(soft atmospheric music)
- [Narrator] A pulsing underwater oasis,
a peaceful garden of unique animals,
a quiet corner to rest and observe.
Living art that can be passed down through generations.
An aesthetic masterpiece you created.
BRS and World Wide Corals are proud
to take you on this journey
and to build your first Euphyllia garden.
Don't forget, this video is part of an entire series
where we take the Innovative Marine 40 NUVO Fusion Pro 2
and build several completely different habitats.
The first video in this playlist
tells you all about the gear that we use
and how to set everything up.
The link to that video is in the description below.
(wind chimes chiming)
There are three main types of corals
found in the genus Euphyllia,
torch, frogspawn and hammer corals.
They come in a wide variety of colorations.
Euphyllia grow in one of two different patterns,
branching varieties and wall varieties.
Wall varieties typically grow much slower,
are difficult to frag
and are really hard to recover once diseased.
For those reasons, and especially for beginners,
we will always recommend to buy branching varieties.
All of the corals you see behind me in the tank
come from World Wide Corals.
Based out of Florida, Word Wide Corals prides itself
on clean, healthy, aquacultured corals.
All of their corals go through a rigorous, lengthy
and multi-step quarantine process.
All of their corals are grown under LED lights
which means they will acclimate easily to most systems.
Out of an abundance of caution,
I did my standard three-part dipping process
when I received these WWC corals
and there was nothing on them,
no pests, no hitchhikers, no algae.
(wind chimes chiming)
There are a few general care requirements for Euphyllia,
low to medium indirect flow,
PAR between the ranges of 50 and 150,
I personally strive for a range of 75 to 125.
And lastly, give them room to grow, especially torches.
Sometimes, torches don't play nicely
especially with other hammers,
so giving them plenty of space is a good idea.
But that being said, I have never had a problem
with my hammers and frogspawns close together.
(wind chimes chiming)
Sand and scape, CaribSea Special Grade
is the perfect size sand for this setup.
It's small enough on one hand
to give a consistent, small tropical beach feel,
but large enough grain size to stay put under medium flow.
I added just enough sand to this tank,
probably around 15 pounds
just enough to cover the glass entirely
and give a slope from front to back,
which really helps create a sense of depth in the tank.
For rock, I used a mix of the CaribSea LifeRock Shapes
along with the Nano Reef Kit.
I keep a large selection of this rock in a Brute trashcan
that's already cycled
because this will help acclimate the corals quickly.
For this aquascape, minimal in style
with lots of empty space.
I wanted it relatively flat and sloping upwards
until it came into contact with the back panel.
I chose pieces with a lot of nooks,
that way, I could hide the coral skeletons
as much as possible.
For some additional strength,
I used the Maxspect Coral Putty
to secure the reef rock together.
(wind chimes chiming)
Filling the tank, cycling and water parameters.
To disturb the sand bed as little as possible,
I used a plastic OXO strainer to disperse the water.
On top of the pre-cycled reef rock,
I also added a media bag full of cycled rubble rock
to the rear filtration chamber.
I'm using Tropic Marin Pro-Reef Salt,
which mixes to an alkalinity of 7.0,
calcium of 440 and magnesium of 1,350.
I'm keeping a consistent temperature
of between 76 1/2 degrees and 78 degrees.
Euphyllia are notorious for doing poorly
in low-nutrient systems.
So I'll be dosing Brightwell Aquatics NeoPhos
and NeoNitro as needed to keep those levels up.
With the tank about halfway full, it's a perfect time
to use those composite shims to level the tank.
(wind chimes chiming)
Gear setup, using the included MightyJet DC Return Pump,
I have it set to 1.1 to 1.4
which is a gentle pulsing motion.
I chose that because it gives just enough movement
to the torch corals I have in the front of the tank.
But I found that the return pump alone
wasn't giving enough flow to all the Euphyllia,
so I did add that Sicce XStream SDC Wavemaker.
I placed it in the upper-back left of the tank
where it intersects with the two return nozzles
creating a little bit of turbulence
and giving flow evenly around the tank.
For my setup, I found that the impulse setting
with a max of 40% and a minimum of zero
with two seconds on and three seconds off to give
just the right amount of flow.
For my ATI SunPower T5 lights,
I have two Actinic Bulbs and two Coral Plus Bulbs.
I have the Actinics set at a max of 40% on channel one
and on channel two are the Coral Plus Bulbs
set at a max of 70%.
I chose that 40, 70 split first and foremost
because it really looked good to my eye.
And secondly, I did use my PAR meter to check the light,
and those settings gave me readings
of between 75 and 125 all throughout the aquascape.
I did choose to set up a BRS dosing pump,
which is dosing Tropic Marin All-For-Reef.
(winds chimes chiming)
Adding livestock, World Wide Corals overnighted me
just over 30 Euphyllia frags
and I asked for a mix of shapes and colors,
but I didn't want anything super high-end or collector.
I dipped, inspected and placed all of the coral frags
into my water box frag system.
Please note that if you're starting out
and building your first Euphyllia garden,
you will not be buying this many frags to put in your tank
all at once for a whole myriad of reasons.
Just start out with a few, three to five,
and you can purchase more as time goes on
to fill out your tank.
It'll be really helpful to you if you don't think of this
as an overnight project,
but rather a one to two year project
where you get to watch your corals grow out
and expand to fill your aquascape.
Since all my frags are small, I only needed
to use super glue to attach them to the aquascape
and I always remove the frag plug.
I started my design by separating the corals by type
and then by color within their type.
I tried my best to create a rainbow road of torch corals
from the front left of the scape
all the way through to the upper right of the scape.
I then placed the hammer corals, for the most part,
to the left and top of that rainbow road,
and I placed all the frogspawn
to the bottom and right of the torch corals.
Just check out the final product.
World Wide Corals absolutely killed it
with these diverse Euphyllia.
(wind chimes chiming)
Long-term care,
when you're ready to add a cleanup crew
and some beginner fish,
the videos we've already made are a great reference
and we'll link them down below.
Personally, I rarely target feed Euphyllia corals,
but I do broadcast feed the tank once a week
and add Coral Aminos as well.
I will, of course, be testing weekly
and adjusting the amount of All-For-Reef accordingly.
If any of your Euphyllia corals start to brown jelly
or show signs of disease, don't hesitate to turn
off the flow, remove them from your tank and re-dip them.
Other than that, just watch your Euphyllia,
especially for those first couple weeks
and adjust the wavemaker to give the perfect amount of flow.
I have never been the best aquascaper
and that's just a fact,
but if I'm being honest, this is probably
the favorite aquascape I've ever made.
But it is only one example of what you can do
with this Innovative Marine 40 tank.
Click here to see five completely different habitats
we built from this tank alone.
And as always everyone, thanks for watching,
happy reefing, be well.
We'll see you next time.
(soothing atmospheric music)