ABW75’s RS Reefer V2.0

abw75 · Aug 24, 2020

Hello everybody and greetings from Belgium

Long story short, I had a RedSea Reefer 350 up and running for over 3 years until was time to relocate in a new house;
Due to some issues I was not able to just move the tank, so I had to keep it “dry” for few months (with most of live stock give away); But no way to keep the live rocks alive (not very eager either, as I had quite a majano infestation);
At same time, as most equipment was already old and not the best on market, I decided to make some changes there as well;

Very happy about the chance of a new start, I decided to abandon the classical “wall of live rocks” for a more modern minimalistic aquascape with dry rocks (no pest issues);
I cycled the tank slowly using bottled bacteria and small pieces of live rock (I know well the drawback of dead rocks) and for more than 6 months I just slowly added fishes (some of my own fishes from friend’s tank) and as I only used some temporary light was no way to keep corals yet (still using the old pumps & skimmer);

Then I changed:

old skimmer Bubble Magus with a new RedSea RSK600
temporary LEDs with a ATI SunPower 6x39W T5 (non-dimmable) – after years using LEDs I wanted to try the T5s
return pump – Jebao to Aquamedic DC Runner 3.2
Flow pumps – 2 x Jebao replaced by 2 x Tunze 6045 (still plan to add couple more)

For some days everything was amazing, then hell get loose…. worst cyano / dino infestation I ever saw (confirmed by microscope I get both). My old tank / skimmer combination always (in the last 3 years) required 5ml / day NOPOX and some amount of Seachem PO4 absorber to keep parameters in check, so I used same combo with new skimmer (what a mistake); I thought that need time to start skimming and do the job, but amount of skimming was waaay more than old BM;
Honestly, I never get into cyano/dino before and didn’t knew too much about – just that is related to high nutrients (stupid me); NO3 & PO4 tested absolute 0.00, but I believed that nutrients are bounded to cyano, so I increased more and more the NOPOX dose & Seachem amount, but tank looked worse with every day;
As I was really puzzled about what is happening, I start reading about cyano/dino and trying to understand it better; Just so many forum threads on cyano/dino and low nutrients I was shocked;

As result of what I learned:

stopped NOPOX (made it gradually, as was high dose already)
removed PO4 absorbers
increase feeding to 3 x day

without any improvement (same ugly tank, same 0.00 params)

Next steps were:

adding pods and start dosing daily phyto
NO3 dosing – around 5 mgL / day and took around 2 weeks to finally stabilize it at 20; Now is falling back slowly, but I keep an eye on to not go too low (10 would be great for me)
PO4 dosing – started with 0.02 mgL / day and slowly increased to 0.10 / day and test are in same range 0.02-0.03; After 2 months I still dose 0.03 / day just to have 0.02-0.03 tested after 24 hours;

Some improvements here and there, but nothing spectacular – my tank was still a sea of red slime;

At this moment I started the hydrogen peroxide dosing 1 ml / 10 g twice / day and after some days started seeing red mat being broken here and there; As I don’t had any sps or sensible creatures I decided to increase the H2O2 dose to 4 times a day; From this moment I actually start seeing real improvements to my tank; Still have some small cyano patches on sand, but get better any day;

This is my tank as of today - will see how much I can get out of it (sorry for bad photo - quick phone pic) - V2.0

And here is my tank before moving... V1.0

revhtree · Aug 24, 2020

abw75 said:
Hello everybody and greetings from Belgium

Long story short, I had a RedSea Reefer 350 up and running for over 3 years until was time to relocate in a new house;
Due to some issues I was not able to just move the tank, so I had to keep it “dry” for few months (with most of live stock give away); But no way to keep the live rocks alive (not very eager either, as I had quite a majano infestation);
At same time, as most equipment was already old and not the best on market, I decided to make some changes there as well;

Very happy about the chance of a new start, I decided to abandon the classical “wall of live rocks” for a more modern minimalistic aquascape with dry rocks (no pest issues);
I cycled the tank slowly using bottled bacteria and small pieces of live rock (I know well the drawback of dead rocks) and for more than 6 months I just slowly added fishes (some of my own fishes from friend’s tank) and as I only used some temporary light was no way to keep corals yet (still using the old pumps & skimmer);

Then I changed:

old skimmer Bubble Magus with a new RedSea RSK600

temporary LEDs with a ATI SunPower 6x39W T5 (non-dimmable) – after years using LEDs I wanted to try the T5s

return pump – Jebao to Aquamedic DC Runner 3.2

Flow pumps – 2 x Jebao replaced by 2 x Tunze 6045 (still plan to add couple more)

For some days everything was amazing, then hell get loose…. worst cyano / dino infestation I ever saw (confirmed by microscope I get both). My old tank / skimmer combination always (in the last 3 years) required 5ml / day NOPOX and some amount of Seachem PO4 absorber to keep parameters in check, so I used same combo with new skimmer (what a mistake); I thought that need time to start skimming and do the job, but amount of skimming was waaay more than old BM;
Honestly, I never get into cyano/dino before and didn’t knew too much about – just that is related to high nutrients (stupid me); NO3 & PO4 tested absolute 0.00, but I believed that nutrients are bounded to cyano, so I increased more and more the NOPOX dose & Seachem amount, but tank looked worse with every day;
As I was really puzzled about what is happening, I start reading about cyano/dino and trying to understand it better; Just so many forum threads on cyano/dino and low nutrients I was shocked;

As result of what I learned:

stopped NOPOX (made it gradually, as was high dose already)

removed PO4 absorbers

increase feeding to 3 x day

without any improvement (same ugly tank, same 0.00 params)

Next steps were:

adding pods and start dosing daily phyto

NO3 dosing – around 5 mgL / day and took around 2 weeks to finally stabilize it at 20; Now is falling back slowly, but I keep an eye on to not go too low (10 would be great for me)

PO4 dosing – started with 0.02 mgL / day and slowly increased to 0.10 / day and test are in same range 0.02-0.03; After 2 months I still dose 0.03 / day just to have 0.02-0.03 tested after 24 hours;

Some improvements here and there, but nothing spectacular – my tank was still a sea of red slime;

At this moment I started the hydrogen peroxide dosing 1 ml / 10 g twice / day and after some days started seeing red mat being broken here and there; As I don’t had any sps or sensible creatures I decided to increase the H2O2 dose to 4 times a day; From this moment I actually start seeing real improvements to my tank; Still have some small cyano patches on sand, but get better any day;

This is my tank as of today - will see how much I can get out of it (sorry for bad photo - quick phone pic) - V2.0

And here is my tank before moving... V1.0