So it has been about 6 years since our last saltwater tank which was an AIO 40 gallon aquarium. We had it in a Condo that we were renting at the time. All was fine and the tank was doing well. About a year in, our landlord stopped by (we were very good renters, paid rent on time, no issue or damage to the property), saw the tank and completely freaked out! Long story short, we broke down the tank and sold everything! We were done with fish and coral, at least until we had our own place.
Fast forward to today, we now have been in our custom built house for a little over 4 years and am ready to give it a go again. I spent months researching and re-learning saltwater all over again. So many things have changed in the hobby in the time we were "out" that we are sort of glad we sold everything. It gave us a new slate to start with and also we weren't limited on the size/type of tank. I wanted to document this build from the start but got overzealous the last month and worked on the tank without sitting down at the keyboard. Needless to say, we will start with the tank being filled this past weekend and include an equipment list:
RedSea Reefer 525 G2 & Stand (White) Chose this color stand because our prior black stand showed every drop of dried saltwater
Red Sea LED 160 (2)
Neptune COR20 return Pump
RedSea RSK600 skimmer
RedSea Reefmat 1200
Nyos Reactor for bio-media (more on this in a later post)
Neptune WAV powerheads (3)
Avast Vibe Reactor for Zeovit (Another coming thread)
Neptune COR15 for Avast Reactor
Neptune ATK (ATO)
Neptune Trident (not connected - in the box)
If I left something out I will edit it later but this is pretty much the "list" for the build. Tank was filled over this past weekend October 1-2, 2022. It was a lengthy process as I can only make about 30 gallons of RO/DI water, add salt, wait and then pump into the tank at a time. Approximately, 150 gallon system, less rock and sand displacement - took about 5 "garbage cans" of RO/DI over 2 days!
We have the system up and running with the Algae Barn Turbo 900 bacteria starter onboard along with their NitroCycle additive. Tonight I will run water tests for the first time to see how things are progressing on the cycle. Algae Barn claims 5 days - we'll see....
First struggle of the tank has been around the RedSea G2 gate valve. It sure is sensitive! Yikes!! I think I am starting to get the hang of it now and the sump return chamber has 6" of water as recommended and the overflow box water level is just below the emergency drain. I originally had too much water in the system and struggled to get things stabilized. We will see if I finally got it adjusted after fiddling for two days.
I think the next post should talk about the rock scape and how we accomplished this look. Hopefully this is interesting to someone else looking to get a similar RedSea tank or some of the equipment I am using. I should also mention that my narrative alternates between "I" and "WE" as my wife is also a Reefer and we are doing this together!
Fast forward to today, we now have been in our custom built house for a little over 4 years and am ready to give it a go again. I spent months researching and re-learning saltwater all over again. So many things have changed in the hobby in the time we were "out" that we are sort of glad we sold everything. It gave us a new slate to start with and also we weren't limited on the size/type of tank. I wanted to document this build from the start but got overzealous the last month and worked on the tank without sitting down at the keyboard. Needless to say, we will start with the tank being filled this past weekend and include an equipment list:
RedSea Reefer 525 G2 & Stand (White) Chose this color stand because our prior black stand showed every drop of dried saltwater
Red Sea LED 160 (2)
Neptune COR20 return Pump
RedSea RSK600 skimmer
RedSea Reefmat 1200
Nyos Reactor for bio-media (more on this in a later post)
Neptune WAV powerheads (3)
Avast Vibe Reactor for Zeovit (Another coming thread)
Neptune COR15 for Avast Reactor
Neptune ATK (ATO)
Neptune Trident (not connected - in the box)
If I left something out I will edit it later but this is pretty much the "list" for the build. Tank was filled over this past weekend October 1-2, 2022. It was a lengthy process as I can only make about 30 gallons of RO/DI water, add salt, wait and then pump into the tank at a time. Approximately, 150 gallon system, less rock and sand displacement - took about 5 "garbage cans" of RO/DI over 2 days!
We have the system up and running with the Algae Barn Turbo 900 bacteria starter onboard along with their NitroCycle additive. Tonight I will run water tests for the first time to see how things are progressing on the cycle. Algae Barn claims 5 days - we'll see....
First struggle of the tank has been around the RedSea G2 gate valve. It sure is sensitive! Yikes!! I think I am starting to get the hang of it now and the sump return chamber has 6" of water as recommended and the overflow box water level is just below the emergency drain. I originally had too much water in the system and struggled to get things stabilized. We will see if I finally got it adjusted after fiddling for two days.
I think the next post should talk about the rock scape and how we accomplished this look. Hopefully this is interesting to someone else looking to get a similar RedSea tank or some of the equipment I am using. I should also mention that my narrative alternates between "I" and "WE" as my wife is also a Reefer and we are doing this together!
