Reefer 170 Mistress Upgrade

[beardedman11]

Like the title says. I found a killer deal on a red sea reefer 170(only red sea tank allowed in the house). The guy had so much equipment and livestock that after selling what i didn't want made money. lol My kind of free deal. lol Here's the old thread that's getting the upgrade.

https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/20g-mistress.1094675/
Basically got the tank home and the fish rehome and started the cleaning process. Tank was neglected for a few months so it was pretty awful. I did some much needed TLC had the tank ready for the transfer from the 20g. I set up a temp tank to place everything inside while i empty the 20 moved it out of the way and moved this one into its place. After about 4 hours everything was finished. After a tank move of a waterbox a few years ago I always spend the $100 for new sand to prevent any kind of cycle. The only thing I will do is scoop out a few scoop and put inside the new tank to kind of seed the new sand.

 

[beardedman11]

First step was the aquascape. Pretty easy when you only have 4 pieces of rock to work with. Ended up with this. Dont think it looks to bad. lol

Of course the next upgrade was changing out the AI hydra 26HD to the 4 bulb ATI fixture with reef brite XHO

 

[beardedman11]

Now I had the hardest time with the Red Sea drain to make it quiet and it would never settle in for me. So the next best thing was to upgrade it. I saw on here a few hacks that you could convert the metric piping from Red Sea to be regular PVC. So, i bought the return line connector. There you’re able to unscrew the nipple part and buy a 3/4” thread male to female adapter and then finish off the drain with 3/4” PVC. Score. lol ran the drain down to a union so I could take off the bubble magus filter roller. Spoiler alert taking it off now cause the paper gets to wet or has a hard time rolling and will tear due to it becoming like wet toilet paper making me manually press the button to move the paper around or I have to take it out and rerun the paper thru the rollers and up top again.

 

[Fish Fan]

Nice score, good luck with your build!

 

[beardedman11]

Nice score, good luck with your build!

Thanks. We’ve got a long way to go with updates. lol

 

[beardedman11]

Next few posts will be of the corals I’ve had since starting the tank. Neglected the tank a few times due to be busy with work and life and resulted as some lost. But hopefully that’ll change with a new job and setting up some extra equipment to make stuff easier.

 

[Gumbies R Us]

Following along!

 

[beardedman11]

Few more

Momma JB of the babies below. Love and always have some poletti JB in all my tanks.

 

[beardedman11]

Following along!

Welcome along.

 

[beardedman11]

Few more.

 

[beardedman11]

Last round for the earlier stages.

 

[beardedman11]

Time to get back on track. A few test results from previous testing. Since I want to try and get better at testing figured I’ll post on here.

Test results from June 23. Didn’t realize alk was so low and nitrates were undetectable. Started dosing 10ml for a few days and brought up to close to what I would like to see it at.

June 27th results were better but nitrates were still undetectable. So order some ammonium bicarbonate and automatic feeder to feed the fish twice a day. When the lights turn on and right before they turn off.

 

[beardedman11]

Did another round of testing yesterday and happy besides the PO4 which is probably double of what it needs to be. Going to figure out a good way to drop that down to 0.25 which I’ll be able to live with.

 

[beardedman11]

Took my most prized possession my Jellybean chalice and took it to the bandsaw. Made 5 pretty good frags of it and learned you really want a blue light over the bandsaw when fragging so you’re able to see all the colors clearly.
Momma

Frags that came out. Seems to be looking good as well. After 5 days they haven’t died yet(knock on wood).

 

[beardedman11]

While I had the saw out went ahead and did a few zoas a few friends have been asking for. Lsoh, CARS, fairy fart, and some I forgot the name of.

Not sure what the ones in the back are but went under the saw too.

 

[beardedman11]

Test results are in for the last week. I think it’s safe to say I need to start my kalk wasser up after getting the number up where I would like them. I’m going to try and show for these:
Alk 8.5
CA 420
Mag 1420
NO 5-10
PO4 0.20 definitely need to get this down asap.

 

[beardedman11]

Test results are from Monday 8/3. PO4 has gotten out of hand.

 

[beardedman11]

Last night Got off work at 6 and came home to do a 15g water change along with taking out the roller and switch back to a filter cup. The paper was always ripping and need to catch stuff coming from the tank to hopefully clear it up some. Need to get some plumbing parts to change this a little bit but for the next couple days it’ll work. Tested the water at 4am todsy for PO4 and liked the results. 0.62. Down from over 0.89.

Pretty cool reflection shot when doing the water change last night.

 

[beardedman11]

Well, did a few extra things this week. My normal water test results from the 16th. Little behind on posting. Dosed 80ml of calicum and 40ml of alk to get the numbers where I would like them. Alk around 9 and CA 420. Seems to have worked. Just have to figure out my stupid kalk stirrer. It took about 3 days to become clear in order for me to dose it which I believe shouldn’t take that long. Most I’ve read it’s 12hrs or so. I’m using seachem kalkwasser.

 

[beardedman11]

Photos of my kalk stirrer. And video of me adding it.
Video on 8/06 11:30am. It's only spinning about 10-20% and the rest of the time its off.

8/06 8:30pm

8/07 6:30pm

8/11 11am it might have been cleared the day before.