SoonerBerrios 425XL

[SoonerBerrios]

It's been a long time coming, but I'm finally getting around to a build thread for my RedSea Reefer 425XL. I broke down my first tank a 40B in July of 2016 when I bought my 425XL
https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/soonerberrios-40b-sumpless-build.227835/

The 425XL has been up since July 2016 with many ups and downs.

Below is my original build

Equipment

RedSea Reefer 425 XL
50lbs of Florida Reef Rock (transplanted from my original 40B)
60lbs Carib Sea Arag-Alive Fiji Pink live sand
2 Hydor Koralia Evolution powerheads (850 gph each)
Sicce Syncra Silent 4.0 (950 gph) as a return pump
2 AI Prime HD LED Lights (will be upgrading in the future)
2 150 watt heaters (Aqueon and Cobalt)
Neptune Apex Jr
Tunze Osmolator 3155 ATO

Fish

1 Gold-dot Maroon Clownfish (had a mated pair, but the other got into an accident and found him at the pump inlet of my old Reef Octopus HOB)
1 Yellow Tang
2 Pajama Cardinals

Coral

1 Frogspawn (40B transplant)
1 Candy cane (40B transplant)
1 Acanthastrea (40B transplant) – I think
2 Zoa frags
1 Paly frag

For some reason my Flickr account does not have all of my pictures, but I will add them later on.

 

[SoonerBerrios]

In the past 4 months I've done a few upgrades to the tank.

I have since replaced the Apex Jr. with a new Apex (2016)
I have added an MP40 along with a Neptune WAV
With my decision to add some SPS I replaced my two AI Primes (FOR SALE!) with 2 Radion XR30 G4s
and have bought a COR-20, that is not yet plumed. My Ecotech products are controlled through the Apex using a WXM module.

These upgrades have really improved my LPS and the SPS seem to be doing well. The upgrades were motivated by a failure with the heater probe of the Apex Jr, which will be detailed soon. My current livestock and pictures will be updated as well. For now, enjoy this current full tank shot, it's not the best, but I'm starting to work on the photography side.

 

[FredsNJReef]

looking good!

 

[SoonerBerrios]

Story time. Late last year, about mid-December, I started noticing one of my acans that I have always had trouble with suffering from RTN and noticed my blue tip hammer and a big beautiful favia I had losing a slight bit of color. I did tests, found everything normal and my Apex Jr. was reading a normal temperature. Over Christmas, I went to California, but left my Sister-In-Law to look after the tank. She slightly overfeeds, but other than that does a good job of following my feeding schedule and making sure the ATO reservoir has water. We were gone a little over a week. During that time I saw a spike in temperature, but it quickly fell back to 78 (it spiked to 79). When I got back from vacation, I noticed that my blue tip hammer, giant favia and my candy cane echinulata were all a highlighter green. I did tests, dipped corals and still no recovery. My fish were still thriving and all other corals were good. When taking out corals for dipping, the water did seem colder than usual, but since my Apex was showing a normal reading and I just washed my hands in hot water, I ignored it.

Next step was to do a water change. When going to go get water I threw out my back and then had to call my LFS to help me do maintenance and help troubleshoot. Immediately, they pointed out that the water felt really cold and used a thermometer to take the temperature. The temperature had fallen to 68 degrees. The Apex Jr. heat probe had failed and was giving artificially high readings. We did a 20% water change, changed out the temperature probe and slowly brought the temperat ure back up. During that next two days of raising the temperature, I noticed my cobalt heater had failed as well, good thing I had a 150W aqueon as well. During the period of bringing up the water, my two 3 year old PJ Cardinals called it quits, it was just too cold. This taught me a couple of things. 1) always have a spare temp probe and heater 2) if your gut says it's cold, get a thermometer and take a reading.

Since then, the giant favia fully bleached and had algae forming and my oldest acan that always had issues with RTN perished. With the lighting and flow changes since then, my fully bleached candy cane echinulata has zooxanthellae back on the base of the heads and is spreading and the highlighter color of my blue-tip happer is starting to darken back up. It could have been much worse.

Color of blue-tip before:

Blue Tip After

Giant favia Before Giant Favia After

 

[FredsNJReef]

wow what a difference! I'm sorry that happened and I hope the torch comes back. Is the Favia a gonner??

 

[SoonerBerrios]

wow what a difference! I'm sorry that happened and I hope the torch comes back. Is the Favia a gonner??

Torch is coming back and starting to darken back up, favia lasted about a week longer, it was too far gone.

 

[SoonerBerrios]

Looks like I have an acan in trouble. Don’t really know what’s going on so had my parameters checked by LFS. Nitrates 20 and phosphate at .8. I’ve started nopox today and will dip tomorrow. Hope this acan can pull through. No color loss right now.

 

[SoonerBerrios]

Looks like I have an acan in trouble. Don’t really know what’s going on so had my parameters checked by LFS. Nitrates 20 and phosphate at .8. I’ve started nopox today and will dip tomorrow. Hope this acan can pull through. No color loss right now.

 

[FredsNJReef]

Can you do a quick water change? get the parameters in check, you still have time!

 

[SoonerBerrios]

Can you do a quick water change? get the parameters in check, you still have time!

I figured out the issue, I brought down phosphates but then noticed another acan looking bad. The other night I caught a peppermint shrimp eating away. I’m thinking of sending them back to LFS and picking up a filefish for aptaisia control.

 

[FredsNJReef]

I figured out the issue, I brought down phosphates but then noticed another acan looking bad. The other night I caught a peppermint shrimp eating away. I’m thinking of sending them back to LFS and picking up a filefish for aptaisia control.

Ok great, I hope they come back! Let me know how the file fish works, I am thinking about getting one myself!