85 Gallon CADE 900 S2 Build

[JoeinLA]

Hello All,

After reading and getting help from so many of these threads, I thought I’d post my own. Below is a summary; I’m happy to answer any questions regarding any aspect of this. I’m thinking I might update this from time to time as things develop – if anything more as a diary of how this all progresses.

Equipment:

• Cade 900 S2
• Radion XR30 with track mounting system
• Jebao DCP-10000 (originally had 5000, which is now just in storage as backup)
• Reef Octopus Regal 150SSS Protein Skimmer
• GHL Profilux 4
• Helio 400W Heater
• BRS 7 Stage RO/DI filter
• Tunze Ecochic Refugium light
• A very large number of additional bits and bobs

Received pallet on 12/7/21. Aquarium set up and filled on 12/8/21. Cycling of the CADE took 10 days using bateria and live sand (I think it actually took longer than necessary b/c the live sand added some more ammonia than I “needed”, and I went thought a few very large water changes correcting this).

Aquascaping was much more involved that I anticipated. It’s interesting to see the evolution of my aquascaping skills looking at my early pieces vs. the most recent piece that I’m still trying to get installed (it’s tall so I decided to use acrylic rods and then also ran out of mortar). I suspect the aquascape will be an ongoing project over the next few months.

Initial inhabitants were 2 clown fish. A small ball of Cheato was added 12/27/21. Two fire fish and a frogspawn coral were added 1/2/22 (this forum seems to advise against 2 fire fish but the LFS said it would be no problem and, at least for now, the two seem like good friends). A watchman goby, pistol shrimp, 2 dancing shrimp, and 5 nassarius snails were added 1/8/22. Two jars of Ecopods and 2 jars of 5280 pods were added last night, 1/10/22. Two mandarin gobies are an absolute must, but understand that that's a longer term goal. Beyond that, a jawfish of some type (really like the blue dot but understand the difficulties there so likely will go with yellow headed), a fire shrimp, cleaner shrimp, and a baby blue tang (understanding that we may need to trade it back to the LFS once it gets too large) are on the list.

I’m running my own “custom” light settings: 75% on the purple/blue side, and 50% on the “green/red/white” side, from 8:00 to 10:00 with a 6 hour 100% period (of the 75/50). My wife and I aren’t fans of the super-blue look of any of the templates. Lights were essentially kept off until we got the frogspawn coral; I was/am hoping to avoid the ugly phase.

I’ve been grossly overfeeding over the past 10 days or so to ensure that all the new inhabitants are eating properly. I think the protein skimmer and the little ball of Cheato are keeping up; and I’ve been shooting for weekly water changes (last one was 1/6/22 and I plan on doing a 10% change this weekend on 1/15 or 16). Testing as of just now shows dKH 7.0, phosphate 0.0, Nitrate 6.2, using Hanna checkers. These numbers have been very consistent via daily testing over the past week (I’m running out of reagents). I have Salifert Calc and have Aquaforest Magnesium test on the way; not sure either is really needed for now. Phosphates are at 0 to 0.03; not sure what’s going on there but I read that dry rock can absorb phosphate initially. Nitrate seems to be holding steady; I’ll ascribe that to the Cheato. Though, for both phosphate and nitrate, I may not giving everything enough time and perhaps this almost daily testing is unnecessary (or perhaps wasteful). I have temp set at 77, and salinity currently is at 34-ish. I was keeping it at 35 early on, but went to 33 for a little bit, and am currently thinking that 34 is a good compromise. It does seem to fluctuate +/- .5 throughout the day and I haven't gotten the salinity for each water change nailed down.

Near term, I need to (1) install the some GHL float switches and leak sensors, (2) keep working on aquascape, (3) do some serious cable management; and (4) try to figure out a better set up for the Cheato (the CADE sump is a bit small and I’m not sure I’ve got the Cheato set up in any kind of optimal way and it doesn’t seem to be really growing very much).

I’m hoping to add no more fish for a month or so to let things settle down. May try to add some easy corals though.

Here’s a pic of the tank as of today:

Thanks for reading. Please feel free to ask any questions – hopefully I can provide a fraction of the help that other build threads provided to me.

 

[SPR1968]

Great start, and we need more pictures!

 

[JoeinLA]

Ask and ye shall receive...

Closer pic of tank. I haven't vacuumed the sand so algae is starting to grow on it. Currently making some RODI water to do a water change tomorrow and will try to clean up the sand.

Close up of Frogspawn Coral and Dancing Shrimp (there are two that live on the coral).

Pic of Cabinet. The LED light isn't actually that bright, but it works well enough for now. The protein skimmer was at 9" so I made a stand out of just egg crate material. There's algae growing on the inside from the refugium light, so I need to clean that up as well. I didn't do anything re: the water level in the sump - that's just where it ends up so I hope I set it correctly. The drain and return pump are set just right so there's no noise. The loudest thing is actually the fan on the Radion XR30 and then the protein skimmer. There's almost no water noise.

Top view of sump. It's a bit small. I put my small little bit of Cheato in a media basket and made an egg crate top to keep the Cheato from flowing out of the media basket. The Cheato isn't doing that well, so I got some CheatoGrow, and I ordered a much larger ball of Cheato from AlgaeBarn (along with more copepods - i really want to get those mandarins . If anyone has any suggestions on how to set up a refugium in this fairly limited space, I'm all ears.

As stated above, any suggestions for improving the setup are very much welcomed!

 

[JoeinLA]

Just as an update:
1. Been trying to figure out how to best set up the refugium/Cheato. Currently, I can't figure out how to get a ball to spin, and my last ball of Cheato wore down to just a nub, so I ordered the "large" size Cheato from AlgaeBarn and put it in an 8" eggcrate cage where the media baskets are supposed to be. I have a wave maker set at 100% full time to give the Cheato more flow. I've also been dosing Brightwell's CheatoGrow, but my tank is getting cloudy and I'm wondering if I'm feeding the wrong stuff. I've also lowered the timer of my refugium light from 12 hours to 8 hours.

2. I ordered another set of 4 Ecopods as well, so now I've dumped a total of 8 jars of pods into the tank. This time, I used a turkey baster to try and seed the copepods directly into the sand and also on the rods. I've been using ~20mls of the OceanMagic at night as well, and plan on continuing until my current bottle runs out. I'm not sure if the OceanMagic is contributing to the cloudy water.

3. Phosphates continue to be at 0.00. I've tested up to 0.03, but it then just goes back to 0.00 the next day. Nitrates are also very low, just tested at 3.3. My understanding is that the marco rock is absorbing the phosphates and that the Cheato is also taking up phosphate and nitrates. I'm concerned with dino's from bottoming out phosphates and nitrates, so ordered Brightwell NeoPhos and NeoNitro to try and get the Phosphates and Nitrates higher.

4. I keep playing with the Protein Skimmer. I'm pretty sure the 150 is too big for my current bioload and I'm getting very, very wet skimmate running the pump at full and having the gate valve open. I've lowered the pump to 3 (out of 5) and used the gate valve to get the general bubbling to just before the skimmer cup so that it foams over only now and then. I've done this before and had the cup hit the float valve as well, so I'm still trying to figure out optimal settings here.

5. Except for the pistol shrimp and the watchman goby, all fish, snails, shrimp, and my one coral are accounted for and looking healthy/happy. I see the pistol shrimp only indirectly via his digging but have seen him a couple of times darting out to grab some food that's fallen near one of his openings. I haven't seen the watchman goby in 4 days now, so I'm not sure if he made it. The goby was hanging out, albeit timidly, the first few days he was in the tank but then he just disappeared. I'm hopeful he's just hiding since my water parameters seem good (and redox has remained stable ~300-325).

6. Current plans are to try to allow the tank to stabilize somewhat while I try to get the phosphates and nitrates up. I'm not sure how long before the marco rock is done absorbing phosphate. Everyone seems very disappointed when I tell them it will be weeks or a month before we add anything new to the tank (though we might add another piece of coral just to keep things lively).

7. My wife commented on how maintaining the tank is much more work than she anticipated. I told her that it's just b/c we're still trying to get things settled and b/c we're new at all of this so we'll be terribly inefficient as we figure out our systems/procedures.

As always, any comments/thoughts/suggestions/advice would be greatly appreciated.

Pic of tank as of now, in all its cloudy glory:

 

[JoeinLA]

Hrm reading that cloudy water - bacterial bloom and that could be bc of a dead fish Not sure what happened with the goby

 

[JoeinLA]

Update. I'm learning that it's easy to say that "everything good that happens in a reef rank happens slowly", but it's a very different thing to live it

1. The goby is alive! It was, however, living in my sump's return pump section. I only saw it because I was fiddlng around with my GHL probes, and saw a flash in the corner of my eye. Fast forward an hour later and my return pump removed and my sump a mess otherwise, but we managed to snag the slippery little ******* and put him in the main tank. He was eating very eagerly. I hope he learned his lesson...

2. I was out of town for the week, so I bought a Wyze 3.0 camera to look into the sump area. Long story short, my wife ended up learning the intricacies of balancing the drain flow and the return pump speed. It did not, however, help that I apparently closed off the ATO feed for some completely inexplicable reason before I left. Thank God I had both ready salt water and ready RODI water. I'd love to find out some way to monitor how much water the ATO is putting into the system, but not sure how to do that...

3. Before I left, I, again for some inexplicably unwise reason, bought a purple firefish, some Astreaus snails, more Nesarrius snails, a Tonga fighting conchk and 3 small coral frags. One of the Asteasus snails didn't make it the week, but the 3 that did are amazingly clean eaters; their perfectly white tracks across brown algae is a thing to see The fighting Conch is my wife's current favorite because, as she puts it, he does some serious work.

4. Before I left, I went with the Mobius Radiant lighting plan on a shorter schedule, and also set the light for acclimation mode , both to avoid burning the new coral frags and also to see if that helped with the cloudy water. All in all, not sure if this helped, but it didn't seem to hurt anything.

5. The Frogspawn coral looked really, really good when I came back. My wife was doing 1/2 a cap of NeoPhos and 1/2 a cap of NeoNitro, and when I came back, water tested 6.9 Alk, 0.04 Phosphate, and 5.5 Nitrate. Cheato looks good, but there's brown algae EVERYWHERE. The water got slightly less cloudy, but not cleared.

6. Of course, we went to the fish store to "look around", and we ended up with more Astreaus snails (for a total of 10 now), a second fighting conch, and a Sebae Anemone. My wife really wants the clownfish to have a host. From what I've read, the Sabae Anemone can be hard to take care of, but the guys at the fish store seemed to feel that it would be fine in my tank. They haven't led me wrong yet, so I'll trust them on this one. If the clownfish don't take to the Sebae anemone, I'll likely see if the fish store will take him back.

7. I've ordered a cheap Jebao CW-36W UV sterilizer from Amazon to try and clear up the tank water and kill the brown algae that's everywhere. I also ordered a Icecap 4k Gyre and Hydros Wave Engine. I'm starting to get annoyed enough with the GHL complexities that I'm willing to take a look at the Hydros system and since I needed a controller for the gyre anyways, it seemed like a good chance to see what the Hydros system was like. I'm also hoping the wave engine will work with the Jebao return pump.

8. Ultimately, it doesn't matter how "powerful" the GHL system is. It's just too much of a headache to figure out how to get it to work that I'm willing to just use it for monitoring for now. Maybe an Ion Director and/or GHL Doser will force me to actually figure out the system, but, at this point, I'm starting to feel like the GHL Profilux was just a waste of $1k.

9. Immediate projects are to (a) figure out how to customize the top cover of the tank - the CADE comes with a set of add'l aluminum and corner pieces, which is amazing (another major thumbs up for the CADE), and (b) set up the float switches to turn the return pump on/off for both the sump return section and also for the water level in the overflow section. Major challenges are (i) making sure the Sebae Anemone doesn't die (or burn my other corals), (ii) clear up the water, and (iii) get the brown algae under control.

I'd paste some pictures, but the tank is kind of ugly now...

 

[JoeinLA]

Installed a Jebao CW-55 UV sterilizer yesterday afternoon (I cancelled the CW-36 and upgraded to the -55 since it was only $19 more). It was powered up at 3:45 in the afternoon. Later that night, I blew off as much of the "ugly brown algae" (which turns out to be dino's) off the rock as I could in a few minutes. The tank is CRYSTAL CLEAR this morning. It is unbelievable how fast the UV sterilizer worked.

The install was entirely kludgy - I just inserted it between the return pump and the return line, no messing around with flow or anything. here's a pic of the tank in its current condition. My original thought was to just use it for a few days/weeks until the water cleared up and then take it down, but given its effectiveness I'm wondering if I should give it a more permanent install. It's really big though, so I think it will have to be plumbing vertically to keep it inside the cabinet.

I'm going to try and blow off as much of the dino's as I can over this week and hopefully that will clean up the rocks and sand, but, again, my mind is completely blown by how amazing the UV sterilizer is working.

 

[JoeinLA]

2 week update:

1. Been trying to get a handle on phosphates. I was running at 0 phosphates, so I was dosing NeoPhos. Phosphates got up to the 0.06-0.07 range; Phosphates suddenly jumped to 0.11, 0.14, and then 0.16. I believe it was because we added a piece of supermarket Nori (human food that we had laying around). In any event, I've been spending the last week or so trying to get them down to the 0.05-0.10 range. I performed a 20% water change, and have been feeding less. This morning, I tested at 0.10, so I think we're making progress.

2. In connection with all the phosphate testing, I've begun to get a good handle on the "swings" of the tank, which is pretty neat. I lose about 0.02 phosphates over night (presumably due to my poor dying cheato still clinging to life), nitrates drop by about 1-0.5 per day, and alkalinity rises about 0.1 per day. I'm very much looking forward to getting an ion director - the calcium and magnesium tests are cumbersome enough that I don't really bother. Given my limited livestock, I assume, rightly or wrongly, that these aren't particularly sensitive right now.

3. I did get a 3D printer (Ender 5 Pro ~$320 on sale), and can think of a million uses for it. My first "project" with it has been to design a refugium section. Hopefully that will save my poor cheato. When I bought the CADE, I had read concerns re: the sump's setup/size. I must agree that it's a bit on the small size, or, at the very least, it would have been nice if the Protein Skimmer and Media Basket areas had been better set up to include a dedicated refugium area and maybe only 2 media baskets. But that's just my very noob take on things, so who knows.

4. I haven't figured out how to plumb the UV sterilizer. I don't think I'll end up putting in a second line and am thinking of just continuing to plumb it in between the return pump and the tank return. I can't seem to find the right fitting for the union so as to replace that bottom piece of plumbing that has the manifolds (I assume I'm using the right terminology), so I'm thinking of just using hose line and installing the UV sterilizer vertically in the "dry" half of the cabinet. Another negative to the CADE is proprietary (uncommon-in-the-US) plumbing hardware. It seems like I'd have to essentially replace it just to re-do a section of it.

5. Also, I added an Icecap 4k Gyre with a Hydros WaveEngine. I'm getting a bit put out by the GHL and its complexities, so figured I'd see what the Hydros system is all about. The 4K is, however, WAY TOO MUCH for my tank. I'm using it only in the 25-35% range (can't go below 25%, it seems). It certainly was less of a headache to set up but, ultimately, wasn't necessary less effort. I'm assuming the reef tank controller market isn't large enough to justify a budget that polishes things to an apple-like level of user friendliness. Without a doubt, however, the Hydros interface is MUCH MUCH more "modern" than GHL, though so far, I feel like it still requires a certain amount of effort and research to actually figure out how to use (no different in that respect than the GHL system).

6. Otherwise, everything seems well. I had some concerns re: the purple firefish and a poster here thought that it was being bullied. My wife reminded me that we moved some rocks and that the purple firefish had been "caught" underneath so maybe that was the source of the bruising. It did heal up, and we continue to see no signs of aggression - if anything, they all seem quite friendly, with the purple firefish being the bravest of the three.

7. We're on a mission to get the clowns to host the sebae anemone, so we bought a Nyos bubble trap and have been trying to get the fish to become accustomed to it. It's been in the tank almost 2 days, and so far, no dice. But our plan is to catch the 2 clowns (or perhaps only 1 and maybe that can teach the other one), and put it and the anemone into a colander until they get connected (saw this on the youtoobs).

8. We've given up on trying to get the watchman goby and the pistol shrimp to pair up. the Watchman Goby has set up post around the little hole in the bottom "split" of the far left tower rock, and the pistol shrimp has set up shop in the second rock tower (we only know he's alive because we see the signs of fresh excavation each morning). I'm somewhat tempted to get another pistol shrimp and "tube dump" it to where the watchman goby lives...

9. The tank has definitely been taking over everything - the living room and our time (and budget). But it's been a great adventure and very much worth it.

Tank this morning:

 

[MmeAssoc]

Great build thread! Following with close interest - I've definitely had some of the same experiences as you (live sand delaying the initial cycle, brown algae on the rocks), and reading how you're resolving these issues is really useful.

Interesting to see the fuge setup - I had been worried it would be tight in the media basket section.

I'm keen to hear how your firefish all go together over the longer term - I love firefish, and would really love to add a purple or a helfrichi, but I've been nervous about introducing any aggression into the tank with my existing red firefish.

 

[JoeinLA]

Re the firefish, they definitely seem like good friends - all 3 essentially sleep in the same burrow (we have a pic of the 3 of them sleeping together that's neat - I'd post it but it's a terrible photo b/c it was dark and the angle of the camera makes the glass refraction really bad). But we did add the 2 red firefish at the same time, and the LFS said the two were getting along fine; we added the purple firefish about a week later and it was larger than the other 2, if only slightly. But, again, so far so good. I'd very much like to add a Helfriesh and maybe another purple, but reading all the horror stories here makes me think I'm just lucking out here and that I shouldn't push it - heh.

Re the Refugium, I've been having a real problem keeping the Cheato alive. I've tried Cheatogro, which seemed to only encourage all the other algae to grow, and am now dosing iron (but very little b/c it's not clear to me how "safe" dosing iron is). So far, no dice. Reading up on getting cheato to grow, I'm thinking I made a big mistake by trying to grow Cheato too early in the tank's life... Right now, I'm trying to 3D print what I hope will be the first "wall" in a makeshift refugium, so if that works, I'll definitely post something here about it. I've been "trying" to print this for the past two weeks, but, yeah, 3D printing is a thing in and of itself, I'm finding.

As a further update, a week ago, the Sebae Anemone was looking like it was on the verge of death, even though just a day before, it seemed to be well enough and ate some shrimp. We took it back to the LFS and they said they would try to nurse it back to health. We stopped by yesterday, but the guy that was helping us wasn't in that day, so we're not sure the status. We're guessing, however, that it isn't good news... I read that you're not supposed to get anemone's early on, but the LFS did say we could keep the Sebae - this might be their first piece of "bad" advice...

We've never been able to get the yellow watchman goby and the pistol shrimp to meet up either, so another disappointment in the symbiotic relationship arena. We did find the pistol shrimp in the sump this morning (just as the goby had disappeared down there as well) - we're taking this as a sign that they are, in fact, birds of a feather. My wife caught him while I was asleep and was hoping she and I could somehow force the two together, but the pistol shrimp escaped her trap and found a new burrow on its own. Oh well - hopefully at some point they'll find each other.

We also installed a Co2 Scrubber last Thursday and we've seen Ph hit 8.45 but is now holding at approx 8.25-8.3. I'm guessing the media is getting used up and needs replacement. I'm a bit surprised that it gets used up so quickly and I'm wondering what the longer term expense of that media will end up being. If I can get our 3D printer to actually work (that's a whole different story) and I can print a recirculating top for the protein skimmer. I have seen a drop in alkalinity (down to 6.5) since starting the Co2 scrubber, which I'm taking as a sign of greater growth in the tank. In response, I started dosing AFR. We'll see how things go. I'm also considering another salt, since I've been using Tropic Marin Pro and that mixes to an alk of 7 and it's also out of stock at BRS.

The tank overall looks really good - we keep monkeying around with placement of rockwork, gyres, etc. I'm sure we're touching things a bit too much, but the tank really has become a bit of a fixation for us, at least for now anyways.

Quick iphone shot:

 

[JoeinLA]

One other thing to add here: There seems to be a fairly meaningful difference between the Hanna Phosphate checker and the Phosphorus checker. As an example, 2 nights ago, Phosphates were 0.08 and Phosphorus showed 14 (which converts into ~0.045. Last night, Phosphates showed 0.06 and Phosphorus showed 15. All results were in the margin of error either way, but if you're shooting for what I understand as the "magic range" 0.03-0.05 phosphates, it seems like the Phosphate checker is too inaccurate for that level of precision...?

This hobby seems to be either a godsend or a curse for anyone with even remote OCD...

 

[cmgg99]

Hello All,

After reading and getting help from so many of these threads, I thought I’d post my own. Below is a summary; I’m happy to answer any questions regarding any aspect of this. I’m thinking I might update this from time to time as things develop – if anything more as a diary of how this all progresses.

Equipment:

• Cade 900 S2
• Radion XR30 with track mounting system
• Jebao DCP-10000 (originally had 5000, which is now just in storage as backup)
• Reef Octopus Regal 150SSS Protein Skimmer
• GHL Profilux 4
• Helio 400W Heater
• BRS 7 Stage RO/DI filter
• Tunze Ecochic Refugium light
• A very large number of additional bits and bobs

Received pallet on 12/7/21. Aquarium set up and filled on 12/8/21. Cycling of the CADE took 10 days using bateria and live sand (I think it actually took longer than necessary b/c the live sand added some more ammonia than I “needed”, and I went thought a few very large water changes correcting this).

Aquascaping was much more involved that I anticipated. It’s interesting to see the evolution of my aquascaping skills looking at my early pieces vs. the most recent piece that I’m still trying to get installed (it’s tall so I decided to use acrylic rods and then also ran out of mortar). I suspect the aquascape will be an ongoing project over the next few months.

Initial inhabitants were 2 clown fish. A small ball of Cheato was added 12/27/21. Two fire fish and a frogspawn coral were added 1/2/22 (this forum seems to advise against 2 fire fish but the LFS said it would be no problem and, at least for now, the two seem like good friends). A watchman goby, pistol shrimp, 2 dancing shrimp, and 5 nassarius snails were added 1/8/22. Two jars of Ecopods and 2 jars of 5280 pods were added last night, 1/10/22. Two mandarin gobies are an absolute must, but understand that that's a longer term goal. Beyond that, a jawfish of some type (really like the blue dot but understand the difficulties there so likely will go with yellow headed), a fire shrimp, cleaner shrimp, and a baby blue tang (understanding that we may need to trade it back to the LFS once it gets too large) are on the list.

I’m running my own “custom” light settings: 75% on the purple/blue side, and 50% on the “green/red/white” side, from 8:00 to 10:00 with a 6 hour 100% period (of the 75/50). My wife and I aren’t fans of the super-blue look of any of the templates. Lights were essentially kept off until we got the frogspawn coral; I was/am hoping to avoid the ugly phase.

I’ve been grossly overfeeding over the past 10 days or so to ensure that all the new inhabitants are eating properly. I think the protein skimmer and the little ball of Cheato are keeping up; and I’ve been shooting for weekly water changes (last one was 1/6/22 and I plan on doing a 10% change this weekend on 1/15 or 16). Testing as of just now shows dKH 7.0, phosphate 0.0, Nitrate 6.2, using Hanna checkers. These numbers have been very consistent via daily testing over the past week (I’m running out of reagents). I have Salifert Calc and have Aquaforest Magnesium test on the way; not sure either is really needed for now. Phosphates are at 0 to 0.03; not sure what’s going on there but I read that dry rock can absorb phosphate initially. Nitrate seems to be holding steady; I’ll ascribe that to the Cheato. Though, for both phosphate and nitrate, I may not giving everything enough time and perhaps this almost daily testing is unnecessary (or perhaps wasteful). I have temp set at 77, and salinity currently is at 34-ish. I was keeping it at 35 early on, but went to 33 for a little bit, and am currently thinking that 34 is a good compromise. It does seem to fluctuate +/- .5 throughout the day and I haven't gotten the salinity for each water change nailed down.

Near term, I need to (1) install the some GHL float switches and leak sensors, (2) keep working on aquascape, (3) do some serious cable management; and (4) try to figure out a better set up for the Cheato (the CADE sump is a bit small and I’m not sure I’ve got the Cheato set up in any kind of optimal way and it doesn’t seem to be really growing very much).

I’m hoping to add no more fish for a month or so to let things settle down. May try to add some easy corals though.

Here’s a pic of the tank as of today:

Thanks for reading. Please feel free to ask any questions – hopefully I can provide a fraction of the help that other build threads provided to me.

Hello I recently got this tank. Last Friday 7/24/22 to be precise. The people I got it from installed it for me. One thing I have noticed is that my Auto top off valve is leaking. Despite having normal water level. How can this be solve?

 

[JoeinLA]

You want to make sure it’s installed the right way. I installed mine backwards at first and it was leaking as well. This is a common mistake i believe. If that doesn’t fix it, I’d think you could get a replacement part…?

 

[MmeAssoc]

Hello I recently got this tank. Last Friday 7/24/22 to be precise. The people I got it from installed it for me. One thing I have noticed is that my Auto top off valve is leaking. Despite having normal water level. How can this be solve?

Are you sure the float valve is installed the right way around? It seems not uncommon for people to accidentally install the float back-to-front, or upside down - although if you had professionals set up your tank, I guess that shouldn't be an issue.

 

[JoeinLA]

One Year Update

I’ve been wanting to do updates along the way, but, of course, my own laziness kept that from happening. But since we’re at the one year mark and also, for whatever reason, things seem to be finally “settling in”, this seemed like a good place to provide an update and a 1 year overview of how things went and are now.

Picture of tank and sump are below; the Euphyllia, Stylo, and Birdnest are mostly a 9-12 months old, with the goni’s and most of the SPS corals being anywhere from 8-3(or less) months old. Almost everything started from a standard small frag except for the Euphillia, each of which started with 3 heads (they all have 7-9+ heads now).

Key Lessons:

• Honestly, if I had known how much work this would all take, I wouldn’t have gotten into it in the first place. But now that I’m in it, I’m trying to think of how to upgrade up to a 120 or 150 gal tank (whatever is the max size that can be supported with, essentially, our current equipment).
• Don’t add new dry rock if you don’t want to essentially go through the ugly phase again.
• QT your fish. We’ve found fish harder than corals. We’ve only had a few corals not make it, but our survival rate for fish is at approx. 60%. It really put the cost of this hobby into perspective re: the number of fish collected vs. the number of fish that get to enjoy full happy lives in our tanks.
• Clean out that sump. We were dosing nitrates and phosphates for a while, but towards the fall, nitrates were incredibly stable but phosphates seemed to fluctuate daily and I was struggling with keeping phosphates relatively low (and stable). As a “one-year” project, we cleaned out the sump and we were amazed by how much crap/detritus/gunk was down there. The next day after cleaning the sump, everything was almost at 0 so we’re now back to dosing nitrates and phosphates.

Hardware Changes:

• Added cheap UV sterilizer (from Amazon). At first, we did it for dyno’s and those cleared up almost overnight. We did disconnect it after that a while, but I think that was a mistake (seemed like algae/dyno’s came back fairly quickly), so we re-connected it. At this point, I’m not sure what it’s actually doing besides being a supplemental heater, but hopefully it’s helping keeping some degree of algae in check. We don’t have it connected “optimally” – just in line from the return pump to the tank.
• I purchased a 3D printer to support the tank – the 3D printer has been (and continues to be) an incredibly frustrating project on its own, but it’s also been very, very helpful in printing all manner of accessories (e.g., recirculating Co2 scrubber top, brackets, lids and other knick-knacks that come up from time to time).
• We replaced our original 2xXR30 Pro’s with a single Kessil A9X. We prefer the shimmer of the Kessil, but are trying to come up with a good way to mount one of the Radion XR30 Pros along with the Kessil for the best of both worlds (in our head theory). I personally feel that 2 XR30’s was serious overkill and we did burn a coral before I really appreciated the fact that too much light can be bad…
• Added Icecap 2k and 4k Gyres and Wave Engine. 4k Gyre seems like overkill; 2x2k Gyres would seem more than sufficient, at least to me. I run the 2k at 60-75% and the 4k is running at 45%. I’m happy with the gyres, though I don’t have any experience with any other wave/flow system. There is a very obvious dead spot right in the middle of the tank between the “front” rock and the “back” rock, but I’m not sure how to clear that area out…
• Added recirculating Co2 scrubber system to Protein Skimmer. This seems like it works very well, and the Ph differences are absolutely noticeable. You don’t really need the color changing media – the Ph dropoff when the media stops working is pretty obvious.
• In November, we added a cheap Ozone generator (from Amazon). Water clarity is as-hoped – amazingly clear. I run the generator at just a bit more than the lowest setting that makes the red “on” light appear.
• I plan to replace/supplement the Profilux with the Hydros system once the CoralVue Hydros X10 is available. I'm feeling the need for dosers and I’m hoping the X10 will solve both my need for dosers and my frustrations with the GHL Profilux system.

Maintenance:

• I test Alkalinity, Phosphates, and Nitrates essentially daily (though when nitrates were super stable, I was testing that every few days). After cleaning the sump, I haven’t felt totally “in sync” with how much nitrate/phosphate to dose, so I still test daily and adjust dosage of All for Reef, NeoPhos, and NeoNitro as appropriate. I try to keep Alkalinity at 8.2, phosphates at above .03 and under .8, and nitrates are usually around 4.0 to 5.5. I also just started using NP Balance. Dosing is currently done manually daily by me just adding the AFR and other stuff in to the sump in the morning after I test the water. I really want to get a doser, but, as noted above, am waiting for the Hydros X10 to be available.
  • If anyone's curious, I'm currently dosing 30ml AFR, 1-2 caps of NeoNitro, and 1-2 caps of NeoPhos, but those certainly vary based on test results.
  • I'm also currently adding coral snow + microbacter clean at night to try and combat algae growth. I also add Ferrion every other night for the cheato. I add a drop of Iodine once a week after the water change.
• We do weekly 15gal water changes using Tropic Marin Pro Salt.
  • Re: the Tropic Marin salt, I feel like they may have changed something because it seems to me that there’s a difference in the quality of the salt that I was using a year ago vs. the quality that I’ve been getting for the past 6 months or so. I understand that there were some problems with a new plant; but I’m not sure they’ve really recovered from that or if it was the plant’s fault as much as perhaps some supplier or something else. I continue to use the salt b/c I’ve read that changing salts can upset your tank quite a bit. For now, at least I can say that things are doing well enough. But I really have been tempted to try a different salt for some time.
• The amount of time my wife and I put into the tank is beyond anything I would have anticipated. That being said, we both very much enjoy it and can watch the tank for, quite literally, hours. As stated above, if I had known now what I had known then, I never would have gotten into this. But now that we do have this tank, I really wish we had gotten a bigger one.

Current challenges and goals for 2023:

• We continue to struggle with algae. If it’s not turf algae, its hair algae, Bryopsis, ulva, cyano, dynos, something green and/or brown and ugly. We’re really hoping that this will all just cycle its way out, but keeping on top of algae is a real pain.
• Dosing/stability: I’m really hoping to be able to get away from daily testing with a doser and a little bit more time. So far, adding 30ml of AFR daily seems very consistent, but I’m re-learning the nitrate and phosphate dosages following sump cleaning. I consider getting some sort of alkalinity tester or automated testing, but they’re really expensive and, frankly, they seem really clunky. Plus, there are too many wires already and I’m not sure where I’d even locate one of those large auto-testing bots.
• Fish: this continues to be frustrating. I think the tank is quite a bit understocked but we’ve had issues either figuring out which fish we want, finding them, or keeping them alive through quarantine. Our plan is to try and buy pre-quarantined fish going forward, but we’ll see.
  • The current plan is to add a small blue tang and a small purple tang, and maybe a reef safe angel and call it a day, but who knows… We have 4 sexy shrimp and 2 mandarins and between those, it seems like our fish choices are somewhat limited (e.g., no wrasses, no fish that might get overly aggressive). Would love to get a Kole tang if those every become available again.
  • I have a fantasy of getting a juvenile emperor angelfish that hopefully won’t have developed a taste for corals, but I’m not sure how smart that is… Plus we definitely want to add a giant clam once we find “the one”, so that probably also makes such an angelfish a bit of a gamble…
• Perhaps a bigger tank. My current theory is that the amount of work that we’re putting into the tank won’t be much different than if we had a 150g, so maybe we should just upgrade to that size. I overbought on the skimmer, we have the Radeon lights, etc. so I’m telling myself that it wouldn’t cost too much more to just upgrade to a bigger tank… heh. We’ll see about that one.
  • Probably wouldn’t go with a Cade again – I really love our Cade and would recommend it to anyone who’s interested in it. That being said, the non-US plumbing creates a lot of challenges for modifying the plumbing (in the US obviously), and, given its substantially higher cost, I think that the reasons for why we got the Cade initially wouldn’t really apply to getting a 2nd tank now that we have a bit more familiarity with things.

Happy to go into more detail on anything if anyone’s interested.

Thanks!

 

[nallured]

One Year Update

I’ve been wanting to do updates along the way, but, of course, my own laziness kept that from happening. But since we’re at the one year mark and also, for whatever reason, things seem to be finally “settling in”, this seemed like a good place to provide an update and a 1 year overview of how things went and are now.

Picture of tank and sump are below; the Euphyllia, Stylo, and Birdnest are mostly a 9-12 months old, with the goni’s and most of the SPS corals being anywhere from 8-3(or less) months old. Almost everything started from a standard small frag except for the Euphillia, each of which started with 3 heads (they all have 7-9+ heads now).

Key Lessons:

• Honestly, if I had known how much work this would all take, I wouldn’t have gotten into it in the first place. But now that I’m in it, I’m trying to think of how to upgrade up to a 120 or 150 gal tank (whatever is the max size that can be supported with, essentially, our current equipment).
• Don’t add new dry rock if you don’t want to essentially go through the ugly phase again.
• QT your fish. We’ve found fish harder than corals. We’ve only had a few corals not make it, but our survival rate for fish is at approx. 60%. It really put the cost of this hobby into perspective re: the number of fish collected vs. the number of fish that get to enjoy full happy lives in our tanks.
• Clean out that sump. We were dosing nitrates and phosphates for a while, but towards the fall, nitrates were incredibly stable but phosphates seemed to fluctuate daily and I was struggling with keeping phosphates relatively low (and stable). As a “one-year” project, we cleaned out the sump and we were amazed by how much crap/detritus/gunk was down there. The next day after cleaning the sump, everything was almost at 0 so we’re now back to dosing nitrates and phosphates.

Hardware Changes:

• Added cheap UV sterilizer (from Amazon). At first, we did it for dyno’s and those cleared up almost overnight. We did disconnect it after that a while, but I think that was a mistake (seemed like algae/dyno’s came back fairly quickly), so we re-connected it. At this point, I’m not sure what it’s actually doing besides being a supplemental heater, but hopefully it’s helping keeping some degree of algae in check. We don’t have it connected “optimally” – just in line from the return pump to the tank.
• I purchased a 3D printer to support the tank – the 3D printer has been (and continues to be) an incredibly frustrating project on its own, but it’s also been very, very helpful in printing all manner of accessories (e.g., recirculating Co2 scrubber top, brackets, lids and other knick-knacks that come up from time to time).
• We replaced our original 2xXR30 Pro’s with a single Kessil A9X. We prefer the shimmer of the Kessil, but are trying to come up with a good way to mount one of the Radion XR30 Pros along with the Kessil for the best of both worlds (in our head theory). I personally feel that 2 XR30’s was serious overkill and we did burn a coral before I really appreciated the fact that too much light can be bad…
• Added Icecap 2k and 4k Gyres and Wave Engine. 4k Gyre seems like overkill; 2x2k Gyres would seem more than sufficient, at least to me. I run the 2k at 60-75% and the 4k is running at 45%. I’m happy with the gyres, though I don’t have any experience with any other wave/flow system. There is a very obvious dead spot right in the middle of the tank between the “front” rock and the “back” rock, but I’m not sure how to clear that area out…
• Added recirculating Co2 scrubber system to Protein Skimmer. This seems like it works very well, and the Ph differences are absolutely noticeable. You don’t really need the color changing media – the Ph dropoff when the media stops working is pretty obvious.
• In November, we added a cheap Ozone generator (from Amazon). Water clarity is as-hoped – amazingly clear. I run the generator at just a bit more than the lowest setting that makes the red “on” light appear.
• I plan to replace/supplement the Profilux with the Hydros system once the CoralVue Hydros X10 is available. I'm feeling the need for dosers and I’m hoping the X10 will solve both my need for dosers and my frustrations with the GHL Profilux system.

Maintenance:

• I test Alkalinity, Phosphates, and Nitrates essentially daily (though when nitrates were super stable, I was testing that every few days). After cleaning the sump, I haven’t felt totally “in sync” with how much nitrate/phosphate to dose, so I still test daily and adjust dosage of All for Reef, NeoPhos, and NeoNitro as appropriate. I try to keep Alkalinity at 8.2, phosphates at above .03 and under .8, and nitrates are usually around 4.0 to 5.5. I also just started using NP Balance. Dosing is currently done manually daily by me just adding the AFR and other stuff in to the sump in the morning after I test the water. I really want to get a doser, but, as noted above, am waiting for the Hydros X10 to be available.
  • If anyone's curious, I'm currently dosing 30ml AFR, 1-2 caps of NeoNitro, and 1-2 caps of NeoPhos, but those certainly vary based on test results.
  • I'm also currently adding coral snow + microbacter clean at night to try and combat algae growth. I also add Ferrion every other night for the cheato. I add a drop of Iodine once a week after the water change.
• We do weekly 15gal water changes using Tropic Marin Pro Salt.
  • Re: the Tropic Marin salt, I feel like they may have changed something because it seems to me that there’s a difference in the quality of the salt that I was using a year ago vs. the quality that I’ve been getting for the past 6 months or so. I understand that there were some problems with a new plant; but I’m not sure they’ve really recovered from that or if it was the plant’s fault as much as perhaps some supplier or something else. I continue to use the salt b/c I’ve read that changing salts can upset your tank quite a bit. For now, at least I can say that things are doing well enough. But I really have been tempted to try a different salt for some time.
• The amount of time my wife and I put into the tank is beyond anything I would have anticipated. That being said, we both very much enjoy it and can watch the tank for, quite literally, hours. As stated above, if I had known now what I had known then, I never would have gotten into this. But now that we do have this tank, I really wish we had gotten a bigger one.

Current challenges and goals for 2023:

• We continue to struggle with algae. If it’s not turf algae, its hair algae, Bryopsis, ulva, cyano, dynos, something green and/or brown and ugly. We’re really hoping that this will all just cycle its way out, but keeping on top of algae is a real pain.
• Dosing/stability: I’m really hoping to be able to get away from daily testing with a doser and a little bit more time. So far, adding 30ml of AFR daily seems very consistent, but I’m re-learning the nitrate and phosphate dosages following sump cleaning. I consider getting some sort of alkalinity tester or automated testing, but they’re really expensive and, frankly, they seem really clunky. Plus, there are too many wires already and I’m not sure where I’d even locate one of those large auto-testing bots.
• Fish: this continues to be frustrating. I think the tank is quite a bit understocked but we’ve had issues either figuring out which fish we want, finding them, or keeping them alive through quarantine. Our plan is to try and buy pre-quarantined fish going forward, but we’ll see.
  • The current plan is to add a small blue tang and a small purple tang, and maybe a reef safe angel and call it a day, but who knows… We have 4 sexy shrimp and 2 mandarins and between those, it seems like our fish choices are somewhat limited (e.g., no wrasses, no fish that might get overly aggressive). Would love to get a Kole tang if those every become available again.
  • I have a fantasy of getting a juvenile emperor angelfish that hopefully won’t have developed a taste for corals, but I’m not sure how smart that is… Plus we definitely want to add a giant clam once we find “the one”, so that probably also makes such an angelfish a bit of a gamble…
• Perhaps a bigger tank. My current theory is that the amount of work that we’re putting into the tank won’t be much different than if we had a 150g, so maybe we should just upgrade to that size. I overbought on the skimmer, we have the Radeon lights, etc. so I’m telling myself that it wouldn’t cost too much more to just upgrade to a bigger tank… heh. We’ll see about that one.
  • Probably wouldn’t go with a Cade again – I really love our Cade and would recommend it to anyone who’s interested in it. That being said, the non-US plumbing creates a lot of challenges for modifying the plumbing (in the US obviously), and, given its substantially higher cost, I think that the reasons for why we got the Cade initially wouldn’t really apply to getting a 2nd tank now that we have a bit more familiarity with things.

Happy to go into more detail on anything if anyone’s interested.

Thanks!

Appreciate you sharing your experience in such great detail. Keep it up!

 

[Petcrazyson]

Now this is an amazing tank. Following along! Cant wait to see more? Since you said that…..may we have some fts and other pictures pls?

 

[Suzannes]

Hello All,

After reading and getting help from so many of these threads, I thought I’d post my own. Below is a summary; I’m happy to answer any questions regarding any aspect of this. I’m thinking I might update this from time to time as things develop – if anything more as a diary of how this all progresses.

Equipment:

• Cade 900 S2
• Radion XR30 with track mounting system
• Jebao DCP-10000 (originally had 5000, which is now just in storage as backup)
• Reef Octopus Regal 150SSS Protein Skimmer
• GHL Profilux 4
• Helio 400W Heater
• BRS 7 Stage RO/DI filter
• Tunze Ecochic Refugium light
• A very large number of additional bits and bobs

Received pallet on 12/7/21. Aquarium set up and filled on 12/8/21. Cycling of the CADE took 10 days using bateria and live sand (I think it actually took longer than necessary b/c the live sand added some more ammonia than I “needed”, and I went thought a few very large water changes correcting this).

Aquascaping was much more involved that I anticipated. It’s interesting to see the evolution of my aquascaping skills looking at my early pieces vs. the most recent piece that I’m still trying to get installed (it’s tall so I decided to use acrylic rods and then also ran out of mortar). I suspect the aquascape will be an ongoing project over the next few months.

Initial inhabitants were 2 clown fish. A small ball of Cheato was added 12/27/21. Two fire fish and a frogspawn coral were added 1/2/22 (this forum seems to advise against 2 fire fish but the LFS said it would be no problem and, at least for now, the two seem like good friends). A watchman goby, pistol shrimp, 2 dancing shrimp, and 5 nassarius snails were added 1/8/22. Two jars of Ecopods and 2 jars of 5280 pods were added last night, 1/10/22. Two mandarin gobies are an absolute must, but understand that that's a longer term goal. Beyond that, a jawfish of some type (really like the blue dot but understand the difficulties there so likely will go with yellow headed), a fire shrimp, cleaner shrimp, and a baby blue tang (understanding that we may need to trade it back to the LFS once it gets too large) are on the list.

I’m running my own “custom” light settings: 75% on the purple/blue side, and 50% on the “green/red/white” side, from 8:00 to 10:00 with a 6 hour 100% period (of the 75/50). My wife and I aren’t fans of the super-blue look of any of the templates. Lights were essentially kept off until we got the frogspawn coral; I was/am hoping to avoid the ugly phase.

I’ve been grossly overfeeding over the past 10 days or so to ensure that all the new inhabitants are eating properly. I think the protein skimmer and the little ball of Cheato are keeping up; and I’ve been shooting for weekly water changes (last one was 1/6/22 and I plan on doing a 10% change this weekend on 1/15 or 16). Testing as of just now shows dKH 7.0, phosphate 0.0, Nitrate 6.2, using Hanna checkers. These numbers have been very consistent via daily testing over the past week (I’m running out of reagents). I have Salifert Calc and have Aquaforest Magnesium test on the way; not sure either is really needed for now. Phosphates are at 0 to 0.03; not sure what’s going on there but I read that dry rock can absorb phosphate initially. Nitrate seems to be holding steady; I’ll ascribe that to the Cheato. Though, for both phosphate and nitrate, I may not giving everything enough time and perhaps this almost daily testing is unnecessary (or perhaps wasteful). I have temp set at 77, and salinity currently is at 34-ish. I was keeping it at 35 early on, but went to 33 for a little bit, and am currently thinking that 34 is a good compromise. It does seem to fluctuate +/- .5 throughout the day and I haven't gotten the salinity for each water change nailed down.

Near term, I need to (1) install the some GHL float switches and leak sensors, (2) keep working on aquascape, (3) do some serious cable management; and (4) try to figure out a better set up for the Cheato (the CADE sump is a bit small and I’m not sure I’ve got the Cheato set up in any kind of optimal way and it doesn’t seem to be really growing very much).

I’m hoping to add no more fish for a month or so to let things settle down. May try to add some easy corals though.

Here’s a pic of the tank as of today:

Thanks for reading. Please feel free to ask any questions – hopefully I can provide a fraction of the help that other build threads provided to me.

Thanks for all the details you’ve shared. I have a new S2 900 Cade, which is still cycling. Today it has suddenly become quite noisey (have run noisey for 5 hours now). My son did turn the power off briefly earlier today, as he was trying to set up a back up battery for pump. I’m not sure if the noise is from air in the water feeding back to sump. Any advice would be gratefully received. Sue

 

[JoeinLA]

Thanks for all the details you’ve shared. I have a new S2 900 Cade, which is still cycling. Today it has suddenly become quite noisey (have run noisey for 5 hours now). My son did turn the power off briefly earlier today, as he was trying to set up a back up battery for pump. I’m not sure if the noise is from air in the water feeding back to sump. Any advice would be gratefully received. Sue

If by noisy, you're talking about a water-fall/gurgling like sound (as opposed to a mechanical rattling or something else), then I'd guess your pump speed and your drain valve aren't properly balanced. it's a bit of work, but you have to match/balance the amount of water draining from your overflow area down to your sump with the amount of water you're pumping back up to the main tank; you also need to have the right water level, which I've found to be somewhere above the bottom of the CADE logo and not much higher than the top of the CADE logo - but this may vary based on differences in the length/height of your main drain pipe in your overflow box and that of your emergency drain pipe in your overflow box (essentially your water level needs to be between these two - just above the main drain to avoid taking in air, but below your emergency drain so there's no noise from water falling down that pipe). So either your drain valve is too open relative to the amount of water you're pumping into to the main tank (i.e., your pump speed) and thus your main drain is making a bunch of noise, or your drain valve is too closed relative to your pump speed and you're getting noise from too much water falling down your emergency drain.

What you're aiming for is that the main drain is acting like a siphon and not as a drain, so there shouldn't be any air being drawn into the main drain, while maintaining a water line that doesn't overflow into the emergency drain. This is done though opening/closing the drain valve for the main drain and also increasing/decreasing the pump speed (I assume you have a DC return pump). I think an easy way to start is to set your pump speed at whatever speed you'd like (presumably based on desired flow rate) and then opening/closing the drain valve very incrementally until you're in balance. Once you "get close", you'll want to make small adjustments to the drain valve, give the system a few minutes to catch up, and see if you're set properly. This can be a bit challenging and for me was VERY time consuming at first (I think it took me a few days to figure all this out), but once you've set/balanced the drain valve on the main drain and your return pump speed, you'll be "in the zone" and would only need to adjust after water changes and also as water is removed from your system via the protein skimmer (or at least that's how my system works now, as those are the only two times when water leaves the system - of course excepting evaporation/top off, for which you'll want to monitor your salinity as you balance the evaporation and water top off with the water leaving via your skimmer).

Once this is balanced, the system is essentially dead silent.

Hopefully that's your issue, but if it's something else, let me know.

 

[JoeinLA]

Now this is an amazing tank. Following along! Cant wait to see more? Since you said that…..may we have some fts and other pictures pls?

I just saw this post! sorry for the delay. I'll try to get some more detailed pictures up tomorrow!