RS525 LPS Dominant

[unchainedcoot]

Red Sea 525 LPS Dominant

 

[unchainedcoot]

Red Sea 525 LPS Dominant

About 4 months old post nitrogen cycle

 

[Gumbies R Us]

So far, your tank is looking great!

 

[unchainedcoot]

So far, your tank is looking great!

Appreciate it. Plan to layout a “recipe” of what I’ve done so far since I’ll have some down time over the holidays and before I forget too much of what I did. I need to go through some other build threads but what does the community find valuable about the start up? Only “issue” that cropped up was some hair algae but that was mainly because I was tardy in getting a CUC in there

 

[unchainedcoot]

More random finds while adding frags at night

 

[skey44]

Came here to see more of those goniopora! Update request! Following.

 

[unchainedcoot]

Came here to see more of those goniopora! Update request! Following.

i'm a terrible photographer. Some people on here are soooooo good at taking pictures of their coral. In the last month or so I've also managed to brown out a few of the rainbow type gonis from SBB. Some are slowly coming around but they seem to lose color in a day or two and then months for them to get it back. I'll see if I can show you the worst offender

 

[unchainedcoot]

as received june '25


what i turned it into Sept '25

 

[unchainedcoot]

Only about a year late to this "tank recipe" but it seems prudent now for reasons i'll explain later. Absolutely TLDR so away we go:

Equipment:
-Purchased the Red Sea Reefer G2 package mainly because I'm lazy (understood the seam issues but felt the solution of the bracing on the stand lined up with what most people were experiencing. We shall see long term if my trust in the fix was a mistake).

• 3x ReefLED 90
• DC Skimmer 600
• 2x Reefwave 45 gyre
• Reefrun 7000 gen 1 (replaced once under warranty after only a few months)
• Reefrun controller
• Reefmat 1200 (my opinion the single best piece of equipment Red Sea makes)
• ReefATO (had to replace probe once already under warranty, ATO pump is fairly loud)
• 7 stage RO/DI system (tried mixed bed only but silicates kept showing up and i'd waste so much more money in changing out mixed bed resins instead of just breaking them out)

-Hydros Launch controller

• pH monitoring
• runs solenoid for ATO of the ATO reservoir (extreme laziness in me not wanting to spend time or effort filling my ATO reservoir)
• temp control
• UV sterilizer (aqua ultraviolet 57 watt) that is not plumped into return (constricted flow too much with the number of bends needed to get it in a reasonable location)
• leak detection rope around sump

-Adaptive reef algae turf scrubber (seems to be discontinued)
-Recirculating CO2 scrubber (lid attachment from Fish of Hex)

Aquascape:

• 80lbs of caribsea special grade sand
• 100lbs of shelf marco rock
• 8 pieces of foundation marco rock
• 20lbs of TBS live sand
• 5lbs of TBS rubble (sump)

Setup:
Fishless cycle following Dr. Tim's method:

• started July 25 of 2024
• clean of ammonia in 7 days (added 2ppm of ammonia and turned to nitrite in 24hrs)
• Nitrite took additional 10 days to clear
• A note to new reefers here: if you still have nitrite in your tank, do not waste time testing nitrate. Every test i've done using multiple manufacturers is going to tell you that you have an astronomically high level of nitrate in the tank and it just isn't true. The high levels of nitrite mess with the nitrate tests. A chemist can explain why which isn't me.
• Started to transfer fish from a separate system after about 3 weeks. Only transferred 2-3 per week because i wasn't in a huge rush

Post Nitrogen Cycle:

• A note here as well. At no point have I turned the lights on. Obviously will when coral get added but I'll provide a timeline of that
• Once fish started getting added, i added a few bottles of copepods and started dosing phyto
• End of September turned the lights on for about 4hrs at about 15% intensity
• Slowly increased the light intensity and duration to about 30% and for 12 hrs until the end of October. Wanted to see if anything funky would pop up. In hindsight, light has probably never been high enough for anything real funky to take hold
• Continued to add coral through November
• Mid-November got a huge algae bloom on the rocks and the main reason why is because I failed to purchase any crabs or snails for the new tank up to this point (dumb dumb on my part)
• once the CUC was purchased they made quick work of the algae and it hasn't been a problem since

I think that takes care of the initial startup. I'll do a separate post for maintenance/dosing

 

[unchainedcoot]

A few updated goni shots. Will try to grab more later

 

[Gumbies R Us]

A few updated goni shots. Will try to grab more later

Gonis are looking great!

 

[unchainedcoot]

Still have a few more

 

[unchainedcoot]

This might be all of them

 

[unchainedcoot]

I lied.

I have one more that’s been sulking for about a month after I took a chunk off of it. This has been its typical state since then. Decided to intervene last week by moving it a little bit away from the rock thinking it was blocking flow a little too much. Pulled it out and it’s crusting back over the cut line. So despite it being grouchy, it’s obviously not in a dire of enough condition for it not to grow. If its condition doesn’t improve I’ll probably either do an iodine dip or a therapeutic dip from joker corals for a couple of days. Though part of me thinks to ride it out is the best course of action for the reason mentioned above.

Note: lighting switch from Red Sea to radions is part of the reason for the goni seemingly changing color. It also darkens up quite a bit when it’s not extended

Post-cut


Pre-cut

 

[unchainedcoot]

Can see the goni is growing over the cut. Started a KCl dip last night. Looked a little better. Might do another couple of rounds and see how that plays out or alternate daily between KCl and therapeutic joker coral dip. This was taken in the KCl dip

 

[unchainedcoot]

I’ve also realized I haven’t included any photos of the fish. This seems like real negligence on my part. Maybe the only group photo I’ve ever snagged.

-Pair of long fin clowns
-Banggai cardinal (was 3 but spawning pair was rehomed)
-black cap basslet
-pair of firefish
-solar wrasse
-melanurus wrasse
-coral beauty
-bi-color blenny
-tomini tang
-yellow tang
-red coris wrasse

 

[unchainedcoot]

Officially out of space for gonis after these 4 additions

 

[unchainedcoot]

Also got some warfare going on so hammer has been moved

 

[unchainedcoot]

Phosphates have gotten out our control over the last few weeks. Increased feeding because I had thought the yellow was developing HLLE but after doing more reading and investigating I believe it’s “epithelial thinning” and not true HLLE. Either way. It had gotten out of hand capping at almost 0.5ppm with yesterday’s test. I dosed some coral snow, dosed 12ml of lanthanum chloride and did a 40gallon water change and basically cut it in half when I tested this morning. Dosed another 6ml of lanthanum again once I got the 0.24ppm reading. Tank seems fine so far, we’ll see if I regret the rapid drop in PO4 or not

 

[unchainedcoot]

After about 4ish months post fragging, this goni is finally showing signs of recovery