Tenurepro's Redsea Reefer 250

[tenurepro]

Hi guys! I've been posting about my adventures in reefing on the other forums, But it seems like r2r is where all the cool kids are hanging out, so will start posting here as well

First intro -> I am in Toronto Canada, but grew up on the Mediterranean... so salt water is in my blood. I started a 30 gallon nano about two years ago to test my aptitude for reefing. Promised that if I could keep it going for a year, that I would get a nicer bigger system. I did, and this thread will chronicle the development of my Redsea reefer 250

Tank: Redsea reefer 250; 65 gal total volume.
Lights: 2 x Radion XR15 gen 3 w 120 deg Lenses. Currently running sps ab+
Return: Vectra M1
Powerhead: 2 x MP10
Heater: 2 x fennex 100w heater
Skimmer: Bubble King mini 160
Reactors: 1 Phosban 150 running rowaphos, plumbed to vector
ATO: Tunze osmolator + 5 gallon carboy
Controller: new Apex, wxm module, power bar 8, Reeflink

Dosing: Bubble Magus T01 - for 2 part, currently offline. Also dose kalkwaser via ato

Salt: Instant Ocean

Sand: 2 to 3" aragalive pink Fiji

Rock: 35 pukani in display

Bio-filtration
seachem matrix (1 large filter bag in return compartment)
2 liters of siporax in stock ato converted fuge

Carbon: seachem in small filter bag

Current parameters
Temp: 78f, salinity 35 ppt, nitrate ~ 2.5 to 5, phosphates ~ 0, Ca 440 ppm, kh 8 to 9, Mg 1400

Livestock list:

Fish: 2 tank-raised clownfish, Canary Wrasse, purple firefish, yellow watchmen goby, 3 blue green chromis, 2 ornate leopard wrasse.

Inverts: pistol shrimp, skunk shrimp, 2 emerald crabs, 1 strawberry conch, 2 brittle/serpent starfish, many trochus snails (they are reproducing in my system) several nassarius snails and cerith snails and blue legged hermit crabs

Coral:
LPS - sunflower pot, 2 torch corals, 1 hammer, acan, open brain.
SPS sticks: top: red planet, blueberry wine, pink lemonade, RR pink Cadillac, Cali Tort, green milli, RR orange passion, ORA blue voodoo, RR stellata, unusual tort
Mid: Ora birds of paradise, acropora tenuis, mini pink milli colony, deep water acro, RR strawberry short cake.

Bottom: Mr Pacman, bonsai Vallida, green slimer. Meteorshower

montipora: x-mas cap. Encrusting rainbow, encrusting pink mystic, encrusting supermen, encrusting Mystique.

Softies: a few mushrooms and zoa's

Pictures:
Day 160

Day 100

Day 4

 

[tenurepro]

A little overview about my fish at this time:
2 clowns, about 2 yrs old now
Nemo, male

Meano = Mean to Nemo; female

A purple fire fish, Fuego. Used to be shy but now is out in the open most of the day

Sunny, the yellow watchmen goby, hangs in his hole with a candy pistol shrimp all day

Then we have 3 blue/green chromis. All purchased about an inch big, but now all different sizes... jumbo, medium and tiny

 

[tenurepro]

Then we have the wrasses!

A canary wrasse - Jaune
About a year and half old and I think is turning into a male. Adds a lovely tang-free flash of yellow to the tank

Then I had three ornate leopard wrasses all named after Disney princesses (my daughter name them). Ariel, Cinderella and Elsa. I sold Cinderella so it's just Ariel and Elsa
Ariel is about 3.5 " and her color is a bit lighter than Elsa, who is very dark. I am not sure if there is some geographic difference in coloration, or maybe one is a boy and the other a girl... but you can really notice some different patterns on the two fish. Both very active and add a lot of movement to the tank
Ariel

Elsa

I feed 3 times a day to keep the wrasses and the chromis happy. 1/2 cube of mysis in the morning, a little bit of Pellets at noon via autofeeder, then 1/2 cube of brine or mysis at 5 pm

 

[tenurepro]

Some pics of my favorite frags right now
Shockaholic ... brightest thing in the tank

Cali tort

A not so Cali tort

Ora blue voodoo, basing, basing, basing... when are we going to see your horns, stag?

RR orange passion

Mr pacman

 

[tenurepro]

Blueberry wine

A super polypy acropora tenuis

Ora bird of paradise

Tyree pink lemonade, coming back from the dead... zombie lemonade now

Superman that monti (why don't you crank that song

Mystique the monti

 

[tenurepro]

And here is a little video progression of the tank
15 days

1 month

3 month

4 month

5 month

6.5 month

7 month

8 month


Recent coral tour

 

[tenurepro]

Month 9 update!

 

[tenurepro]

My thoughts on the bubble king mini 160 skimmer (gen 2) after 1 month of running in the tank.
The bubble king replaced a bubble magus curve a5 with the DC pump.

In terms of consistency; the bubble king is amazing. It started skimming on the first day, I have not had to adjust the water level at all. The number of times the bubble king overflowed on me is ..... ZERO.... ziltch.... nada. It produces roughly the same volume of skimmate every week.

To put things into perspective, the bubble magus curve a5 - at best - overflowed once every two weeks. It required adjusting every few days. It got so bad that I had to check on the curve skimmer three times a day just to make sure it is skimming and not on the verge of overflowing.

Perhaps the comparison is not fair. But On paper, the curve a5 is rated for 75 to 120 gal while the bubble king mini 160 is rated for 50 to 130 gal, so they are competing in the same sand box. But the bk is about twice as large as the bm in real life and the pump is twice as big, so clearly the BM rating is purely aspirational. The BK is clearly a better skimmer imho... it also costs 5x more new...so perhaps that is to be expected.

I do have one complaint about the BK mini 160. It is loud. When first installed, i measured 75 db right up next to the skimmer (where skimmer cup meets skimmer body). The noise subsided to 67 db after a few weeks of breaking in. (It is sitting on two silicone pads). I was told that it should quiet down more, and I hope it does, as it is currently the loudest bit of kit in the tank. The bubble magus was near silent.

 

[tenurepro]

Quick update. Things going well. Colors improving a lot on sps. Slowly ramping up radions - 1% per week. Parameters stable with alk at 8.6 to 9, ca 430 - 440, mg 1360, nitrates holding steady at 5 ppm, phosphates undetectable. Weekly water change of 15 liters. Dosing 7 tsp kalk in my 5 gallon ATO reservoir. Feeding 3x a day. Skimming wet.

Increased temp from 77.8 to 78.8f after some research (peer-reviewed scientific journals baby!) on optimal temp for sps growth. What I learned is that it varies for different species (expected) and different regions (also expected). Sps from the Red Sea like it a bit warmer. Interesting findings include: 1) acropora often grows faster in the winter than in the summer. 2) There is a clear temp sweet spot for growth. After this optimum temp is reached, growth quickly declines. 3) many corals bleach a few deg above their optimum temp. Saw 78.8f a lot in Australian and Hawaiian studies, so decided to set the temp there.

Red cyano has all but disappeared. Noticing a very bright green cyano in a few places on the sand, but not really spreading. This cyano turnover is interesting; when one thing dies, something else takes its place!

Noticing a change in the accumulation of algae / gunk on the glass. Last 4 to 5 month, maybe longer, glass got dirty super quick; every two days. But starting last week, glass has been looking good for 5 or so days. I cleaned it last Saturday and it's still looking good. I am taking that as an indicator that my corals and filter feeders are starting to out compete nuisance algae. But that may just be wishful thinking

Finally. A few of you will remember this ugly 'Cali tort' stick

That turned into this glorious mini colony that doesn't look like a Cali tort at all

Well, after a long search and consulting with some of the sps experts here and elsewhere, I am fairly confident that it is a Myagi tort (which may actually not be a tort at all... wish frags came with scientific names!). Cool!

 

[tenurepro]

Little mishap with equipment yesterday: (ps I have the new apex)

Power / wifi went out at 4 am while sleeping. Woke up at 6 am to 1) tunze osmolator alarm sound; 2) apex heartbeat notifications saying apex has been disconnected for 2 hours. Inspected tank -> mp10s were on (controlled by apex wxm module but not plugged to Alex power bar). Some outlets on apex power bar were off (return, skimmer) while others were on (ato, heaters, doser). Because the return was off, the display temp had dropped by a few f. The water level in the sump increased prompting the tunze osmolator to alarm

I manually reset the apex which allowed it to connect to wifi again but 1) salinity prob immediately stopped working 2) power bar and everything plugged to it lost touch with the apex. I unplugged and replugged the connection between power bar and apex brain. This created a new 'module' that I could access and control on fusion, but i had to reprogram each outlet again; the old programming was stuck in the old 'module' that was no longer responsive.

This whole thing took about 10 min to figure out. Went to work and came back to find that my skimmer had overflowed and the ph spiked to 8.2; In my morning haste, I reprogrammed the power bar but forgot to change the pointers to the new power bar. So I had a custom feed mode at noon, which shuts down return for 15 min while my ehime autofeeder dispenses pellets. My skimmer and ato had a line that turned them off whenever the return was off; but it was still mapping to the 'old return' on the old module, not the new return on the new module... so return went off but skimmer was on, which overflowed. The skimmer removed two cups of water from tank into skimmer cup which the tunze osmolator replaced with freshwater loaded with kalk, raising the ph.

Everything is fixed now, except the salinity probe which is still down. Contacted apex about issue and waiting to hear back.

While I really like the apex, yesterday's experience opened up my eyes to a whole bunch of things that can go wonky. I think I will plug all life critical equipment to a regular power bar when I go on vacation. The return was set to 'on' whenever the apex disconnected from fusion, but obviously that didn't happen. Not cool Apex! Not cool!

 

[jefra]

Great tank! Setting up my 250 in the next month so am browsing others. Has the yellow coris been okay without a lid?

 

[tenurepro]

Great tank! Setting up my 250 in the next month so am browsing others. Has the yellow coris been okay without a lid?

Yes, haven't had any jumpers yet (fingers crossed). There are a lot of diy cover options for the reefer 250, so you can set one up. I am on the fence because I like the top down view when feeding the tank. There are also some variation in the propensity of different wrasse species to jump. Another factor is tank dynamics and the fish in my tank are mellow; no bullying or chasing. So I am not too concerned about jumping right now, but that may change if I notice any changes in behavior.

 

[Daniel@R2R]

Looking great! Loving those fish pics!!

 

[tenurepro]

Looking great! Loving those fish pics!!

Thanks... we'll keep them coming

 

[tenurepro]

Little update; things are mostly going well. Nitrate still at 5 ppm, phosphates are undetectable. I have been seeing a lot of accumulation of green slime cyano on my sand. I had a red cyano issue two month ago, but regular water changes made it go away. After the red cyano was gone, the green cyano started to take hold and the water changes don't seem to help. It was coating / irritating some of my corals on the sand bed so I decided to try out chemiclean
Here is before pic.

I dosed 6 scoops last night at 9 pm. Kept skimmer on but removed cup and let it overflow in sump.
12 hours later, noticing very obvious sings of recession

Sps and LPS seem normal and so do the fish. I repointed the return nozzle to increase surface agitation. Low o2 can be a problem with this treatment, but I think my massive skimmer is keeping the water nicely aerated - My display is full of microbubbles.

 

[tenurepro]

24 h after dosing

 

[tenurepro]

10 month update video.
Added 1 more radion xr15 and two small power heads. Also chemiclean treatment did its job... but for how long? Sps are starting to look good and growing.
Enjoy

 

[tenurepro]

Little update and follow up post chemiclean treatment

In brief: po4 increased from undetectable to 0.03 10 days post chemiclean treatment. Noticing a bit of red cyano on rocks and sand and GHA on rocks. Seems the chemiclean did an nuisance algae re-rest in my tank
Decided to use my fuge to export the excess nutrients.
Got a ball of chaeto and upgraded my light on the fuge from a really cheap LED bar to this 5000k 17w Phillips par38 led. Hoping this will do the trick

 

[bubblemytip]

Looks great. Did you ever hear back on your Apex issue?

 

[tenurepro]

Looks great. Did you ever hear back on your Apex issue?

Thanks! I sent them the salinity probe and they determined it was defective and a new probe is in the mail. No word though on what caused the power bar to fail and reconnect under a different id