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burtbollinger's Red Sea Reefer 170 (converted to planted)


burtbollinger

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Nano sapiens

Montipora are known for being quite resilient.  I had 4-5 varieties sitting in 15 - 20 ppm NO3 for a few months when I started my 12g and they were okay. My tank today has ~1 ppm NO3 and they are fine with that as long as some phosphate is available (preferably organic phosphate). 

 

Carbon dosing has it's uses in a tank that is fed very heavily (usually due to a large fish bioload), and/or one where water changes are few (or non-existent) and/or the substrate and/or sump hasn't been cleaned/isn't cleaned in a long while.  Both circumstances tend to raise NO3 and phosphate levels.  For a more normally balanced reef aquarium that has regular effective maintenance...typically not needed.

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Nano sapiens
43 minutes ago, Weetabix7 said:

 

I'm pretty sure those nitrates will be perfectly fine for Monti's and LPS and that it could actually be detrimental to have them too low.

I'm interested to hear what others think though.

 

In a system where ammonia is scarce (or assimilated very quickly by a large number of efficient organisms) and organics/phosphates are low, very low nitrate can be an issue.  These are all nutrient sources that corals utilize (ammonia is actually preferred over nitrate by corals).  Since my system runs naturally low NO3 (~1 ppm) and untestable PO4 (Salifert), even with 2x/day fish feeding I find that I still need to feed my LPS 2x week if I want to see new polyp production.  Montis are fine with what they can scavenge from the water column as long as the sum of all available nutrients isn't super low.

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burtbollinger

Opinions on adding a Green Banded Goby in with a clown pair and a royal gramma?....this would be a total of 4 fish.

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1 hour ago, burtbollinger said:

Opinions on adding a Green Banded Goby in with a clown pair and a royal gramma?....this would be a total of 4 fish.

 

Sounds good, go for it!!

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burtbollinger

divecj5 hooked me up with great deal on a small Avast Spyglass reactor...had been running GFO passively recently and its made a world of difference...excited to now be up and running with a reactor.

Running a little over 1/4 cup of non high-cap GFO.  

 

Hanna Checker has always read 0.00 (+- 0.04) so I'm just kinda winging it, trying not to overdo it.

 

 

 

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Looking good. I have to start a thread with my tank. Although, it would pretty much mimic yours. I think I'm gonna go skimmerless and Reactorless and go straight fuge. I was pondering this move for a couple months before BRS dropped their latest vids on fuge nutrient exporting. All my previous tanks had no skimmer and a refugium. In fact my best growth came when I ran barely no filtration at all, just added filter floss from time to time. 

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burtbollinger
58 minutes ago, schwaz said:

Looking good. I have to start a thread with my tank. Although, it would pretty much mimic yours. I think I'm gonna go skimmerless and Reactorless and go straight fuge. I was pondering this move for a couple months before BRS dropped their latest vids on fuge nutrient exporting. All my previous tanks had no skimmer and a refugium. In fact my best growth came when I ran barely no filtration at all, just added filter floss from time to time. 

I just dont know where to put one :)

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MockandRoll

You could easily add an algae reactor. You just need to split the return line. Tank looks great and I really like your overall vision for the tank. Keep the updates coming. Following.

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burtbollinger


tank officially at 8 months today...still getting a feel for it...lots of small frags I'm letting grow out at this point, trying to guess how it will all look @ 24 months.

A few more frags, then I'm done...corals still needed include:

  • WWC Bubblegum Monster Chalice (center, right side)
  • Pink Boobies Chalice (center, right side)  (might be the centerpiece coral...its the one I want most.)
  • A nice RFA (back, right side)
  • Orange, red micromussa (left side acan garden cascading down into middle sandbed acan garden)
  • Jack O' Lantern Leptoseris (?) (I really want a bright splash of orange/yellow this provides)
  • LARGE gold branching Hammer (left side glass)
  • Stylos

 

biggest mistakes so far:

  • rushing into SPS at @ the 3 month mark before understanding the deceiving power of LEDs.
  • running whites too high, fading out my monti caps & undatas (wwc cherry tree, rainbow monti) with too much light...watched them go from deep reds to pale pink until I lowered the whites.  Since then, slow but steady improvement on the the montis.  They're starting to pink back up after a few months looking almost bleached/dead.  (running Nanobox Duo at 80 blues, 26 whites during midday)
  • browning out a red montipora digitata (now turning redish again)...also buying the wrong red digitata frag...was told it was Forest Fire, but it wasn't.
  • Buying Walt Smith 2.1 rock.  Wish I would have bought the Caribsea stuff.
  • Buying a Green Crown Leather that has not opened in 5 months.  (pulling this coral at some point soon.  I hate it.)
  • Wasting money on cyphastrea, not respecting how absurdly low-light they are.  (may pull these corals too)
  • Not starting Purigen/GFO sooner.
  • Red Sea Reef Energy A + B dosed even once per week causes significant brown algae blooms....this is beyond anticdotal.  Every time I dose, brown algae forms.  Tossed in the trash.

 

biggest positives:

  • All of the equipment has been wonderful (Red Sea, Nanobox)
  • The white Reefer 170 cabinet (looks great, can't see water stains on it, etc)
  • Hanna Alkalinity Checker (dKh)  (this is a tank-saver...a must-have item, total game changer)
  • ESV Bionic (much better than mixing up BRS 2-part)
  • Fritz RPM salt (I prefer it over RSCP)
  • Bayer Advanced
  • Space Invader Pectinia (such a cool coral and getting cheaper, easier to find)
  • Ease of care and growth of the Miami Hurricane chalice...cheap, pretty, and easy.
     

Still unsure:

  • Tropic Eden Tonga Reef Flakes (leaning negative on this sand....grains almost too big?  I might go with a smaller grain sand if I could do it over again.)

 

5aa1e25aec031_ScreenShot2018-03-08at7_23_27PM.png.74f18f0128eae755866ceb9e89f66553.png

 

 

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MockandRoll

Tank is looking great. How long are the sweepers on the pectinia? I heard they are crazy long but have never seen in person. 

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burtbollinger
On 7/30/2017 at 8:51 PM, MockandRoll said:

Tank is looking great. How long are the sweepers on the pectinia? I heard they are crazy long but have never seen in person. 

I dont see them all the time, and i just moved it to the front vs the back....but i've seen them at @ 3"

 

keeping an eye on it so it doenst sting the duncans.

 

EDIT 8-10-17:  since moving the space invader, seeing multiple new tenticles.  Only difference in placement is slightly more light.

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Things are looking good, and I really enjoy your comprehensive approach to documenting what's going on with the tank. A couple random thoughts, since you asked :)

All of my monticaps do fine in high light, in fact as they grow higher in the tank towards the light, they get brighter and grow faster. Too much light too fast will bleach them, though, in which case you'll see bright white spots where the light hits them the hardest, and the bleached spots may or may not regrow depending on how bad it is.

When I've kept monticaps in tanks with low nutrients, however (nitrates and/or phosphates at zero), they gradually got paler and paler until they lost most color and eventually died. 

Also remember zero phosphates can mean something like algae or diatoms are consuming the phosphates from the water column, so they can't be measured. I wonder if that's what's happening in your tank? Your nitrates aren't close to zero, so you aren't running low nutrients, and it sounds like when you started running gfo conditions improved. That would seem to indicate that actually had an excess of phosphates that were fueling algae and/or diatom growth. I had something similar to that happen in my 40g...diatoms every day well past the six month mark. I finally cleared it up with a combination of Vibrant and more aggressive gfo use.

Having said all that, there's a lot to be said for keeping things simple. Your nitrates are fine - many reefers that are well known for having beautiful corals run nitrates in the same range. And if you're trying to keep a mixed reef with softies and monticaps, it will be a lot easier with nitrates in the range you've got.

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burtbollinger
1 hour ago, teenyreef said:

 

When I've kept monticaps in tanks with low nutrients, however (nitrates and/or phosphates at zero), they gradually got paler and paler until they lost most color and eventually died. 

 

heh, i think this was happening to me because they were getting too much light, maybe a light shock situation or something....i really did a number on my montis with them too high up.  

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Legendary Corals
21 hours ago, burtbollinger said:


tank officially at 8 months today...still getting a feel for it...lots of small frags I'm letting grow out at this point, trying to guess how it will all look @ 24 months.

A few more frags, then I'm done...corals still needed include:

  • WWC Kingpin Chalice (center, right side)
  • Pink Boobies Chalice (center, right side)  (might be the centerpiece coral...its the one I want most.)
  • Red hot Setosa (right side)
  • Orange, red micromussa (left side acan garden cascading down into middle sandbed acan garden)
  • Jack O' Lantern Leptoseris (?) (I really want a bright splash of orange/yellow this provides)
  • LARGE gold branching Hammer (right side, rear)

 

biggest mistakes so far:

  • rushing into SPS at @ the 3 month mark before understanding the deceiving power of LEDs.
  • running whites too high, fading out my monti caps & undatas (wwc cherry tree, rainbow monti) with too much light...watched them go from deep reds to pale pink until I lowered the whites.  Since then, slow but steady improvement on the the montis.  They're starting to pink back up after a few months looking almost bleached/dead.  (running Nanobox Duo at 80 blues, 26 whites during midday)
  • browning out a red montipora digitata (now turning redish again)...also buying the wrong red digitata frag...was told it was Forest Fire, but it wasn't.
  • Buying Walt Smith 2.1 rock.  Wish I would have bought the Caribsea stuff.
  • Buying a Green Crown Leather that has not opened in 5 months.  (pulling this coral at some point soon.  I hate it.)
  • Wasting money on cyphastrea, not respecting how absurdly low-light they are.  (may pull these corals too)
  • Not starting Purigen/GFO sooner.

 

biggest positives:

  • All of the equipment has been wonderful (Red Sea, Nanobox)
  • The white Reefer 170 cabinet (looks great, can't see water stains on it, etc)
  • Hanna Alkalinity Checker (dKh)  (this is a tank-saver...a must-have item, total game changer)
  • ESV Bionic (much better than mixing up BRS 2-part)
  • Fritz RPM salt (I prefer it over RSCP)
  • Bayer Advanced
  • Space Invader Pectinia (such a cool coral and getting cheaper, easier to find)
  • Ease of care and growth of the Miami Hurricane chalice...cheap, pretty, and easy.
     

Still unsure:

  • Tropic Eden Tonga Reef Flakes (grains almost too big?  I might go with a smaller grain sand if I could do it over again.)

 

 

 

The tank's looking great! I love how you're planning on your coral ideas and letting them grow in, it takes a lot of patience.

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burtbollinger
35 minutes ago, schwaz said:

Why this? 

  • Hanna Alkalinity Checker (dKh)  (this is a tank-saver...a must-have item, total game changer)

over time, if testing isnt easy, its doesnt get done.  Too easy to get lazy and fall into a routine.  Too easy to start skipping testing, and guesstimating what your tank is doing.

 

At the end of the day, good chance its an alk . parameter out of balance that will proably doom your tank if you're not on top of it, testing the tank, testing the freshly mixed replacement salt water, etc.

 

Theres nothing easier than the Hanna alk checker...its accuracy is also very spot-on and repeatable, and allows you to CONFIDENTLY track day to day fluctuations.

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4 minutes ago, burtbollinger said:

over time, if testing isnt easy, its doesnt get done.  Too easy to get lazy and fall into a routine.  Too easy to start skipping testing, and guesstimating what your tank is doing.

 

At the end of the day, good chance its an alk . parameter out of balance that will proably doom your tank if you're not on top of it, testing the tank, testing the freshly mixed replacement salt water, etc.

 

Theres nothing easier than the Hanna alk checker...its accuracy is also very spot-on and repeatable, and allows you to CONFIDENTLY track day to day fluctuations.

^this: I check three tanks almost every night in less than two minutes :)

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burtbollinger
27 minutes ago, schwaz said:

What do you guys keep your Alk at?

I dose a very small amount (3ml ESV B-ionic 2 part) about 2x per week to keep my Alk as close to 9 as possible...will dip down to 8.6 or so and then I give it a dose.  

 

I test daily to every other day...Tank drops maybe 0.1 dKH in a day...sometimes it drops 0.0 according to the Hanna (but this could all be within its margin of error).  

 

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8.6 is well within the optimal dKH of 8-12. Do you notice the affects when you drop below 9? Have you tried bumping up to 10? How far will it drop before it bottoms out? 

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burtbollinger

No effects dropping below 9....I've never let it drop past 8.5,  not curious about or interested in bumping to 10.  Salt mixes to 8...so I'm trying to stay in that ballpark.

 

No clue on how far it would drop to if I let it....I didn't know finding that out was a thing :)  not too keen on finding out.

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  • 2 weeks later...
burtbollinger

Tank finally starting to come together....most frags now obtained and are in in place for the long grow out.   Added WWC Pink Sapphire, Pink Boobies and a Bubblegum Monster Chalices from WWC over the weekend with my birthday money.

Final additions will be a LARGE colony of gold branching hammer for left glass (if such a thing exists)...a green stylo (left), a nice RFA (right),  Jack O' Lantern Leptoseris (left)...Various orange/red micromussa for the left side and onto the sandbed.

 

Hard lesson learned from last time....You have to know when you're done..."just one more" is what gets you in the end.

 

IF (knock on wood) I can keep this tank alive and going in 24 months, it should be pretty cool.

 

Removed and returned a few corals, btw...no more green leather, or cyphastrea.  

 

Running the Nanobox Duo at 80 on the blues, 23 on the whites...with cloud mode enabled.  

 

 

 

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  • burtbollinger changed the title to burtbollinger's Red Sea Reefer 170 (converted to planted)

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