R2R Reef of the Month: Joe's 270-gallon SPS Reef - March 2018

[hybridazn]

Absolutely beautiful! The reef spotlight is well deserved

 

[SnowDog]

@JBNY - Well done! That's a beautiful system and I like how you've got it set-up to be fairly simple to maintain. One thing I noticed was you list the PO4 as 1.2ppm. That's much higher than I have been running and I always assumed high PO4 in this range would cause problems. What have you done to prevent any issues with PO4 at this level?

Cheers!
SD

 

[JBNY]

Wow! This tank is frickin' incredible, I love it. I'm pretty amazed though, your ARID reactor takes on the bioload for your entire tank? That's awesome, i've been looking to install a Macro Algae Reactor in my Tank as well

I don't think the ARID takes on the bioload of the tank much, it's mostly the Live Rock and sand doing the heavy lifting with the ARID helping to take down some phosphates. Right now I'm having some issues getting the ARID to grow chaeto so it's probably not doing much.

Wonderful joe!! Great job, what your secret with purple queens anthias to take food?

I started them off with cyclopeeze, that they eat right pretty readily. Then added some mysis, when they were eating that I stayed to use small (0.5) pellets,

@JBNY - Well done! That's a beautiful system and I like how you've got it set-up to be fairly simple to maintain. One thing I noticed was you list the PO4 as 1.2ppm. That's much higher than I have been running and I always assumed high PO4 in this range would cause problems. What have you done to prevent any issues with PO4 at this level?

Cheers!
SD

I used to keep my Phosphates at near zero. But I stopped measuring it a long time ago and when I did go back to measuring it found it was at .7 and it has been slowly rising since then. I've not seen any problems at all with higher phosphates level, I felt so betrayed by the reefing world when I realized higher phosphates had little to no impact of the tank, coloration, growth, or algae. Now I don't really worry about it anymore.

 

[Epic Aquaculture]

I just finished setting up the 750 Reefer last week!! Upgraded from an old 650. Very happy with the tank. Good luck!!!

Thank you. I'm looking forward to getting it wet!

 

[Tim2@Triton]

The tank looks great @JBNY . Great to see an early adopter of Triton spotlighted!

 

[Marek-S]

Congrats !!!!
Awesome looking reef

 

[Ruben's Reef]

Congratulations !!! Amazingly beautiful tank.

 

[gpwdr]

Very nice system you have Joe. I gave up my MH for LED. Now I'm back to MH with LED. So don't give up on MH brother.

 

[sonny316]

Congrats. Beautiful reef tank!

 

[SAPPER]

Awesome aquarium, I love tiger tail cucumbers but they don' half leave big sand hills in my tank.

 

[Dan Cyr]

HOLY CRAP .....wait can I say crap on here? LOL.
Anyway, my wife always said good things come in small packages, even though she wasn't talking about a reef tank , that is incredible!

 

[Ferrell]

Most excellent Joe. Something we can all aspire to achieve

 

[ReefSlice]

What an incredible system! And just to clear things up you feed 12 cubes of food plus pellets a day? Your bioload is massive, very impressive.

 

[JBNY]

Thanks everyone for the kind words, I really appreciate them!

The tank looks great @JBNY . Great to see an early adopter of Triton spotlighted!

Thank Tim!!

Very nice system you have Joe. I gave up my MH for LED. Now I'm back to MH with LED. So don't give up on MH brother.

Oh, I'm not really looking to give up on them for a while. I keep a rotating 2 year supply of MH lamps. So I'm always good for a few more years!

Awesome aquarium, I love tiger tail cucumbers but they don' half leave big sand hills in my tank.

Some of the big sand hills are form the pump but a few are from the tiger tails too.

What an incredible system! And just to clear things up you feed 12 cubes of food plus pellets a day? Your bioload is massive, very impressive.

Yes that is what I am feeding. I think once you resolve yourself to not keeping zero nitrates you will be surprised how much you can add tot the tank and still have low (under 10 ppm) nitrates.

 

[gcarroll]

Congrats Joe!!! I'm going to have to find a way out to see your tank when I'm out for RAP NY.

 

[TUSI]

Very well deserved joe. Congrats absolutely beauty full

 

[JimmyV]

Stunning system. Definitely inspired me. I have been struggling for 6 years. You say you use just the 2 gyres in there.

 

[Ron Jenks]

Absolutely beautiful...easy to see why it's reef of the month!

 

[Nicholas Dushynsky]

Beautifully stunning tank, with a well deserved spotlight. Maybe one day. I've only just started basic sps as in monti digi. Grown from frags over 9 months and had one rtn.I was gutted. Reading that you had sps rtn can i ask what you did to try and save them? I fragged mine and just reglued the frags back on to the dead skeleton.

 

[SteveM10]

Wow, spectacular!