Red Sea Reefer - S 1000 Build
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- Thread starter hja99
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Everything is running really well. I really like the tank. No complaints at all from me. However, I lose about 2 and a half gallons of water per day to evaporation, so I wish that Red Sea would have a better ATO solution as part of the package. I have a 15 gallon tank in the stand, but it takes up almost all of the available room. I will try to get some updated pictures uploaded this weekend to show you what I did with my dosing pump and containers too. I will try to do a more detailed update then as well.
Very nice. I have the S-1000 myself. I ended up using a 10 gal ato res on the outside of the stand. I didn’t want to give up the space under the cabinet. It would need to be refilled every other day. So I installed a float valve inside the res and ran a 1/4 inch poly line into the basement where I have my mixing station. I picked up an extra brute can just for top off R.O. Water. I hooked up a small pump on a timer to run twice a day for 30 mins. Keeps my ato full and I couldn’t be happier to not have to fill the res every 2 days. I just fill up the brute every 20 days or so.
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Wanted to know how well the build is going as well and if you had photo updates of the build as well!!!
Hi, the tank is coming along well. Yes, I am still very happy with the Red Sea purchase. It's a great tank and I still believe the quality is just top notch. I am also very happy with all the other equipment choices that I made. I have the tank just about completely stocked as far as fish go, and I have a decent variety of SPS, LPS, and softies. Still have room for more LPS, but that will come with time. All the equipment that I chose seems to be working very well for everything.
I am running the Triton method and have been happy with that. I still do a 38 gallon water change every three weeks though. I am using the Red Sea dosser for the four Triton liquids and all parameters are very stable.
The only real "problem" that I've had is that Nitrates and Phosphates always read 0. I know they are in there, but the refugium and everything else sucks them out of the water column right away. I have no real algae to speak of in the display, except some greenish brown (what I believe to be) cyano on the gravel bed in some spots in the back where the flow is a little less. I do clean the glass every other day or every third day. When I first put some SPS colonies in the tank, the uptake of the nitrates and phosphates was too great and fast and I started getting some burnt tips and lost a couple colonies. A lot of the LPS pieces started bleaching out too. I started feeding the tank with Red Sea Reef energy every morning at about 4 while it is still dark, and also phyto. The nutrients still register 0, but now all the corals are growing well and have colored up very nicely. The burnt tips on the SPS have almost all grown back over the dead parts. I thought my test kits may have been off, so I tested some of the water that came with some frags I bought and they registered both nitrates and phosphates. Everything seems to be doing well now.
The other mistake I initially made was with the lights. I had metal halide and T-5s on my last tank so this is my first experience with LEDS. After what I thought was a good period of acclimation, I slowly turned the lights up to 90-95% over the course of a few days. These lights are very strong and it bleached a bunch of the LPS and made the zoes close up on the sand bed. I currently ramp them up to 65% over two hours, and then up to 75% over the course of two hours for four hours, then the ramp back down to 65% over two hours, and then ramp down to dark over three hours. This seems to be a good balance. The lights are still a little strong for some of the zoes and LPS, but I think I will be able to mitigate some of that once the SPS colonies grow out more and provide some more shade for the rocks below them.
Really the only two things I would have changed are the routing of cables for the protein skimmer and the return pumps. I put them in wiring conduit which keeps them very organized and looking good, but it does make removing them for maintenance a bit more of a pain than it needs to be. The second thing I would have done different is to have placed the protein skimmer in a different chamber. The Triton method wants you to have a relatively large refugium, so I have red gracilaria and caulerpa in the first chamber after the filter socks, and then I have the supplement chamber that is connected to the sump with pipes filled with chaeto. The protein skimmer is in the last chamber before the return chamber, and it sucks up some pieces of algae when it breaks away or when I trim it. The Triton method recommends to have the skimmer in the last chamber after the refugium, but I would have put it before in hindsight.
Let me know if you have any specific questions, I hope this information is useful to you.
I've tried taking some photos, but I haven't gotten good at it yet, especially with using a filter so that they don't come out too blue. I'll try to get some taken though and get them up. If there is anything specific with the tank or equipment that you want photos of, just let me know and I'll try to get them.
Sorry this is such a late reply. I didn't see that you had posted. I thought about the reef mat, but I'm running the Triton method and it suggests not even using filter socks let alone the reef mat. So initially, I only put two of the four socks in. My current situation is that my nutrients are on the very low side (always test 0), so I don't even worry about trying to remove the stuff that the reef mat and the socks usually catch. I only clean the socks once every other week or so, and I put a piece of Marineland bonded filter pad on top of the bubble diffuser foam block that sits right before the return pump chamber. That catches everything from going back up into the display and keeps the water in the display looking very clear. I just roll up the filter pad and throw it away every three or four days.
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