Randy's Redsea Reefer 250 and the rest of the Coral Farm

[RandyC]

Awesome build thread Randy! I am definitely going to do your GEO calcium reactor modification. After reading through your whole thread I think you've convinced me to buy a Trident after hearing about your alk plummeting to 1.2dkh while away. Couple questions. With the CaRx mod, that will put more co2 into the tank versus getting trapped in the reactor correct? Also, it seems you are having great results growing your chaeto, can you tell me what light you are using and where you purchased it from? I've been considering making my own DIY one from Rapid LED, but would like to know more about yours, since it's working well for you. I really appreciate you posting your corrections to problems you've encountered. This helps everyone!

Thanks! My alk didn’t plummet to 1.2dkh, but it went down by 1.2dkh. The drop happened between 12-18 hours, so it was still a significant drop in a short period of time.

Yes, some of the co2 won’t get recirculated most likely. I’d rather waste a little co2 for the peace and quiet though. I don’t notice a big difference in pH the DT after the mod, but I also have a secondary reactor so that may have help with the extra undissolved co2.

I use two dimmable 45W grow light panels from amazon that I velcro to the side of the fuge using command strips. I run both at around 20W and just have two for the spread. I have a glass sump, if you’re using acrylic and mount to the side, be sure to leave a larger gap so it doesn’t have any chance of overheating the acrylic and cause crazing or cracking issues.

 

[ajjw0828]

Thanks! My alk didn’t plummet to 1.2dkh, but it went down by 1.2dkh. The drop happened between 12-18 hours, so it was still a significant drop in a short period of time.

Yes, some of the co2 won’t get recirculated most likely. I’d rather waste a little co2 for the peace and quiet though. I don’t notice a big difference in pH the DT after the mod, but I also have a secondary reactor so that may have help with the extra undissolved co2.

I use two dimmable 45W grow light panels from amazon that I velcro to the side of the fuge using command strips. I run both at around 20W and just have two for the spread. I have a glass sump, if you’re using acrylic and mount to the side, be sure to leave a larger gap so it doesn’t have any chance of overheating the acrylic and cause crazing or cracking issues.

Oh , gotcha, my bad thought it went down to 1.2. Awesome, that’s what I was wondering. I don’t mind a little lower pH if I can get rid of the bubbling and having to bleed off the reactor. Do you remember the brand of the lights you bought off Amazon by chance? Would it be something like this?

 

[RandyC]

i-Venoya was the brand. Link was include in the post above. They were $10 cheaper when I bought them though.

Amazon.com: LED Grow Light for Indoor Plants Growing Lamp 289 LEDs 150W Red Blue Spectrum Full Aluminum Dimmable Plant Lights Bulb Panel for Hydroponics Greenhouse Germination Seedling Veg and Flower by Venoya: Home Improvement

Buy LED Grow Light for Indoor Plants Growing Lamp 289 LEDs 150W Red Blue Spectrum Full Aluminum Dimmable Plant Lights Bulb Panel for Hydroponics Greenhouse Germination Seedling Veg and Flower by Venoya: Growing Lamps - Amazon.com ✓ FREE DELIVERY possible on eligible purchases

smile.amazon.com

 

[ajjw0828]

i-Venoya was the brand. Link was include in the post above. They were $10 cheaper when I bought them though.

Amazon.com: LED Grow Light for Indoor Plants Growing Lamp 289 LEDs 150W Red Blue Spectrum Full Aluminum Dimmable Plant Lights Bulb Panel for Hydroponics Greenhouse Germination Seedling Veg and Flower by Venoya: Home Improvement

Buy LED Grow Light for Indoor Plants Growing Lamp 289 LEDs 150W Red Blue Spectrum Full Aluminum Dimmable Plant Lights Bulb Panel for Hydroponics Greenhouse Germination Seedling Veg and Flower by Venoya: Growing Lamps - Amazon.com ✓ FREE DELIVERY possible on eligible purchases

smile.amazon.com

Just ordered one to try! Thanks for your help!!

 

[RandyC]

Don't know what's causing the current hype on Gonis, but sure, I'll play.

Unique Corals Amazeball Goni

Three no name gonis, I gave silly little names to.

Pinky the Ghost Goni - Digging the long tentacles on this one

Super Dragonfruit Goni

Guava Monster Goni

 

[RandyC]

Probably should get a screen....that’s a 1.5” input btw. I got me some big turbos.

 

[Eric Morissette]

For the first two years or so, I never had a problem maintaining the overflow water level at a specific level with the Red Sea diaphragm valve on the main drain and things were silent. However, for the last few months, I have had to make constant adjustments to the valve every 4-5 days because the water level would increase by itself and the noise from water trickling into the emergency drain became super annoying. I've cleaned the valve a number of times, but still had the same problem. I'm not sure why after two years I began to have an issue, but here we are.

So I decided to make the change to a Spears gate valve for the main full siphon drain. Normally something that should be a simple swap in a fish tank, but the Red Sea plumbing poses a challenge because it is metric.

So here's what it looks like now.

From what I've seen, most people have just taken the return connector part (part number 42221), getting a 3/4" threaded male adapter and wrapping the threaded end with 10-15 wraps of telfon tape to fit it into the metric fitting in place of the barb. For a number of reasons, I'm not comfortable with this solution.

So what I did was take a Spears 32mm to 1" transition union and glued the 32mm end over the outer part of the return connector which measures 32mm. I used PVC primer and cement. The plastic that the return connector is made out is an "unknown plastic" (exact words from Red Sea tech support), so using PVC primer and cement wasn't a sure thing that it would bond well, but it looks like it's holding up. No leaks have been seen and best part, tank is dead silent with water in overflow staying steady.

Here's my parts list

- Red Sea return connector part #42221 (remove barb before gluing - also be carful to not over do it on the cement, you don't want to glue the black screw nut since it's a tight fit)

- Spears 32mm to 1" sched 80 transition union
- Spears 1" schedule 80 gate valve
- 1" blue PVC pipe

Just purchased a RSR 250 thinking of doing the same thing to my valve, how is this holding up any leaks?

 

[RandyC]

Just purchased a RSR 250 thinking of doing the same thing to my valve, how is this holding up any leaks?

Been working out well. Haven’t had any leaks at all.

 

[Daniel@R2R]

@RandyC how's your reef doing these days?

 

[Lionfish hunter]

This little guy, TSA Haymaker, has been a pretty slow grower for me. At least it's doing something - albeit in super slow fashion. Polyps have developed that cool looking two tone color with a bright orange on the base of the polyp though.

Got the piece on July 17 and here's a picture from July 26

November 5 (102 days later)

Any updates on this, I just picked one up.

 

[LiftinTheVeil]

------ Frag Tank (Day 88) ------

Just got done with a battle of dinoflagellate ostreopsis. My nutrients had pretty much zeroed out and then the dinos took over. Dinos covered egg crate, the small amount of rocks in the tank and then slowly, they started to cover acro frags and significantly bother BTAs.

Here's a picture of them in tank. They were worse than this, but I can't seem to find a picture of it.

In the bucket they definitely don't look pretty. Very much like brown snot.

Here's what the little buggers look like under the microscope.

At first I just tried feeding more and got nitrates up to 5ppm and phosphates up to 0.1, but this didn't help clear them out. Tried upping the fuge photoperiod once nutrients were up and seeing if chaeto could out compete it, didn't work. Siphoning it out didn't help either, it would just be back in full force the within a couple days. This probably lasted around 2-3 weeks and it was starting to become painful to watch once acros started being covered.

So I broke down and bought an Aqua UV Classic 57 Watt sterilizer. Talk about a miracle cure for this particular strain of dinos. After a good siphon session the day of installing it and basting/blowing the dinos off the egg crate, rock and frags daily, they were pretty non-existent by day 4. Seven days later, there was zero trace of them. It was pretty awesome. Two weeks have gone by since installing the UV sterilizer and tank is back on track and crystal clear.

I have my unit plumbed on one of my return pumps. Installed a 1" Neptune flow sensor to measure the flow rate and I'm putting 300-310 gph through the unit.

I think I was lucky and so far, I only had one casualty, a frag of BC Backdraft.

I’m going through the same exact thing right now, also with Ostreopsis. What’s the size of your system? I just bought a 25W Aqua UV for my 133gal display (24 gal sump). Do you think this is appropriately sized to get the job done? Also what flow do you recommend? I ask because the manual instructs high flow to combat algae and bacteria which seems contrary to what you’ve done.

 

[geckoejon]

Very niiiiice….

have an updated pic of the hippie juic?

 

[Benny85]

For the first two years or so, I never had a problem maintaining the overflow water level at a specific level with the Red Sea diaphragm valve on the main drain and things were silent. However, for the last few months, I have had to make constant adjustments to the valve every 4-5 days because the water level would increase by itself and the noise from water trickling into the emergency drain became super annoying. I've cleaned the valve a number of times, but still had the same problem. I'm not sure why after two years I began to have an issue, but here we are.

So I decided to make the change to a Spears gate valve for the main full siphon drain. Normally something that should be a simple swap in a fish tank, but the Red Sea plumbing poses a challenge because it is metric.

So here's what it looks like now.

From what I've seen, most people have just taken the return connector part (part number 42221), getting a 3/4" threaded male adapter and wrapping the threaded end with 10-15 wraps of telfon tape to fit it into the metric fitting in place of the barb. For a number of reasons, I'm not comfortable with this solution.

So what I did was take a Spears 32mm to 1" transition union and glued the 32mm end over the outer part of the return connector which measures 32mm. I used PVC primer and cement. The plastic that the return connector is made out is an "unknown plastic" (exact words from Red Sea tech support), so using PVC primer and cement wasn't a sure thing that it would bond well, but it looks like it's holding up. No leaks have been seen and best part, tank is dead silent with water in overflow staying steady.

Here's my parts list

- Red Sea return connector part #42221 (remove barb before gluing - also be carful to not over do it on the cement, you don't want to glue the black screw nut since it's a tight fit)

- Spears 32mm to 1" sched 80 transition union
- Spears 1" schedule 80 gate valve
- 1" blue PVC pipe

What needs to be done if your connecting to a reef mat 500?