Randy's Redsea Reefer 250 and the rest of the Coral Farm
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Spdjnky
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Hard to put into words what a beautiful Reef you have just awesome how can I do something like that.
Thanks for sharing I'm going to give it one more try and seeing your aquarium just gives me inspiration I have a post named
Taking one more shot at having a successful reef aquarium. I would welcome any comments
Thx Phil
Thanks for sharing I'm going to give it one more try and seeing your aquarium just gives me inspiration I have a post named
Taking one more shot at having a successful reef aquarium. I would welcome any comments
Thx Phil
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RandyC
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Thanks! I'll take a look at your thread and see if there's anything I can help with.
Spdjnky
Well-Known Member
Thank you I'm in the process of getting QT tanks set up and trying to come up with the next step. I know that I have no regular schedule to do anything and need to get that right first when I start over. I was almost set on Triton but I just read allot of reviews on there new packaging and now I have more questions.
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RandyC
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I experimented with Triton in a QT/Experiment tank and whether it was worth switching my main tanks from a calcium reactor to Triton. I bailed on it because the turn around time on a Triton ICP test was abysmal. Sometimes it was okay and I'd get a result back in 11-14 days from the day I mailed it, but a few times it would take a month. Which in my mind is pretty useless.
I don't necessarily have anything bad to say about the supplements itself, but I feel that Triton needs to have a US based testing facility to make the turn around time for results significantly better.
Spdjnky
Well-Known Member
Some frags I'm cooking. Absolutely stunning!!!
Tierra del Fuego
RR Orange Passion
ASD Rainbow Fruit
RR Pink Cadillac
Rick.45cal
2500 Club Member
Real nice tank Randy! Well done, the corals look great!
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RandyC
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A little progression shot. I got this little booger nub of a Homewrecker back in May 2018. It was a pretty slow grower for me for a while, but it's finally starting to do something worth showing. Good things come to those who wait?
5/22/2018
3/22/2019
5/22/2018
3/22/2019
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RandyC
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Thanks! I shoot with a Canon 7D and couple of different macro lenses then use Adobe Lightroom to adjust the white balance to bring the red/orange spectrum back into the picture so it more closely matches what our eyes see in person.
For quick snaps with the phone, I usually slap an orange filter on the lens. There’s a lot of companies making phone clip-ons for reef photography, but my preference is to grab a filter swatch so that you can better match the right color gel filter with the spectrum you’re using.
Rosco Rosco Lux Small Swatchbook https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0002ER2YG/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_DN8MCb4DM8F2T
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RandyC
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Here's the latest edition to my “coral farm”. It's debatable whether this was a good or bad purchase, but at least the wife didn’t didn’t kick me out of the house after it showed up in the garage. 
It’s a 6x3x1’ acrylic tank. I have a 40breeder sump and a 20 gallon external fuge plumbed.
Tank is cycled and has been running for a litttle over a month now. Rocks in the sump have been cured/cycled for longer than that. Fish are slowly being added, but no coral so far.
And I can’t leave without at least one coral picture. Here’s a super colorful shroom I picked up a few months ago. Compared to my other shrooms, this one has been growing pretty slow, but I think the colors on this one are pretty awesome.
It’s a 6x3x1’ acrylic tank. I have a 40breeder sump and a 20 gallon external fuge plumbed.Tank is cycled and has been running for a litttle over a month now. Rocks in the sump have been cured/cycled for longer than that. Fish are slowly being added, but no coral so far.
And I can’t leave without at least one coral picture. Here’s a super colorful shroom I picked up a few months ago. Compared to my other shrooms, this one has been growing pretty slow, but I think the colors on this one are pretty awesome.
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RandyC
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These are some of my camera shy friends that go into hiding when FTS get taken. But they can't resist a top down camera shot.
Left-to-right: OG Colorado Sunburst, CC Supernova and CC Inferno.
Up close and personal shots. What's cool is that you can see that up close, they are very different in their markings.
OG Colorado Sunburst
CC Supernova
CC Inferno
Left-to-right: OG Colorado Sunburst, CC Supernova and CC Inferno.
Up close and personal shots. What's cool is that you can see that up close, they are very different in their markings.
OG Colorado Sunburst
CC Supernova
CC Inferno
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RandyC
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Did some slicing and dicing this week and thought some might be interested in how I propagate BTAs.
I prefer to use a sterile #10 scalpel to a cut BTA. I actually like to make two cuts. First cut is from the center of the mouth to the edge, then I follow up with a cut from the mouth to the opposite edge right after. One thing I'd suggest is that you commit to the cut. Do not be squeamish; make sure your cut goes through the oral disk and foot the first time for a clean cut. Bad things will happen if you have to keep going over and over the cut area. After cutting, I just give it a good rinse in tank water to get rid of excess BTA poo and extra BTA bits and then back in the tank. I don't dip in anything before putting it back in the tank. Also, I like to place the BTA halves back in the spot that it came from to minimize stress.
5 minutes after cutting
5 minutes after (another view)
14 min after - newly cut halves starting to attach itself to surface again
24 min after
37 min after - tentacles starting to inflate again
58 min after cutting - tentacles almost back to fully inflated
1 hour after video - like to have at least a decent amount of flow on them after cutting so that extra BTA pieces come off of it and food/detritus gets blown off as well.
I prefer to use a sterile #10 scalpel to a cut BTA. I actually like to make two cuts. First cut is from the center of the mouth to the edge, then I follow up with a cut from the mouth to the opposite edge right after. One thing I'd suggest is that you commit to the cut. Do not be squeamish; make sure your cut goes through the oral disk and foot the first time for a clean cut. Bad things will happen if you have to keep going over and over the cut area. After cutting, I just give it a good rinse in tank water to get rid of excess BTA poo and extra BTA bits and then back in the tank. I don't dip in anything before putting it back in the tank. Also, I like to place the BTA halves back in the spot that it came from to minimize stress.
5 minutes after cutting
5 minutes after (another view)
14 min after - newly cut halves starting to attach itself to surface again
24 min after
37 min after - tentacles starting to inflate again
58 min after cutting - tentacles almost back to fully inflated
1 hour after video - like to have at least a decent amount of flow on them after cutting so that extra BTA pieces come off of it and food/detritus gets blown off as well.
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RandyC
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For the first two years or so, I never had a problem maintaining the overflow water level at a specific level with the Red Sea diaphragm valve on the main drain and things were silent. However, for the last few months, I have had to make constant adjustments to the valve every 4-5 days because the water level would increase by itself and the noise from water trickling into the emergency drain became super annoying. I've cleaned the valve a number of times, but still had the same problem. I'm not sure why after two years I began to have an issue, but here we are.
So I decided to make the change to a Spears gate valve for the main full siphon drain. Normally something that should be a simple swap in a fish tank, but the Red Sea plumbing poses a challenge because it is metric.
So here's what it looks like now.
From what I've seen, most people have just taken the return connector part (part number 42221), getting a 3/4" threaded male adapter and wrapping the threaded end with 10-15 wraps of telfon tape to fit it into the metric fitting in place of the barb. For a number of reasons, I'm not comfortable with this solution.
So what I did was take a Spears 32mm to 1" transition union and glued the 32mm end over the outer part of the return connector which measures 32mm. I used PVC primer and cement. The plastic that the return connector is made out is an "unknown plastic" (exact words from Red Sea tech support), so using PVC primer and cement wasn't a sure thing that it would bond well, but it looks like it's holding up. No leaks have been seen and best part, tank is dead silent with water in overflow staying steady.
Here's my parts list
- Red Sea return connector part #42221 (remove barb before gluing - also be carful to not over do it on the cement, you don't want to glue the black screw nut since it's a tight fit)
- Spears 32mm to 1" sched 80 transition union
- Spears 1" schedule 80 gate valve
- 1" blue PVC pipe
So I decided to make the change to a Spears gate valve for the main full siphon drain. Normally something that should be a simple swap in a fish tank, but the Red Sea plumbing poses a challenge because it is metric.
So here's what it looks like now.
From what I've seen, most people have just taken the return connector part (part number 42221), getting a 3/4" threaded male adapter and wrapping the threaded end with 10-15 wraps of telfon tape to fit it into the metric fitting in place of the barb. For a number of reasons, I'm not comfortable with this solution.
So what I did was take a Spears 32mm to 1" transition union and glued the 32mm end over the outer part of the return connector which measures 32mm. I used PVC primer and cement. The plastic that the return connector is made out is an "unknown plastic" (exact words from Red Sea tech support), so using PVC primer and cement wasn't a sure thing that it would bond well, but it looks like it's holding up. No leaks have been seen and best part, tank is dead silent with water in overflow staying steady.
Here's my parts list
- Red Sea return connector part #42221 (remove barb before gluing - also be carful to not over do it on the cement, you don't want to glue the black screw nut since it's a tight fit)
- Spears 32mm to 1" sched 80 transition union
- Spears 1" schedule 80 gate valve
- 1" blue PVC pipe
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RandyC
Well-Known Member
Totally worth it! Hoping to never have to make weekly/daily adjustments again. It a relatively easy mod with big gains IMO.
You are on a roll here Randy!Here's the latest edition to my “coral farm”. It's debatable whether this was a good or bad purchase, but at least the wife didn’t didn’t kick me out of the house after it showed up in the garage.
Tank is cycled and has been running for a litttle over a month now. Rocks in the sump have been cured/cycled for longer than that. Fish are slowly being added, but no coral so far.
And I can’t leave without at least one coral picture. Here’s a super colorful shroom I picked up a few months ago. Compared to my other shrooms, this one has been growing pretty slow, but I think the colors on this one are pretty awesome.
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