- It's that time again,
time for an election, a water change,
and a reef tank update for November of 2020.
There's lots to cover, so with that,
I'm ReefMan and this is the state of my 280-ish
gallon reef tank here in November of 2020.
I'll say it up front this time,
if you're new here, welcome, and of course, subscribe.
It's YouTube after all.
I usually cover marine science on my channel,
and interrupt it every few months
with a video like this one
that's totally not about science at all.
So I hope you enjoy it.
Okay, so the biggest change in my tank
is that I don't have any more sand in it.
Or at least, very little.
I wanted to be able to put my vortechs closer to the bottom
of my tank to really get water flowing through the rockwork,
but that meant they would suck up sand
which ruined a couple wet sides.
So the solution was easy,
suck out the sand slowly as I did my water changes.
I think this also cut down on the nutrients in my water,
nutrients that were leading
to quite a vibrant population of algae.
And I still have some of it in my tank.
I feed my corals regularly and also dose AcroPower,
which is an amino acid,
so between that and feeding all my fish
I put quite a bit of nutrients into the tank.
Now that's great for coral growth and color,
but I felt like the sand was trapping
a lot of nutrients because every time I vacuumed it out
during a water change the water was just full of detritus.
So, with no sand, there's nowhere for all that junk
to gather, and overall, I think the tank stays much cleaner.
Whatever was causing my coral to slowly recede
has stopped happening, and the coral is much happier looking
and has started to grow again.
This really is a benefit of having large acropora colonies
in my tank, just like in the wild
a part of the colony can die back
from something and the rest will still survive.
I'm really glad this particular colony did survive,
it's the only staghorn shaped coral
that I really have in the tank,
and it's one of my favorite Acropora for that reason.
You can also see that algae has grown
on some of the dead branches.
Now, they're too thick to cut back,
so I've thought maybe I'll use them as a place
to glue some coral frags on in the future.
And I thought that would be a really
interesting way to mount them.
I just need to find the right coral to actually do it.
I haven't gotten any new coral at all this year,
everything has just been growing and doing well.
So sometime I'll need to place an order
for some new frags, something colorful,
just to get some new stuff into the tank.
And when I do that I like to use Battle Corals
through, I think, out of Colorado,
or WWC out of Florida or another online group like that.
It's also really nice living in Southern California
because, of course, we have lots of coral shops locally.
Once we make it past COVID-19
and it's safe to go shopping in person again,
then I think it'll be fun to do that and just browse again.
I would like to go back to Unique Corals
and do their concierge service again,
if they're still doing that.
They run a really nice facility here in Los Angeles
and if you get the chance to set up an appointment
with them to check it out, I would really recommend it.
Now that I don't have any sand in my tank,
I've noticed that I need a lot more members
for my clean up crew, a lot more in fact.
I'm very curious where you'd all go if you needed,
say, 100 astera snails, or 100 blue legged hermit crabs.
So post your sources down below,
and the numbers that I'm gonna need
is just gonna be way expensive to go to a local fish store
so I'm looking for something online.
I've so far stayed a bit away
from hermit crabs in this tank.
and I really only have a few in the tank,
but I think they can play a useful role
and since I don't have all that much LPS coral,
which I'd have to worry about them maybe stealing food from,
I think it'd be a good time
to maybe just add some to the tank.
I have been working on a design
for a custom enclosure for the hood,
using a design tool from MayTec,
which I would highly recommend.
MayTec makes aluminium extrusions very similar to the 80/20
that you may have heard about already.
They also have a really nice, easy-to-use design tool
that you can use to create whatever you want,
and then they'll help you fine tune it,
make sure it'll support the loads,
and get it all assembled and ship it out to you.
And I think having a hood like this is gonna go a long way
just towards the overall niceness of my tank.
I work from home, I sit right next
to the tank all day every day,
so blocking out all that blue light
is really gonna be nice.
I also really like Anthias firefish,
small reef fish like that,
but they all tend to be jumpers.
Having an enclosure over my tank
will help me keep these species again,
which I've been really looking forward to.
Wild reefs are dominated by those really small fish,
and I'd like to do that in my reef tank as well,
except that I don't have a cover and they jump.
I'm also still really excited
about the Phillips CoralCare Gen 2 lights.
They're completely passively cooled.
They have no fans so they're silent.
And that's something you don't really pay attention to,
and you don't notice it until you notice it.
Radions can be really loud.
This will also be another quality of life improvement
for my home overall, again, my tank is in my office
so keeping it a bit more quiet is just gonna make it better.
The CoralCare lights also seem to get really good reviews
for people who've already bought them.
And of course, if I do go this route,
you'll all get a complete review
with PAR numbers and all that kind of stuff.
And as always, the main issue with that is just price.
I have a big tank, it's seven feet long
by three feet wide, front to back,
and that makes everything orders
of magnitude more expensive than a smaller tank.
And that is the main drawback
that I would make sure you're aware
of when you get a tank that size.
As I mentioned earlier in the video,
I've had intermittent issues with my Vortech pumps.
Now, I've used Vortechs MP40s for over a decade,
and over that time I couldn't even tell you
how many wet sides I've replaced.
It's not like every week they break,
but the the magnets swell,
some sands get in and ruins it,
whatever goes on, but I'm kinda just over it.
I've been seriously considering creating a closed loop
just to remove my vortechs,
and use that to provide flow instead.
And I just need to actually sit down and do it really.
The new MayTec hood might be able to help there
because I'm sure there's some attachment
that I could use to attach the plumbing
for the closed loop to the aluminium frame of the hood.
That about wraps up this tank update.
I hope you enjoyed it.
Let me know what you think about the CoralCare 2 light,
if you've got one or closed loops,
if you've got one of those.
I've never actually had a closed loop,
or the MayTec framing system, if you've used it.
I'd be very curious to hear your thoughts.
Don't forget to subscribe,
especially if you've made this far already.
Stay safe, be kind to each other.
I'll see you next time, bye.