High Tide Aquatics

Ryan’s New 40G Setup mixed reef

borker

Supporting Member
After the 90 in my garage crashed due to alk spike—sold it to Tim for one of his tap rooms—I found a nice deal for a 40G innovative marine that I could put in the kitchen! Huge win for everyone, hopefully.

Setup: innovative marine 40G, A 360-WE on gooseneck, eheim heater, tunze ATO, MP-10 pump AQUAMAXX HOB skimmer, GFO reactor. No sump. Media filters include mechanical sponge, purigen, GFO.

Livestock: leopard wrasse, ocellaris clown, small nem (type TBD?), a few hermits including scarlet leg

Coral:
Kenya, frogspawn, utter chaos, a couple blastos,
GSP, some crazy mushrooms (3 colors), meteor shower, a struggling Acro, a couple of unidentified pieces as well of LPS and add’l Zoas.

Goal:
Much more stable and clean than my downstairs tank. Keep Parameters much tighter and reduce phosphates to 0.

Pics:
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Frogspawn is really growing.

Unfortunately so are the mushrooms.

Have stocked a starry blenny and a mandarin. Have not seen the mandarin once. But the blenny has a lot of personality. Too bad he’s currently scared of humans. That will change.

Also an arrow crab (pictured) and 2 emerald crabs since my daughter loves crabs.

So far growth is good for no dosing and only doing weekly water changes.

Main challenge has been changing the water. Not sure how people with nanos do it cleanly. Sand everywhere when I siphon and when I pour in.

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Got new Hanna kit today. Salinity refractometer was WAY off and SB was around 1.019. Brought it up gradually thru water changes to 1.024.

dKH remains low which is strange. Currently 6.4.

Going to do a couple 20% water changes back to back and see what happens.

Considering adding Kalk to ATO water.


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Main challenge has been changing the water. Not sure how people with nanos do it cleanly. Sand everywhere when I siphon and when I pour
I have a bare bottom now, but when I had my nuvo 10 with sand I would pour the water into the return chamber and turn on the pump. I would hit the feed pause if it got close to running dry. It would still disturb the sand a bit but was significantly better. I’ve also seen fresh water tank videos where they use a water bottle with the top cut off where the bottom has a lot of holes to distribute the water and it would also reduce sand getting blown up
 
Invest in a cheap powerhead and extra hose. Pump the newly mixed water into your return or overflow chamber. Doing so might stir up whats settles in the back chambers but that is something you can siphon out on occasion when removing water prior to a change.
 
Some recent shots. Everything is growing well but my params, in particular alk are not great.

Salinity 1.026 (hanna)
pH 7.9 (Hanna)
Nitrate .25 (Red Sea)
Phosphate 0.00 (Hanna low range)
Temp 76
Alk 5.8 (hanna)
Down from 7.2 3 weeks ago despite 2 25% water changes.

Any idea what I can do?

I’ve been adding Tropic Marin All For Reef which should raise alk?

Not sure what’s going on.


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Alright so dosing pump is in the mail. Using TRopic Marin all for reef to dose and Alk is happily back up to 9.0

Growth is good!

Params today:
Sg 1.026
Alk - 8.9
Phosphate - .25 ppm
pH - 7.9

Tank is growing
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Bizarro Cyphastrea making a come back though not growing yet!!
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I've been spot feeding the coral a lot, hence the phosphate - didn't have time for a nitrate test today.

What do you recommend for phosphate reduction?
 
Yeah just refreshed my reactor had been running about a month. So that should help I think.


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