Hello,
Wanted to post this up to catalogue progression of my Reefer 250. I want to first acknowledge that I’m guilty of “doing too much, too fast”. Some parts of this almost feel like a confession as I reflect back on these first stages of building my reef.
Fortunately, things seem to be going well. The R2R community has been an incredible resource during the short time I’ve been able to call myself a participant in this hobby. Setting up the tank and trying to understand the chemistry has been such a joy.
First Fill Date: 10/12/2021
I actually had a Reefer 170 that had been up and running for a week with pre-cycled live rock and live sand but I immediately realized I wanted something larger. So I picked up the Reefer 250 and transplanted the rock/sand/water to the tank. I had also dumped some Fritz bacterial starter in the 170. I didn’t have a dedicated RO/DI unit and my LFS of choice was closed to I spent the day driving to a further away LFS to fill jugs and get the tank running. I even resorted to picking up some Imagitarium pre-mixed water from Petco. I’m cringing as I type this.
Unfortunately I don’t have my parameters written down from this time but my ammonia was near zero and nitrite/nitrate negligible so I added two clownfish on 10/14. About a week later I added few coral from the LFS (green hairy mushroom, a couple mushrooms, and zoa). I had a starry blenny on my stocking list and my LFS happened to have one…he came home with me as well.
I also had set up 2 QT tanks housing a McCosker’s flasher wrasse, Tomini tang, and coral beauty. My thought was that by the time I finished QT the DT would be ready for additions. The coral beauty never ate and declined almost immediately upon being quarantined. The wrasse and tang appeared stressed and were not eating. The coral beauty passed away 6 days into quarantine with no obvious signs of infection. At this point I was panicking, and stumbled on some threads describing that there were some reefers who bypassed quarantine.
While I truly wanted to be a reefer who quarantined everything I also felt like the new crew was declining from stress. I bit the bullet and moved the McCosker and the Tomini to the DT in the evening. Almost immediately the tang was picking at the live rock and the wrasse at some nori. I did not experience a significant bump in ammonia/nitrate and the crew looks happier than ever. Zero signs of infection so far.
Ultimately, my goal is to have a SPS-heavy tank so I’m steering toward that. I swapped out my ReefLED 50s for two Radion XR 15 Pro’s. One was acquired from a local reefer who also helped me out with a great deal on some SPS frags so I have those mounted in the tank as an early experiment to see if things fly.
Equipment List:
I started with the AlgaeBarn refugium kit and added the mud and was gifted some caulerpa
Wanted to post this up to catalogue progression of my Reefer 250. I want to first acknowledge that I’m guilty of “doing too much, too fast”. Some parts of this almost feel like a confession as I reflect back on these first stages of building my reef.
Fortunately, things seem to be going well. The R2R community has been an incredible resource during the short time I’ve been able to call myself a participant in this hobby. Setting up the tank and trying to understand the chemistry has been such a joy.
First Fill Date: 10/12/2021
I actually had a Reefer 170 that had been up and running for a week with pre-cycled live rock and live sand but I immediately realized I wanted something larger. So I picked up the Reefer 250 and transplanted the rock/sand/water to the tank. I had also dumped some Fritz bacterial starter in the 170. I didn’t have a dedicated RO/DI unit and my LFS of choice was closed to I spent the day driving to a further away LFS to fill jugs and get the tank running. I even resorted to picking up some Imagitarium pre-mixed water from Petco. I’m cringing as I type this.
Unfortunately I don’t have my parameters written down from this time but my ammonia was near zero and nitrite/nitrate negligible so I added two clownfish on 10/14. About a week later I added few coral from the LFS (green hairy mushroom, a couple mushrooms, and zoa). I had a starry blenny on my stocking list and my LFS happened to have one…he came home with me as well.
I also had set up 2 QT tanks housing a McCosker’s flasher wrasse, Tomini tang, and coral beauty. My thought was that by the time I finished QT the DT would be ready for additions. The coral beauty never ate and declined almost immediately upon being quarantined. The wrasse and tang appeared stressed and were not eating. The coral beauty passed away 6 days into quarantine with no obvious signs of infection. At this point I was panicking, and stumbled on some threads describing that there were some reefers who bypassed quarantine.
While I truly wanted to be a reefer who quarantined everything I also felt like the new crew was declining from stress. I bit the bullet and moved the McCosker and the Tomini to the DT in the evening. Almost immediately the tang was picking at the live rock and the wrasse at some nori. I did not experience a significant bump in ammonia/nitrate and the crew looks happier than ever. Zero signs of infection so far.
Ultimately, my goal is to have a SPS-heavy tank so I’m steering toward that. I swapped out my ReefLED 50s for two Radion XR 15 Pro’s. One was acquired from a local reefer who also helped me out with a great deal on some SPS frags so I have those mounted in the tank as an early experiment to see if things fly.
Equipment List:
- Tank: Red Sea Reefer 250 V3
- Lighting: Radion XR 15 Pro Gen 4 x2
- Running default SPS AB+ protocol
- Flow: Red Sea ReefWave 25 x2
- Return Pump: Sicce Syncra TDC 6.0
- Running this at max flow
- Heating: Eheim Jager 250W (overflow) + 150W (sump) controlled by an Inkbird
- Skimmer: Red Sea Skimmer 300
- Doser: Kamoer X1
- ATO: Reef Breeders Exo-ATO connected to a 10 gallon Brute container next to tank
- RO/DI: Spectrapure 90 GPD
- Refractometer: Red Sea (Milwaukee digital on the way)
- Mechanical filtration: polyester fiber in the two filter basket slots with one chemi-pure blue 5.5 oz bag
- Ocean Nutrition Formula 1/2 (every other day)
- LRS Herbivore Frenzy (nightly)
- Coral Frenzy (every ~3 days)
- All-for-Reef
- Red Sea Coral Pro Salt (starting later this week I will switch to Tropic Marin Bio-Actif salt)
I started with the AlgaeBarn refugium kit and added the mud and was gifted some caulerpa
- Chaeto/Caulerpa
- Miracle Mud
- Marinepure cubes
- Adding 15oz phytoplankton daily
- Refugium light: Tunze Eco Chic 8831 (a little too long but works well enough)
- Red Sea Multi Test (ammonia, nitrate, nitrite, pH)
- Calcium (Hannah)
- Alkalinity (Hannah)
- Phosphate (Salifert, ULR Hannah)
- Clownfish x2
- Starry blenny
- Tomini tang
- McCosker’s flasher wrasse
- Peppermint shrimp x3
- Reefcleaners 55 gallon snail/hermit clean up crew
- Yellow Coris Wrasse
- Melanarus wrasse
- Coral beauty
- Stabilize parameters
- Organize power cords
- Obtain a lid
- Take some pictures for this thread
- Finish stocking the tank so I can turn my attention to coral
- Set up an AWC system (lugging the 5 gallon buckets up and down from basement is painful)
