WarEagle's CADE 1500 S2

[WarEaglesReef]

I finally bit the bullet and decided to go big(ish). My yellow and blue hippo tangs that I got as itty bitty little babies have officially outgrown my 70 gallon tank and they're so well mannered and such a joy to watch that I can't bring myself to trade them in. So, an upgrade it is!! I opted to go all out on Black Friday and snagged the sweet deal that AlgaeBarn was having on the new CADE tanks, and pick up all the new gear I need for it during BRS's big sale. Still patiently waiting for delivery of the tank (looks like the crate will juuuuust barely fit through the front door of my condo) but I figured I'd start my thread with my current equipment list and all of the tank babies that will be migrating over once it arrives and gets cycled.

My parents were oh-so-nice and got me the GHL Profilux 4 kit and a doser 2.1 for Christmas. I'm super stoked to get that Profilux up and running to see all the things it's capable of. I'll most likely plan on adding the KH Director and the ION Director down the line once I start adding coral to the tank, but for now I'll be taking my time to learn all the ins and outs of the Profilux. This will be my first adventure into the world of aquarium controllers, so I'm excited to get a little nerdy with that.

I stuck with AI for lights as I've always been happy with their programmability and how well they've grown corals for me in the tanks I've had, and picked up two Hydra 32HDs and gooseneck mounts. I have two AI PrimeHDs on my current tank that I will migrate over to fill in the gaps in this tank rather than add another Hydra to save some expense and make use of what I already have.

Went with the Reef Octopus VarioS-6 for my return pump
A pair of Ecotech MP40s for flow (considering adding the VorTech controller add-on to the Profilux just to have that all controlled in one place)
A Nyos Quantum 160 skimmer (maybe sliiiightly smaller than I could've gone, but I wanted to save some footprint in the sump for a larger refugium)
Two Eheim JAGER 200w heaters, and I've got a JBJ 1/4HP Arctica chiller on my current tank that will be migrating over if needed.

Will most likely be adding an Ecotech battery backup for the Vortech pumps (whenever BRS has them back in stock, or my LFS has one) and I still need to pick out a good refugium light.

AlgaeBarn's holiday deal on the tank came with all the salt/sand/rock and additives to get up and running. Chose to go with Hawaiian black sand this time around, which will be my first tank deviating from the traditional Fiji pink.

Current inhabitants of the 70g that will be migrating over:
- NotDory, the blue hippo tang
- Mz Alotta, the yellow tang
- Gobi-Wan Kenobi, the rainford goby
- Harvey Milk, and Marsha P. Johnson, my clownfish pair
- Benny, my starry blenny who loves to bite me when I do maintenance in the tank
- Ruth Bader Pinsberg, my tuxedo urchin
- An unnamed skunk cleaner shrimp
- the assorted snails and hermits
- and a RBTA

I've got a massive ~18" around toadstool leather and a few acan and ricordea corals that will be making the move as well. Haven't decided if I want to try and frag the giant toadstool leather to just move a smaller piece of it or leave it as is as a big centerpiece in the new tank. The clowns live under/in it and spawn very frequently under the safety of its cover, so it would be nice to let them keep that home as they move.

In terms of future stock, I couldn't resist picking up a gorgeous little neon dottyback at the LFS this weekend, who is currently chilling in his own little quarantine tank for the time being. I've given him the name Houdini for now, due to his supreme and seemingly magical escape artist skills of managing to squeeze himself through the tiny little iPhone lightning cable plug sized hole in the back of the Evo 13.5 he's in to hang out in the back filtration compartments as he pleases (curious how long it will take him to do the same with the lower overflow grate in the CADE and end up in the sump). I hear dottybacks have the potential to be a real handful, so I'll be saving him to add to the new system until after everyone else is moved in and settled. Not sure what else I'd like to add to the stock list. I'd love to pick up one of Biota's captive-bred coral beauty angels (they are who I got my clowns and rainford goby from), and am considering adding a third tang to the mix now that I'll have the space when I put in the two I have now...maybe a sailfin or one of the typically more mild mannered species, although I'm not sure I want to chance upsetting the balance with how unbelievably chill the two I have now are towards each other and all of their tank mates. I'd love to explore my options for wrasses, but there seems to be so much to learn about them and who plays well with others that they're a little daunting to me for the time being until I take the time to really do my research. Would love to hear some recommendations from others of fish they've really enjoyed having in their larger tanks now that I will finally have the space for a wider variety of livestock.

Looking like it will probably be the second week of January when the tank finally arrives. Until then...we wait!

-Charlie

 

[Mikedawg]

You've come a long way since posting about your Evo! Great quality equipment list, even Gus with all his buyout$$$ would be envious, lol.
On the neon dottyback - I have two (in separate tanks of course) and they are very territorial as you know, so good idea to add in last.

Looking forward to seeing your build.

 

[Zach B]

Wow that's a nice setup

 

[WarEaglesReef]

You've come a long way since posting about your Evo! Great quality equipment list, even Gus with all his buyout$$$ would be envious, lol.
On the neon dottyback - I have two (in separate tanks of course) and they are very territorial as you know, so good idea to add in last.

Looking forward to seeing your build.

Lol, I certainly have! Should've known starting with that little tank several years ago that I'd end up here in the end...could've saved myself a lot of money in the middle. Haha. But I figure if this pandemic quarantine is to be never ending, I might as well have a giant tank to watch when it's not football season. And I'm super stoked to give the tangs 5' of swimming room.

And I gotta say, while I was a little surprised with our new hire, it was time for the Gus Bus to leave the station. Far too many "rebuilding" seasons with little results. He never did quite figure out how to evolve when his hurry-up offense became obsolete with the new substitution rules.

Even with the handful of "never again" horror stories I've read here, every time I've seen a neon dottyback in person I'm totally enamored (maybe it's that orange and blue Auburn coloring? ) so I figured I had to give it a try and hope for the best. He's already proving to be a bit of a snob, as the first fish I've ever had turn down the Piscine Energetics pellets that everyone else loves. He requires only the freshest of frozen mysis I guess. I'm just hoping that he doesn't turn into too much of a bully. A little worried about him with my rainford and any other smaller fish I might choose to add, but the rainford holds his own with the tangs and surprisingly wasn't afraid to fight back against the male lyretail anthia that I just had to get rid of for turning into an absolute terror. He killed my bangaii cardinal a few months back, and did a real number on my blue tang's fin overnight last week and that was the last straw. Absolutely stunning fish that I loved seeing out in the water column, but I won't do another male anthia again. SO rude, and insanely difficult to catch.

Good to hear from you again, and WDE!

-Charlie

 

[WarEaglesReef]

Wow that's a nice setup

Thanks! Figured if I was finally gonna go big, that I'd go all in with all the dream equipment. Getting antsy with it all sitting in the corner waiting for the tank to arrive! Lol.

 

[WarEaglesReef]

Got a little antsy this evening and decided to crack open the Christmas gift and play with the Profilux 4 for a bit. It was super easy to get the basics all set up. Got it hooked up to my Wifi network, set it up with its own WiFi hotspot, and connected it to the myGHL cloud sync following along with their YouTube video in a matter of minutes, and followed along with another reefer's video to calibrate the probes and put them in my 70G tank to start getting some readings and see how everything works. A quick screenshot from the GHL connect app:

I think the data nerd in me will really enjoy how easy it is to keep an eye on everything with this controller. And I'm happy to see that the current tank is all reading normal! (The chiller kicked on right after I took this screenshot. )

I doubt I will delve into the world of redox/ozone with this new tank since running carbon has much of the same benefits, but having the info on what my levels are is nice regardless!

 

[Poseidon's snail]

im gonna follow - awesome build!

 

[WarEaglesReef]

Still waiting on the tank, but Raven the awesome customer service agent at AlgaeBarn that I've been working with was nice enough to get all the rocks that came with their November special shipped out to me so that I can start working on my aquascape. BRS has been our of the E-Marco mortar for weeks now, so I'm still waiting for that to be back in stock to really start working on it. (If anyone knows of another place that sells it, let me know!)

They also confirmed that they rent out the big glass suction cups to help lift the tank onto the stand. I was told for my size tank I would need two pairs, which is a $400 deposit (refunded when they get them back) and a $150 fee for a four week rental period. I'm waiting to hear back on if they have shorter rental periods for a smaller fee. As I imagine I will find a way to get that tank up and in place as soon as it lands on my porch because I'm excited to play with all my new reefing toys. Lol

In an unrelated mishap, my ancient refrigerator stopped working this weekend, and I couldn't find one anywhere in stock that would fit the space I have. (I guess most fridges have gotten larger in the last 15 years) So I ended a very long day of frustration by coming home with a little 3.1 cubic foot mini fridge/freezer from Home Depot so that I could save all my frozen fish food and work on finding a replacement without being on such a time crunch. I'll probably keep it after I get a full size replacement though. It's a decent size to keep frozen/refrigerated fish food and additives that need to stay cold, and it would be nice to have all the fishy stuff out of my regular fridge.

Fingers crossed the tank ships this week!!

 

[Wayne P.]

Looks like you are going to have a high quality build. Looking awesome. In regards to getting you tank in the house, I hired my LFS to move it in. $250, for the Cade 1800. All I had to do was uncrate it. So much easier and your LFS folks know what they are doing. Leveled it out and everything. Just a suggestion.

 

[WarEaglesReef]

Still patiently waiting on the tank. Looking like perhaps the end of next week it will be here. It arrived at AlgaeBarn late last week and is currently going through inspection before being packaged up to come to me!

I was finally able to get some of the E-Marco mortar from BRS to work on my scape, and I picked up the battery backup for the VorTech pumps that had been out of stock as well. So now I just need to pick a refugium light to round off my equipment for the new tank! Those should arrive mid next week and I'm excited to get to work on the aquascape when they do!

I stopped by Aquatic Art in South Denver today to see what they had in stock and I picked up a little juvenile powder brown tang to start quarantining here at home, and a second cleaner shrimp to pair with the one I currently have in my display tank.

Powder browns are from Japan, so I've decided to name this pretty lady Itsuko after my grandmother's lifelong friend from Japan. She's settled in to the QT tank with the dottyback nicely and the dottyback is playing very respectfully so far. Having a friend in the tank has actually made him start to spend much more time out front instead of sneaking back into the filter compartments and hiding there most of the day, so that's been nice to see more of him.

After the tank is cycled and she's been in QT long enough for me to know she's healthy she'll get added to the new tank at the same time as my other tangs to make sure they all hit that new territory at the same time.

The new cleaner shrimp went right into my current display after acclimating and has already buddied up nicely with my previous resident cleaner. It's nice to have a pair again. Here's to hoping for some free fish food if they spawn!

And I've just now considered, I don't plan on adding the live rock from my current tank to the new display (although I will probably add some of it to the sump to help speed up the cycle), and I've got a RBTA on one of them. Any tips on how to get that little guy off the rocks? I've removed him from glass before, but he's made his home under a ledge on one of my rocks this time. So I'll have to figure out how to get him off there when it's time to move him.

That's all for now!

-Charlie

 

[WarEaglesReef]

Looks like you are going to have a high quality build. Looking awesome. In regards to getting you tank in the house, I hired my LFS to move it in. $250, for the Cade 1800. All I had to do was uncrate it. So much easier and your LFS folks know what they are doing. Leveled it out and everything. Just a suggestion.

That's not a bad idea! Thanks for the tip.

 

[WarEaglesReef]

FINALLY. The new tank has arrived! Got it unboxed and into my condo with the help of a friend, but I have to wait for a few more hands to get it up on the stand...this thing is HEAVY. They came packaged really well and everything looks perfect, so significant delays aside, I'm happy with my purchase so far.

Took around 4 hours to get the crates pried off of them and move them into my house. I scratched the white paint on the bottom of the display tank on the dolly we used to move it, but I'm not doing bare bottom, so I'm not concerned about the aesthetic blemish there. Can't wait to get it up on the stand and start hooking everything up and adding water!!

Also, if anyone reading this is interested in picking up a CADE from AlgaeBarn, I 100% recommend renting the big suction cups from them to help move things. I absolutely would not have been able to get the tank inside yesterday without them. But I'll also say, if I had to do this over again I would hire a team to unbox and install a tank this large. It was a much more significant undertaking than I thought it would be.

 

[ShepherdReefer]

Super nice, cant wait to see more.

 

[mattgsa]

Looking Great!

 

[WarEaglesReef]

We're up and running and I can finally see into the tank! Filled it up and got my rockwork and sand in there on Sunday and it's been suuuuper dusty since then. But this morning there are finally clear(er) skies on the horizon!

Got three friends to help me lift the tank up onto the stand on Friday, and that was juuuust enough muscle to get it up there, which I was worried about after realizing how heavy it was trying to get it inside my house. But once it was up there it was super simple to get all lined up and make sure everything was level.

I will say I was very disappointed in CADE's instructions they provided to install all the plumbing on this tank. They give you a single sheet of paper with a QR code that sends you to a super quick YouTube video with no dialogue that runs through the installation of all the parts. But several of my parts were different than what the video showed (like flexible tubing instead of rigid piping) and I ended up getting so frustrated by the mismatch with what they were showing that I decided to close the video and figure it out on my own. IMO a tank of this quality should come with some actual instructions instead of just a 5 minute video. But thankfully the plumbing isn't too complicated and I was able to get myself up and running with no leaks in a reasonable amount of time. I am curious as to why there's no siphon break in the plumbing on the return though. It's low enough in the tank that there is a pretty significant rise in the sump water level when the return pump is turned off as a good 2" of water comes in from the display. Considering getting some parts and making one myself, but decided to leave it for now.

I installed a set of DIODER lights from Ikea to put in some LED lighting in the sump/cabinet for when I'm down there working, and I'm super happy with them. They come with four little strips of lights that you can combine however you please and I put 3 on the sump side and one on the cabinet side and they provide the perfect amount of light to see down there without getting in the way. Now I just need to get my cable management all figured out to get the wires out of the way.

Here's what the sump looks like with those turned on:

I got all my rockwork cemented together with E-Marco mortar on Sunday while the tank was filling up and realized pretty quickly that the cardboard rectangle that I'd cut out to map out my aquascape on when I was building it a couple weeks ago included the dimensions of the top off tank in the back when it shouldn't have, so I'm squeezing it all in about 4" less length. Still need to make some final adjustments, but overall I'm pretty happy with it. Hard to show all the spacing and design from a stationary photo, so I'll have to take some video at some point.

I'm not terribly happy with the amount of smaller white sand particles in the Hawaiian black sand I picked out (you can see in the pic below), but I picked up a sifter that I'm hoping to pull some of that out with. Hopefully that works out ok, because I am digging how much better everything else pops visually without white sand.

Been running the skimmer pretty wet and letting it drain into a bucket outside the tank and it's doing a great job of pulling out a pretty decent amount of the fine dust from the rocks and sand, but I'm definitely gonna have a lot of cleaning to do in the sump, as it is already super disgusting with everything that's settled down there.

Moving over the marinepure ceramic plates I've been seeding in my established tank today (Ruth Bader Pinsberg, my tuxedo urchin has been having a field day chewing trails into them. Lol) and I'm getting some macro algae ordered from AlgaeBarn to get the refugium up and running. I need to decide what I want to do lighting wise down there. I will probably stick with AI and pick up one of their Prime fuge lights just for the simplicity of keeping everything lighting related all on the same app.

And speaking of lights, I was a little bummed to see that the new bluetooth only AI Hydras can't connect to the old Primes as children to automatically pick up the same scheduling. But it was simple enough to pull the stored preset from my files in the app and get them synced up, so no big deal there. Not sure if I will stick with the schedule I use on my current tank, or play around with some of their signature presets and see if I like any of the options that their featured reefers use better. I'm definitely happy I stuck with AI, as their customization and scheduling is something I really enjoy being able to tweak. Getting them level with each other on the flex arm mounts was fairly simple, and I just need to dremel out a couple little cutouts in the auto top off tank lid so that it can fit flat again. But I'm gonna wait until I do some PAR testing to see if the two lights are sufficient for my needs or if I need to add some additional power. If needed I'll probably scoot the two Hydras closer together, and bookend them with the two primes from my current tank to get some extra light on the edges.

Once all the dust is fully settled and I know I wont be gunking up my probes, I'll work on getting the Profilux moved over from my current tank to start monitoring this one and start working on getting the doser set up.

Can't wait to get my fish into their new home! I can't help but wonder if they're staring at the new tank from across the room like, "man, I really need to contact my fishy real estate agent so I can get in on that new prime slice of reef." Hahaha. The tangs are definitely itching to have some more space. They're starting to get a little feisty with each other and I can't wait to give them some more freedom to roam!

 

[revhtree]

Congrats and ROLL TIDE!

 

[WarEaglesReef]

Congrats and ROLL TIDE!

War Eagle!

 

[WarEaglesReef]

Ok, got a chance to try out the sifting pan I got after work, and it worked flawlessly. Kind of a pain, but I think after a few rounds of this my sand bed will look how I want it to.

On the off chance anyone else is looking for something to clean up their black sand, here's the sifter I bought off Amazon: SE Patented Stackable 13-1/4" Sifting Pan, Mesh Size 1/20" - GP2-120
1/20" mesh was the perfect size to pull out almost all of the white sand while taking as little of the black sand as possible.

 

[zukihara]

 

[WarEaglesReef]

Well...wouldn't be a new tank adventure without a crisis. Noticed a leak in the return plumbing of the tank yesterday while I was finalizing the installation of my MP40's and getting all my cable management taken care of. Drained the back ATO reservoir into the sump so I could pull apart all the plumbing. Took it apart multiple times and put it back together...added plumbers tape to the threading, tried everything I could think of and I still could not fix the leak. It's salt water, not RO, so I know it's coming from inside the piping and not leaking down from the ATO reservoir in the back. At 2am after getting water everywhere and having to pull out all the electronics and plugs to keep everything safe I finally hit my wits end and covered up the connection with silicone and went to bed. That still hasn't stopped it though, so I'm totally out of ideas. I've gotten it down to a verrry slow drip and have decided to leave it at that with a little bucket underneath for now so at least the water can continue to circulate and keep the cycle going. I reached out to AlgaeBarn this morning about getting a replacement piece for that fitting but haven't heard back yet. I'm so frustrated at this point I'm considering going to Home Depot and picking up some flex seal and trying that since none of that area touches the internal water of the tank and seeing if that works. Plumbing is not that complicated...so I'm not sure what I could possibly be doing wrong at this point aside from something in that piece of the piping being defective and leaking regardless of how tight the seal is.

I'm over it and would like to be back to the fun part of reef keeping please. Lol

Say a prayer to the water gods for me.

In more fun news, I placed an order on TSM aquatics for a couple juvenile tangs and a fairy wrasse to add to the tank. They're going through TSM's extensive QT process and should be ready to ship out towards the end of March. That should give me plenty of time to be confident that the tank is fully cycled to my liking, and good to go. I've heard great things about the quality of livestock and shipping practices from them, so I'm looking forward to seeing for myself what I end up with!