Skibi’s Red Sea Reefer 250

[powers2001]

Have you tried some chaeto on reverse schedule lighting? Don't know how to determine how much chaeto it would take.

 

[Skibi]

Ya have been running that for a while now probably like a month

 

[RichtheReefer21]

Nice build so far! Keep the updates coming!

 

[Skibi]

Was an eventful weekend for the tank! I took all my stuff out of the Nano tank and transferred it over the big tank. The Nano was on its last leg and I was hoping to do this a little slower than what I did but it seems to be working out for now. All coral shrimp and inverts are doing way better corals look much happier and have expanded a lot. I’ll post some pictures but they are so blue going to be figuring out my dslr soon so I can take good photos of stuff!
My rock has started to get a hairy brown algae so adding the extra cuc from the Nano I hope combats it enough. But now ima just sit back and do water changes and let stuff settle in for a month or 2 before adding some more stuff.

Oh I did get some new stickers and a shirt from wwc pretty excited how my sticker cabinet is coming along hahaha

 

[powers2001]

Nice tank, how much was the T-shirt?

 

[powers2001]

@Skibi has your pH stabilized?

 

[Skibi]

Wow can’t believe it’s been since September since I updated. So the tank is doing great I switched to using kalkwaser in the ato and my ph problems are no more! All the corals are growing like crazy and I have coralline growing all over the rocks and back of the tank. I did have a velvet outbreak which killed 3 fish before I could get the quarantine tank set up So now the tank is running fallow for 72 days so I can be sure that the velvet is out of the system.

Below are some shots from about a month ago!

 

[Skibi]

Just thought I’d give a little update after the holidays. Tank is doing great super stable now since using kalkwaser! PH is constant above 8 even at night. I am seeing a lot of coral growth my chalice and tri color paletta especially. It was kind of all of the sudden to. 2-3 weeks ago didn’t notice anything then yesterday I see my acro encrusting the plug now and stretching out to the rock! Still got my dwarf flame angel and clownfish hope to get more once I get the fish through qt and I know for sure my tank has no parasites.

 

[powers2001]

@Skibi so what's on your list for fish stocking?

 

[Skibi]

Im looking at getting a tomini tang and probably a wrasse or 2 need to get a lid for my tank before i get any wrasses. Plan on getting fish that help with algae/pest.

 

[powers2001]

What lid are you planning on for your Reefer?

 

[Skibi]

Umm I haven’t decided. I want one that has an opening to feed and stuff trying to decide if there is something out there like that or if I need to go a custom route.

 

[Reefer40b]

If I had to recommend a wrasse I would say never buy a six line... get a pink streaked wrasse stays small and not aggressive. Also leopards are awesome and peaceful in my experience. If you do go the coris wrasse route say a yellow or melenarus, expect them to get possibly too aggressive and big for your tank, but when they are small they are great usually as they are awesome pest killers flat worms, nudi's etc

 

[powers2001]

If I had to recommend a wrasse I would say never buy a six line... get a pink streaked wrasse stays small and not aggressive. Also leopards are awesome and peaceful in my experience. If you do go the coris wrasse route say a yellow or melenarus, expect them to get possibly too aggressive and big for your tank, but when they are small they are great usually as they are awesome pest killers flat worms, nudi's etc

@Skibi If you go Yellow Canary Wrasse check out the tank-raised ones at Blue Zoo Aquatics. Although they are wild bred they are caught as juveniles and tank raised for quite some time in captivity. It is a process and time frame that goes well past quarantine. They are quite a bit more hardy at this point than the ones just plucked from the ocean. I think they would worth the extra money. They say you get what you pay for and that includes hardiness.

 

[Skibi]

So for right now I ended up with another foxface and a melanarus wrasse they have doing great so far. I plan on getting a yellow eye kole tang and then a wrasse or two or maybe a mates pair of clowns can’t decide but I need to up my fish count here in the near future!

 

[Skibi]

Thought I’d give a little update since it’s been a minute. I am currently struggling to keep sps not really sure what’s going on I had a 2 point swing went from 8.2 to 10 and now I’m back at 8.2 and ever since then all sps have started to stn and show skeletons especially candy canes and my chalice. Even though all other numbers are on point.

So I sent and icp test out just to verify my numbers or to see if it picked anything up that I was missing. Got it back today and every element was in the green except iodine. It said I was low and should dose to get it where it should be.

I’m religious on water changes 10% every Sunday don’t dose anything and try and test once a week. My numbers from this weeks test were.

Nitrate=5
Phosphate=.1
Cal 457
Alk 8.2
Mag=1440

Recently cleaned all pumps with vinegar/Rodi water mixture but that shouldn’t of hurt anything.

I’ll try and post some pictures tonight only coral doing well is my Duncan and zoa and hammer coral kind of at a lost/frustrated everything was doing so well then bam these last 3 weeks been losing coral that had started to encrust on the rock.

 

[powers2001]

@Skibi what company did you go with for your ICP test? There are about 3 or 4 doing it now: Triton, ATI, Coralvue, and I think AquaForest. Coralvue is quite a bit cheaper than Triton but can't remember the figures off hand.

 

[Skibi]

I ended up going with Triton ya it cost more but they have been doing it so long and really like how they give you suggestions on what to correct. It took about a week or so to get my results back one thing to note is you have to go to the post office to ship it cant just put stamps on it like I thought. The results came back everything good with just one element I was low on. There was. Ithing red or anything that needed action right away.

So I've just been keeping my water changes at 15% right now and vacuuming the sand bed. Just letting the tank mature and hopefully at the 1 year mark I'll try sticks again. The hammer,leather, zoa, and Duncan's all look good. Sticks are half gone and the acans look pathetic.

 

[powers2001]

@Skibi how about a full tank shot? You haven't posted a FTS since December.

 

[Skibi]

Do that here in a minute cant believe its been that long lol