WAMAS Tank of the Month
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My name is Graham and I’ve been in the reefing hobby for just about 15 years now. A lot of the WAMAS folks have come to recognize me as I regularly set up to sell frags at the quarterly WAMAS meetings, which is used to support my (healthy) addiction. Well, at least before COVID put a hold on these awesome events. Over my 15 years in the hobby the total water volume I maintain has grown from about 100 gallons to 1500 gallons. I’ve always focused on SPS but dabble in most of the types of coral that are available to us in the hobby. I focus on aquaculture, in general I just love growing things. I have two display tanks, a 300 gallon and a 90 gallon, all the other tanks are really just geared towards growing coral.
This article covers my Red Sea 425XL display. I set it up around October 2017, so it’s about 3.5 years old now. At the time I had all my reef tanks in the basement, and my wife suggested I set up a tank on the main floor of our house so that we would have a tank to enjoy upstairs. Twist my arm! Remaining space was pretty limited, which was narrowed down to the spot on the left of our fireplace in the living room. I already knew I wanted a Red Sea Reefer for the modern, rimless look. So, it was as simple as picking out the biggest one that would fit well in the available space, which ended up being a ~90 gallon 425XL.
The 425XL is plumbed into the sump of the most recent system I set up, which totals about 800 gallons. The aquascape for this tank was inspired by “The Great Wave off Kanagawa”. I wanted a larger reef structure that crested over a smaller one. The overhang is meant to create dynamic appeal, almost appearing as it defies gravity. Water movement in the 425XL is quite simple, it’s two MP40s at about 60% on reefcrest, mounted to the back wall on either side of the overflow. The return pump is a Poseidon PS3, an old school AC pump with a plastic volute, titanium hosing, and graphite/ceramic bushing. It’s been running in various applications for my 15 years in the hobby. I always recommend AC pumps for return pumps over the expensive DC pumps that are on the market today. The AC pumps run seemingly forever and are super reliable. But people usually pay more attention to the marketing and then the controller, power supply, etc. fails on their expensive DC pump leaving them scrambling until they can get a replacement. I put a lot of thought into the lighting for this tank. We wanted a clean, modern looking tank without all the ugly wires, mounting arms, etc. I wanted to do a LED hybrid, primarily LED but with the added benefit of T5s for uniform light spread. I almost sprung for a Giesemann pendant, they make beautiful fixtures, but I couldn’t convince myself on the performance of their LEDs. I did a lot of research and was sold on the performance of Ecotech Radions. I knew to accomplish a hybrid fixture without any visible wires or mounting arms I would need to do something custom. So, I designed a wall mounted canopy to house two G4 XR30 Pros and four 36” T5s. The shells of the canopy are constructed out of white acrylic sheet and the structure is 80/20 aluminum extrusion with a 4” square aluminum tube that ties the 80/20 structure to the studs in the wall. The outer shell folds up to increase tank accessibility and I put an IP67 PWM controlled Noctua fan in the center to keep heat from building up. The canopy is designed so that the fan pushes air upward into channels that forces the air over the lights and out of the canopy. The only change to the lighting since I built it was swapping out two of the T5s for 36” reefbrite XHOs. I wasn’t getting the pop I wanted out of the Radion Pros blue channels. The addition of the XHOs has really got the spectrum to where I want it. During the day the tank looks natural and well lit, and at night as the white channels dim down the corals fluoresce beautifully. The lighting schedule is 12 hours of Reefbrite, 10 hours of T5, and the Radions have a 6 hour peak period with a 1 hour ramp up and ramp down on either side. Since this tank is plumbed into an 800 gallon system there isn’t any dedicated filtration. In the sump of the system I use filter socks and two Reef Octopus Regal 300 skimmers. Originally, I was just using one skimmer, but added another as I don’t think you can have too much air exchange with the atmosphere, it only helps drive off excess CO2. The sump is a 300 gallon Rubbermaid trough, and holds a few hundred pounds of live rock for biological filtration. I still use two part on this system. I have a large calcium reactor set up with intentions to switch over, but never turned on the CO2. I currently run two systems on two part and one on a calcium reactor. I find the two part to be much more reliable, as it only requires a peristaltic pump. Where as my calcium reactor requires a peristaltic pump, CO2 regulator, ph probe and controller, circulation pump, etc. Too many things that can fail and too many lines that can become clogged. My two part is from bulk reef. I also add some iodine, strontium and potassium to the calcium mix to maintain these trace elements at NSW levels. I used ICP-OES testing over many months to establish the amounts needed to maintain these levels. One upside of calcium reactors over two part is that these levels seem to be maintained by the calcium reactor alone, without supplementation. I add some Lanthanum Chloride to the calcium mix to control PO4 between 0.10-0.15 PPM. I drip it into the skimmer intake to prevent the participates from irritating any livestock. I also dose Aquavitro Fuel at one half the recommended dose to this system. I’d like to keep my Nitrates between 10-25 PPM. However, when I brought my PO4 levels down the NO3 levels dropped from about 10-25 PPM to 0.5-1.0 PPM. I’m not sure why this happened to be honest. I’ve experimented with dosing NO3 before, but I find it only results in algae growth and the levels only increase temporarily. So I’ve just let it be as it hasn’t caused any issue. Although I do feel I am riding a fine line between available nutrients and none, I’d prefer to have more margin. There are only about 10 or so fish in this tank, it’s not really large enough to keep many more without aggression issues considering the minimalistic rockwork. For the coral it’s truly a mixed tank. Since my other display is entirely SPS we wanted a tank where we could appreciate other types of coral as well as invertebrates. The top of each bommie is covered in SPS. On each side near the bottom of the tank I have a torch garden. There’s also a rock with a bunch of RFAs. Each bommie has a tunnel through the middle. This was intended to give an area for the fish to swim through the rock structures. The left one is a home to a pair of Fire Shrimp and the right a home to a pair of Cleaner Shrimp. I love the antics of the shrimp. The fish regularly pause in these pass throughs to allow the shrimp to jump on board and clean the fish. My favorite part of the tank is the NPS area. It’s tucked under the top shelf of the larger bommie. It contains a number of Dendrophyllia colonies as well as a single, large Rhizotrochus. The benefit of tying this tank into a larger system is that I can feed it heavily without causing too many nutrient issues. Three days a week I broadcast feed the tank with mysis. The NPS catch a good portion of this which means I don’t need to spot feed them to keep them alive. Although, I have noticed very limited growth with the Dendros which would almost certainly be improved with regular spot feeding. I’d spot feed much more often if I had more free time. After the lights go out on a night that I spot feed, the Dendros and Rhizo reward me with almost unreal polyp extension. The Rhizo is one of my favorite corals, when fully expanded it’s incredible looking. I follow my feeding schedule religiously to maintain stability. Every day I feed 1/2 heaping teaspoon of NLS Spectrum Pellets. On Monday, Wednesday and Friday I also add two cubes of Mysis. The only exception is when I feed the NPS corals I add a third cube of mysis at night when I spot feed as well as a small chunk of frozen shrimp for the Rhizo. This tank hasn’t been too difficult since it’s tied into a larger system. Early on I had an issue with Dinos which I addressed with Dino X. I also recall an Ich outbreak within the first year which was resolved with temporary installation of a large UV sterilizer and by paying special attention to water quality. I think most of the issues are partially a result of having a shallow sand bed. A lot of detritus gets caught in it, and I don’t clean it as often as I should. All my other tanks are bare bottom which I think makes things a lot easier. I’ve had an ongoing issue with bristleworms. Other than being unappealing they typically don’t cause any issues. However, I keep a number of Fairy Wrasses that like to bury in the sand at night. Multiple times I’ve had a fish with an eye covered in bristleworm hairs from burying at night too close to the worms at the base of the rock. I have a one eyed Lineatus as a result, that will never be as healthy of a fish as he was when he had two eyes. The only future plans I have for this tank is to gradually weed out less colorful corals and only have cream of the crop acros, torches, etc. I’d also like to commit more time to spot feeding my NPS corals. They’re healthy, but have very little growth. I would like to get them to grow to a point where they form a blanket of polyps at night on the underside of the one rock structure. |
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