Red Sea Reefer 200 G2 - First Reef Tank

[cubey]

I made a ton of progress today.

• Pulled my rockwork out and drained the dusty water. I recommend rinsing the rockwork in a separate bin if possible. Would have saved me time trying to clean the dust out of the aquarium. Also, a small piece of the aquascape broke off which was a bummer. And putting the aquascape directly on glass is easily the riskiest aquarium activity I've ever done! It was a tighter fit than I would have liked and next time I would build it in "modules" that interlocked or sort of went together. Pulling out such a big piece of rock was really nervewracking. I was worried the epoxy wouldn't hold and the base rock would smash my aquarium. But epoxy held strong and the aquascape is stable, especially with the sand in place.
• Added the sand. Bought way too much sand but whatever. Used the clarifier packet which worked well.
• Added 27 gallons of saltwater to the tank and filled up the rest with RO/DI water. This was a mistake because I then had the incorrect salinity. But I thought that was fine because there was no livestock so I could just add the salt directly to the aquarium. But I can see the small clumps of the salt are just sitting on the aquascape. Not a big deal, but in hindsight I could have easily pumped water from the RO/DI can to the saltwater can and just mixed up more saltwater pretty quickly. The trop marin salt dissolves (according to the naked eye at least) in about an hour. Probably not a huge deal, but I'll definitely be diligent with water changes just to ensure salinity levels are correct. I'll also use a turkey baster to blow any patches of salt of the aquascape and the sand.
• Added the heaters, inkbird controller, filter sock, activated carbon in a bag, red sea ato, protein skimmer, and return pump. Spent a lot of time with the inkbird and sicce return pump apps. The software is ok on iPhone. Perhaps they work better on android?
• Took such a long time to get the water level right and to get rid of the gurgling. I have the red sea g2 gate valve so I had to turn that thing what felt like 7+ full clockwise turns to finally raise the water level in the overflow box. I wasted a lot of time turning it 1/4 and waiting 5 minutes. Really I needed to just crank it until it activated the emergency drain lol. And BRS support did it say it could take up to 30 minutes for the water level to stabilize, but for this particular aquarium the water level only needed 3 minutes to stabilize. Thankfully I saw that Tuan ran into this same issue so I just turned and turned that valve and prayed I wasn't going to break it lol. Finally, I got the valve close enough and then just adjusted the power of the return pump to get it just right. It is dead silent now which is awesome. It was so loud at first that I was worried.

Things took a really long time because I wasn't that organized and didn't really know what I was doing. So I consulted the manuals constantly and really took my time with each step and piece of equipment to avoid mistakes/disaster. But no major spills or failures. Working on getting the salinity correct and then I can add the bacteria to get the cycle going. I won't run the protein skimmer or mechanical filter floss in the beginning according to the instructions for the aquabiomics live reef rubble.

 

[cubey]

So last night I decided to add a little more sand to the aquarium. Don't recommend doing this if you can avoid it because the sand made the water pretty cloudy.

I added the aquabiomics live reef rubble and algeabarn's cycling kit today after making sure the salinity was right. Now it's time to wait which I'm happy for. I took out the filter sock, filter floss, and carbon according to the cycling instructions. The live reef rubble was cool, it smelled like the ocean! Haha. Time to wait for nitrate to be detectable. I'll probably get ammonia/nitrite test kits just to be on the safe side.

 

[cubey]

I am well on my way to cycling the tank. I’ve been adding the PNS substrate sauce every day. Hoping that and the reef rubble will help my tank cycle faster and build the micro biome. We will see. The rest of the equipment is coming Thursday which is exciting!

 

[cubey]

Refilled the ato. I’m guessing it will only last 2-3 days on average. Looking forward to getting the new ato set up tomorrow.

I tested all of my parameters today and it took a while.

All parameters seem normal except for the nitrate test. I used the NYOS test kit and the color was beyond the high range of the test kit. I’m wondering if I made a mistake when testing. Will retest nitrate tomorrow. It is possible that I added too much of the nitrocycle in the beginning.

 

[cubey]

So I have started to add all of my gear. So far I’m very impressed with Hydros and the Reefmat is gigantic haha. I spent a good amount of time today with the heater and return pump turned off so hopefully the bacteria colony didn’t get affected too much. Really I’ve spent too much time trying to get all of the equipment perfect, but I’m happy with the results. But experience will be the best feedback.

All that’s left is to tweak the gate valve and return pump and add the PH probe and the co2 scrubber. I’ll hold off on the scrubber to see what my PH is without it.

 

[cubey]

Also need to set up the ATO through Hydros. I ended up putting the Reefmat on the left side because the tubing does not want to bend more than 90 degrees. I already wish I went with a bigger tank and a bigger sump lol.

 

[cubey]

So today we have some setbacks.

• My pH probe is not working. Even after recalibration my pH probe does not give accurate readings. It is currently submerged in saltwater and giving a pH of zero.
• My salinity in my tank is way off. Just measured it at 32.8 ppt. I thought my ATO was going through a ton of water. My guess is that my fidgeting with equipment lowered the water level in the sump and the ATO diluted it.
• Nitrate is greater than 90ppm and phosphate measured at 0.57ppm
• There’s some noise since installing the Reefmat. I haven’t managed to dial in the gate valve and return pump well enough yet.

Reached out to BRS for some help with the pH probe, but that’s not too critical at the moment.

I am worried that my low salinity killed off some of the helpful bacteria and the live reef rubble. And that the die off is causing the nutrient spike. Either way, I have turned off the ATO and will top off with saltwater until I reach 35ppt.

Some good news though. The Radion with diffuser is so nice. I have it at 12,500 kelvin. The tank has such a different energy than my freshwater tanks that is really captivating. Perfect for night time viewing! I’ll be mindful of fueling algae so I have it in acclimation mode starting at 10% and ramping up to 50%. If I see algae I’ll just dial it back or turn it off completely.

Hope my next update will be better!

 

[cubey]

Today the salinity in the aquarium is 33.8ppt. Getting closer to the goal of 35 ppt. My saltwater bin is at 34.8 ppt so I added a little more salt to bring it to 35 ppt.

Just waiting for the salinity level to correct itself and for the protein skimmer to break in.

 

[cubey]

My salinity is finally correct in my tank and my saltwater bin. I'm trying to tune the skimmer, but there's no fish or corals in the tank so I'm wondering if I don't have enough organics for the skimmer to work. But my nitrates were high so not sure. I also need to adjust the gate valve and turn the ATO back on.

 

[cubey]

Replaced the defective hydros x4 and now I can monitor pH. It’s only been 24 hours but ph is hovering around 8. I’m going to add the co2 scrubbing media and see what difference that makes.

Debating if I want to send in water samples to aquabiomics. Would be cool to see how diverse my micro biome is.

 

[cubey]

So again my salinity has dropped. My tank is now 34.2ppt. Really glad that I haven't introduced livestock yet.

I haven't changed anything since my last post. My overflow box is now overflowing into the emergency drain when it was only 3/4 of the way full last week. My guess is that as the reefmat got dirty that it restricted flow from the overflow box. But that's just a guess.

For now I have turned off the ATO and reduced the return pump speed from 51% to 48%. My plan is to balance the overflow box water level, let the tank evaporate water to 35 ppt, and then turn the ATO back on. Hopefully then it will work.

 

[cubey]

I made another mistake. I turned down my DC return pump power level to adjust the overflow noise. But I turned it down too far that the water wasn’t being returned… so I turned the pump back up and now I’m trying to get the overflow level right and minimize the trickling noise.

Before this mistake, I added galaxy pods, some bacteria from algae barn, and some red macro algae. I added the macro algae to the display tank. But my light has been growing a ton of diatoms so I just turned the light off.

Don’t worry, I haven’t added any fish, corals, or clean up crew yet so no living creatures have been hurt. I’m taking my sweet time with cycling the tank and learning how all the gear works.

Having all of this fancy equipment from the get go is cool, but I would have been better off with a simpler system to start haha. Equipment doesn’t matter if you don’t know how to use it!

But in the long-term, it will be pretty cool I think.