New Red Sea Reefer 170

[jhatfield]

FINALLY!! After over a year of delays (termite tenting, carpeting, etc.,) vacations, and miscellaneous financial setbacks I finally got the Red Sea 170 moving forward.

I'm intending this to be a mixed reef with lightly stocked smallish fish. Aquascaping was to be pretty minimal but now that I've put rock in there I can't stop and now I have a DT packed with dry rock. BRS sent me way more Pukani than I ordered plus a couple big heavy (non-pukani) dryrock that I can't identify. At this point, I'll never get water in this thing if I keep playing with the aquascape thanks to a fear of commitment and a desire to stack things.

I'll be using mostly Aquaforest products for this project and will be starting with the AF Reef Salt and Bio S for the cycle.

Equipment:

• Sicce Silent 2.0 return pump
• IceCap K2-50 skimmer
• AI Prime HD (waiting for replacement since first on failed to power on, under warranty)
• 2 Jbao PP-4 wave makers
• Red Sea test kits for most everything except Alk where I'll be using Hanna. Salifert for Phosphate.

Anyway, I've learned a ton over this last year thanks to my nearly constant lurking on R2R. Fantastic resource. It feels really good to finally stop planning and start doing.

 

[Preme]

I'm really digging that scape, what are the demensions on the reefer 170?

 

[jhatfield]

I'm really digging that scape, what are the demensions on the reefer 170?

It's 24" x 20" x 20". For our space the 170 was the only option, size-wise. The 250 may have worked but would just be on the edge of crowding in the living room with the way we have it set up. Also, for me, easy water changes are a major factor. If I can get away with a water change from a single 5gal bucket I'm much more likely to do it long term.

 

[Preme]

It's 24" x 20" x 20". For our space the 170 was the only option, size-wise. The 250 may have worked but would just be on the edge of crowding in the living room with the way we have it set up. Also, for me, easy water changes are a major factor. If I can get away with a water change from a single 5gal bucket I'm much more likely to do it long term.

You should be able to get away with only a 5 gal water change. In my 56 I only do 10 gallons and all my levels are where they should be!

 

[revhtree]

Nice tank!

 

[jhatfield]

Five days into the cycle and dosing 1drop of Aquaforest Bio S daily with an occasional pinch of food pellets.

Maybe it's just my nerdish tendencies (and because I'm so new at this and hasn't gotten old yet) but I'm really enjoying testing the water. Family thinks I'm nuts.

 

[Hemlawk]

Nice! Updates?

 

[jhatfield]

Nice! Updates?

LIFE! diatoms everywhere. This shot was from a few days ago and it's gotten a lot worse. Rocks are completely covered. Nitrites have finally started to drop and nitrates are steady. I'm assuming there are more nitrates wrapped up in the algae.

Snails are in the mail. Will begin to quarantine a couple clowns this weekend.

 

[Darth George]

FINALLY!! After over a year of delays (termite tenting, carpeting, etc.,) vacations, and miscellaneous financial setbacks I finally got the Red Sea 170 moving forward.

I'm intending this to be a mixed reef with lightly stocked smallish fish. Aquascaping was to be pretty minimal but now that I've put rock in there I can't stop and now I have a DT packed with dry rock. BRS sent me way more Pukani than I ordered plus a couple big heavy (non-pukani) dryrock that I can't identify. At this point, I'll never get water in this thing if I keep playing with the aquascape thanks to a fear of commitment and a desire to stack things.

I'll be using mostly Aquaforest products for this project and will be starting with the AF Reef Salt and Bio S for the cycle.

Equipment:

• Sicce Silent 2.0 return pump
• IceCap K2-50 skimmer
• AI Prime HD (waiting for replacement since first on failed to power on, under warranty)
• 2 Jbao PP-4 wave makers
• Red Sea test kits for most everything except Alk where I'll be using Hanna. Salifert for Phosphate.

Anyway, I've learned a ton over this last year thanks to my nearly constant lurking on R2R. Fantastic resource. It feels really good to finally stop planning and start doing.

I like that scape!

 

[Mr.Rocc]

is this just a chart on word/excel? Its super sweet!

 

[Hemlawk]

is this just a chart on word/excel? Its super sweet!

I like it too. Maybe an app?

 

[jhatfield]

is this just a chart on word/excel? Its super sweet!

Sorry for the late response... the app is Aquarimate. So far I love it. Especially helpful is a feature where you can enter an event, like a water change or new equipment, which will be plotted on the graph. So I can easily see hoe any new adjustment or additions effect the normal parameters.

For those without an apex, profilux, etc. this is the next best thing.

 

[jhatfield]

First Livestock addition disaster

Ok, not a good weekend for my first go at adding livestock. Basically lost 1 clown, skunk cleaner shrimp and about 15 snails.

Pour your self some coffee or have an adult beverage, sit back and hear my tale of woe....

All livestock was ordered online through one of more well respected vendors. I'll say right here that most of this is my fault and that this is not a rant against the place I bought the livestock.

Ordered some snails, a skunk shrimp, a couple peppermint shrimp, pistol shrimp and 2 clowns. Got a call from the vendor on Thursday saying that they were going to ship the order that day and would arrive on Friday. I offered to pay extra for Saturday delivery to which they didn't have a problem with. It occurs to me know that they probably already had the critters all bagged up and ready to go so were more or less in transit much longer than normal.

Got the order on Saturday as expected. Floated all bags and read over acclimation procedure which was included in the order. Opened the bag and drip acclimated the clowns for 30 - 40 min. All looked well until I put them in quarantine where the smaller of the two started swimming erratically. He went downhill fast and was dead in about 15min.

During this time I was drip acclimating the shrimp for the display tank in the same way while I put the snails directly in the tank. Turns out there were at least 2 dead snails which decomposed overnight in the tank the resulting ammonia spike (Through the Roof) was way more than my new tank could handle.

The only survivors so far are most of the cirith snails, 3 peppermint shrimp and the pistol shrimp plus one clown in quarantine which I don't think is out of the woods yet. Looks good, swimming well but not eating yet. Fished out the dead from the display tank and now doing a couple 5 gal water changes.

At this point I'm going to get right to the "Lessons Learned" part of this tale. No order of importance here just writing them as they occur to me.

1. Make sure you know for sure what's going on with shipping details. First and foremost, when and how long ago was it shipped. I'm in an unfortunate part of California where the nearest fish store is 2 hours south in LA. so it's either brave hellish traffic or risk shipping. There is one aquarium store we do have here is run out of a garage and features aptasia in a starring role it's main tank but that is another rant for another time.
2. Inspect snails closely. Admittedly I wasn't really sure what to look for with snails but I did get a faint whiff of death when opening one of the bags which, in hindsight, is a good sign that things aren't right. Respect the nose. Also, the peppermint shrimp zoomed right in on 3 of the snails and started prying them out of their shell. They definitely respected their noses!
3. Skip the drip acclimation and add a drop of Prime to each bag from any online shipment and get the critters into the tanks if salinity matches.
4. Test and match salinity from the bags. I still have no clue what salinity was used in the bags... didn't think to check since I was going to do the drip acclimation regardless.

I'm sure there should be more to this list but so feel free to add. I have to go tend to the tank.

 

[HolisticBear]

How is your tank doing?

 

[jhatfield]

The tank is looking good. Parameters-wise it's settled down quite a bit and I've started to see increased growth and color. I've been using a doser for almost two months now and it's made a huge difference. I went with the cheap jebao for the doser and seems to work fine.

Sticking with the Aquaforest route with the exception of salt, which is Red Sea Reef Salt (blue bucket). In addition to the comp 123 I've been using Pro Bio S and NP Pro. Will be starting the coral nutrition this week. Feed reefroids about once a week.

Stylophora and Birdsnest are growing over their plugs and developing some great color. The acans seems to be happy, one has split into two. The alveopora is growing slowly and has good color.

Also have

• 1 Acropora
• Some Zoanthids -
• Galaxia
• 1 Ricordea - Beautiful but would love if it spread/multiplied.
• Favia
• cyphastea

Have an assortment of snails plus a couple enormous mexican turbos which I got to knock down some hair algae that was cropping up. It took them less than 48hours to gobble up all the hair algae and now I'm stuck with these monster snails in my tank. I really should have paid more attention to their size when ordering from live aquaria. Have a skunk cleaner shrimp, pistol shrimp as well. No fish yet. Living in an area with no aquarium store is super inconvenient when it comes to buying fish. The clowns I've ordered online haven't lasted much more than a week in quarantine (both from the same online retailer.)