Reefer 425 G2 - Our little piece of the ocean!

[Umrigark]

Hello Everyone!

Finally starting a journal for the new tank, RedSea Reefer 425. Its my second tank, started this hobby with a sumpless 20G long tank with mechanical filtration. Decided to upgrade (obviously with wife's permission), as I got addicted to growing corals!
My 20G (sometime last year):

Started working on this tank early Jan, took lot of time to prep the water station and building it over several weekends. Got the tank wet in mid March and added some rocks that were cooking in my garage tank for more than 3 months, so it cycled instantly Added 5 fishes over 2 months.

Current setup:

Tank: RedSea Reefer 425 G2,DT 91gal sump 24gal
Light: Kessil AP9X
Wavemakers: 2 MP40
Return pump; Syncra 9.0
Mechanical Filter: ReefMat500
Skimmer: RedSea 600 - Runs 12 hours only at night.
Controller: Neptune Apex
AQQA 25 watt UV sterilizer - added recently to see if helps with water clarity


Water Station:
- 55 Gal fresh water
- 55 gal salt water
- Reef Crystals salt
Water change schedule: Auto water change setup for 1.5 gal every day between 9pm and 10pm

Life stock - my daughter insists I refer them by their names!
- onyx clownfish pair ( Ashoka and Kaurwaki)
- White tail bristletooth tang - Maui
- one spot fox face - Pheebe
- Elibi mimic tang - Trixy

Inverts:
- Two rock flower anemones
- snails

Corals:
- Hammer from prev tank
- toadstool from prev tank


Tank Goal: SPS dominated mixed reef
Personal goal: Enjoy the tank without attempting to find imperfections and make changes


Some background, started my previous tank as an experiment, having kept freshwater tank for 8+ years wanted to try something different. I did not anticipate the amount of effort and cost lol, but it was worth it. After struggling for an year and making several rookie mistakes like making too many changes all the time, reacting to every little thing and few tank crashes, learned my lessons. I have had my fair share of cyano, dino, algae outbreaks, was able to overcome with help of forums, youtube and most importantly patience. Once I learned to leave my tank alone, it really took off, I was able to grow out softies, lps and few montiporas without sump or skimmer.

I truly hate water change its messy and tedious, but I think that the single most important aspect to keep tank healthy based on my anectodical experiences. So I wanted to setup new tank such that I can change tiny bits of water every day. I spent a few weekends setting up my water station, with two 55 gallon drums, RODI unit and Neptune DOS. I change 1.5 gallons (1.5%) water each day using DOS.

Next steps next 60 days:
- Transfer more corals from my old tank to this one.
- Setup Kalk dosing and maintain stable alkalinity
- Add few easy SPS corals like stylopora, digitadas, montis and have them grow out (not in 60 days lol .

Here is a latest pic(Today):

Yes, Thats Cyano - not worried it will pass, I might siphon and let us pass through the UV.

 

[IOnceWasLegend]

Looking good! It's always a fine balance between being too hands off versus too hands on, but nice that you've found a good balance.

 

[Umrigark]

Update was long overdue, some latest tank pics:

Tank is doing well, all corals transferred from my old 20G are thriving, the long polyp toadstool had grown quite a lot needs to be trimmed soon.

New Fishes:
- Wrasses: Pintail (Nero), Solar (Doby), yellow corris (Glory)
- royal gramma (Castro)
- yellow watchman goby (Grumpy) + candy cane pistol - The pair came from my previous tank and stayed hidden in their cave for two+ months, I gave up on them and one day I saw both of them out around mid-night. I have seen them several times at night, they no longer come out during the day. I guess YWG is scared of the large fishes.

Also, I have to say Elbli tang (acanthurus tristis) goes to town on grazing algae, probably the best CUC in my tank she is unstoppable.

Critters:
- Cleaner shrimp
- Trochus, cerith, astrea snails (not too many all included might be less than 20)
- Blue tuxedo urchin
- Pink cushion urchin - This guy came as a freebie with TBS live rock, had grown quite a bit, its a menace I had to glue all my frags to rocks and sometimes it still picks up rocks. If anyones has tank big enough and few frags, I am happy to pass it on.

New equipment:
- Avast Kalk reactor + Versa: - I dose 300ml Kalk at night right now ( Versa connected to my fresh water reserve)
- Avast Plank feeder

Latest Tank Parameters:
- Alk : 9.2
- Phos: 0.4 ( its high but tank looks great)
- Nitrates: 12
- Calcium: 450
- PH range: ~8.1 at night, ~8.25 during peak day.
- Salinity: 35.4 PPM

Updates:
Tank has progressed well so far. I don't know how to QT, so I have only added Fishes that are already QT-ed, quite a few came from High Tide Aquatics, Wrasses came from New Wave Aquaria (MN). I still put QTed fish in observation tank for two weeks, to train them on pellets/fish food that I use and add them using acclimation box. So far it's been successful, not much aggression. Having said that most of my fishes are Juvenile so fingers crossed. At this point I have 9 active fishes in there and I have decided to not add any more (unless I find a Japanese Swallow Tail pair - genicanthus semifasciatus). I am still doing 1.5gal daily water changes with Neptune DOS, it's working pretty well ( I will do a separate post on my auto-water change system), I think it's pretty neat

Travel: My tank ran auto-pilot for 3.5 weeks while we travelled out of the country, Avast Plank auto feeder was excellent dosing freeze dry mysis shrimp and pellets. Auto-water change helped keeping nutrients in check. I can share more details if anyone is interested. The only goof up was that I had changed my return pump speed few days before leaving (rookie mistake) and did not account for change in water level, which made Reef Mat go nuts, I could not understand why. My salinity also increased by 1.5PPM. I have got it down gradually with wet skimming after I came back.

ongoing projects:
- Planning to setup an external refugium next to my water station ( hope it goes well) will share more details soon.
- collecting SPS and Acro frags (not the high end ones)

Some coral pics:

Wishing everyone a Happy New Year and Happy Reefing!