for a fuge (which I really wanted) so I started research alternative sumps that could fit in the Red Sea cabinet. It wasn't easy but I finally settled on a Trigger Sapphire Cube which just barley fits (well actually I haven't gotten it yet so we will see pretty soon!). I relocated the Red Sea power center to the wall behind the tank to make as much room as possible in the cabinet (I actually like this setup better than having it under the tank). It will be a tight fit for sure and I wont have room for much else. I also decided to buy a Reef Octopus 110 to replace the Red Sea skimmer. Not that the skimmer is bad or anything but it specifically states in the manual that it is designed for the back sump and needs a very high water level so instead of dealing with that I bought a new one that wouldn't have any trouble in the sump. I will have more to post on Friday with the sump and skimmer install. I have already purchased the Red Sea pipework for the sump so hopefully all will go according to plan.
After the tank settled down and ever since I have had pristine water quality! With the exception of tons of micro bubbles while the skimmer was breaking in. I solved that pretty quick with some filter floss on the bottom rack of the media basket because for some reason the Red Sea sponge was not doing anything to help the matter.
I decided to use Red Sea Reef Mature pro kit. I have been following the instructions to the tee and as of yesterday my water parameters were the following;
Temp - 79, SG - 1.024, Ammonia 0.10 PPM, Nitrite 0.25 ppm, Nitrate 20 ppm, 11.2 dKH.
Did a 5% water change yesterday per the instructions with the kit.
Today when I get home I am going to retest the dKH because my old test showed 7.5 a few days ago. I switched to the Red Sea Pro Test and got a 11.2 yesterday so I want to verify that result. I did dose the tank with the KH booster so this is not out of the realm of possibility I guess. Today I will also test Ca and Mg for the first time just to get a feel for my levels. I am using Red Sea Coral Pro salt so I am curious to see how that turned out.
I have had zero algae growth as of yet and my sand, rock, and water is still immaculate.
I have included all the pics I have taken so far below and will be posting more when I install the sump and new skimmer. I have also purchased all of the Red Sea chemical dosing elements including Ca, Mg, KH, and trace colors.
Thanks for tuning in and check back for update! I am sure I forgot to mention something so I will update this thread as it comes to me.
