Red Sea 3xl 900 plan (build to come)

[ID-Reefer]

Follow along. I have had my RS 900 up and running for a few months and noticed your build thread. Did you use the secondary sump/sump extension?

Also a 900 owner with a newer build going. Interested in seeing what others are doing with the same tank and sump layout. FWIW I will be making my secondary sump a frag tank with a fuge in the front main chamber. Have AI lights in both for their respective purposes. Not a lot of water movement as I’m sure you both have noticed. I added a smallish pump to hopefully move more water through the secondary sump.

 

[LBReefer]

Great looking build.

 

[ImaFlippinDolphin]

Great looking build.

Thank you!!

 

[metzer]

I went with an external sump...why, well i have two 900's Still a work in progress and have modified the rock some since the photo.

 

[ImaFlippinDolphin]

I went with an external sump...why, well i have two 900's Still a work in progress and have modified the rock some since the photo.

Thats ******!!!

 

[ImaFlippinDolphin]

B@da$$!!!

 

[Richmond]

Very nice build! Waiting on RS to deliver my tank. Still struggling with lighting decision, skimmer (or filter roller and no skimmer), and circulation pumps.

Current "plan" is 3x RS LED 160s, but tempted to get hydras.

I'm going to wait till I have the tank, to see if I can make the filter roller I want work. I think I'll have to remove the filter socks all together, and not 100% sure if that's possible.

Almost certainly going to get 2 reefwave 45's for circulation.

Would love your opinion, since you have the tank!

 

[metzer]

My personal opinion's:

I run the Gyre 350's but have never owned the reefwaves. Gyres have a good sale right now and look at the gph on the reefwaves vs. the Gyre's. I have had one set of 350's for over a year running on another tank (RS 750) and have never had an issue. I guess it will depend on what you want to grow and if flow or combination of other flow in your tank will suffice.

Lighting; i had four RS 90's on my 750. The lights were nice to the eye and good color (bit purple/violet). I recently switched to G5 radions, and my growth has took off. I would note thought that my first year was me being a bit of a noob and learning good husbandry, so it may not have been the lights...it could have been the tank finally got settled and i learned to stop tinkering . Some of this too was what i was trying to grow. I broke down and bought a PAR meter; the RS 90's were not strong enough for where i was trying to grow SPS (maybe the reason for reduced to no growth). The 90's were great for LPS but lacked the humph for me on SPS. I could move my SPS up higher in the tank but i didnt want too. The RS 160's do look great and the concept seems good. Switching over to the Radions (XR 15s on my 750 and XR 30s on the 900s)...huge difference for PAR, light etc. I found the RS lighting app too be much better than Mobius (Mobius for me is a bit buggy). Not bashing redsea lights but i do like the radions better and my corals seem to be liking them better as well. I should probably sell my four red sea 90s, they are sitting in a box and only a year old. I think the PAR maps on the 90s and 160 are similar in terms of depth pentation of light.

I run bare bottoms and would recommend the MP60, i found the MP40 to lack enough flow to reach the other end (six feet away) unless i leave it at 100% (then it gets a little warm). You could do a MP 40 on each side, which has some benefits, or a single MP 60 to keep detritus off the bottom. I run a Single MP 60 on the front and two MP 40s on the back and then the Gyres up high.

Allot depends on what you are trying to grow.

 

[ImaFlippinDolphin]

Medusa jellys, hitched a ride on snails or a crab

 

[ImaFlippinDolphin]

Spontaneous vermatid infestation!!! Trochus snail smuggled them in...dang it. Gonna grab some bumblebee snails and a wrasse for hopefully natural eradicating, also some kz marine snow to slow the spawning events

 

[ImaFlippinDolphin]

On a positive note

 

[ImaFlippinDolphin]

On a positive only slower note, my phosphate has continued to bottom out so I've been trying to increase the bioload via livestock however, 2 fish are held up in quarantine until the 15th...I had an opportunity to acquire a Foxface when I laid out the hold for the other fish but didn't...I have a feeling this folly will be the weight that swung the scale to dinos. Ive been overfeeding and abstaining from water changes, but I may have to start dosing phos...coming back to this hobby I never thought I'd say those words.

 

[ImaFlippinDolphin]

What the dinos don't know is I got a uv sterilizer plumbed in since onset, and I already got used to blacked out tank. I honestly don't want to dose phosphate, but desperate times...oh, and I'm about to plumb in a calcium reactor stay ahead of the curve

 

[ImaFlippinDolphin]

Got some phosphate generators lol

 

[ImaFlippinDolphin]

Finally up from 0.00!!! Nitrates still less than .2 though...feeding like crazy added couple more fish and 2 more this week

 

[ImaFlippinDolphin]

Man I'm feeling disheartened. I got some weird butt brown hair algae cropping like we goin to market. Nobody eats it, my levels still bottoming out but I'm sure my test are because of this stuff...
On top of ugly, my carx has Styrofoam stuck in every nook and cranny due to shipping.
Upside is all livestock are fat, happy, showing growth on corals.
Only weird thing is this brown hair garbage and an unhappy anenome.

 

[ImaFlippinDolphin]

Feeling a bit rejuvenated!! Won some frags and a tank from my lfs in a raffle!! . Contemplating doing a 3 day blackout to kill off the algae...I was having bottomed out readings and fed heavy and then reef roads and...boom...outbreak lol. My own fault. Don't really want to fluconazole it or phosphate rx it, to be honest I don't want to blackout the tank as my anenome has finally settled or so it seems. Anyway, stoked about the raffle prizes, will probably gift the tank to my folks to give them something to look at this plague season.

 

[metzer]

nice, on the raffle wins. I started feeding the RS AB+ (green stuff) (1/2 recommend dosage) and had a mini breakout of dino's and cyano and my nitrates bottomed out. I blacked out the tanks for three days, dosed some nitrates every day, would turkey baste to keep everything in the water column, and changed filter socks every day. Knock on wood, it looks like I won this battle without needing to do chemical treatments and no coral or fish loss.

 

[ImaFlippinDolphin]

So...im not surprised that I'm frustrated with this. As it turns out, I believe what I'm up against is white slime bacteria. I had a wax melt deal going after my skimmer went nuts(whole place smelled vile) having said that, I never put 2 and 2 together. This stuff is positively relentless...I thought I was battling some weird rusty brown hair algae with gross goo around it, so I went the natural route in hopes of eradicating it. Needless to say there ain't a snail or crab or tang that can dent this nightmare. I finally off handedly came across white slime bacteria and bingo, yahtzee, ding ding ding!!! There it is, the spawn of Satan. Impervious to any remedy. Laughs at
tangs, scoffs at snails....even cootchie cooed my sea hare. I really really don't want to go the chemical route, but at this point it may be the only way. I say "bacteria" because that's what people call it, but between us, its thors weird cousins hair with gooey lice bulbs with....air bubbles. Pretty gnarly stuff and I even went and bought a few different style brushes and tried to scrub it off(I did the hair algae pick thing...system is 240, 192 display) and I felt like I made a dent but this stuff just grew longer, uglier and faster. I'm cleaning filter socks daily to get the grossness out, my skimmer intermittently overflows, I had thought it was vermatids spawning but nope...bacteria blooming. I saw on YouTube reefggrl video said flatworm xit worked on hers...seems a stretch and that video is old and nobody confirmed, only shut down systems, so...yeah. I'm in the trenches, the upside is fish and corals even the anenome doesn't seem to mind it. It's an unsightly mess, it looks like Portland after the summer of love...hot garbage. I got no idea short of a dr tims article about a dentist and bacteria dosing. I went to order it, but not in stock...any ideas are welcome. I've tried cutting back photoperiod, feeding a lot less(some corals are losing color, and my fish are getting testy with each other) all the CUC variations you can think up...melanarus wrasse thanks me for the margaritas...murderer. I dunno man, I aint gonna throw the towel in, and I read rip cleaning is a crap shoot with this stuff, I simply don't have the means(time)to pull it off. I did notice however brown residue in my mixing container, I am switching salts because as they say....aint nobody got time for dat

 

[ImaFlippinDolphin]

Sea hares are beasts!!! Took a few days before it went to town but now its gone(lyngbya)