Mescobar's RedSea 300 G2 Build

[mescobar]

I don’t currently have an official tank thread and I recently did a reset to make room for my crowded frag rack full of acros, so I figured now would be a good time to start a build thread and document the process.

I’m currently running a

• Red Sea Reefer 300 G2
• 2 XR15 Gen5 Blue
• 1 21” AI Blade Grow
• 1 Jebao DMP30
• 1 AI Nero 5
• Curve 5 Skimmer
• 8W AquaUV
• 200W Eheim Heater
• Direct from China ATO
• Desk Fan in 3D printed enclosure with PWM Controller
• Inkbird Controller
• Neptune Apex
• Neptune Trident
• Refugium with 100W Full spectrum Light
• Jebao Dosing Pump DP-4

Fish:

• 2 Snowflake Clowns
• Longnose Hawkfish
• Sixline Wrasse
• Copperband Butterfly
• CB Yellow Tang
• CB Mandarin

Refugium

• Pom Pom Gracilaria
• Red bush Gracilaria
• Codium

Dosing:

• BRS Sodium Bicarb
• BRS Calcium Chloride
• BRS Magnesium Chloride and Sulfate Mix

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[mescobar]

My tank has been running for 2 years now primarily started with LPS and softies. I want to say about a year or so ago I started dabbling into easier SPS. Started with some anacropora, birdsnests, montipora, and cyphastrea (branching variety). Still being new into the hobby I wanted anything and everything that looked unique (to me). I had very little regard for long term planning of where everything would go, how it would grow, or the overall color balance of the tank.

This led to a lot of mistakes that future me now have to deal with. Things like torches growing and falling off the rockwork due to their increased weight. Unsecure branch rock that makes trimming birdnest a challenge. And poor placement of fast growing SPS corals that limited my flexibility to swapping coral. The biggest offender being my bubble gum digi, purple montipora, and milk stylo corals. Thankfully the SPS corals were mostly located on shelf/cup rocks that could easily be removed.

This brings us to the reset, the plan was to remove all corals from the cups rocks in the center and upcycle the cups into shelves onto a small arch for acros. Most of the corals were quite easy to remove with the exception of my beach bum moni, bubble gum digi, and purple monti cap. I really had to leverage the bone cutter and chisel to remove and separate the corals from the rock.

 

[mescobar]

Once all the coral was removed from the rocks, I went ahead and let them dry out for 48 hours. After which I used a chisel to break the cup rocks and started placing them onto the arch using reef cement. Doing my best to create shelves without too much shadowing. And hoping that the shelf placement would place nicely with the existing rock structure.

After the rock structure was cured it was time to drop the new arch and shelves into place, right where the cup/shelf rock structure was, in the center of the tank. The only problem was that the existing base rock wouldn’t nicely support the arch, so I had to call an audible. After finding a nice nook that the arch could sit on, I had to decide where the displaced branch rock would go. I ended up deciding to move my leathers and branch rock. The branch rocks would now be placed horizontally in the center of the tank (instead of horizontal+vertical). And the arch would be in the left/center of the tank, sitting a tad higher than I would have preferred.

The only left to do was to glue the acros onto their new shelves, balancing color and my best educated guess on which direction they should grow to avoid warfare. I decided on keeping on my more unique birdsnest corals and placing them onto the branch rocks. The interlocking branch rock is quite cool because it leaves a fair amount of cracks and openings for my small fish to swim through. There are still a handful of coral I still need to place; branching cyphastrea, grafted monit caps, some birdsnests, and a scroll coral. Overall, the tank is looking a lot cleaner with what feels like a lot more open/negative space fish to swim and coral to grow.
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[drexel]

Nice! Sometimes a reset is the best thing. Looks like it’s going well.


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[thresher]

The flow around that structure will be nice. Limited dead spots....at least til the coral go nuts.