Ash's 400 Gallon Reef

[Ashish Patel]

Are you using a separate feed pump for the scrubber?

Yes

 

[Ashish Patel]

Scrubbers on, no leaks but the pump is overkill

 

[Ashish Patel]

New video on Youtube about my Closed Loop.
I am doing a voice over with my apple headphones, which is clearly trash. I have a good camera microphone so probably just going to speak into it next time.

The next video will be (10 Must-haves for starting a saltwater tank), (Building a ATS for $100), (Battle with Nitrates)

I am going to try my best to talk better, probably should write a script but I just start yapping and can't stop sometimes.

 

[Ashish Patel]

If R2R family can do me a big favor and support me by subscribing to my Youtube channel,

That would mean the world, I am trying to get to 100 subscribers Cheers!

 

[marcus aurelius]

Nice job.

 

[Ashish Patel]

Added a new Video on YT. Please check it out!

 

[Ashish Patel]

My Nitrates are finally down to 50ppm. I finally see some results after 8 months long battle. I think after removing 5 massive turbo snails and adding the scrubber 2 months ago really ramped things up. Phosphates drop daily about .05ppm so have to dose that continuously. I expect the nitrates to soon bottom out and when they do I can reduce the carbon dosing. Hopefully just remove it all together as I don't feel it's something I would like to do long term.

 

[McPuff]

Curious why you removed the turbo snails...

 

[Ashish Patel]

Curious why you removed the turbo snails...

My NO3 started sky rocketing after adding 13 big turbo snails, within one year they were massive, I mean apple size big! I also had 2 large top crowns and 2 large urchins. I honestly feel they cause more nutrient build up than fish since their poop is very dense and ends up on the barebottom and rockwork. The fish poop constantly and it always ends up in the overflow to the skimmer. I had the fish in my system for 6 months before adding the turbos and never NO3 higher than 20ppm. Since I was dealing with high Phosphates i stopped testing NO3 for 6 months and when I did it was on the higher side, than i tested another 6 month later and it was off the charts. I waited another 6 months to deal with it with carbon dosing and when i diluted the water to get a accurate reading I had NO3 of over 300-400PPM. It took 8 months for me to get below reading.


Left pic from 1/2/24, and right from last week. This was the first time I could officially confirm I was below 100PPM nitrates. All the other tests came out close to the left picture or it was just too close to determine.

 

[Ashish Patel]

You know the funny part, my last tank i had a few turbos that perished when i moved, so my entire tank turned into a algae hair nightmare, I could not find medium size turbos for 3 years and all i would get were tiny turbos. When I came across normal size ones (1.5-2.5") I figured I had a large system so should just stock up on them. Now they are so big they can't even get into the rockwork between corals. Lesson learned!, do not over do the clean up crew, Whatever the fish and inverts can't eat I can always scrape and siphon out the excess until the issues are resolved. I never really took NO3 seriously, i always figured a few large water changes could remedy the problem, however, I was wrong, NO3 being high is just a sign of your nutrient import being far greater than your export, and water change did nothing really...Now I am ready for the next issues, NO3 will bottom out

 

[McPuff]

My NO3 started sky rocketing after adding 13 big turbo snails, within one year they were massive, I mean apple size big! I also had 2 large top crowns and 2 large urchins. I honestly feel they cause more nutrient build up than fish since their poop is very dense and ends up on the barebottom and rockwork. The fish poop constantly and it always ends up in the overflow to the skimmer. I had the fish in my system for 6 months before adding the turbos and never NO3 higher than 20ppm. Since I was dealing with high Phosphates i stopped testing NO3 for 6 months and when I did it was on the higher side, than i tested another 6 month later and it was off the charts. I waited another 6 months to deal with it with carbon dosing and when i diluted the water to get a accurate reading I had NO3 of over 300-400PPM. It took 8 months for me to get below reading.


Left pic from 1/2/24, and right from last week. This was the first time I could officially confirm I was below 100PPM nitrates. All the other tests came out close to the left picture or it was just too close to determine.

Wow, thanks for the explanation. I ask because I have 3 very large turbos... also apple size. I wonder if they are making the NO3 worse in my tank as well. I have sand and I'm working to vacuum it out more often. It's pretty dirty! And my NO3 is super high as well. Way over 100 again. I had it down to 55 last year but it worked it's way back up. I have since added an algae scrubber and that seems to be cranking pretty good now. Hopefully it's doing more than just keeping up!

 

[Ashish Patel]

My aiptasia problem went out of control.... Ironically I never learn from my past mistakes, which was never to go to WAR with Aiptasia. I watched a video on reefbuilders about using sodium hydroxide to kill aiptasia, i thought it was genius, it kills them but if they close up, which they do, they will panic and skrew u few months later, which they did.

Over the course of few weeks I noticed few peppermint shrimp died and the aiptasia started coming back like gang busters (I added 25 peppermint shrimp in total 2 years ago now see zero).

Couple that with removing shrimp from my frozen food mix and only using fish,which tends to be hard to keep chunky and creating smaller pieces for the aiptasia. On top of that 6 weeks ago my UV filter sprunk a leak so have not turned that back on. Yeah so now i don't even want to clean algae patches on some rockwork because there is probably a good 200 aiptasia and another 100 small babies ready to take over.

I REALLLY HATE DEALING WITH AIPTASIA.

Its still a mystery how they got in my display, my QT has NONE, like dang

 

[Ashish Patel]

Also, check out my video on YouTube (10 Flow Tips). Its doing well from my standards, now I just need few hundred more subs to get Monetized... what a painful process reef aquarium niche is on YT....

its like NO one even wants to go near our hobby unless your really obsessed like most of us wackos.

 

[Daniel@R2R Verified Admin]

Also, check out my video on YouTube (10 Flow Tips). Its doing well from my standards, now I just need few hundred more subs to get Monetized... what a painful process reef aquarium niche is on YT....

its like NO one even wants to go near our hobby unless your really obsessed like most of us wackos.

Great video! Beautiful reef! Btw, I subbed to the channel.

Are those last shots the reef as it is today? Any chance we could see a recent FTS?

 

[Nburg's Reef]

Also, check out my video on YouTube (10 Flow Tips). Its doing well from my standards, now I just need few hundred more subs to get Monetized... what a painful process reef aquarium niche is on YT....

its like NO one even wants to go near our hobby unless your really obsessed like most of us wackos.

I feel ya! the first 1,000 was daunting, then you have to make sure you have 4,000 hours of watch time. Once you get there, it will go up a little fast each time you post something. I went from a couple hundred to 2,300 in about a year. Edit: also don't expect to earn much. I think I have been averaging about $10 per 2500 views, so its something but not worth it if you're just looking at a revenue source. I enjoy making the vids and the community interaction.

 

[Ashish Patel]

I feel ya! the first 1,000 was daunting, then you have to make sure you have 4,000 hours of watch time. Once you get there, it will go up a little fast each time you post something. I went from a couple hundred to 2,300 in about a year. Edit: also don't expect to earn much. I think I have been averaging about $10 per 2500 views, so its something but not worth it if you're just looking at a revenue source. I enjoy making the vids and the community interaction.

Thanks I've hit the 4000 watch hours. Once I get monetized i am going to focus on a different channel that has a greater audience. Talking about scandals or trending topics has more chance of making money. But I learned alot in few months so transition should be easier. Reefing videos are time consuming. My next one is 30 mins and kinda burned out

 

[Ashish Patel]

Great video! Beautiful reef! Btw, I subbed to the channel.

Are those last shots the reef as it is today? Any chance we could see a recent FTS?

I have some aiptasia issues going on and it's really upsetting so most of the videos are old. Nitrates and phosphates are finally under control so gonna take videos of the mess soon and hopefully have a happy ending lol

 

[Reign1]

I have some aiptasia issues going on and it's really upsetting so most of the videos are old. Nitrates and phosphates are finally under control so gonna take videos of the mess soon and hopefully have a happy ending lol

Keep it up man .. lots of work but I like your channel.

 

[Ashish Patel]

Keep it up man .. lots of work but I like your channel.

Thanks alot,, I really appreciate that

 

[Ashish Patel]

Ok so need 300 more subscribers to get monetized. i only get a few subscribers per day and its kind of frustrating since I got 21K views on one video and only 150 subscribers.. Once I have a budget I know I can produce better content but getting there without being monetized is mentally draining task.