Neptune Aquatics

Dan's RSR-S 850 Mixed Reef

Here's the frag rack of fresh cut (and pissed off lol) corals:
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And here's a pic of some of my favorite tank spawned torches – BLA Canary Grail & BLA Dragon Spawn – that are starting to grow out:

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dandemeyere said:
I've gotten a few questions in the past about how often I frag and what my general approach is, so I figured I’d share a bit today since I just wrapped up a fragging session.

In the past, I definitely had times where I was fragging mainly to create pieces to sell. But right now, my focus is really on letting the tank grow out into a proper display. So I’d say about 90% of the frags I made this time were just where colonies were either growing into each other or starting to shade neighboring corals.

I also try to make cuts that result in nice, chunky frags while keeping the mother colony looking as natural as possible. There are definitely cases where I could take a frag from a big colony, but if it’s not causing issues—like shading or crowding—and there’s no clean way to cut without making it look hacked up, I just leave it alone.

This particular frag session took around 50 minutes that was timelapsed down to 20 seconds. Unfortunately, the time-lapse didn’t come out quite in focus, so it's a little blurry—but hopefully, it still gives a sense of the process:
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I would love to watch the 50-minute original video.
 
Alexander1312 said:
I would love to watch the 50-minute original video.
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I recorded it in timelapse mode. Next time I'll try to find a better setup for recording. Are you more interested in how I frag the colonies in my tank or my plug/gluing setup?

Coral reefer said:
Looks like someone wants to host the next fragging workshop. Even if it’s virtual and not in person…
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:p I don't think I do anything unique when it comes to fragging, but my setup is in the garage with a fair amount of space so I could definitely host something in the future!
 
I had someone stop by last night to pick up a coral frag and they made a comment about how fast the corals in my tank are growing. Growth rates are so tricky because it's one of those things that's hard to notice when you're staring at the tank every day. I think my growth rate is good, but his comment made me want to dig up an old picture from a few months ago just to compare. I don’t take a lot of FTS photos, which is actually one of the reasons I’m trying to downsize my collection right now so I can get all the frag racks off the glass as I hate how that looks in FTSs, but I did find a photo from January and it was helpful to see how much the Bali Green Slimer and the ORA Blue Staghorn next to it have grown – probably doubled in size in 6 months.

Anyway, sometimes it takes someone else’s perspective to help you appreciate the progress. It’s easy to focus on what needs improvement when you’re looking at the tank every day, but that outside comment reminded me just how far things have come :)

January '25 FTS
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July '25 FTS (yes I need to clean the glass and back wall!)
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Took a few top down pictures recently when I was cleaning the tank. The first is my TGC Orange Creamsicle, which has really taken off and is now one of the biggest corals in the tank:
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The next is one that has been a super slow grower, but it finally rewarding me for my patience with the rainbow color --- BC Bubble Bath Unicorn:
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dandemeyere said:
Took a few top down pictures recently when I was cleaning the tank. The first is my TGC Orange Creamsicle, which has really taken off and is now one of the biggest corals in the tank:
emHS0e0.jpeg


The next is one that has been a super slow grower, but it finally rewarding me for my patience with the rainbow color --- BC Bubble Bath Unicorn:
DPyiret.jpeg
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Looks great! Did I get the unicorn from you? If that is how they will eventually looks like then I will wait :).
 
Not sure how I missed the boat on this one as I've heard people talk about them before on podcasts but I picked up this handheld power scrubber from Costco for $20 over the weekend and it has completely changed how I clean my gear.

My tank grows algae on the glass, frag racks, and Vortech pumps pretty fast so every 3 weeks or so I’m doing the usual soak-everything-in-citric-acid-for-24-hours -> manually scrub everything clean for 20-30 minutes routine to get all the gunk off my frag racks and pump heads.

Well, not anymore. This scrubber gets a frag rack or pump clean in under a minute. What used to be a 30-minute chore is now wrapped up in 5 minutes total. Highly recommend grabbing one if you haven’t already!
 
Saw your post about moving away from SPS. Have you considered a calcium reactor to ease up maintenance and dosing? We saw with the other Dan's tank that you can keep an SPS tank going with pretty much an ATO and a CaRx for a very long time.
 
Darkxerox said:
Saw your post about moving away from SPS. Have you considered a calcium reactor to ease up maintenance and dosing? We saw with the other Dan's tank that you can keep an SPS tank going with pretty much an ATO and a CaRx for a very long time.
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I'd say the dosing isn't the part I'm worried about. Between the kalkwasser, ESV, and All For Reef, it's usually just 15-20 minutes a month of maintenance.

With SPS (especially the big colonies), it's the following:
  • Keep having to adjust the flow of the tank to accommodate the growing colonies
  • Having to actively trim them as they run into each other (and then keeping frag racks with the frags)
  • Having to make sure no detritus settles in the SPS colonies which can lead to issues
  • Having a ton of flow (4 MP40s) means having clean those every month or so -> I'll only need 2 with a LPS tank
  • Having a ton of light (4 radions + 2 blades) -> more wires, more cleaning, and algae that grows faster due to the higher par
  • Trace elements get depleted quickly with the massive colonies -> I'll have to do ICPs / dose traces much less frequently with a LPS tank
And the funny part is I have very few close friends that are in the hobby and 99% of the people who see the tank, don't care about the SPS so it's really just for me and I'm also kind of curious to see if I can build a really attractive LPS/softie tank :)
 
Yea there's probably something to that. For me, I've found stability is really key to having long term success with higher end SPS and to keep that stability, I have to obsess (to a certain extent) about a few things like testing every week, staying on top of maintenance, etc. and that can lead to burn out over time. Once you find a rhythm, you can "keep it simple", but my version of simple is probably different than others. It doesn't help that I had a power outage/surge a week ago that took out two EB8s and a light power supply during a week where myself and my kids got the stomach flu and work was really crazy o_O
 
dandemeyere said:
Yea there's probably something to that. For me, I've found stability is really key to having long term success with higher end SPS and to keep that stability, I have to obsess (to a certain extent) about a few things like testing every week, staying on top of maintenance, etc. and that can lead to burn out over time. Once you find a rhythm, you can "keep it simple", but my version of simple is probably different than others. It doesn't help that I had a power outage/surge a week ago that took out two EB8s and a light power supply during a week where myself and my kids got the stomach flu and work was really crazy o_O
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I appreciate you recognizing the effort you put into the success you have. I often see folks downplaying this, mostly for odd reasons, sometimes just misremembering all the small things, referring to easy reefkeeping while there are no shortcuts to success unless it aims for short-term success < 5 years.

I wonder, though if you will save a ton of time with your switch to LPS. I guess milleporas and tenuis are particularly unforgiving re mistakes or fluctuations, but other types of SPS seem to be even easier to keep than LPS.

Your algae growth seems to be a large contributor to your rather intense pump maintenance schedule. I clean my MP40s and gyres regularly too, and I consider myself very (!) disciplined with this, but they only get cleaned every 12 weeks. I believe we talked about PAR before, but I do not remember how much PAR you are running. Also, I believe the use of Kalkwasser + ESV is not 'helping' with the algae growth.

Anyway, as you can tell we are not very supportive of your switch :) as we do not want to lose such a successful SPS grower, so hopefully this will only be short-lived until you get tired of those beginner corals and get back to the big boys stuff.

(intentionally written provocatively with the goal to not receive any likes for this comment)
 
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