Riding the Wave with Reef Casa: My Studio 12 Saltwater Build 🌊

[Airedale.Reef]

9 hours ago, banasophia said:

but just yesterday I made the decision that I really need a skimmer for my tank rather than a refugium, so I decided to switch things up.

Excited to hear about this. I will be in the market for a skimmer soon, and I am interested to see which skimmer you chose.

[banasophia]

2 hours ago, Airedale.Reef said:

Excited to hear about this. I will be in the market for a skimmer soon, and I am interested to see which skimmer you chose.

So… refugium vs skimmer… for my tanks I’ve decided skimmers are probably a better fit. I thought this back when I kept my Biocube 16 and first tried a refugium, and my experience with this tank and refugium have reinforced this belief. 

 

I tend to stock my tanks pretty heavily, and I like to feed fairly heavily as well. I have 5 fish in this tank: yellow clown goby, yellow banded possum wrasse, tailspot blenny, and ocellaris clownfish pair. Currently I don’t feed too heavily compared to my Biocube 16 with its nonphotosynthetic corals, but I do feed Sustainable Aquatics hatchery diet pellets along with Spirulina 20 flakes daily. 
 

 

What I’ve found with this bioload and feeding regimen is that my tank is maintaining a nice low nitrate level around 1 with the help of the refugium, Chemipure Elite, and Purigen, but my phosphate level remains really high, 1.3 last time I checked. I’ve been having issues lately with cyanobacteria, possibly due to the imbalance between the nitrate and phosphate levels.

 

In my experience with my Biocube 16, either daily NOPOX dosing or  intermittent use of Phosphate RX (which is lanthanum chloride) are great ways to control elevated phosphate levels. BUT, NOPOX requires a skimmer to provide increased oxygenation and to remove bacteria flocks formed by the dosing and Phosphate RX requires either a filter sock or a skimmer to remove the precipitated phosphate. So at this point I need a skimmer so I can use one of these two methods to control my phosphate level. 

 

I had a Coralife Biocube Skimmer V2 new in the box in my supply cabinet and I hooked that up yesterday, but unfortunately it seems to be too tall for this tank and I can’t get it low enough in the water column to do its thing… probably need to take it out and save it for my Biocube 32 once I’m ready to get it going.
 

 

 

So I ordered a Bubble Magus Mini Q yesterday, looks like it could fit in this tank and has really good reviews. Can’t wait to get it and try it out!!

[Airedale.Reef]

I always enjoy reading through your tank journal, and often find little gems that have helped me along the way. Thank you for sharing these details for us! Based on the information you provided above, I think the skimmer approach will prove to be successful for you.  

 

I have not used a Bubble Magus, but all throughout my research, it seems to get very solid reviews! Looking forward to seeing that skimmate in the future haha

[banasophia]

11 hours ago, Airedale.Reef said:

I always enjoy reading through your tank journal, and often find little gems that have helped me along the way. Thank you for sharing these details for us! Based on the information you provided above, I think the skimmer approach will prove to be successful for you.  

 

I have not used a Bubble Magus, but all throughout my research, it seems to get very solid reviews! Looking forward to seeing that skimmate in the future haha

Thanks so much for the nice feedback. 😊🤗 Just followed your tank journal too… your tank looks great… can’t wait to read more about it!

 

Hopefully the skimmer will do the trick, and I’m looking forward to seeing the skimmate too. I’ve only ever used Coralife Biocube skimmers in my tanks, which tend to produce a pretty wet skim, so this could be interesting to see the comparison. 

[Airedale.Reef]

@banasophia thanks for the follow! The goal here is to be like you and get featured for tank of the month : ) For now, I have some upcoming travel plans so livestock and goodies will have to wait another few more weeks. 

 

Yes indeed - the reviews and videos I have seen regarding the bubble magus have been quite impressive! I suspect you will see a big difference. 

[banasophia]

10 hours ago, Airedale.Reef said:

@banasophia thanks for the follow! The goal here is to be like you and get featured for tank of the month : ) For now, I have some upcoming travel plans so livestock and goodies will have to wait another few more weeks. 

 

Yes indeed - the reviews and videos I have seen regarding the bubble magus have been quite impressive! I suspect you will see a big difference. 

Your tank’s off to a great start… I love the IM Nuvo Fusion 30 Longs, your scape is awesome, and the setup looks really great… looking forward to watching it progress!! 

Hank chilling on his favorite candycane, next to a couple of knopia polyps peeping out. You can see why knopia is often called daisy polyps. 🌸🌸

 

[Airedale.Reef]

Thank you! : ) 

 

And wow - what a stunning photo! Hank is insta famous! 

[Kev1n]

The Clove Polyps growing between the Candy Cane heads is really awesome.

[banasophia]

The tank is still doing great. It’s beautiful, yet so easy and low maintenance - I love it!! I’m just feeding pellets and flakes and doing a 2 gallon water change with Nutri Seawater or Imagitarium water once every week or two. 
 

Every water change I do usually need to hit it with some Aiptasia-X… maybe I’ll invest in some Berghias soon, but the aiptasia aren’t too bothersome. 
 

 

 

And the Bubble Magus Mini Q skimmer fits perfectly and works really well. It’s definitely the more effective than both of the models of the Coralife Biocube skimmers I’ve run in the past… I would recommend it for this tank. 

 

[banasophia]

[banasophia]

I changed my light settings and was able to get some really nice shots of this tank the other day before I moved the tall gorgonian and mushrooms from the left foreground to my other tank. Here’s one of my faves… if you look closely you can see Hank, Marshall, and Schmidt all swimming in the same direction.

[banasophia]

Another shot from the other night, this one with the flow on. Rippled vs mirrored reflection. Hank and Schmidt. 

[banasophia]

Well the green Kenya tree (otherwise known as my reef broccoli) was really getting too big for this tank and shading most of the other corals so I made a decision after my water changes tonight and moved it to the new Biocube 32.

 

Looks so empty in the tank now without it, but hopefully I can find something new for the spot. Any ideas for a new addition? If I could get another Fiji yellow from my LFS that could look nice, but I think they already sold it. 

 

 

 

[colormegone]

Tank looks great! The reef Broccoli was for sure taking over your tanks light source.😃

[RecifeEco40]

On 1/22/2023 at 2:43 PM, banasophia said:

Yeah, thanks, I hope it does well. I didn’t want to just leave it at the LFS… they have some spider sponges and nonphotosynthetic gorgonians they’ve had in stock for months that are slowly dying and I didn’t want to see that happen to this beautiful coral since there didn’t seem to be any other takers. (The guy that worked there that bagged it up for me said he actually thought it was a resin decoration!) I guess there must not be many reefers that shop there that keep these types of corals/sponges. 
 

Now I’m debating what to do about flow for this tank. Right now I just have the stock pump, which is about 200 gph, and the stock return nozzle.
 

I also have a mini UV sterilizer hooked up to the pump, but I haven’t been using it lately since I’ve been adding various forms of beneficial bacteria and I don’t want to kill them off. As you can see from the pic I had to come up with a way to attach the UV sterilizer inline between the pump and return nozzle.

 

 

 

I was thankful for my trusty bucket of odds and ends and spare parts I’ve saved and I was able to use some of the the tubing and U connectors from my chiller I had in the Biocube 16. Do you guys all have buckets or boxes like this? I feel like it’s a kind of junk drawer for reefers. 

 

 

Anyway, it made me a bit nervous with the tubing like that… I kept envisioning it detaching and all the water from my tank shooting out like a fountain so I ordered some moisture detectors. Should’ve had these behind my tanks before… you can see how hosed the wood flooring already is from years of drips and spills that went unnoticed. 

 

Hi,

What did you use to make that sharp bend in the tube, is that some plastic pipe hook, or a rigid piece of tubing?  I am trying to figure out how to add my UV onto my 12 Gallon Reef Casa that comes tomorrow.  Thanks for the help!

[banasophia]

18 hours ago, colormegone said:

Tank looks great! The reef Broccoli was for sure taking over your tanks light source.😃

Thanks so much! Yes, I’m preparing myself for an explosion of green mushrooms now that they’ll get more light!!! And these things already multiply like crazy! 
 

 

3 hours ago, RecifeEco40 said:

Hi,

What did you use to make that sharp bend in the tube, is that some plastic pipe hook, or a rigid piece of tubing?  I am trying to figure out how to add my UV onto my 12 Gallon Reef Casa that comes tomorrow.  Thanks for the help!

Yayyy!!! Congrats on your new tank! I hope you enjoy it as much as I’ve enjoyed mine!!
 

It’s a clear pvc piece that came with my Chill Solutions nano chiller. Looks like they stopped selling them:

 

 

 

 

You probably won’t need a UV sterilizer though… I bought mine as a brand new reefer and had mine for years sitting on my supply shelf before finally needing to use it when I encountered those horrible dinoflagellates when starting this tank. 

[RecifeEco40]

6 hours ago, banasophia said:

Thanks so much! Yes, I’m preparing myself for an explosion of green mushrooms now that they’ll get more light!!! And these things already multiply like crazy! 
 

 

Yayyy!!! Congrats on your new tank! I hope you enjoy it as much as I’ve enjoyed mine!!
 

It’s a clear pvc piece that came with my Chill Solutions nano chiller. Looks like they stopped selling them:

 

 

 

 

You probably won’t need a UV sterilizer though… I bought mine as a brand new reefer and had mine for years sitting on my supply shelf before finally needing to use it when I encountered those horrible dinoflagellates when starting this tank. 

Awesome, thanks so much for that info, exactly what I was looking for and what I need for some other projects, lol and I just looked it looks like the company might be out of business no more social media pages either.  Thanks again though, it gave me some ideas!

[banasophia]

So many green mushrooms! The tank looks a bit chaotic at the moment because I’m moving things back and forth between this tank and the Biocube 32. The fish and corals all seem happy though, and I’m looking forward to adding more variety soon. 

 

I was surprised to hear my ATO doing a lengthy fill tonight and discovered the culprit: an asterina star was on the sensor! Luckily there wasn’t much water in my reservoir so it didn’t get flooded.

 

 

[TheCoffeeReef]

they're curious little guys getting just about everywhere, didn't know they could fool sensor equipment.

 

[banasophia]

8 hours ago, TheCoffeeReef said:

they're curious little guys getting just about everywhere, didn't know they could fool sensor equipment.

 

Yeah - first time for me! I stock asterinas on my tanks… my daughter loves them and I’ve never had any problems with them harming corals. 

[banasophia]

On 9/9/2024 at 8:18 PM, RecifeEco40 said:

Hi,

What did you use to make that sharp bend in the tube, is that some plastic pipe hook, or a rigid piece of tubing?  I am trying to figure out how to add my UV onto my 12 Gallon Reef Casa that comes tomorrow.  Thanks for the help!

Just thinking about your new tank… did you get it up and running yet?