My ULM Fully Connected Red Sea Reefer 170

[Jboulerice]

And this weekend my tanks value went... alllll the way uppp... got mad bounce shrooms, mad shrooms, and a bunch of rare zoas coming in the next few days as I swap out the old stuff to other members...

New gear... every single Hanna checker for salt is in my arsinal besides copper...

Tested a iceprobe to stabilize temps in a degree... it works... I’ll get another one for redundancy and I’ll be building laser cut bracket for other Red Sea owners to add a cheap cooling solution. For now I popped it in the overflow

And it’s tiny but here’s that first wwc bounce shroom

 

[Jboulerice]

This makes me very happy...

That single iceprobe has done some intense cooking to keep things down on much hotter day than without. Temps are averaging 79.38

I’ll be ordering another for redundancy and designing the bracket this afternoon.

With the apex controlling the temps and backups for both cooling and heating I hope the system is setup for success... I opted for square trade 4 year warranties on the chillers, im sure they’ll fail well before the warranty period and I can replace them in cycles as they fail. I consider the warranty an operating expense...

I got my WWC order.... got ripped off on the yoda: paid 100$ pp and ended up snagging one locally for 20$ but my pink hammer and pink with green mouth torch are amazing... give me til tomorrow to blast the thread with macro shots of all the new stuff coming tomorrow...

Clowns: swimming as a pair.

 

[Jboulerice]

Chiller is on point! Ordered another one and some mesh for the mp10 once all my corals are firmly attached I’ll fire it back up.

The golden maroon is gone and in a new home! The paired Lightning’s are doing great!

Here’s a list of all the new corals:

New Mushrooms:

OG bounce mushroom
Candy crush jawbreaker
Orange w red stripe jawbreaker
Gum drop mushroom
PZ godspawn bounce mushroom
(Three others I haven’t identified yet)

New zoas:
3x yoda zoas
3x fruit loops zoa
(Two other morphs I’m not sure yet)

Euphyllia:
Pink tipped torch with green mouth (WWC)
Pink branching hammer (WWC)

 

[Nando]

Dude it’s so loud and so ratchet with the movement I just hope it’s designed for mad cycles... I have mine tested and verified to only come on once a day for now until the bioload increases... i didn’t think my fish would go for the pellets but they lost their mind and frenzied.

I have a nest cam I check ever once and a while so I’ll probablly catch this if it ever does happen. Was this just a incorrect setting in fusion?

Also have a Reefer 170 with Apex and was thinking about the Neptune AFS. I've read complaints about it dumping too much food. Do you think it gives a small enough portion of pellets for only a pair of clowns? I'm feeding 1mm PE Pellets once/day.

 

[Jboulerice]

Also have a Reefer 170 with Apex and was thinking about the Neptune AFS. I've read complaints about it dumping too much food. Do you think it gives a small enough portion of pellets for only a pair of clowns? I'm feeding 1mm PE Pellets once/day.

It’s disabled right now lol... dumps way too much of the fine pellets for the amount of fish I have: two clowns and the coral beauty. I need to set it to dump after the pumps have fully stopped for a minute. I had a horrible experience a week or two ago when I accidentally dumped a ton of food...

As it stands it sounds like a piece of ****; feels cheap and I’m not sure if I’ll run it long term but was hoping it could keep food aggression down. If I figure out how to pause the auto feeder I’ll probably be more inclined to use it.

 

[Jboulerice]

So much new stuff in the tank...

Buttkissers
Rainbow hornets
Rastas
Punk rockers
Lunar eclipse
Pinwheel zoas
Fruit loops zoas

And a bunch more that I’ll try and photograph with the macro lens soon... been working on getting everything off plugs and on rubble rock; grouping corals by color and figuring out my goals for coral placement... trying to keep zoas at the bottom; mushrooms mid level and then sps tabling out the top. Going to try more SPS soon once I get a dos (coming soon)

 

[Nando]

It’s disabled right now lol... dumps way too much of the fine pellets for the amount of fish I have: two clowns and the coral beauty. I need to set it to dump after the pumps have fully stopped for a minute. I had a horrible experience a week or two ago when I accidentally dumped a ton of food...

As it stands it sounds like a piece of ****; feels cheap and I’m not sure if I’ll run it long term but was hoping it could keep food aggression down. If I figure out how to pause the auto feeder I’ll probably be more inclined to use it.

haha I was hoping you weren't going to say that but expected it. I'll probably hold off. Hopefully they come out with something better. I love all the other Neptune products. Great tank BTW. Pictures are amazing.

 

[Jboulerice]

A lot going on with the tank but not much time for updates... for now enjoy some eye candy as I’m finally gluing everything down to rubble rock for my zoa garden and finally some corals to the actual aquascape

 

[Jboulerice]

Haven’t been posting much besides buying rare stuff...

As far as fish are concerned I had a blue headed jawfish that somehow jumped even though I have a screen top... found him in a cup not sure how he got there... probably was hanging out in a rock or something and didn’t notice he was left in the cup?!?

Also got a really nice orange sided fairy wrasse who’s getting along somewhat... the clowns are still cool and the angel is chilling, I have a purple fire fish that’s a little too scared to come out unless there’s brine in the water column.

As for stability temps are stable in the hottest of summer any hate towards an icecap thermoelectric Chillers are just not using them for the right application.

I’m starting to purchase the auto fill system equipment to handle water changes and r/o top off... it starts with my mini saltwater mixing station (14$) for the container.

I the 7 gallons should easily handle a weekly continuous water change and it hoping to have the apex regulate the salinity if possible using a dos for pumping in and out the mixed salt and the ability to pump ro would be cool. I want to talk with Neptune on their thoughts but I’ll start with purchasing the dos’s and other equipment as well as a BRS 5 stage system.

 

[Jboulerice]

Got a big order with BRS for completely removing the LFS from the hobby... I hate the way it sounds but at least where I live the sene is sad... prices are bad... and the quality of water I pay for is not worth the hassle... did some tests on the LFS water and my britta pitcher had less TDS lol...

The new set up:

I’m a renter on the third floor so this is my plan for RO and a salt mix station:

Sink adapter to 1/4 tubing : to first SV1 to control flow into the 5 stage BRS RO/DI filter > flows out to T which flows to two SV1’s one for the salt mixing (7gallon blue storage) and directly to a float into a the tank, I plan to use optical sensors to let me know when to refill the salt mix and to stop the r/o when the jug is full. Then in the sump a total of two more optical sensors and the original mechanical float.

I decided to remove the auto top off tank included with the system as any disaster will be just as bad as with a reservoir in my opinion.. I’ll have a third over full optical sensor in case of an emergency all solenoids will close...hopefully the dual layer SV1’s will prevent disaster; that with two leak sensors on in the sump and one on the floor I should be set...


I confirmed the threads on the cap for the water storage is a 3/4 NPT comparible thread so once I have the heater and power head to stir the salt and keep it ready for use I’ll go ahead and figure out how to seal the wires with a grommet inside a plug to keep evaporation down.

Also note: did a peroxide dip on some of the weak looking zoas as well as turned the mp10 all the way up during the day to 100%

 

[Jboulerice]

And so... the Jurassic Park spare no expense rule allowed me to finally end my dependency on the LFS and the trials for the past 10 years of reefing to always buy salt and RO water is over.

I ordered this huge list of gear to automate as much as I can... holding the idea all I’d need to do is drop in two cubes of brine and pour in salt once a week. The plan is to run daily 1 gallon continuous water change in conjunction with a dos managing the CA and ALK level, when trident comes out my testing routine will dwindle to once a week ideally but soon the automated glass cleaners will arrive and this ULM will be living up to my expectations

 

[Jboulerice]

And it’s been crazy... I’ll be posting a million pictures soon of the construction photos for my ATO and water change system. I turned another cabinet into a dosing cabinet for two part, and eventually mag and amino acids.

Just got a few orders of sps queued up but here’s some shots of the current situation for my aquarium systems:

 

[ryboy707]

Hey I just ordered a 170 and will be doing a lot of the same things you are. One question I have is how is your auto water changes going? I had a bad experience with the DOS and air bubbles in the line so I’m wondering how it’s going for you?