It’s been a good long time since I did a reef tank update video.
Too long, in fact - so here we are, in May 2022, and this is an update on my 288 gallon
reef tank.
Hi guys and girls, I’m ReefMan, and there’s an awful lot to cover, lots of new equipment
and changes in the aquarium to report and discuss.
If you’re new here, welcome, and consider subscribing to the channel for updates and
lots of science content.
Let’s dive in, starting with my newly added harem of anthias.
Evansi Anthias The Evansi anthias that I added in late February
of this year are doing well.
I’ve lost only one, which didn’t really eat well for me after it cleared quarantine.
All the rest are doing well, there’s one thin fish though that I’m extra careful
of to make sure it gets food and it has been gaining weight.
They all come up when it’s time to feed, and all are very active feeders right now.
As they do, the most dominant fish has turned into a male.
Some people will tell you that Evansi anthias look the same male versus female - and I’m
here to tell you that’s total BS.
The male anthia has a yellow dorsal fin where the females have a clear fin, and the male
is overall a bit more brightly colored it seems.
The big give away though is the yellow dorsal fin, if you see that, it’s a male.
If it’s clear, it’s a female.
I think a second male started to transform - there’s one in particular that my male
doesn’t like.
Nothing too serious, but it does get chased from time to time.
These anthias only use about half the length of my tank.
I think you could easily keep a group of Evansi anthias in a 3 or 4 foot tank.
I rarely see mine on the “other side” of the tank, usually they’re schooled in
their corner unless it’s feeding time and they’re out for food.
The male is often out swimming on its own, and the females are usually just in their
corner.
I’ve been feeding my anthias a mix of frozen foods - Rods Reef, a few types of Mysis, frozen
eggs, bloodworms, sort of a random mix of those things.
I make the mix in the morning, and then feed them 4 or 5 times from the container throughout
the day.
My other fish are super happy to be getting all the extra food, but I’m careful to not
add more than the anthias and my other fish will eat in a single sitting to avoid spiking
nutrients too high.
Adding all that food does mess with your levels though.
Cyanobacteria I recently did a Triton test, the link is
down below if you want to check it out - and more or less everything elemental is in a
good range.
I do know that adding this extra food has added a lot of nutrients to the water, and
it fueled an outbreak of algae.
To solve that, I added some GFO about a month ago, and today the tank is nearly algae free.
As you can see, the algae in the tank has been replaced now by cyanobacteria.
Cyanobacteria thrive when water parameters are slightly off or unbalanced.
There’s a golden ratio of carbon to nitrogen to phosphate, the redfield ratio.
My Phosphate is nearly 0 thanks to my GFO - it’s not even high enough to grow Chaetomorpha
in my PaxBellum to be honest.
I’ve been feeding the tank a lot more though with the Anthias, and undoubtedly that has
spiked up my nitrates.
That spike in nutrients powers the growth of Cyanobacteria in the tank, and the result
is a nice red tank like you can see today.
I think if I backed off the GFO some and let the phosphates rise a bit this might more
quickly resolve itself, but I’m not too worried about it to be honest.
At the end of the day, the anthias need to be fed several times a day, and I think that
given some time the tank will stabilize with the higher input of nutrients.
It takes some time for bacteria to really get growing, and I think that with some time
the cyano will be replaced with a more active microbiome and then we’ll be back to a nice
clean stable tank.
The GFO stripping the phosphate is slowing that process down I’m sure, but at least
it’s preventing algae.
The nutrient swings have killed some of the frags that I bought to get my Acropora growing
again.
Once the cyanobacteria is under control we’ll think about adding more coral.
One thing at a time.
Kamoer X2SR Part of the answer to nutrient problems is
increased water changes.
I have about 280 gallons of water in my system and so to make a dent in that it’s a lot
of water changes.
Who has time for that?
Automation is the answer.
I tried using industrial peristaltic pumps, saving some money, but they were not really
rated for running for an hour on end and overheated despite my best efforts.
I did a bit of research, and all the commercial options got very mixed reviews - I ended up
purchasing a Kamoer X2SR.
I have only just set it up, and it does work - I’ll give a more in depth review of it
in a couple months once I know all the quirks.
The Kamoer X2SR has two peristaltic pumps, one for the fresh saltwater into the tank,
and one for the wastewater out of the tank.
After calibration it seems so far so good, but this is the first day it’s been running.
I have it set to change water three times throughout the day, for a total of about 5%
of the tank volume every day.
We’ll see how it goes.
Hopefully it’ll work well, as doing this in an automated fashion really is the way
to go.
Having it automated means it’ll actually happen, and happen consistently.
In theory smaller water changes more often are better overall anyway for a reef tank,
so if all goes according to plan this should be really good for the aquarium.
The only issue that I had is that I have my water tanks outside, and so it’s a long
run from those into my tank.
The X2SR comes with some 9.5mm ID tubing which is hard to work with unless the system is
right next to your tank.
To solve that, I wanted to convert it to quarter inch OD tubing like we’d use for our RO
systems.
It took a barbed adapter into a reducing adapter to do it, but in the end I met the goal and
am now changing the water through quarter inch OD tubing.
It seems to work just fine, and the unit runs for about half an hour three times a day to
get that 5% water change each day.
The X2SR is not loud when it’s running, but it’s also not really quiet.
I’m glad I can position mine outside on my covered back patio though as that makes
the sound much reduced.
It’s loud enough to hear it through the exterior house walls as a gentle hum, so keep
that in mind if you’re putting this somewhere you’ll be annoyed by pump noise.
Manifold I’ve made some progress on my manifold that
I want to build to reduce my dependency on a bunch of pumps all of which need to be cleaned
and maintained.
Bulk Reef Supply had a sale on Red Dragon DC pumps which universally seem to get good
reviews, and so I picked up a Speedy 3 Mini pump to run the manifold.
At full power, it pumps about 1,300 gallons per hour - which is just about what I need
for my manifold.
It will let me back off the power just slightly even, making the pump super efficient from
a power perspective.
I’m running a Teco TK2000 chiller which likes about 200 to 300 gallons per hour of
flow, a PaxBellum ARID C30 which needs 350 to 750 gallons per hour, and a GFO reactor
that doesn’t need nearly that much.
That puts me a little over 1,100 gallons per hour that I actually need to provide, and
so this 1,300 gallon per hour pump should be just what I need for the manifold.
More on this when I actually build it though... should be soon!
Dalua GW-12 My Vertex Alpha 200 skimmer has been running
24/7 since I set up this tank about seven years ago.
Vertex as a company has long since been closed, which is unfortunate since their equipment
has been rock solid.
Still, because of the unavailability of parts, I wanted to replace both my Vertex return
pump and skimmer.
For the new return pump, I’ll be using a second Red Dragon pump, probably the Red Dragon
3 Speedy 100W Pressure model once it’s back in stock and available.
I want a slightly overpowered DC return pump - I only need about 1,600 gallons per hour,
because tuning these pumps back just a little bit to 80 or 90% of the power significantly
reduces the power they actually use without affecting the flow much.
For the skimmer, I looked around at the options today.
I liked the Great White skimmers from Dalua, they seemed to get good reviews, and so I
ordered a GW-12 skimmer rated for 150 to 400 gallons.
That came in as well late this week, and is in the tank now as of just this morning.
The Great White GW-12 skimmer is rated for the same exact size ranges my Vertex Alpha
200 was, but wow - it’s so much smaller!
I’m interested to see how this skimmer works once it gets broken in, and how fast the collection
cup fills up.
It does come with a line for easily draining the cup into a bucket, and I’ll likely make
significant use of that feature.
Modern skimmers seem to all put the pump inside the skimmer body - a great space saver.
They also generally all come with DC pumps which saves energy and lets you control the
skimmer pump directly to change how much water goes into the body.
For my GW-12 I have the pump turned way down for the break in period because at 100% it
overflowed like crazy.
We’ll see how far up I can turn it without overflowing the skimmer once it breaks in.
No more cabinet You can see that the wood facia behind me
is gone as well.
This is more for ease of maintenance than anything else, to be honest I don’t love
looking at the junk under the tank.
I’ve got a plan to address that, and you’ll see it’s much improved in the next video.
I do need to figure out a cover for it, but it needs to be made of small panels that are
easy to remove for maintenance.
The problem really is that this tank is just too big for the house I’ve got.
The stand facia is all one big piece of wood - it looks amazing - but it’s a nightmare
to move around for maintenance.
Because it was a pain to move I got lazy about filter socks, about cleaning the skimmer,
really about everything under there.
I’ve been much more involved in it now that I don’t need to move a bunch of stuff out
of the way just to get into the sump.
This tank was designed and ordered for my previous house.
It was delivered, but before I could get it set up I had to move for work - and so I have
a much larger tank then I ever would have ordered living in the house I live in today.
I strongly considered getting rid of this tank recently, and really only the fish inside
it kept me from doing so.
I’ve had most of these fish for years, my Achilles tang and Bluespotted angelfish have
been with me for most of the life of the tank.
My pair of potter’s angelfish too - these animals have gotten to know me over the years.
They come over when I’m near the tank, and they require somewhat specialized care due
to their size or just their rarity in the hobby.
I was looking at getting a nano reef, or maybe a small average size reef - something around
80, 90, maybe 100 gallons.
That would have meant a lot more room in the house, a lot less water used for the RO/DI,
less power used for lights and pumps.
But it also would have meant breaking the commitment I made to these animals when I
purchased them, and in the end I didn’t want to do that.
Triton ICP and NDoc testing I plan on running a Triton ICP test basically
every month or so.
This should give me great visibility across lots of parameters in the tank, and I’m
also going to send out an NDoc test with many of those to get the bigger picture including
all the carbon and nitrogen compounds you get with the NDoc testing.
Hopefully this will help shed some light on trends the tank is going through.
It’s certainly easy enough to do, if not a little expensive.
We’ll see how useful they are over the next year and I’ll adjust the schedule from there.
Conclusion So that’s about it.
Lots of cyanobacteria, no more algae.
Some acropora frags dead with the nutrient spike from all the food for the Evansi anthias.
The tank will rebalance and recover though.
Once this round of GFO is exhausted I’ll probably reduce the dose I’m using and try
to get my PaxBellum running again.
All my chaetomorpha died with the GFO stripping out all its food.
It just takes time, everything in a reef tank takes time.
We’re balancing natural processes here, and you can’t really rush that - not if
you want long term stability.
I hope you enjoyed the update!
Lots new this time.
Be kind to each other, stay safe, and have a fantastic day!
Bye!