Mateo’s Seapora 50 build

19Mateo83 · Aug 29, 2023

I decided to armor my seals today. Call it way over kill but I really like the look of this, it makes the silicone clean and neat visually and also adds strength to the corner joints. I used black anodized 3/4” aluminum angle applied to the exterior of the corners. It conceals the black silicone that’s a little uneven and also protects the glass corners from any bumps and chips. I cleaned all surfaces with alcohol and used black aquarium silicone to apply it making sure I get good contact and a touch of squeeze out which I will have to carefully clean up with a razor blade later.

Before

After

FTS right after siliconing them in place.

19Mateo83 · Aug 29, 2023

Video update time!

rhizotron · Sep 19, 2023

Cool setup! Nice hardware details. I like those aluminum corners.

19Mateo83 · Oct 22, 2023

so far things are going fairly well with the tank. I had something cause a birdsnest to die off and some of my montis have lightened in color. All parameters are in range and I’m continuing my daily dosing by hand. I added a tuxedo urchin today to help keep some of the GHA patches under control and I also added two gold cowries. Here’s a current FTS

rhizotron · Oct 28, 2023

Lookin' good!

19Mateo83 · Nov 11, 2023

November update!

Tonight’s water test results
Sg-1.025
Ph-8.15
Po4-.02
No3-5
Alk-8.3
Mag-1320
Cal-450

My plan of action is to bump up my Po4 with a 4 ml dose to .03, no3 gets a 7ml dose to get it up to 6, the alk gets its daily 5ml dose for a .5dkh increase, mag is getting 10pm dose for 8 days to reach the target of 1400 and cal is right on the money.

19Mateo83 · Nov 12, 2023

I picked up a cheap acro frag to test how they do in this system. Anyone have any ideas as to which type it may be? I asked the sales guy and he said “it’s the $15 type”

Gumbies R Us · Nov 13, 2023

19Mateo83 said:
November update!

Tonight’s water test results
Sg-1.025
Ph-8.15
Po4-.02
No3-5
Alk-8.3
Mag-1320
Cal-450

My plan of action is to bump up my Po4 with a 4 ml dose to .03, no3 gets a 7ml dose to get it up to 6, the alk gets its daily 5ml dose for a .5dkh increase, mag is getting 10pm dose for 8 days to reach the target of 1400 and cal is right on the money.

Tank is looking great!

19Mateo83 · Nov 15, 2023

I added a green/purple polyp frogspawn today that had a cracked skeleton. Fingers crossed for that guy….

And I added a 5” BRS reactor for carbon to my sump. I figured since I have two toadstool leathers in here and palys I probably should have some carbon running.

19Mateo83 · Nov 15, 2023

I also got tired of mixing saltwater in a 5 gallon hedpak jug so I upgraded and built me a rolling mixing station. 20 gallon brute can with wheel base, 150w eheim heater, Sicce 1.0 power head and a power strip. Easy peasy and will make life oh so simple.

19Mateo83 · Nov 15, 2023

I also found mini limpets… Exciting!

19Mateo83 · Nov 29, 2023

I decided to take the leap and switch from brightwell 2 part to all for reef. I built a reservoir out of a Nalgene bottle, https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/s...rvoir-for-all-for-reef.1021101/#post-11966993 and got a kamoer F1 hooked up. I got it calibrated and set for my All for Reef dose, which is 7.6ml a day. It is set to auto dose and splits that 7.6ml up into 12 equal doses. I am going to run it a few days and see how it does before I go live with the AFR.

I am also in the process of building out a 2.5 gallon tank as a quarantine system that fits under my tank. I’m hoping that will be big enough to quarantine smaller size fish and corals.

NCsalt · Dec 2, 2023

Looking good! Very clean

19Mateo83 · Dec 2, 2023

Thank you sir! I’m starting to see a little bubble algae starting to pop up so I’m now on the hunt for a male and female pithos crab.

19Mateo83 · Dec 4, 2023

I couldn’t get to sleep tonight so I hooked up an air line to my skimmers air intake and ran it to the window beside the tank. Hopefully it gives me a little more stability with my ph at night and a little boost

Bonus!!! It is pink but it fluoresces white under the black light. Yay!

19Mateo83 · Dec 6, 2023

I’m am officially on day 5 of all for reef. During my “accuracy testing period” I figured out the kamoer has a hard time with 10ths of a ml and decided to start my daily dosing at 6ml split into 6-1ml doses throughly the day. I kept dosing my brightwell A&B for a few days until I started seeing my numbers rise. It only took 3 days for the AFR to kick in. It’s been two days so far and im sitting at a steady 8.9 alk, 470 cal and 1450 mag. The ph is also now stable at 8.15 thanks to the air line out the window. The temp swings have also been minimized thanks to a inkbird controller. I will continue my nightly alk and cal testing for another week and then start testing once a week. On another note I swapped a few paly frags for a neat rainbow edged favia and a neon green Kenya tree.

I also tried out a tiny file fish who almost instantly took a liking to my Euphyllia. He got taken back and exchanged for a sweet blue/green/purple platygyra

I am also starting to see patches of bubble algae starting to pop up and what I can see will be dealt with next water change but it does have me on the hunt for a pithos crab or two. I’m also looking at getting a dozen or so pounds of nano sized gulf live rock to replace the Marco rock I currently have in the refugium section of my sump.

Gumbies R Us · Dec 7, 2023

19Mateo83 said:
I’m am officially on day 5 of all for reef. During my “accuracy testing period” I figured out the kamoer has a hard time with 10ths of a ml and decided to start my daily dosing at 6ml split into 6-1ml doses throughly the day. I kept dosing my brightwell A&B for a few days until I started seeing my numbers rise. It only took 3 days for the AFR to kick in. It’s been two days so far and im sitting at a steady 8.9 alk, 470 cal and 1450 mag. The ph is also now stable at 8.15 thanks to the air line out the window. The temp swings have also been minimized thanks to a inkbird controller. I will continue my nightly alk and cal testing for another week and then start testing once a week. On another note I swapped a few paly frags for a neat rainbow edged favia and a neon green Kenya tree.

I also tried out a tiny file fish who almost instantly took a liking to my Euphyllia. He got taken back and exchanged for a sweet blue/green/purple platygyra

I am also starting to see patches of bubble algae starting to pop up and what I can see will be felt with next water change but it does have me on the hunt for a pithos crab or two. I’m also looking at getting a dozen or so pounds of nano sized gulf live rock to replace the Marco rock I currently have in the refugium section of my sump.

Nice looking new frags!

19Mateo83 · Dec 7, 2023

I purchased the 17lb nano special from gulf live rock this morning from gulf live rock. I’m looking forward to getting some real ocean live rock again. The majority of it will go in the sump but a few pieces will get added to the display. My plan is to do a hyper sanity dip for a few minutes and see what critters comes out of the rock then I am going to put it in a 10 gallon and make sure there is no die off and if there is that the nitrogen cycle takes care of it before it as added to the 50. I also plan on taking a piece and using it to seed the Tonga rock that came out of my 14 gallon that I had to put in the bleach again. I am going to just let it cycle in a bucket and I may put a light on it and see if I can turn that all back into ocean live rock.

19Mateo83 · Dec 10, 2023

Sunday FTS and updates.

It has been 8 days since I started auto dosing 6ml of All for Reef and my water parameters are stable
SG-1.025
PH-8.15
PO4- less than .03
NO3-10
Alk-8.9
Mag-1470
Cal-470
I’m super stoked about the platygyra from QCC, I love me some brain corals. The favia I traded for is kicking butt too so that’s exciting.

I also stopped by @Queen City Corals today and picked up a super healthy royal gramma, a triple head black light torch and smallest two top crown snails they had.