Hello NOOB here with Reefer 250 starting my journal

[jordimex]

My name is Jorge I am from Mexico but currently living in Aventura, Florida, I am here studying to become an airline pilot and in the meantime start and learn from this awesome hobby
I currently own two tanks one is a 10 gal fw tank and a 65 gal fw as well (if you want pictures of them just let me know and ill post them)
Tomorrow i am getting the reefer 250 deluxe with the 2 AI 26 hydra lights hope this was a good buy
also getting live sand and live rock to start the cycle right away, with the help of a fellow friend here and hopefully with all of you guys help.
Will be posting pictures of the tank set up tomorrow
also was wondering if you would recommend the
Reef Octopus Classic 110INT 4” Internal Protein Skimmer for this tank and what other products I should get

Currently i have:
Reefer 250 deluxe edition
2 AI 26 Hydra lights (came with the deluxe edition)
vectra M1 return pump
No skimmer yet
No heater yet
60 pounds live sand
No idea on live rocks yet
plan on hard plumbing it from the get go with the help of SithRico he is a member here and has a youtube channel as well, but since i am fairly new to this hobby don't really know how to use up the space beneath the cabinet. GFO's Fuge etc any help or recommendations?

Will be posting pictures also would like some advice for corals i should get that are easy to care and stunning to the eye

Thank you
More coming soon

 

[brett_schn]

Go with dry brs rock it’s much cheaper and u don’t have all the unwanted hitch hikers of live rock. I would run an algae turf scrubber as there isn’t much room in the sump and the algae turf scrubber will grow the algae that would be in the tank but instead its grown in the scrubber. Gfo isn’t needed. Carbon could be nice. What about dosing would u do dosing pumps or would u go with a calcium reactor. Heater you could go with neo therm or something similar as long as u go new from a retailer. As for corals Acans could be easy monti caps could be a little later down the line. Take it slow and try to quarantine your fish and always dip your corals. Also it was a good buy. Ask me whatever question you have and I can try to help u.

 

[jordimex]

Go with dry brs rock it’s much cheaper and u don’t have all the unwanted hitch hikers of live rock. I would run an algae turf scrubber as there isn’t much room in the sump and the algae turf scrubber will grow the algae that would be in the tank but instead its grown in the scrubber. Gfo isn’t needed. Carbon could be nice. What about dosing would u do dosing pumps or would u go with a calcium reactor. Heater you could go with neo therm or something similar as long as u go new from a retailer. As for corals Acans could be easy monti caps could be a little later down the line. Take it slow and try to quarantine your fish and always dip your corals. Also it was a good buy. Ask me whatever question you have and I can try to help u.

i was thinking of a mix of live rock and dry rock, where would the algae scrubber be set up? inside the sump?
the guy at the LFS said that dosing wasn't really necessary from day 1 he said i could wait about a month before i buy it
as for he heater how many watts do you recommend for the reefer?

 

[brett_schn]

i was thinking of a mix of live rock and dry rock, where would the algae scrubber be set up? inside the sump?
the guy at the LFS said that dosing wasn't really necessary from day 1 he said i could wait about a month before i buy it
as for he heater how many watts do you recommend for the reefer?

I would do all dry rock just because of the hitch hikers you will never be able to remove. The algae turf scrubber (ats) is placed in the sump. Dosing isn’t necessary at the start but once u get a few corals it will help tremendously. What about an auto top off (ato) the stock one can’t hold much water and will most likely fail if you don’t clean the float switch from time to time. 5 watts per gallon is fine but I would go with 2 of the same heaters set 1degree apart so u have redundancy.

 

[jordimex]

Got the reefer today have a lot of pictures from every step of the building process of the stand can post if you guys want.
For the meantime the box and the end product
everything is stock atm but waiting on the Max Power Strip. tomorrow ill give it a nice scrub and a leak test
I am really exited

Brett i will do that with the heaters i wanted to make sure the space available in the sump before buying one
what ato would you recommend for this tank and should i get that before the dosing pump? i want to upgrade it little by little
Thank you!!

 

[jordimex]

also the owner at my LFS said that there pretty much are 0 to no hitch hikers on his live rock he has had it for a while

 

[Salty1962]

Welcome to R2R!

 

[jordimex]

thank you Salty!!

 

[brett_schn]

also the owner at my LFS said that there pretty much are 0 to no hitch hikers on his live rock he has had it for a while

That’s what my lfs said. I got a ton of bad things

 

[Reef_Tank_Fan_SC]

also the owner at my LFS said that there pretty much are 0 to no hitch hikers on his live rock he has had it for a while

Of course he is gonna tell you that because he wants to get your money in his pocket, lol. I'm with Brett and the all dry rock from BRS. Look at it as buying insurance, always better to err on the side if caution in this hobby. As for your protein skimmer... I run the Reef Octo classic 110int on my tank and I absolutely love it. I feed the crap out of my fish and also have a 10 y/o that I let feed them from time to time and it just keeps all the crap cleaned out of it tank. I got 0 complaints about it. It does take a bit to get it dialed in but once it's there it I a bad@$$ skimmer..

 

[sebastiaan1985]

This will be a nice build. I am following.

+1 on the dry rock, better safe than sorry in this hobby.

 

[brett_schn]

+1 on the dry rock, better safe than sorry in this hobby.

I learned that the hard way lol

 

[Katrina71]

I like hitchhikers. I have been lucky with not getting anything bad. It's kind of an interesting bonus to me.

 

[Reef_Tank_Fan_SC]

I like hitchhikers. I have been lucky with not getting anything bad. It's kind of an interesting bonus to me.

Yeah, but there is always the chance of the bad guys slipping in on ya. Just makes me a litte nervous, lol. Then again I'm one of those guys who only has bad luck so it would just be baddies for me all day long

 

[jordimex]

I like hitchhikers. I have been lucky with not getting anything bad. It's kind of an interesting bonus to me.

Ive been reading about hitch hikers and look at them the same way i think, hope i don't regret this if it happens i already ordered dry rock from BRS should i cure that rock before putting it in? if yes how do i do it? , then waiting on getting the water delivered.

 

[jordimex]

Of course he is gonna tell you that because he wants to get your money in his pocket, lol. I'm with Brett and the all dry rock from BRS. Look at it as buying insurance, always better to err on the side if caution in this hobby. As for your protein skimmer... I run the Reef Octo classic 110int on my tank and I absolutely love it. I feed the crap out of my fish and also have a 10 y/o that I let feed them from time to time and it just keeps all the crap cleaned out of it tank. I got 0 complaints about it. It does take a bit to get it dialed in but once it's there it I a bad@$$ skimmer..

i will def be getting that skimmer also not as expensive as other skimmers and from what i have been reading really reliable

 

[Reef_Tank_Fan_SC]

Ive been reading about hitch hikers and look at them the same way i think, hope i don't regret this if it happens i already ordered dry rock from BRS should i cure that rock before putting it in? if yes how do i do it? , then waiting on getting the water delivered.

You don't have to cure dry rock.. the point of it being dry (dead) is that everything is off it and it is ready for the tank. With that said you CAN do a curing process but it is really more of a cycling process then a curing. I bought 50lbs of the Reef Ready rock from BRS myself. The way I did mine was I put them in a Rubbermaid tub filled with water, put in a powerhead and a heater (try to keep temp around 80°) and let it run for a week. After the week I checked the ammonia lvl (it should be 0 since its dead rock) and then I did a 50% water change. I repeated this process for about 8 weeks. The time you wanna do it would be up to you I would imagine.. all this will do is get a little bit of action going on the rocks and when you put them in the tank it should make the cycle process a bit smoother. It seemed to for me anyway.

Ive been reading about hitch hikers and look at them the same way i think, hope i don't regret this if it happens i already ordered dry rock from BRS should i cure that rock before putting it in? if yes how do i do it? , then waiting on getting the water delivered.

 

[Reef_Tank_Fan_SC]

She sleeping

 

[AcanthurusRex]

Ive been reading about hitch hikers and look at them the same way i think, hope i don't regret this if it happens i already ordered dry rock from BRS should i cure that rock before putting it in? if yes how do i do it? , then waiting on getting the water delivered.

"water delivered"????
If you don't have an RODI system you really should figure that out. You need RODI water constantly.

 

[jordimex]

You don't have to cure dry rock.. the point of it being dry (dead) is that everything is off it and it is ready for the tank. With that said you CAN do a curing process but it is really more of a cycling process then a curing. I bought 50lbs of the Reef Ready rock from BRS myself. The way I did mine was I put them in a Rubbermaid tub filled with water, put in a powerhead and a heater (try to keep temp around 80°) and let it run for a week. After the week I checked the ammonia lvl (it should be 0 since its dead rock) and then I did a 50% water change. I repeated this process for about 8 weeks. The time you wanna do it would be up to you I would imagine.. all this will do is get a little bit of action going on the rocks and when you put them in the tank it should make the cycle process a bit smoother. It seemed to for me anyway.

I went with the live rock at the end
all im getting delivered is the salt water
i will be getting a RODI device which one would you guys recommend?