Red Sea Reefer 170 Build

[pmarsh44]

I would take a temp reading of the display tank and make sure when the heater kicks on it doesn't go off too soon.

Because it is just upstream of the sensor, it might think the target has been reached too early.

 

[Blitheran]

I would take a temp reading of the display tank and make sure when the heater kicks on it doesn't go off too soon.

Because it is just upstream of the sensor, it might think the target has been reached too early.

I follow along with an apex, and have the hanna checker verify my positioning and it works perfectly.

 

[Blitheran]

BRS is always coming out with super awesome, and reliable products! I ordered one of these bad boys to help maintain my tank temperature! Replacing my old jaeger heater.

 

[Blitheran]

Coral update! I have added another new batch of corals. Super excited about my recent pick up.

I picked up a nice chunky and encrusted Walt Disney acro and not even an hour post Bayer dip it has polyp extension! Super happy about that.

picked a few other designer pieces all of which are doing amazing!

 

[Blitheran]

Next mission is going to be mounting both of these inside the reefer 170 cabinent!

 

[Blitheran]

Alright so! Things are slowly starting to take shape. I finally got the neptune DOS setup in the cabinet. Super simple and easy. Cool part about this, is these DOS units are only a few months old so nothing to worry about in terms of the pump head life. I currently have two of them which allows me to dose up to 4 things. Currently I am dosing Alk, calcium and acro power. I have magnesium chloride but I have been reading that it is not entirely necessary to dose compared to alk and calcium. I may just leave the magnesium supplement up to the weekly water changes to replenish and if the demand gets higher I will change it up and bump up the dosage. I do however have a fourth head unit which is not currently being used. I think I may give tropic marine part C a try. I have been reading reveiws that it pairs well which BRS 2 part to replenish magnesium and trace elements so we will see.

 

[Blitheran]

This evenings update and few things I would like to share. To start here is a tank shot, tbh it is nearly impossible to see any of the corals so I need to invest in some camera lens filters.

Next on agenda is filtration. I went a little overboard and insane with it. I have a skimmer, refugium, seachem matrix media, tons of extra rock in sump for bacteria, bare bottom so detritus never settles, also have pumps in the sump to eliminate settling. So, with all the sad and done. My tanks filtration is more than adequate for my two clown fish, salfin tang, and cleaner shrimp and five snails. I feed twice a day morning and dinner. My goal with my filtration was to allow me to broadcast feed everyday. About a month ago I started doing it everyday but noticed excess brown algae show up, so I went to every other day. Well nitrates and phophates have bottomed out to zero again.. great. So today is day three of reef roids I want to see how my tank can handle feeding everyday. Hopefully it will bring my nitrates and phophates back up. In the mean time, it might be time to start dosing nitrates and phosphates... I might give fish of hex’s nitrates and phosphates a go. But I am going to try and up my feeding.

My Ph is very low as you can see in the picture it has a low of 7.6. That is not good. It is slowing my corals growth. I heard that if you can increase the ph to 8.2-8.3 your corals with begin to boom. I have been looking into buying a BRS CO2 scrubber but still deciding if I want to do it.

I have a checklist of a few things I have on my agenda to get in the near future. I just need to not spend so much on corals haha!

- lens kit for iphone
- nitrate additive
- phosphate additive
- CO2 scrubber
- more corals

 

[Blitheran]

 

[Blitheran]

Defiantly need to work on maintaining better trace elements levels. I need to start dosing iodine because of my cheato soaking it up. A little odd how my salinity is so how... 1.027... hanna salinity checker says 1.026.. I am going to lower it down to 1.025 and just work with that, because 1.027 is a little high... arsenic and copper... sadly need to get these out of my tank!

 

[Blitheran]

CO2 scrubber is set up. I am currently making a video on the progressions of it and how it is performing. Here is how it is mounted

I was dosing 5ml of acro power a day, but I feel as though the acro power was helping aid in the algae bloom, I dialed it back to 2ml a day. My alkalinity and calcium intake is 5ml a day which is holding steady. Nice to have my dosing on track. Purple tip stag has started encrusting along with the 500 degree efflo. Super happy about it.


I have been suffering with taking proper pictures so I bought the Polyp lab v2 lenses. The yellow Lens is awesome and helps make the colors pop! I have no idea how to use the other lens (macro). I can’t get it to work.

here are some starter up pictures

 

[Daniel@R2R]

Great idea on the scrubber mount!

 

[Blitheran]

Great idea on the scrubber mount!

Thanks!

 

[Blitheran]

Here is day 2 of the CO2 scrubber in action. You can see how much tighter my PH swings are. Prior they would sing by about... A LOT, lol. Now I am having a low of 8.1! Im
Hoping in the next few days it will kick up to that sweet 8.3!!! CO2 Scrubber was an awesome investment

 

[Blitheran]

Day 3 of CO2 scrubber it is kicking butt!

 

[AnxiousReefer]

Wow you have opened my eyes to so much more the 170 can do. I wanted to add the apex system in the future but when I looked in the cabinet that came with the tank I felt that it would like to cramped. After reading your build I can see that it’s possible. Could you shoot me a pm and explain all the diy work that you did I would like to take some of what I saw and incorporate it to my tank

 

[Blitheran]

 

[Blitheran]

Tank is doing well. Coral colors are a little bland... tank is still new and is not as stable as more mature reefs, I am hoping things will start to dial in as the reef matures more. Some of the rock in the tank isnt even 2 months old. As I was doing my tank inspection, I noticed what looks like a small speck of coraline on my rock, this rock is newer and I am happy to see it!!!

as I mentioned some of the rock is newer which lead to a bad diatom outbreak, which I am still stuck with, a lot of brown algae all across the back of the tank :/ so much fun to look at. There is a lot of peeling in parts but there is still a nice matt of algae. Hoping eventually it will go away.

Going to try and get into a habit of cleaning the pumps every month. There was a ton of gunk on them! You can see how well they stick out from the diatoms on the back wall.

sadly my red dragon sps RTN’d in a matter of a day. No clue why. It never really did anything and then it just poofed away. So that was a bummer to have happen.

 

[Blitheran]

The refugium is just teaming with life! Tried my best to get clear pictures but pretty much every dote is a creature of some sort

 

[Blitheran]

Update! CO2 scrubber is kicking butt! 9 days going strong with the media and no signs of slowing down. Finally reached that sweet spot of 8.3 (or almost haha.. )

 

[Blitheran]

So I bought a small bathroom cabinet off of amazon. It worked well, but the More equipment I kept trying to fit into it, it was becoming extremely tight and hard to fit anything inside. As you can see in the pictures I was bleeding on the outside of the cabinet trying to fit everything.

so I decided I would build a cabinet that fights the bill with what I want with this tank. I need a slicker cabinet. So I built this.

much happier, with the outcome and no fear of water splashing and hitting the power strip.