My Reefer 350 Build

[See Gee Sea]

Hello all! I'm back in the hobby after a 20+ year hiatus in which I had a 33 high that I converted from freshwater to salt with a canister and under gravel filter and then a protein skimmer and then was just couldn't handle having another fish travel from the Indo Pacific only to die in my living room. What a difference with the internet and forums like this and the equipment. This build started in late December 2019. Prior to that we only had a 5 gallon Betta tank in this house.

December 2019 - Whoa! The ATO is the size of my current tank!

Obligatory kid in tank photo!

Aquascape. Should've listened to everybody and taken my time....

Hastily filled on Christmas Eve. Again, I should've listened to the feedback!

January 2020 - We added a pair of maroon clowns and A LOT of Bio Spira.

January 2020 - We are lit with LED 90s! Over did it with the Seachem rock epoxy to try and weld the rocks to gether. We'll get coralline algae...eventually...next year maybe? Additional cured live rock from the LFS.

February 2020 - Nitrates .25PPM in goes the cleanup crew.

March 2020 - fire shrimp.

March 2020 - Fire Fish. Sadly he developed a swim bladder disease and died in June of 2020. He was a cool fish.

April 2020 - Never ordered livestock by mail but with COVID...it looks good! First corals in the tank along with some chromises

Don't even think of it!

April 2020 - This will keep the cats out. I wish Red Sea sold these pre-assembled. That crease on the right is KILLING me!

May 2020 - Added more soft coral. Sadly in my haste with low nitrates and daitomes blooming I "nuked" the tank accidentally adding Seachem Flourish, following the dosing for fresh water. Nearly lost all coral! This GSP still ain't the same since! All but one other coral made it. LUCKY ME!

June 2020 - More livestock and corals

June 2020 - First LPS! There's also an anenomne that is hiding behind the rock in the background.

 

[See Gee Sea]

Getting there...

 

[JFJ]

I like your scape, do you have a qt?

 

[See Gee Sea]

I like your scape, do you have a qt?

Thanks! Did set up my 5 gal as a QT after I overdosed the tank to recover the corals. Probably should get something in the 20 range.

 

[Everything Aquatics]

great looking tank really coming along

 

[See Gee Sea]

This was a very bad week. Lost the last of the 3 acans, a torch, and duncan. Hammer isn’t looking so good either. Babylonian snail died and my arrow crab finally got dismantled by my emerald crab. Soft corals are growing. Anemone split and both are next to each other and growing. Fish are doing fine. Water parameters are good. I don’t understand it other than the swings with PH from 8.1 - 8.4 (increases when windows are opened). ::sigh::

 

[See Gee Sea]

1 year later...I’ve learned the hard way that nothing good happens fast in this hobby. Hitting the breaks on coral purchases after loosing a couple of acans, a monti, a torch, and a hammer. The nitrates finally came up and the refugium has chaeto in it. Small win only cancelled by forgetting to shut off RODI and having it overflow in laundry room.

 

[ShepherdReefer]

Hello all! I'm back in the hobby after a 20+ year hiatus in which I had a 33 high that I converted from freshwater to salt with a canister and under gravel filter and then a protein skimmer and then was just couldn't handle having another fish travel from the Indo Pacific only to die in my living room. What a difference with the internet and forums like this and the equipment. This build started in late December 2019. Prior to that we only had a 5 gallon Betta tank in this house.

December 2019 - Whoa! The ATO is the size of my current tank!

Obligatory kid in tank photo!

Aquascape. Should've listened to everybody and taken my time....

Hastily filled on Christmas Eve. Again, I should've listened to the feedback!

January 2020 - We added a pair of maroon clowns and A LOT of Bio Spira.

January 2020 - We are lit with LED 90s! Over did it with the Seachem rock epoxy to try and weld the rocks to gether. We'll get coralline algae...eventually...next year maybe? Additional cured live rock from the LFS.

February 2020 - Nitrates .25PPM in goes the cleanup crew.

March 2020 - fire shrimp.

March 2020 - Fire Fish. Sadly he developed a swim bladder disease and died in June of 2020. He was a cool fish.

April 2020 - Never ordered livestock by mail but with COVID...it looks good! First corals in the tank along with some chromises

Don't even think of it!

April 2020 - This will keep the cats out. I wish Red Sea sold these pre-assembled. That crease on the right is KILLING me!

May 2020 - Added more soft coral. Sadly in my haste with low nitrates and daitomes blooming I "nuked" the tank accidentally adding Seachem Flourish, following the dosing for fresh water. Nearly lost all coral! This GSP still ain't the same since! All but one other coral made it. LUCKY ME!

June 2020 - More livestock and corals

June 2020 - First LPS! There's also an anenomne that is hiding behind the rock in the background.

I like it, looking great.

 

[JFJ]

1 year later...I’ve learned the hard way that nothing good happens fast in this hobby. Hitting the breaks on coral purchases after loosing a couple of acans, a monti, a torch, and a hammer. The nitrates finally came up and the refugium has chaeto in it. Small win only cancelled by forgetting to shut off RODI and having it overflow in laundry room.

Can we get an update please?

 

[See Gee Sea]

I haven't posted in a while because I was thinking of throwing in the towel after some of the less than flattering comments I got on Red Sea Owner's Facebook page posting my 1 year milestone. I should just stick to seeking help here on Reef2Reef as it's much kinder and much more helpful.

We are now 18 months in and I did an ICP test and found a couple of missteps I was still making, primarily using a phosphate test kit that doesn't register anything until you reach .25PPM which as we all know is not a good thing! The ICP test showed that was the only thing that was really out of whack which gave me hope. I've added an urchin to my cleanup crew but it hasn't come near some of this turf algae where the bonded pair of maroon clowns are finally being hosted by my BTAs that has split 4 times. The anemones stay together and are growing so I know they aren't stressed. I've also reintroduced LPS and (fingers crossed) they are doing well. Squeezed in a GFO reactor into the sump and adding more sea lettuce (since that grew and the chaeto really didn't), pods, and dosing phytoplankton to help beat out the rest of the algae but as told here on R2R, the nitrates are starting to creep up. With the exception of the rock in the last photo that the tang, coral beauty, snails, hermits and even the urchin won't touch (probably because of the anemones I'm guessing) there's just some annoying film on the glass and some on the sand bed that's dissipating since stripping the phosphates out. The timer on the lights was dimming hence the duncans look like they're closing up. They are actually very large now that I got the phosphates under control.

 

[JFJ]

I see lots of progress, it is a hobby for the long haul, keep going.

 

[See Gee Sea]

Okay, okay I've been somewhat delinquent in posting about my tank for quite sometime. I need to order a lens filter for my camera so I can get better photos. I pretty much had the tank running on autopilot with parameters stable and no need for water changes. A big part of that reason is I am on a well and we had, like just about everybody else in the continental US a severe drought over the summer. Additionally, we found out that our well is contaminated with "forever chemicals" known as PFAS. The polluter was ordered by the state to install a massive carbon filtration system to my home water and I didn't want to disturb what little water we had doing water changes. I used some of the 5 gallon spring water jugs the polluters were also ordered to give us. They all registered at 0PPM but I suspect they were LOADED with silicates as I had a diatom bloom. The GFO reactor really was a game changer for me in controlling silicates, as well as phosphates and nitrates. For some reason, acans HATE my tank. I thought they were supposed to be easy!