Red Sea Reefer Nano

ranchhand02 · May 4, 2018

Would you consider shipping me some chaeto? I am wanting to set up a fuge on my tank. Great tank by the way.

ranchhand02 · May 4, 2018

Also what lighting schedule are you running on your chaeto? Did you have to acclimate it at all to the light?

firedancer414 · May 6, 2018

Sorry just getting back to you now. It was about $60 from Ponoko. I originally got two pieces made but realized that I just needed the one long weir.

Custom lasercut acrylic chamber/weirs from Ponoko. 0.25" black acrylic, template links below if you want to do the same thing:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/qowjn1px65wnbx6/sump_long.eps?dl=0

sergio706 · May 17, 2018

Great looking setup!

firedancer414 · May 29, 2018

Hey bay area buddy - question - how long do you run the H380 for? Having some trouble with chaeto die off. I run mine from 8pm-8am.

CoralDanimal · May 29, 2018

firedancer414 said:
Hey bay area buddy - question - how long do you run the H380 for? Having some trouble with chaeto die off. I run mine from 8pm-8am.

Good question. My H380 is about 18-24 inches above the water and I run it from 9pm -> 6am every day. When I first got the H380, I had to acclimate the chaeto as I actually bleached it the first night. I started at 2-3 hours per night and slowly worked up to where I'm at. I used to do 12 hours too but I found more success with the 8-10 hour range. I also feed every day so there's a lot of nutrients for the chaeto to feed off of.

firedancer414 · May 29, 2018

demeyer2 said:
Good question. My H380 is about 18-24 inches above the water and I run it from 9pm -> 6am every day. When I first got the H380, I had to acclimate the chaeto as I actually bleached it the first night. I started at 2-3 hours per night and slowly worked up to where I'm at. I used to do 12 hours too but I found more success with the 8-10 hour range. I also feed every day so there's a lot of nutrients for the chaeto to feed off of.

Awesome - thanks. Just cut from 12 hrs to 8 hrs - let's see how it works. It's been in there for almost 2 months now so I think it's most of the way there.

firedancer414 · May 29, 2018

Just measured that mine is 16" off the surface of the water and the chaeto looks like this

larryl · Jun 3, 2018

Tank looks amazing.

Blue Spot Octopus · Jun 3, 2018

Sand or bare bottom. If you had to choice now which way would you go?

CoralDanimal · Jun 5, 2018

firedancer414 said:
Just measured that mine is 16" off the surface of the water and the chaeto looks like this

The distance and time period is pretty much identical to mine. If you're not seeing growth, it's probably other factors (are you feeding enough? right type of chaeto?). Let me know how it goes

larryl said:
Tank looks amazing.

Thanks! I'll post a new pic soon. I made some changes to the rock work.

Blue Spot Octopus said:
Sand or bare bottom. If you had to choice now which way would you go?

If aesthetics weren't a concern, bare bottom. I really like having a natural looking tank though so I'm dealing with the sand (vacuuming, replacing in small batches, etc.)...for now

firedancer414 · Jun 5, 2018

demeyer2 said:
The distance and time period is pretty much identical to mine. If you're not seeing growth, it's probably other factors (are you feeding enough? right type of chaeto?). Let me know how it goes

Thanks man. I had a few problems with the chaeto that I've been fixing step-by-step - I was running my display lights too long and with too much red/green so that's cut down. I finally started testing my phosphate [Hanna]/nitrate [Red Sea] with higher resolution kits (I was using API before) and they were still _absolute zero_ so I'm assuming I actually need to start feeding more and start running my skimmer in "dry" mode. Definitely 1st world problems for someone who hasn't done a water change since March!

CoralDanimal · Jul 8, 2018

I realized it's been about 5 months since my last update (and this photo is from a month ago). Here we go:

Clownfish
I made the decision to sell my mated clowns to a local reefer. I had been thinking about it for a while and even though I went back and forth, I'm glad I did it. For one, they were absolute pigs. I had to feed twice as much as I would have liked because they gobble up everything before any other fish in the tank can get anything. For another reason, the big female was bullying other fish. In particular, my smaller mandarin seemed stressed. The tank is happy now and traveling is a lot easier because I just buy some pods for the tank before I leave and don't have to worry about setting the automatic feeder.

SPS Growth
In the past 3-4 months, my SPS growth has finally taken off. It's my first time in the hobby where I can actually see the growth week to week - it's been great! Other than stability (haven't made many changes) and increased pH (I think this is due to my packed refugium but I'm not 100%) I'm not sure what other factors are contributing. I'll post a new pic in the next month or so that really highlights the growth. The coralline growth has also been great so there's probably an underlying cause for both.

Aquascaping
I removed a chunk of rock from the left side of the tank. It had some xenia spreading all over it and it came out easier than I thought, but it's left some of my favorite corals stranded. In particular my torch and aquablue acropora - both of them came on small man made rock pucks which are really hard to mount to anything because their bottom side is flat. I've tried epoxy, super glue, and a combination of both. I think the last resort is cementing them to bigger pieces of live rock that I can bury in the sand although the more favorable route would be getting a bigger tank ;Greedy The thought has crossed my mind but it's hard to pull the trigger on because I know in two years I'll have to move and the bigger the tank, the harder the move.

I'll try to post pics/updates more often.

firedancer414 · Jul 9, 2018

Thanks for the update. looks like great progress. Impressed by the growth! Glad you got rid of the Xenia [onatopp?]. Really sharp.

CoralDanimal · Jul 12, 2018

firedancer414 said:
Thanks for the update. looks like great progress. Impressed by the growth! Glad you got rid of the Xenia [onatopp?]. Really sharp.

Thanks! It was ORA pom pom Xenia and while it looked cool (my wife loved them), once it hit the live rock it started to spread like wild fire so I figured it was best address before I had one big Xenia tank. As for the growth, I've been trying to figure out why and I've isolated it to 3 factors:
• My pH is higher now than it's ever been. Daily range is 8.04 - 8.34 and in the past it was probably closer to 7.8 - 8.
• I've been dosing a small amount of nitrates every day in past months.
• I haven't been running carbon for the past month. I've always run carbon with every tank I've had, but when I pulled it out, didn't replace it, and the tank looked great I figured why put it back in.

firedancer414 · Jul 12, 2018

How are you dosing nitrates? I feed what feels like a ridiculous amount (80% goes to sandbed) and can't seem to get nitrates > 0.25, and I'm worried that I'm adding phosphate too.

CoralDanimal · Jul 15, 2018

firedancer414 said:
How are you dosing nitrates? I feed what feels like a ridiculous amount (80% goes to sandbed) and can't seem to get nitrates > 0.25, and I'm worried that I'm adding phosphate too.

A couple things here:

I'm dosing manually currently at 1ml per day, but I'm still not registering on the nitrate testing so I'll need to update the dose.
I spent a lot of time finding out how much to dose and what the concentrate needs to be (that wasn't complicated with grams and liters). Here's the thread I used: https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/p...mover-dosing-steps.215730/page-3#post-2483440
1 tablespoon to 1 cup of RODI is the mixture, but I've seen multiple people stating different daily doses about what it does to nitrates per gallon. This is why I started small and have been testing frequently so I could ramp up if needed.
It's hard to know if this is the source of my great growth recently and whether this has helped keep nuisance algae at bay, but I don't plan to stop since the tank has been it's best recently and nitrate dosing started during it's improvements.

nagreen · Jul 24, 2018

demeyer2 said:
A couple things here:

I'm dosing manually currently at 1ml per day, but I'm still not registering on the nitrate testing so I'll need to update the dose.

I spent a lot of time finding out how much to dose and what the concentrate needs to be (that wasn't complicated with grams and liters). Here's the thread I used: https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/p...mover-dosing-steps.215730/page-3#post-2483440

1 tablespoon to 1 cup of RODI is the mixture, but I've seen multiple people stating different daily doses about what it does to nitrates per gallon. This is why I started small and have been testing frequently so I could ramp up if needed.

It's hard to know if this is the source of my great growth recently and whether this has helped keep nuisance algae at bay, but I don't plan to stop since the tank has been it's best recently and nitrate dosing started during it's improvements.

Just read your entire thread.. I love it.. I'm setting up a Reefer Nano in the next month and you have inspired me. I have a brand new Bubble Magus Curve 5 that I'm wanting to send back and trade in for a Tunze 9004 haha. I love your refugium. Is it still doing well? Are you happy with the Tunze? I'm almost sold on copying your sump setup but I plan on having a pretty heavy bioload, so not sure the Tunze would be as good as the Curve 5.. Check out my thread to see the plans I have for mine and let me know what you think! Please keep updating your thread, I'm following along

firedancer414 · Jul 24, 2018

nagreen said:
Just read your entire thread.. I love it.. I'm setting up a Reefer Nano in the next month and you have inspired me. I have a brand new Bubble Magus Curve 5 that I'm wanting to send back and trade in for a Tunze 9004 haha. I love your refugium. Is it still doing well? Are you happy with the Tunze? I'm almost sold on copying your sump setup but I plan on having a pretty heavy bioload, so not sure the Tunze would be as good as the Curve 5.. Check out my thread to see the plans I have for mine and let me know what you think! Please keep updating your thread, I'm following along

The refugium is much more effective at removing nutrients from the water column than the skimmer for me (I have almost the same setup). I dump what feels like an absurd amount of food (full cube of mysis, small handful of pellet) every day and wasn't able to get my nitrates above 0.25 without dosing KNO3 directly. Tunze 9004 will get it done no matter what the bioload I'm certain, if you have the large fuge.

CoralDanimal · Jul 26, 2018

nagreen said:
Just read your entire thread.. I love it.. I'm setting up a Reefer Nano in the next month and you have inspired me. I have a brand new Bubble Magus Curve 5 that I'm wanting to send back and trade in for a Tunze 9004 haha. I love your refugium. Is it still doing well? Are you happy with the Tunze? I'm almost sold on copying your sump setup but I plan on having a pretty heavy bioload, so not sure the Tunze would be as good as the Curve 5.. Check out my thread to see the plans I have for mine and let me know what you think! Please keep updating your thread, I'm following along

Thanks! Yea I had a bigger skimmer for mine originally too, but I decided that the additional refugium volume was more important. Like @firedancer414 mentioned it's a great (and natural) way for nutrient export and I love the pod population it generates. To answer your question, yes the refugium is still growing like crazy. I remove about a soccer ball size of chaeto every week or two. The Tunze is fine - I don't really need it for the nutrient export, more so for the aeration it brings (I have mine hooked up to a CO2 scrubber which helps keep my pH in the 8-8.3 range). It still pulls out skimmate, but not as much or as thick as my prior skimmer. Don't get me wrong - I wouldn't change a thing and I love that it fits in that overflow chamber. Let me know if you have any other questions!