Beastly! Those GEO reactors look good now days.
Is that magnesium up top? What media do you use?
Is that magnesium up top? What media do you use?
Schnitzel's Shallow Leemar 250
- Thread starter SchnitzelReef
- Start date
Its becoming harder and harder to take decent pics of my corals. They are growing right to the top of the water, and I dont have room with my light fixtures to get my camera at a good angle. This is the best I could do.
Shades of fall
PC rainbow
Acid Trip Milli
Somewhere over the rainbow milli
PC Superman
RRC Shazam
Chemical warfare
ASD rainbow Milli
Shades of fall
PC rainbow
Acid Trip Milli
Somewhere over the rainbow milli
PC Superman
RRC Shazam
Chemical warfare
ASD rainbow Milli
ASD rainbow milli
Orange passion left. Event Horizon milli right
Red planet
Tyree Blue Matrix
RRC blueberry wine
Pink lemonade
Banshee
Oregon tort
Red dragon
Vivids rainbow delight
Jareds tricolor prostrata
Rommels watermelon milli
Bubblegum digi
Pink Cadillac
Sapphire milli
Maleficent on the left
Someone asked me about current filtration, here it is...
I have a basic 3 compartment sump. Sump is fed from a bean animal overflow.
First chamber is an Aquamaxx skimmer. I had a Vertex, a bubble king, and an ATB. IMO high end skimmers are the biggest waste of money in this hobby. I get the same colors and same growth with this $400 Aquamaxx as I did with the my $1200 bubble king. Much rather spend money on a quality light fixture, calcium reactor, return pump, apex, and an ATO.
Havent ran socks in 3+ years. They just create more maintenance.
Second chamber is a tiny fuge. I have a Tao Tronics grow led light I got off of amazon. I found a bunch of reefers using it, so I tried it out. I only keep chaeto in the fuge.
I also run 2 Tunze pumps in my sump to help keep detritus from building up. One in the fuge, and 1 in the skimmer section.
Third chamber is a Fluval SP6. The Fluval is an AC, non adjustable pump that uses an Askoll motor. Having a quality return pump is extremely important. Everyone now a days is running controllable DC return pumps. IMO adding a controller just adds another point of failure. No thanks! I have a manifold off the Fluval that feeds my calcium reactor. I also have a line that bleeds off extra flow back to the sump. The Fluval is a monster, almost too much flow.
I dont run GFO, I dont run bio pellets, and I rarely run carbon. I do have some extra live rocks in my sump, but its not much, and honestly i doubt it really does much. I did run Siporax at one point, but it just became a detritus trap, so I ditched them.
I run a Geo CR818 calcium reactor with a Geo second chamber. Everything is controlled by a classic apex.
Im running an avast marine ATO that is also controlled by the apex. They have an option to plug in their ato to a break out box instead of a stand alone ato controller.
Water changes are done 40-50g at a time, and only when I have spare time. Currently its been almost 6 months since my last water change. I do think water changes help, but clearly they arent a necessity.
Flow in the tank is 2 mp60s, 2 Tunze 6095s, and 2 Tunze 6105s attached to sea sweeps.
I started the tank with all dry rock and dry sand. I used the cheapest dry rock from marine depot, I forgot what they called it. I did acid wash the rock, which I think helped from keeping the rock from leeching nasty stuff back into the tank. When I acid washed the rocks, all kinds of gunk came off them.
Not the biggest fan of starting with live rock. I went through a lot of headache making sure there wasnt any bad hitchhikers going into this tank.
I have a basic 3 compartment sump. Sump is fed from a bean animal overflow.
First chamber is an Aquamaxx skimmer. I had a Vertex, a bubble king, and an ATB. IMO high end skimmers are the biggest waste of money in this hobby. I get the same colors and same growth with this $400 Aquamaxx as I did with the my $1200 bubble king. Much rather spend money on a quality light fixture, calcium reactor, return pump, apex, and an ATO.
Havent ran socks in 3+ years. They just create more maintenance.
Second chamber is a tiny fuge. I have a Tao Tronics grow led light I got off of amazon. I found a bunch of reefers using it, so I tried it out. I only keep chaeto in the fuge.
I also run 2 Tunze pumps in my sump to help keep detritus from building up. One in the fuge, and 1 in the skimmer section.
Third chamber is a Fluval SP6. The Fluval is an AC, non adjustable pump that uses an Askoll motor. Having a quality return pump is extremely important. Everyone now a days is running controllable DC return pumps. IMO adding a controller just adds another point of failure. No thanks! I have a manifold off the Fluval that feeds my calcium reactor. I also have a line that bleeds off extra flow back to the sump. The Fluval is a monster, almost too much flow.
I dont run GFO, I dont run bio pellets, and I rarely run carbon. I do have some extra live rocks in my sump, but its not much, and honestly i doubt it really does much. I did run Siporax at one point, but it just became a detritus trap, so I ditched them.
I run a Geo CR818 calcium reactor with a Geo second chamber. Everything is controlled by a classic apex.
Im running an avast marine ATO that is also controlled by the apex. They have an option to plug in their ato to a break out box instead of a stand alone ato controller.
Water changes are done 40-50g at a time, and only when I have spare time. Currently its been almost 6 months since my last water change. I do think water changes help, but clearly they arent a necessity.
Flow in the tank is 2 mp60s, 2 Tunze 6095s, and 2 Tunze 6105s attached to sea sweeps.
I started the tank with all dry rock and dry sand. I used the cheapest dry rock from marine depot, I forgot what they called it. I did acid wash the rock, which I think helped from keeping the rock from leeching nasty stuff back into the tank. When I acid washed the rocks, all kinds of gunk came off them.
Not the biggest fan of starting with live rock. I went through a lot of headache making sure there wasnt any bad hitchhikers going into this tank.
Wow. Honestly those might be some of the best SPS shots that I have ever seen. Absolutely stunning! Thanks also for the look into your equipment. I'll look a few pages back as well, but if you give your standard parameters that would be fun to see what kind of levels you like.
Truly amazing and inspirational. I need to re-read this thread!
Truly amazing and inspirational. I need to re-read this thread!
Nick your tank sucks! Can't see the rockwork cuz all them big a$$ healthy baller corals are in the way.
ok, just went coast to coast on this build. Good grief pretty wild, and nice to see that a relatively simple equipment setup can yield such awesome results.
Looks like you ditched biopellets at some point, and got rid of the kessil fuge light? Was there a reason for those changes?
I rarely get down south, but when I do next, I'd like to PM you on the off chance that you might have time to show off this beauty.
Looks like you ditched biopellets at some point, and got rid of the kessil fuge light? Was there a reason for those changes?
I rarely get down south, but when I do next, I'd like to PM you on the off chance that you might have time to show off this beauty.
Biopellets werent needed. Almost 5 years ago when I setup this tank, BPs were the go to nitrate reducer. I never thought I would have a tank that had low nutrients. After a few months I realized I had no use for BPs. To this day I can feed as much as I want and Ive never seen nitrates over 2-5.
My fuge is so small, the Kessil was just too much light. No reason to use so many watts if I didnt need it.
man, I wish I had that nutrient issue. I look at the tank wrong and the nitrates climb. I've kind of done away with the refugium idea, other than offering a haven for pods I just didnt see that much nutrient export from it.
I haven’t been posting many pics lately cuz I got a new iPhone XS and the camera isn’t as good. It’s like it tries to over compensate for the bright blue lights, and the orange filter doesn’t work and if I don’t use the orange filter pics look just as bad. Kinda bummed. The older iPhone camera took great pics with the orange filter.
sbandcb
0
Looks just amazing, Nick!
Awesome pics! You should do some more macro shots, would be incredible. I cant recall, where did you land on lighting? Mix or LED?
Still meaning to get down there, would be awesome to see those colonies.
Still meaning to get down there, would be awesome to see those colonies.
Lazy Reefer
New member
- Joined
- Apr 21, 2020
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Wow, one of the coolest reef tanks I’ve ever seen.
man I miss my tank. Thinking of jumping back in with an AIO tank for my daughter. Any of the OGs still around?
Hello Nick.....welcome back.
