SuncrestReef's Red Sea Reefer XL 425 build

[coder0000]

My wife was in Africa for a couple of weeks and took our Nikon D610 camera on her trip. While I missed my wife, I also missed the camera!

Hahaha.. I hope your wife doesn't frequent these forums as she may take your comments to imply that you missed the camera more than her ;-)

This thread is absolutely incredible and highly inspirational! Photos are stunning. Build is extremely well planned. Details + Photos are super helpful for an anxious newbie like myself -- in particular, your step by step breakdown of drilling the ATO and converting it to a refugium. I've thought of doing that for a long time but couldn't find anyone else who had gone that route. It seemed like an obvious option to me, but with nobody else doing the conversion I figured maybe it was just too small.

I'm thinking of going a slightly different route which is to incorporate flow coming from the manifold rather than a PMUP (as I find it annoyingly loud). The manifold would extend into the refugium and feed into a bar along the bottom to generate the flow for chaeto tumble, similar to what you have.

I bought a second pump for the manifold because I feared that the main return wouldn't generate enough flow back to the DT, and it seems like you might be running into exactly this problem. In my case I also wanted additional pressure to divert some of the flow to a spray bar type design using RO piping along the bottom of the sump to keep detritus off the bottom and in suspension. ie somewhat self-cleaning.

Please keep up the excellent posts, they are highly informative and your photos are absolutely jaw-dropping!

 

[SuncrestReef]

Hahaha.. I hope your wife doesn't frequent these forums as she may take your comments to imply that you missed the camera more than her ;-)

This thread is absolutely incredible and highly inspirational! Photos are stunning. Build is extremely well planned. Details + Photos are super helpful for an anxious newbie like myself -- in particular, your step by step breakdown of drilling the ATO and converting it to a refugium. I've thought of doing that for a long time but couldn't find anyone else who had gone that route. It seemed like an obvious option to me, but with nobody else doing the conversion I figured maybe it was just too small.

I'm thinking of going a slightly different route which is to incorporate flow coming from the manifold rather than a PMUP (as I find it annoyingly loud). The manifold would extend into the refugium and feed into a bar along the bottom to generate the flow for chaeto tumble, similar to what you have.

I bought a second pump for the manifold because I feared that the main return wouldn't generate enough flow back to the DT, and it seems like you might be running into exactly this problem. In my case I also wanted additional pressure to divert some of the flow to a spray bar type design using RO piping along the bottom of the sump to keep detritus off the bottom and in suspension. ie somewhat self-cleaning.

Please keep up the excellent posts, they are highly informative and your photos are absolutely jaw-dropping!

Ha! Yes, hopefully my wife doesn't read these posts (though she already knows how important the camera and corals are to me...). I'm glad you like the photos and my build thread.

One word of advice with your plans to feed your refugium from your manifold: Occasionally my refugium drain will get clogged with stray fragments of chaeto, so I have a float switch in the refugium that triggers my Apex to turn off the PMUP so the refugium doesn't overflow and sends me an alert. If you feed your refugium directly from your manifold, it can overflow your refugium if the drain clogs, or if you have a float switch it will need to turn off the flow to your entire manifold. For this reason, I think it's much better to have a dedicated small pump feeding your refugium so it can be turned off in this situation (or for routine maintenance to clean the refugium) so the rest of your system can continue to run while the refugium is offline.

As for the PMUP noise, I can honestly say I cannot hear it running. I have a Nyos Quantum 160 skimmer which is supposedly one of the quietest skimmers on the market and I can't hear the PMUP running when the skimmer is on. I made sure to suspend the PMUP by the output tubing so it doesn't touch the sump glass, and it really isn't noticeable when it's running. I'm not sure if your experience with PMUPs is different, but mine is practically silent as long as it's not reverberating against glass.

Just keep these issues in mind as you're planning your system. Thanks again for the kind words on my build!

 

[Butuz]

Awesome build!

 

[NY_Caveman]

My wife was in Africa for a couple of weeks and took our Nikon D610 camera on her trip. While I missed my wife, I also missed the camera! But now that she's back (along with 4,000+ photos of elephants, rhinos, lions, zebras, cheetahs, and so many other great shots), I can get back to shooting macro shots of my corals. Below are some full-frame shots, each followed by a 100% crop showing details:

California Tort:




Favia:




Oregon Tort:




Green Slimer:

We are all enjoying the return of the camera. Great shots!

 

[coder0000]

One word of advice with your plans to feed your refugium from your manifold: Occasionally my refugium drain will get clogged with stray fragments of chaeto, so I have a float switch in the refugium that triggers my Apex to turn off the PMUP so the refugium doesn't overflow and sends me an alert. If you feed your refugium directly from your manifold, it can overflow your refugium if the drain clogs, or if you have a float switch it will need to turn off the flow to your entire manifold. For this reason, I think it's much better to have a dedicated small pump feeding your refugium so it can be turned off in this situation (or for routine maintenance to clean the refugium) so the rest of your system can continue to run while the refugium is offline.

Yes, that's an excellent point. Everything needs to be designed with an assumption of component failure, and the trick is to think through all of the potential scenarios. I've got two thoughts for this particular failure:

1) I have a spare solenoid which can be used along with the float switch to automatically turn off the feed coming off the manifold

2) Drill a second hole which is higher up and acts as an emergency in case the first one clogs. I was actually going to drill 2x 1/2" holes for the primary drains back into the sump, and then another 1/2" positioned higher as the emergency drain. I'm a little worried about spacing and whether it will be too crowded with 3 drains (ie impede filter socks)

I would throw in a float switch as an alarm as well, but at best it would only give me a few minutes of warning if all 3 drains failed -- so it's not really a mitigation.

I found the PMUP to be loud but you're right, maybe because it's vibrating against something (eg. I have one for my ATO which is touching the bottom). I'll try suspending the PMUP -- I can think of many uses for it in the sump if it were quiet.

 

[SuncrestReef]

Updated full tank photos:

 

[NY_Caveman]

Updated full tank photos:

Beautiful from any angle.

 

[coder0000]

Stunning! BTW, I love the rockscaping. The vertical structure on the left is reminiscent of Pandora/Avatar

How many conches do you have? 4? Anything else for the sandbed?

 

[SuncrestReef]

Stunning! BTW, I love the rockscaping. The vertical structure on the left is reminiscent of Pandora/Avatar

How many conches do you have? 4? Anything else for the sandbed?

Thanks, glad you like it!

I have 5 conchs, 4 nassarius snails, 3 turbo snails, 20 other miscellaneous snails, and 10 hermit crabs. I also have a pistol shrimp and yellow watchman goby that are constantly moving the sand around to build new burrows.

Somewhere on this forum I posted a time-lapse video of my tank where you can really see the snails moving around, but I can't remember where I posted it, so here it is again:

 

[Chrisfish]

Absolutely beautiful tank

 

[mta_morrow]

Beautiful!

 

[NY_Caveman]

Thanks, glad you like it!

I have 5 conchs, 4 nassarius snails, 3 turbo snails, 20 other miscellaneous snails, and 10 hermit crabs. I also have a pistol shrimp and yellow watchman goby that are constantly moving the sand around to build new burrows.

Somewhere on this forum I posted a time-lapse video of my tank where you can really see the snails moving around, but I can't remember where I posted it, so here it is again:

This video is excellent. Makes me wonder if the snails even notice the fish blurring by.

 

[SuncrestReef]

I'm pretty happy with the coral growth I'm seeing:

 

[SuncrestReef]

I had one zoanthid colony that was infested with bryopsis algae. After posting in the Nuisance Algae forum for advice and doing some research, I decided to pull that one rock out and dip it in H2O2 diluted 1:4 with saltwater. After 5 minutes, I rinsed it off with fresh saltwater and put it back in the display tank. 12 hours later, it looks much better:



I'll need to keep an eye on it and the rest of the tank to make sure the bryopsis didn't spread, but for now it looks like problem solved.

 

[mta_morrow]

I had one zoanthid colony that was infested with bryopsis algae. After posting in the Nuisance Algae forum for advice and doing some research, I decided to pull that one rock out and dip it in H2O2 diluted 1:4 with saltwater. After 5 minutes, I rinsed it off with fresh saltwater and put it back in the display tank. 12 hours later, it looks much better:



I'll need to keep an eye on it and the rest of the tank to make sure the bryopsis didn't spread, but for now it looks like problem solved.

Good catch, great save!

Fingers crossed!

 

[Reef Able]

nice looking build...

 

[SuncrestReef]

Here is 10 minutes in the life of a busy pistol shrimp and his watchman goby friend. There's nothing really exciting in this video, but it does show the various techniques the shrimp uses to loosen, dig up, and move sand, and it will give you an idea of why I rarely need to sift my sand bed. If you're curious, the sand is Tropic Eden Reef Flakes.

I honestly don't know how the shrimp has so much energy. He does this every day, constantly building new burrows under different rocks, and is never satisfied with where the sand is! Meanwhile the goby just hangs out doing the "watchman" thing.

 

[Hulley]

Love the Pistol and Goby pair, this is my next purchase!

 

[mta_morrow]

Love the Pistol and Goby pair, this is my next purchase!

I will always have a pair in my tank!

 

[SuncrestReef]

Here's my cleaner shrimp doing his "happy dance". He does this every day at feeding time!