Paul's Red Sea Reefer 425xl Build

[PRock]

Your hardscape looks awesome dude. what route you thinking for this tank? SPS, acro dominant or mixed style? Im excited to see this as it progresses

I'm currently planning to do mostly LPS and a few monties and leptos, with some Zoa's I got as part of a frag deal on one of my smaller rock islands. I'm also thinking that I might put a GSP frag I have on the back wall and let that grow there. I'm pretty sure that once I have the lights mounted properly I'll be somewhere around 225-250 PAR at the top of that middle aquascape so I might be able to make some acro's happy there, but I'll probably add some more lighting and another powerhead later to really pull that off.

 

[PRock]

Bah... anyone know how secure silicone tubing is with a barbed fitting? I've ordered clamps twice now, and both times I've been sent or recommended the wrong size. About to just order every size between 1/2" and 1 1/2" and see what actually fits...

 

[IslandLifeReef]

Bah... anyone know how secure silicone tubing is with a barbed fitting? I've ordered clamps twice now, and both times I've been sent or recommended the wrong size. About to just order every size between 1/2" and 1 1/2" and see what actually fits...

I probably shouldn't say this, but a barbed fitting is all I have used without any problems. Current tank 2.5 years old. Previous tank, 15 years.

 

[PRock]

I probably shouldn't say this, but a barbed fitting is all I have used without any problems. Current tank 2.5 years old. Previous tank, 15 years.

Well, it's your fault now ;-) That's what I'm telling the wife anyhow! I've got some clamps on the way just in case, so your window of blame is pretty small.

For everyone else, some notes from doing the final fill -

• Tighten the plumbing from UNDER the tank before you plumb the sump and add water. MUCH easier to do before all the sump plumbing is in place.
• The Red Sea unions have a "snap" release if you twist them down too tightly. Scared the **** out of me when I over cranked one of them and it went *SNAP* and got all loose.... thought I busted my plumbing.
• Righty Tighty/Lefty Loosy applies to the gate valve too.
• Red Sea didn't include a siphon break or check valve on the return line. what the heck? MAKE SURE you can handle the back flow in the sump or install your own check valve. I don't have either currently so my return is up out of the water a bit to help break the siphon if power goes out. Makes it a bit noisy, but I'd rather that then 10-15 gallons on the floor.

Tank is completely full of water now, sump is running, and I spent about an hour playing with that gate valve, then another playing with and configuring my Kasa HS300 smart power strips to run the lights and skimmer on specific schedules. That's probably going to be temporary until I get the Reef-Pi up and working to control things. Once I had that all tinkered with, it was time for the Fritz Turbostart, then in a few days I'll add some Dr. Tim's, and finally some Bio-Spiria, Get myself a nice diverse set of bacteria.

I'll be using Dr Tim's Ammonium Chloride to "feed" the bacteria (the "fishless cycle") and using a Seneye to keep an eye on the Ammonia in the water column. Hopefully in a week or so the tank will be able to deal with the 125gal dose of Ammonium Chloride within 24 hours and I'll know I'm ready to add more critters! At that point I'm going to start with food for the fish - I'll start adding pods, refugium algae, and oceanmagik and let those guys go to town for a bit to establish themselves, and start talking to my LFS about what critters on my list they have in QT for me to pick from!

 

[PRock]

Added 2ppm of Ammonium Chloride then Fritz Turbo Start. Waited 24 hours, added Bio-Spiria, & dosed back up to 2ppm NH4Cl. Waited 48 hours (dang shipping delay....) and the free ammonia (NH3) in the tank was down to 3ppb, so I added Dr. Tim's One and Only and dosed the NH4Cl to 2ppm again. This afternoon I'm reading 1ppb of NH3 in the tank, so my bacterial army gobbled up the ammonium chloride in about 13 hours, so that's a pretty good sign that my bacterial filter is doing it's thing very nicely. Progress!

 

[count krunk]

I did a DIY vinyl plank install for my whole house.

If I didn't tell you you wouldn't know it wasn't wood.

It's super durable and was easy to install. Only as tricky as the cuts.

Tank is looking good!

The general idea behind no check valve is too design the sump to handle the extra load.

You could also drill a small home in the return to act as a siphon break and return the line to completely submerged again

 

[PRock]

So this morning I see brown spots on the rock and glass and stuffs... I HAVE STUFF GROWING IN THERE! Woot! Now for something actually useful...

 

[PRock]

So I've been using a Seneye Reef to track my progress, and something that's become obvious is that the heaters my LFS recommended just aren't up to snuff. I was pretty sure that for a 112g system Cobalt recommended about 400W of their Neotherm heaters, but the LFS insisted I'd be fine with 2 100W units. Well, my temp swings from 74 to 77 throughout the day, basically 2 degrees above the ambient temp in the basement. That's not going to cut it, especially in the winter when this room drops down to 68. So 2 new heaters get added to my list of things to buy before livestock... Anyone need a pair of lightly used 100W Cobalt Neotherms?

 

[PRock]

So I remembered that I had an extra 150W heater for my fish QT system that I'm not currently using, so I threw that in the tank to give myself a total of 350W of heaters. Temp stabilized at 76.6F, and stuck there for most of the day. I figured Woot! Problem solved!

Well, spoke too soon. 350W isn't quite enough as the temp dropped overnight (we now have about a 1.3 degree swing). So off to the LFS to swap my 100W Neotherm's for something with more power. If they've got a 300W in stock I'll pick up one of those plus a 200W unit, if not, I'll grab a pair of 200W units, hopefully that'll get the temp swings in line. As an aside, I've noticed that my PH is higher now that my temp isn't dropping down below 75 degrees like it was. Wonder if that was part of my PH problem?

 

[PRock]

New 200W heaters went in Wed evening and now that I've had 24+ hours to watch things, the tank is much closer to 78F all the time, swinging from 77.7F and 78.1F, a much nicer range than before. LSF 0, Me 1.

 

[PRock]

Lights! I've had one Kessil 360X over the tank since I got it in place, but that's totally not going to cut it on a 4ft system. So I went out and picked up an AI Prime HD to run overtop of the frag QT tank. Setup was very very nice, easily downloaded some profiles and got things setup in about 20 minutes with the myAI app. Much nicer than the Kessil controller. Maybe when Kessil FINALLY comes out with their WiFi dongle? Anyhow. Once that was in place I put the 2nd 360X on the tank and... crap. Need a USB-C cable. Kessil 10ft K-link Cable is $25. Okay, but it's just a USB-C, maybe I can beat that at the local big box store... They want $39.99 for a 6ft cable... TO THE INTERNET! Oh look, 2 pack 10ft USB-C cables for $12.49. SOLD.

Now, while I wait for my USB-C cables, I need to do something about the brown stuff growing in the tank. The rocks were getting nice and dark brown with stuffs, and it was growing over the sand too, so I put in an initial CUC order with one of the well known vendors:

• 24 Blue Leg Hermits
• 5 Red Tip Hermits
• 10 Nassarius Snails
• 15 Banded Trochus Snails
• 10 Cerith Snails
• Fighting Conch

Took time off of work to be here for the shipment, 10:30am delivery estimate. I look outside at about 9:45, there's the box! Yay! And yay, this end up is meaningless! *grumbles*

Bring it inside, packing is very nice, all the bags are double bagged and clearly labeled and I start floating them to temp acclimate things as I unpack. Very quickly notice that the inside of the box is REALLY warm. I should've taken a temp with my IR thermometer but I didn't think about it. After floating the bags for about 20 minutes, I setup my bucket, air bubbler, and the drip line, and start opening things. That's when things start looking not so good. The vast majority of the hermits didn't survive shipping looks like. About half the snails are toast too. Conch survived, but I'm pretty sure they sent me a tiger, not a fighting conch. Sadness! Everything goes into the bucket, and I run the drip line and bubbler for an hour, then start adding them into the tank. After 24h there are lots of little shells that haven't moved much if any at all. Going to move all those who aren't really moving over to a bare patch of sand and take some pics, then I'll compare tomorrow afternoon. Everything that hasn't moved by then goes on my DOA list for when I talk to the vendor.

On the bright side, the survivors are just tearing massive holes and trails in the diatoms (I think they're diatoms) and a snack bit of nori I put in there for them. So at least they're getting full little digestive systems and doing their thing. I'm going to go back and watch for a bit - the tank looks really really cool now that I've got the lunar mode working on my Kessils - night all.

 

[PRock]

FTS if anyone's interested. Looks like I've got 33 DOA out of the 65 critters I ordered, ~50% mortality rate sucks...

 

[PRock]

While feeding the tank this morning I spot one of my snails with a hitchhiker... Aiptasia. Awesome! Seriously not happy with this invert order so far Out comes that snail and a good scrubbing and RO/DI rinse of the shell... but now I'm adding a peppermint to the shopping list...

 

[PRock]

Okay, tanks been sable for a bit, snails and hermits are doing their thing, I finally took the plunge and got the first fishies... 2 Clownsfish, 2 Bengali Cardinals, and a Green Clown Goby just home from QT at my LFS. Acclimation in progress!

 

[PRock]

Clown Goby dove right into a rock cave, the Bengali Cardinals ran and hid behind some of the rock work. The clowns however....

 

[PRock]

So I got the replacement shipment for my first batch of DOA inverts. Again, 50% mortality. This can't be common for invert shipments can it? *sigh* Sort of terrifies me about ordering fish online.

In other news, found a beautiful orange/green rainbow BTA at one of the LFSs in the area. I'd post a picture, but it's decided that it prefers hiding on the back of a rock. It's open and bubbled up so I think it's happy, but it's just not somewhere easy to see. Hopefully it'll cheer up and find a more visible place in the main tank.

Speaking of that, I put some narrow reflectors on my 360X's, and took some PAR measurements. I'm floored. The difference between with and without the reflector is 250-275 par in spots. I'm seeing 450-500 along the top of my scape where I was thinking I might be able to put some SPS, 250 along the middle of the scape, with about 150 on the floor. But they're narrow reflectors right? so as I push out to the edges, it drops off pretty fast - my rock tower on the left only sees about 75-50 across it's entire face, and the big rock on bottom of the tank on the left sees about 75-25 PAR the further to the right you go. I think I might move the lights an inch or two away from each other and see how much that impacts the top of the scape, because I'd like that tower to see at least 100 PAR, but we'll see.

 

[DeepSouth]

I've ordered clamps twice now,

I have been telling people that I have never taken so many trips to HD and Lowes and spent so little just to hook up my return pump.

Really like the build, and that floor is giving me ideas.

 

[PRock]

Yup, it's true, clowns are dumb. They're hosting the back corner of the tank. They haven't found the Anemone, or the hammer, or anything else that's in there. They like the corner. Of course the Nem is still hanging out on the back of a rock, so if they were hosting it, I'd probably not see them most of the time. Need to get the Nem to move somewhere visible, and then I'll have to herd the clowns over to it...

 

[PRock]

New residents! Pincushion Urchin, BiColor Blenny, Pitho Crab, Porcelain Crab just joined the tank this weekend. I should probably get some more pictures up on here...

 

[PRock]

So Red Sea released their new skimmers right about the time I bought my tank earlier this year. In fact, the day I ordered my tank my LFS was unpacking their very first shipment of them, and I got to tinker with one while they were setting up their display unit. I left my LFS with a bunch of equipment for the tank, including a RSK-300, the smallest of Red Sea's skimmers. It was easy to setup, has really nice features that I'm sure you all have already read about, and it behaved really nicely when I first started playing with. However, after a few months I've been feeling kind of so/so about my the RSK-300, I ended up having to run it basically completely open to get the bubbles up to the neck where the directions say I should have them, but even so it's never quite tuned right and doesn't really make much skimmate... but it's doing something and oxygenating the tank, so I'm just figuring I didn't get the correct sized one and I'll just upgrade later when I have more bio load.

Then tonight I picked up the skimmer to move it a bit to get to something else in the sump, turning it about 90 degrees in the process. The thing INSTANTLY overflows when I turn it back on because I've cleared the intake from the back wall of the sump and it's free to suck up as much water as it wants. So I tuned it down a bunch to get it to stop overflowing, and it's produced about half a cup full of skimmate over the last few hours. Seems I'm an idiot, but that's not an especially new revelation.

;Shamefullyembarrased TLDR for everyone else who might be reading this when thinking about their own tank/sump. When you put your skimmer in the sump, make sure it's intake IS NOT pressed up against the sump wall. ;Facepalm