SPS Dominant Reefer 170 Full Triton Kessil/T5 Hybrid

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Refugium is doing great so far. It actually smells good in there.

Chaeto is growing nicely. I set up my Neptune dose and am dosing Triton in 3 parts and 4th doser is ATO from a 10 gallon external reservoir sitting behind cabinet.

Nitrates sitting at between 0 and 2 despite feeding the fish.

Main Display still algae free but I have not yet gotten my lights (new red sea LED 90w). So waiting on that.

 

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Going on vacation...so I had to bump up my game on automation.

Photo of the ATO tank behind cabinet and 3 x 2 liter dosing container for Triton.

Have auto-feeder and programmed Neptune for automating feed cycles
ATO is also automated now

What could possibly go wrong? A lot I'm sure.

We'll see how it goes.

 

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Here is the link. I hate using the word game changer but...
They are a pretty awesome company too. You have to order 2 parts, one a down pipe and the other the nozzle it’s self. You got about 28.00 invested total and worth every penny. Check the videos they got on YouTube or there site of there nozzles in action.
https://vividcreativeaquatics.com/product-spotlight/random-flow-generator/

I got the VCS nozzle and it's great. Will be nice when I get the corals going.

 

[infinite0180]

Going on vacation...so I had to bump up my game on automation.

Photo of the ATO tank behind cabinet and 3 x 2 liter dosing container for Triton.

Have auto-feeder and programmed Neptune for automating feed cycles
ATO is also automated now

What could possibly go wrong? A lot I'm sure.

We'll see how it goes.

I kind of want the AFS for when im not around. I was woried it would dump too much food though. What do you think? Is it easy to dial it back so its only a little bit?

 

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I kind of want the AFS for when im not around. I was woried it would dump too much food though. What do you think? Is it easy to dial it back so its only a little bit?

I can't tell you with any longterm experience cause I'm just setting it up, but the feeder I used has a sliding gate where you can dial the food way back. You need to use smaller pellets to control that well, I've been testing while home and getting the fish used to it. I think its going to work. Famous last words.

EDIT: Make sure when setting the dose to cycle it many times, as first vs second and third.... are VERY different. It accumulates in the second chamber.

Of course its not the same quality as probably what you would feed if around. I'm not sure what food works best yet in AFS. Im trying PE Pellets - Discine Energetics, which is not my choice when I am at home.

Actually the hard part was programming the Neptune to schedule the Feed mode to come on and off when the AFS is feeding. That was more involved, especially if you want things to come on and off in a progression of spaced times. I can share that if anyone has a Neptune wanting to do the same.

 

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So for ATO, Here is what I did. I did not buy the Neptune ATK kit. Instead I am using a Neptune Dose head to do the ATO. This nice thing is of course how well you can control the dose.

The second part is to get the FMM Module (Flow Monitoring Module) and an optical water sensor. The sensor will be the high water shutoff.

So basically, you figure out how much water you need to add daily, and then you Dose maybe 1.5x to 2.x that amount daily with the Dose.

You need to dose directly into the tank or fuge.

Then in the Dose output configuration (Advanced Tab) you just need one line of code.
If you named the FMM switch for sensor HighW like I did.

If HighW = CLOSED then OFF

You can also monitor the switch on the Neptune dash to see if it is closed or open and adjust the dose.

The benefit as I see it is, there is no runaway ATO here, it will only dose to the max set in the Dose schedule, if you are not dosing enough, then you will see the switch is still open and you can adjust every few days or so but remotely.

 

[infinite0180]

So for ATO, Here is what I did. I did not buy the Neptune ATK kit. Instead I am using a Neptune Dose head to do the ATO. This nice thing is of course how well you can control the dose.

The second part is to get the FMM Module (Flow Monitoring Module) and an optical water sensor. The sensor will be the high water shutoff.

So basically, you figure out how much water you need to add daily, and then you Dose maybe 1.5x to 2.x that amount daily with the Dose.

You need to dose directly into the tank or fuge.

Then in the Dose output configuration (Advanced Tab) you just need one line of code.
If you named the FMM switch for sensor HighW like I did.

If HighW = CLOSED then OFF

You can also monitor the switch on the Neptune dash to see if it is closed or open and adjust the dose.

The benefit as I see it is, there is no runaway ATO here, it will only dose to the max set in the Dose schedule, if you are not dosing enough, then you will see the switch is still open and you can adjust every few days or so but remotely.

Sounds like a solid plan. I have the smart ato micro that has been working well for awhile. I was thinking about maybe getting an fmm and a few optical sensors to put some redundancy into the system. Right now im realying on fhe built in timer in the ato to save me... an Apex is such a great tool. I have an apex jr i picked up for $50 locally from somebody and man it was the best $50 ive spent soo far. On my next tank ill probably upgrade but for now it does everything i need it too!

 

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The red sea LED 90 arrived finally! Yes, and that means we can buy corals!

So initial impression of the red sea 90 LED lights.

Fully red sea quality, yes!

The mounting arm is very high quality and easy to assemble.

The LED assembly is the same. I feel like for the price it is a very good value.

Unboxing experience is also good.

OK for the setup. Seriously easiest Wifi connection and setup ever. They kind of killed it in that regard.

The app looks and works great and is easy to use.

I got my corals and lights at the exact same time and had to drive 1.5 hrs to get home. So I wanted lights up asap. I was able to do the whole thing and get the initial program running before my corals drip acclimated.

I'll write more on this topic later but I see some real benefits with these lights. They don't allow extreme tweaking of spectrum. They do have the following.

Tuned spectrum per red sea research. Control of blue and white channel.

Separate led for moon lighting.

Pre-made programs and custom programming for your own tweaks.

Acclimation mode, yes! I set mine to start at 60% of program intensity and acclimate over 40 days.

Cloud modes can be mixed into program.

Moonlight modes track actual moon cycle.

Good optics (Lens) for mixing of light.

Lens means that there is no weird reflections of individual leds on water surface.

Now tempter this with the fact that I am new and don't know ****.

 

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Here is the tank with my new LPS corals

1 blasto
1 elegance
1 scoly
1 small frag acan (not shown)
1 duncan
1 brain

 

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I'm pretty unsure on my placement.

Any advise it welcome, thx!

 

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The brain coral trips me out. Becomes crazy flourescent under lights and then changes to a neon dark green under moonlight. Wow this hobby is amazing!

 

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The GOOD, The BAD and the UGLY

UGLY first...

I went on vacation for 5 days. My wife and kid returned 2 days before me and reported all fish intact. However by the time I got back, I woke up to a dead wrasse in the rock work and a missing gramma. I frantically checked all my water params and everything was great. Since the wrasse was dead, he was a bit pale and since I hadn't observed him for days, I had little to go on.

So day 2, I wake up and see the gramma swimming into a powerhead which I know is bad. And he has the velvet look to my completely untrained eye. Granulated sugar and even a few next to his eye.

Interestingly my third fish (midas blenny) seems completely fine, although I did notice him flashing a bit before I went away, but now he isn't even doing that.

So long story short, I had no hospital tank setup yet and the gramma was dead the next morning. I am very sorry for this and I feel after reading all the debate on quarantine or not that I risked it with my first three fish and got bitten first time.

So now I have ordered everything for treatment and quarantine, but I need to wait until I have a time window when I am around and able to do that work.

The blenny has gone through at least another cycle of the velvet or other and is kind of seeming relatively resistant at this point. So I will treat him in quarantine and wait the 6 weeks and no more fish until that is done. OK that is the ugly.

The BAD...

Its not really bad, but I have to stick to the theme. After I got corals and turned on the lights, it was a few days and then another weekend away. I used the AFS and this time I was not so careful. When you move the Intellifeed, food drops into the delivery chamber and the first dose can be huge. So anyway, the tank got a too big dose first day. When I returned, diatoms everwhere and algae covering the rocks.

Again, check water params, pretty good, but 5ppm Nitrate, 1.1 phosphate = algae

So Actions...

1. Careful feeding
2. Turn up fuge light to 100%
3. Drop fuge light down a few inches
4. Small 5g water change, while cleaning sand of diatoms
5. Dial back main lights from 40 day acclimation to 60 day and restart day 1
6. increase fuge light cycle to 13 hours.
7. Bought about 15 small feeder shrimp and they are awesome, the catch and eat the stuff my blenny does not eat, and clean the algae.

The GOOD...

Due to the actions above

Right now things are great. It only took a week and..

1. No diatoms
2. Algae is melting off the rocks in main display
3. Nitrate is 2, Phosphate .03, PH 8.2, Alkalinity 8
4. Macro in fuge is taking off - completely effective at this point in reducing Nitrates and Phosphates
5. Small feeder shrimp were introduced to fuge only, but there are at least 13 in main display unharmed, swimming everywhere as a really fun cleanup crew.
6. Corals seems really happy an water is very clear.

Now water is...

2 Nitrate
.03 Phosphate
8 dkh
8.2 PH
34.4 salinity

 

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Here's the way my fuge looks now. I almost like the fuge better than the main display at this point.

My little tunze skimmer if far right front. It's doing what it needs to do. The downside is it is full after 2-3 days.

I also now have Chaeto, some other small green macro that came with the shrimp and a red macro Gracilaria that is killing it. Not sure who will win.

Oh I also took the powerhead out of the sump. Bad idea...I can't roll chaeto anyway with the other macros, so I manually flip them every day when I can.

 

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Next up is a mod I am going to do to the ATO tank that comes with the reefer that I no longer need for ATO.

I plan to drill it, then take part of the return flow from main pump and pipe it to the ATO tank.

I plan to use it as an additional utility area of sump. A place to do tasks like seed foam filter for hospital tank or have more rock for copapods, etc....

 

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I should say something about how triton is going? So far so good. It's not difficult since being dosed with three Neptune DOSE channels (not cheap though).

So I have not yet sent in a single ICP test. Reason being some ups and downs and I wanted to be able to keep the 8dkh alkalinity before doing so. And I have been testing my water daily and getting confidence that it is good.

So one thing that happened is that I started out dosing 1 part A and B and 2 parts C because I mixed Ca and Cb together and that means you need to dose double. But as I was tweaking, I forgot that and started dosing equal on the 3 channels and that has made things not as stable. So caught that and back to the proper routine and think I will send in my first ICP shortly.

The good so far is that the Triton parts seem nicely concentrated and super easy to use and will last a long time before I have to refill. Although I have a low consumption tank at this point.

I am trying to accomplish the 0 water change thing. But I would say that I will change water when needed, especially if I need to clean something like the sand etc. But targeting replacing the volume removed, not using water changes to change water chemistry.

Am I foolish trying this?

 

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Update: New Flow

I just upped my flow game. My old flow seemed fine for my few LPS but my goal is to work toward getting SPS and I want to get some experience with what they may need flow and parameter wise.


1. Added 2nd MP10QWD powerhead
2. Moved powerheads to sides (left/right), about 1/3 down position, middle. They are slightly offset fore and aft
3. Programmed the Neptune for a custom flow pattern

I found a great video with a detailed flow setup in a Reefer 250 and I copied it verbatim. However, I am starting with percentage flow values 50% of what he uses until I am sure its working and also to acclimate my corals.



The fuge is really taking off now. I started getting some too low reading on phosphate(0) and nitrate. So I am feeding more and also adding some other things to the mix. I would definitely say for what I have going on, things seem pretty stable and good right now. Algae not an issue. Although I did add a small pincushion urchin. Now I'm not even cleaning the glass as he is like a lawnmower. He seems to want to stay on the glass so far.

1. A capful or two of live phyto a couple times a week
2. Reef chili, 3 to 4 times a week
3. Trying some different pellet foods for my afternoon feeding
4. Feeding Reef Frenzy frozen in am

My Alk is now stable, dosing only .8 ml each part Triton core 7 a day, so I pulled water samples and just mailed in my ICP. I obviously need some more corals.

 

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I want SPS.

I don't really want to add bunch more LPS before that.

Right now I'm at day 10 of a 60 day acclimation period on the red sea LED 90 lights.

And Im going on vacation in a few weeks so I don't want to make any changes. But after I get back I would like to pick a point on the acclimation curve to get my first SPS. At the same time, I am working on my flow and water params as last few posts shows ^^^

Any advise on this topic?
How many SPS and what kinds?

Oh yeah, I only have 1 fish (Blenny) and a gaggle of feeder shrimp, urchin, a few hermits and snails.

I'm on a fish ban until I can pull the blenny for a long treatment to get rid of what killed my other two fish so suddenly, I think velvet. That's a whole other topic.

 

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Vortech Mounting Tip for anyone mounting on side of tank.

After I mounted mine to the side I realized a few things. The wire anchors they give you have white undersides which are ugly and very visible through your tank. Then the other issue is cleaning your tank with a magnetic scraper is a pain because of the wires.

So what i did was to take some of the black velcro that came with the vortech for mounting the controller. Stuck that to my tank and to the wire mount. The black velcro is invisible from inside view of tank and now I can remove the mount for cleaning with a magnet.

 

[Entz]

How are you liking the 90 so far? I am considering changing up my lighting, which if I do, has come down to the 360x (to replace a pair of 160s), the 90 or eat the cost of a Radion.

I noticed that with a lot of clips its annoying. If you have a 3D printer making replacements would work.