Waterbox Peninsula Mini 25 - DSR method, no water changes

[gonz]

Hello hello,

after my tank settled in in the past weeks, I wanted to take a chance to show my build and approach

So I started off with a Waterbox Peninsula Mini 25 built on a modified cheap cabinet: Juwel sbx lido 120 (I drilled holes in the side for cables and tubes, closed the back with a sheet of hpl).

Things I added:
- Used Radion XR15 gen4 Pro and did the Moebius Update
- Nero 3 wavemaker
- 2x Kamoer X1 Pro Dosing Pumps
- 2x IM Mightyjet DC Desktop Pumps
- 100W Aquael Heater (Neo therm)
- Smart ATO Micro
- Reverse Osmosis Filter
- IM UV sterilizer for first chamber
- Seneye Reef to monitor temp, ph, ammonia

Things i replaced:
I started with Sicce Silent 1.0 for the return pump and Sicce Silent 1.5 for the power filter. Three words: Too dang loud - at least in these small compartments. I have replaced those pumps with IM MightyJet DC Desktop Pumps. The return chamber is too small for the MightyJet, i made it fit by voiding the warranty and cutting the inlet thread.

DSR method:
At this time I cannot comment on the dutch synthetic reefing method (DSR method) that advertises keeping successful reefs without any water changes. This is a test for me to see if it works especially on nano tanks. Of the different DSR variants (Full, EZ, EZ2Go) I am currently using the newest addition: EZ2Go only doses 2 parts. I measure alkalinity regularly and set up the dosing accordingly. I plan to do regular quarterly ICP water tests to see if certain elements go out of whack. The DSR method utilizes a powerfilter (basically a return pump, inlet pipe with filter wool around it) for detridus and nutrient export, thus i need two DC pumps.

Thanks go out to all the youtubers (inappropriate reefer, BRS and others) and reef2reef-threads that made this setup much less daunting and prevented a bunch of mistakes.

Lifestock - Clean up Crew:
- 8 blue legged hermits trimming algae
- copepods feeded with phythoplancton daily
- snails (one turbo, 4 cowry)

Lifestock - Corals
I took the tip to heart to only get corals i love as space is so limited. Not all are beginner friendly, e.g. the goniopora. And some may prove difficult when they grow and go to war.
- Golden Torch
- Rock Flower Anemone
- Toadstool Leather
- 2 Goniopora
- Zoanthids (a mixed rock and a few named ones)
- Ricordea
- Rhodactis
- Leptastrea
- GSP for the back

Before i go into more detail, a first teaser video during sunset hour i took today - around 2 months after filling the tank with water:
(sorry for vertical video, i just noticed when writing this! )

 

[gonz]

Cycling:
I decided to go for bare bottom with dry reef rock - not ideal for cycling. As i currently do not want to keep fish, i used ammonia and a daily dose of bacteria to cycle the tank. This did produce several long phases of quite cloudy water. As i began to be impatient after around three weeks and got the first two corals, i added a uv sterilizer to the first filter chamber to help clear the water. Additionally i became insecure regarding how much ammonia to dose so i purchased the seneye reef.

The seneye reef:
For anyone curious, the seneye reef is a continuous water monitoring device for ph, temperature, water level and ammonia that has running costs of around 10$ / month (for the monthly replacement of the test slide). Some love it for its great inexpensive PAR reading capability.
To monitor water continuously, it either needs an expensive additional device (seneye web server for lan) or needs to be hooked to a computer. I had an 10 year old mini laptop that i used

Some examples of my experience with it:
Temperature

As you can see, my temperature was all over the place the first couple of weeks. I even bought a new heater as i thought it was defective. Turns out that if you place the heater too high in the middle chamber, water flow will not be enough to keep temperatures stable Putting the heater as low as possible solved the issue.

Ammonia

Note: The ammonia did not jump to zero that abruptly, i messed up the graph by setting an calibration offset in the software. I started measuring on 16th of december, the graph jumps to 0 on 3rd of january. It took however a week longer for ammonia to really be at 0. During this period i had already corals in the system.

PH
For me the most interesting part.


As i did not water the test slide (recommended 48 hrs) you see a very low ph reading which is to be expected. However when it stopped to climb at ph 7.34 i panicked and also read that cycling does consume a lot of alkalinity. So i began dosing my 2-part solution with no way of alkalinity measurement or a second ph test to validate the reading.
Big mistake.
When I started dosing and saw a good response in PH I kept adding buffer solution over a time frame of three days until the ph reached 8.23. So i only dosed based on the seneye ph reading. This was pretty dumb.

a.) A ph test i purchased later read consistently 0.2 higher than the seneye (which i later adjusted via calibration)
b.) I had dosed so much buffer solution that my dkh was > 15 (once i got my hands on a test)

I did a 10% water change and waited patiently for my dkh to come down to the red sea coral pro salt level (around 12dkh). Only then i started micro dosing (2ml) with daily alkalinity tests using a hanna checker. Now i keep the dkh nice and quite stable at around 11.6-12.0 dkh.

However as you can see the ph still dropped quite low, range 7.63 to 8.0. So i checked my co2 level in my living room and noticed that the ventilation system was not running as the reading was too dang high:

(Screenshot of my netatmo weather station showing 2000 ppm co2 levels).
Reducing co2 by venting and turning on the ventilation lead to better ph level (around 8 now):

So for me the seneye reef was really helpful during cycling and i also used it to set up my radion lighting.

-Gonz

 

[gonz]

I used arka aquatics reef rock and went for the smallest size rocks to be able to build my own scape with glue + epoxy.

And this is how the scape looked before it went into the tank:

 

[Daniel@R2R]

Cool! I'm excited to follow along!

 

[gonz]

Some progress pictures 31.12.2020 vs 19.01.2021

This is a mixed zoanthids rock my LFS gave me after 3 weeks cycling to test if the water quality is good enough. This went through all the ups and downs of alkalinity. I had to remove a part of the rock as i noticed something that looked like a tiny aiptasia.

Before -> After. Also note the great work the blue legged hermit crabs did regarding algae and cleanliness of the rock.

Sweet color/pattern development on the utter chaos zoas. Whoops, actually utter chaos on the right and aztec on the left ^^ ;Facepalm

And the toadstool really took off in polyp length and "finger" extension - not represented well by the pictures.

 

[gonz]

And a full tour of my tank and the cabinet i took today

 

[TriggersAmuck]

Very cool! Looking forward to following.

 

[gonz]

So a small update (thanks for the likes and subscribes in youtube by the way ;Happy):

 

[Nemfreak97]

Hello hello,

after my tank settled in in the past weeks, I wanted to take a chance to show my build and approach

So I started off with a Waterbox Peninsula Mini 25 built on a modified cheap cabinet: Juwel sbx lido 120 (I drilled holes in the side for cables and tubes, closed the back with a sheet of hpl).

Things I added:
- Used Radion XR15 gen4 Pro and did the Moebius Update
- Nero 3 wavemaker
- 2x Kamoer X1 Pro Dosing Pumps
- 2x IM Mightyjet DC Desktop Pumps
- 100W Aquael Heater (Neo therm)
- Smart ATO Micro
- Reverse Osmosis Filter
- IM UV sterilizer for first chamber
- Seneye Reef to monitor temp, ph, ammonia

Things i replaced:
I started with Sicce Silent 1.0 for the return pump and Sicce Silent 1.5 for the power filter. Three words: Too dang loud - at least in these small compartments. I have replaced those pumps with IM MightyJet DC Desktop Pumps. The return chamber is too small for the MightyJet, i made it fit by voiding the warranty and cutting the inlet thread.

DSR method:
At this time I cannot comment on the dutch synthetic reefing method (DSR method) that advertises keeping successful reefs without any water changes. This is a test for me to see if it works especially on nano tanks. Of the different DSR variants (Full, EZ, EZ2Go) I am currently using the newest addition: EZ2Go only doses 2 parts. I measure alkalinity regularly and set up the dosing accordingly. I plan to do regular quarterly ICP water tests to see if certain elements go out of whack. The DSR method utilizes a powerfilter (basically a return pump, inlet pipe with filter wool around it) for detridus and nutrient export, thus i need two DC pumps.

Thanks go out to all the youtubers (inappropriate reefer, BRS and others) and reef2reef-threads that made this setup much less daunting and prevented a bunch of mistakes.

Lifestock - Clean up Crew:
- 8 blue legged hermits trimming algae
- copepods feeded with phythoplancton daily
- snails (one turbo, 4 cowry)

Lifestock - Corals
I took the tip to heart to only get corals i love as space is so limited. Not all are beginner friendly, e.g. the goniopora. And some may prove difficult when they grow and go to war.
- Golden Torch
- Rock Flower Anemone
- Toadstool Leather
- 2 Goniopora
- Zoanthids (a mixed rock and a few named ones)
- Ricordea
- Rhodactis
- Leptastrea
- GSP for the back

Before i go into more detail, a first teaser video during sunset hour i took today - around 2 months after filling the tank with water:
(sorry for vertical video, i just noticed when writing this! )

Hello you mentioned you trimmed the inlet of the mighty jet, how much did you have to trim? The stock return is way too loud for me and I need to replace it ASAP

 

[gonz]

It is not for the faint of heart:
I had to take off about half of the inlet, trimming also the center part holding the shaft of the impeller. I saw no ill effects at least until now. That said the pump is a tight fit even with that modification - i installed it in a slight angle ensuring a gap between the inlet and the glass. If there is too little gap for water to go in, the pump will create noises and not run properly (naturally as it cannot suck in enough water).

The pump runs extremely silent however so unless a different tiny DC pump is on the market, I would definitely do it again.
One last note: I find the pump still has a lot of power, even in the lowest setting. I reduced the flow by adding a hose clamp to the tube running up to the outlet.

 

[Ricksreeefs]

It is not for the faint of heart:
I had to take off about half of the inlet, trimming also the center part holding the shaft of the impeller. I saw no ill effects at least until now. That said the pump is a tight fit even with that modification - i installed it in a slight angle ensuring a gap between the inlet and the glass. If there is too little gap for water to go in, the pump will create noises and not run properly (naturally as it cannot suck in enough water).

The pump runs extremely silent however so unless a different tiny DC pump is on the market, I would definitely do it again.
One last note: I find the pump still has a lot of power, even in the lowest setting. I reduced the flow by adding a hose clamp to the tube running up to the outlet.

Have the same tank and doing this works great! Super pump.

 

[dank reefer]

How's the DRS dosing going for you?

 

[Daniel@R2R]

Hi there! @gonz how's the tank doing?