Richie's Reefer 500

finalphaze987 said:
Tank looks great! How are those gyres on the end holding up for you?
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A reefwave 45 and a mp40. No issues with either. I do basically no maintenance on them and haven't had any real issues.

I did have the reefwave get stuck awhile back and not rotate, but I just manually pushed it to get it spinning and it fixed itself. I can't recall if it was because a pencil urchin spine was stuck in it, but might have been.

The reefwave is not as quiet as I'd like, given the location in the living room, but it's quieter than the previous I replaced. The MP40 of course is dead silent.
 
Any opinions on this right side rock structure? I put it together really quickly out of rock I had on hand. I have all my original rock from before I tore this down still in the holding tub with the fish and coral, but I may get rid of some that have a bunch of shrooms. Given that I put other rock I have in quickly to help get it seeded.

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Ignore the center and empty other end. That will change when I actually move things in. Sorry for the glare, I couldn't avoid it.

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richiev said:
Any opinions on this right side rock structure? I put it together really quickly out of rock I had on hand. I have all my original rock from before I tore this down still in the holding tub with the fish and coral, but I may get rid of some that have a bunch of shrooms. Given that I put other rock I have in quickly to help get it seeded.

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Ignore the center and empty other end. That will change when I actually move things in. Sorry for the glare, I couldn't avoid it.

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I dig it. Are those rocks attached or just piled?
 
If the rocks are just resting upon each other….a little scary (assuming you have a glass tank
Hopefully in a year the micro fauna will grow and hold it in place.

If the top rock falls toward the glass, can it hit sand before the glass?
If so, you’re probably fine
But, IF you have fish that will excavate, I would make it more secure from the start
 
It looks great, but yea...the stacking with no support would leave me a little uneasy...

What are you planning on having atop? Maybe leave a little more room for growth?
 
They're stacked right now. I did it last night at 11:45pm :)

I wasn't expecting to like it. Given positive vibes I'll drain the tank down and start cementing at some point this week. At that point I'll also be making sure it's nested on glass not sand.

Thanks all!

RE what will go on top, honestly no plan right now. Very spur of the moment. I'm thinking it'd be a good stick + monti cap spot.
 
As @Coral reefer mentioned at the workshop, it's good to plan ahead for flow and growth (having parallel openings underneath your structure that allow the water to pass through helps reduce gunk from accumulating). That could be as simple as rotating it 90 degrees or moving the base rocks 90 degrees as I assume your pumps will be on the short ends of the tank.

I forgot why you took down all the livestock in the main tank again. Was to load up the frag system?
 
Darkxerox said:
As @Coral reefer mentioned at the workshop, it's good to plan ahead for flow and growth (having parallel openings underneath your structure that allow the water to pass through helps reduce gunk from accumulating). That could be as simple as rotating it 90 degrees or moving the base rocks 90 degrees as I assume your pumps will be on the short ends of the tank.

I forgot why you took down all the livestock in the main tank again. Was to load up the frag system?
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I had the floors redone so had to move everything out. Once removed, feels like I might as well future proof and replace some things.
 
Current setup. I'd love critiques. Semi epoxied while I wait for nyos cement to arrive.

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This is a lot more rock than I used last time, but still doesn't feel too full so I'm ok with it.

I tried to @Kensington Reefer style have more varied hides, and @Coral reefer dead spot reduction. Though I do see two spots detritus gravitates to, which might be helpful in that I have a garbage dump I can siphon from.

This was not the setup I wanted, but every time I tried to cement the setups I liked I caused a rock collapse and eventually ran out of time and ended up with this. It's basically a giant arch but has a lot of unshaded area because I have that one really really big rock piece. Also ignore the front section. That's currently a holding ground for random pieces I haven't transferred yet.

Flow wise currently have a mp40 and will move my gyre over once I move the rest of my coral and my fish over. I might also install some locline on the return to point the flow forward and down over the top.

Apologies for blue, early morning and I hate the kessil app so much.
 
richiev said:
Current setup. I'd love critiques. Semi epoxied while I wait for nyos cement to arrive.

View attachment 68752

View attachment 68753

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This is a lot more rock than I used last time, but still doesn't feel too full so I'm ok with it.

I tried to @Kensington Reefer style have more varied hides, and @Coral reefer dead spot reduction. Though I do see two spots detritus gravitates to, which might be helpful in that I have a garbage dump I can siphon from.

This was not the setup I wanted, but every time I tried to cement the setups I liked I caused a rock collapse and eventually ran out of time and ended up with this. It's basically a giant arch but has a lot of unshaded area because I have that one really really big rock piece. Also ignore the front section. That's currently a holding ground for random pieces I haven't transferred yet.

Flow wise currently have a mp40 and will move my gyre over once I move the rest of my coral and my fish over. I might also install some locline on the return to point the flow forward and down over the top.

Apologies for blue, early morning and I hate the kessil app so much.
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Looks good
Yes known dead spots are good, but with more fish and coral growth they may change over time
I too HATE the Kessil app. I’m a big fan of manual control!!
And... what’s the “Kensington reefer style”?
 
Nyos reef cement is awesome stuff. You do need to be careful to not push too much and turn it into dust, but it hardens so fast underwater it's shocking. Coral and fish seem unaffected by the residue in the water.

@Coral reefer do you ever use this?

I'm wondering if I should some carbon temporarily just in case
 
richiev said:
Nyos reef cement is awesome stuff. You do need to be careful to not push too much and turn it into dust, but it hardens so fast underwater it's shocking. Coral and fish seem unaffected by the residue in the water.

@Coral reefer do you ever use this?

I'm wondering if I should some carbon temporarily just in case
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That's what he uses from aqua scaping workshop. Once dry if u want super glue and sand to cover joints if it matters that much to you.
 
richiev said:
Nyos reef cement is awesome stuff. You do need to be careful to not push too much and turn it into dust, but it hardens so fast underwater it's shocking. Coral and fish seem unaffected by the residue in the water.

@Coral reefer do you ever use this?

I'm wondering if I should some carbon temporarily just in case
Click to expand...
I have used it a lot, but never under water. I have out freshly used cement into tank right away tho without issue
 
I would also imagine unless it's a existing tank already fully of stuff and ur just adding a new rock probably a heck of alot easier just to do it out of water than under it.
 
I had a lot of issues with this tank, so haven't been taking pics as much. Semi quick recap:

  • Lost a series of corals, especially LPS and torches initially would suddenly go from fine to polyp bail out. Eventually found that was correlated to when I'd feed from my packet of Rods Food. I created a thread about that awhile ago, and it sounds crazy but was the highest correlation to issues.
  • Lost some anthias. Not sure exactly why. May have been aggression (lost 2 females)
  • Had SPS issues. Wasn't super sure why, some correlation with the first issue, but I'm not sure.
All very weird because my frag tank is doing so amazingly well.

Other equipment related issues / notes:
  • I got a hydros to setup an auto water change, I am very disappointed in hydros. The capabilities are incredibly basic and you have to use it exactly how they want. No smarts otherwise. I probably should go Apex instead.
  • I did setup an auto water change using the hydros, and some diaphragm pumps I wired up. This is mostly working now, but I had major screw ups related to the above
    • I accidentally changed about 50 gallons of super cold water in a day because hydros settings sucks. This was because the water change went into an infinite loop, constantly draining then filling over and over, despite having it set to do 1 change. My guess is the issue was that 1 water change setting is meaningless, and you have to have the stop time short. Honestly no idea and it might just be their AWC setup is buggy AF.
    • The above happened again a second time after I refilled and set everything up, because I didn't pay enough attention to my stop time. Both times my tank temp dropped to around 72/73 because my reservoir is outside. Luckily the repeated changes were over an hour.
    • I dumped about 10 gallons of water on my floor. This was partially my fault partially hydros. Because of an imperfect water change, I needed to add more water. I did so by using my fill pump from my AWC. However, unlike all my other smart things, there's no way to say "do this for X minutes". So I have to remember to manually turn it off. I didn't, and left to pick up my kids, and got a call from my wife that the living room was flooding. FML. My leak sensor did trip, but at the time that was only on my Red Sea controller, and I'm not even sure if the hydros would've turned the pump off anyway.
    • I dumped 5 gallons of RO in at once. This was mostly my fault, but again because the hydros is so basic. There's no way to connect it with anything external to its ecosystem. My ATO is a red sea one, and I need to turn it off before doing an AWC. What happened was I forgot to turn it off, so the AWC drain kicked on which caused my ATO to keep refilling. Luckily my ATO reservoir is only 5 gallons, but my salinity dropped to 30.7ppt. I gave in and bought a hydros power strip which now controls my reefer ATO.
  • I had a bit of aiptasia. A couple here and there. I kalk slurried them and haven't seen them return.
  • My orange diascoma shrooms are everywhere. They detached after battling with other shrooms and are popping up everywhere. I'm kalk slurrying them and slowly winning the battle. Gotta kill them all.
All in all, definitely blame on me in some of the above, but I'm disappointed in the hydros ecosystem.

Positives:
  • My diy auger feeder is working great. I created a thread for those, but overall it's feeding great and I no longer have an ugly feeder on my tank because it's in my sump.
  • My coral is now super healthy. This ironically is related to the accidental huge water changes, nearly 100gal in a couple days. After that, things went back to healthy again.
  • I'm moving corals from my frag tank over. This is the point of the frag tank, but also makes me slightly sad because my frag tank looks awesome. It'll be nice when my display does too though.
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8k video: https://photos.app.goo.gl/wdFzfX4BkWcrC1op8
 
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