BK's R2R and BRS guided 150g mixed reef build

[Bradley Keck]

One thing I knew from reading all the threads to help with beginners like myself is to have all my testing. WC's, and equipment use and maintenance down BEFORE I added one single living animal - including live rock. I felt the best time to do that was with my leak test and first salt mixing. By far the most nerve racking moment in this build has been adding water to the tank for the first time. So many things went through my head. Would the Bean Animal work? Would the stand hold? Would the mixing station work as designed? How many leaks would I have and how bad were they going to be? I must say my Wife was equally as nervous...;Nailbiting The mixing station went without a hitch. There was a sense of satisfaction for all the work and time spent to see it work as intended. HWM did not quite reach 1.26 with the recommended 1/2 cup per gallon, so it took a little practice to get right. My first couple of batches actually mixed to 1.024 as I was second guessing everything I was doing for the first time. Again, I reached out to R2R and was reassured that was normal to have to add more than what is listed.
I put off adding the water to the tank for over a week and then decided it was now or never. Much like the salt mixing station, once I started to see the water drain down the full siphon, and then the partial, I was SO excited! The SCA aquariums can be a little tricky as far as where your water line will be, and many on here had commented on how low their water line was. The fix for that with a Bean design is to elevate where you partial siphon starts. This allowed me to have my water line higher than the bottom of the weir. The trade off was the amount of surface skimming that occurs. I took some tinkering with the Varios 6 output and adjusting the Gate valve on the full siphon to get it balanced, but this sucker was quiet once dialed in. I did notice that even with the return maxed out, I had to close the gate quite a bit or my sump level was going to be too high and the water line too low. I did a "lose of power test" to make sure my sump would not over flow and it did not. No leaks and the stand held well Performed all tests three times and literally removed and disassembled the skimmer and return to have a process down. I learned the programming of Gyres, RK lite, and Kessils. Checking off the boxes.

 

[Dj City]

You are doing a fantastic job.
This is going to be a great build.

We will be here for you when / if you need help and / or advice.

Keep up the good work.

 

[Bradley Keck]

Thank You!

 

[Flippers4pups]

Your very much welcome!

 

[Bradley Keck]

My initial numbers were as follows.
Salinity = 1.024
Temp = 78.1
pH = 8.1
Alk = 9.1
Ca = 460
Mg = 1600
Nitrate = 0
Phos = 0.00
This is literally nothing but water in the tank. I did decide to get some polyfilter and put it in the section that divides the refugium from the return section in the trigger sump. I wanted to do this to make sure any residue or anything from the build was cleaned out. Also ran the filter socks. No skimmer, but went ahead and played with Gyres and experimented around. Those things are awesome! The Kessils were everything @Crabs McJones has said they would be. It was his love for these lights that sold me, and I am VERY pleased with them. I had observed an A160 in action on a 24x24x24 cube at an LFS and felt it was too much shimmer. These A 360's absolutely reminded me of what I observed while snorkeling in southwest Florida and the east end of the Cayman's. For what it's worth, if anyone ever gets the chance to go to Grand Cayman and if you like to snorkel, try Barefoot beach on the east end of the island. You literally just pull off to the side of the road, walk down, and swim out about 50-100 yards and boom! Coral reef. Mostly gorgonians and LPS, but out towards the barrier were some Monti's. Anyways, I love the Kessils, and the feeling you get when you light them up for the first time with the Gyres going was awesome and I don't even have anything in there yet! With no leaks, all equipment working(except couldn't really dial in the skimmer), salt mixing down, and testing down, it's time to start thinking about what rock I want to use.

 

[Bradley Keck]

With rock, there are basically two different ways I can go. Either live or dry. I really like the realreef rock and walt smith rock. I also love Pukani. Pukani was sold out at most places I looked including BRS, but it just so happens that I live 30min. north of Premium Aquatics. I checked and they had some pre-cured left. I decided to go for it. I took my wife and two daughters down with me. Dropped them off at the outlet malls that are located about 10 min. from Premium and picked out 88# of precured Pukani. It was almost all of what they had left. There was probably another 80# in there curing tub. They packed it in coolers and back home we went to put the pre-cured in the tank!

 

[Hemmdog]

Very nice build!

 

[Bradley Keck]

Thank You! Three years to get there, but so far, well worth the wait.

 

[Flippers4pups]

Thank You! Three years to get there, but so far, well worth the wait.

Three years is some time, but worth it in the long run. Took me a year of building to get my system wet.

 

[Bradley Keck]

With the Pukani in the tank, now the fun of looking for life on it and aquascaping could begin! Found some brittle stars, a couple of bristle worms, and sponges on it. I left the rock alone for two weeks with no lights and skimmer off. Just to let it cycle. I tested only for nitrite and ammonia. After two weeks I did a 20% WC and took some new numbers:
Salinity = 1.025
Temp = holding steady at 78.1 (AC home in 90deg summer temps - this was good to see and was a sign I hopefully will not need cooling fans or chiller, but no lights on)
pH = 8.02
Alk = 9.5
Phos = .62
Nitrate = 12
Ca = 440
Mg = over 1500
I was happy with all the numbers except the Mg. Did not make any sense to me to be that high. Something to watch for sure. The other thing was the phosphate. I knew I was in for a GHA explosion so I really tried to minimize light and decided to start up the refugium with Chaeto and hopefully get it and some algae growing in the sump rather than the display. I went with Algaebarn for the chaeto and also added their phyto and Pods package too. I only dosed phyto 1x/wk to feed the pods. On to aquascaping! I captured a pic of one of the sponges on the Pukani.

I read through the aquscaping threads here on R2R to no end and looked at all the awesome scapes done by all the members here. The ideas that really stuck with me was the 3/5 rule, the color wheel, negative space, considerations for future coral placement, and just trying to envision how the tank would look in the future. I had read many comments about going through all this trouble to design swim throughs, etc. only to have it all covered up with coral eventually. So, I wanted to make negative spaces that would add some character to the scape and accent the structures. The picture from above was just the start. I knew I wanted two main "islands" in the tank of different sizes, but I wanted them to be connected in shape too. Another thing I could tell right away was I needed more rock. I had researched about anywhere and everywhere you could purchase live rock. One place I kept going back to was a sight in Florida that imports some pacific rock still. There best import rock was a kind called "GMP". This stuff is pricey, but by the pics, it had awesome coralline algae of many different colors and the shapes were very cool. I ordered 40#, but they could only give me 33# and some rubble to add to the refugium. Time to finish the scape!

 

[Bradley Keck]

The GMP was everything I thought it would be. The only thing was it did not blend in well with the Pukani. I must have spent a month arranging all the pieces. I would set it up, look at it for a day, and then adjust again. This went on for almost a month before I finally settled on an arrangement. I did not glue or fix any of the pieces together which made it harder to set up, because I had to make sure it was stable and that the pieces fit tight. I did this so any need to disassemble would be easier in the future. My solution to the two types of rock being in there was to have most of the GMP on top of the Pukani and have the Pukani as a base rock. I then ordered 100# of fiji pink and placed it in and around the bases of the rock where it rested on the bottom. Here are some pics of the final scape with sand from different angles. Sorry for the color, I had no filters yet.

 

[Bradley Keck]

So at this point, I have the scape pretty much done (I tinkered a little more of course), rock cycled, sand in for two weeks, Chaeto going, but not growing at all, pods added, and dosing phyto 1x/wk for all the pineapple sponges and other critters. Took two more parameter checks over the course of two weeks.
Salinity = 1.026 Salinity = 1.025
pH = 8.1 pH = 8.17
Alk = 8.2 Alk = 8.1
Phos = .28 Phos = .36
Nitrate = 8.0 Nitrate = 4.0
Ca = 450 Ca = 470
Mg = 1600 Mg = 1600
At first I was excited that my Phos and nitrates were lowering. That told me that either the phyto and/or the chaeto were consuming them before GHA or something else could take hold, but when my phosphates went back up two weeks later, I wasn't sure that was the case. The other thing was the Mg testing so high. I decided it was time to start thinking of a CUC.

 

[Bradley Keck]

I had been going back and forth about where I wanted to try to keep my phosphates and nitrates at. Did I want to go ULN or what seems to be the "trend" and where a lot of reefers have noticed being preferable even for acro's and that's to have a measurable amount of each, but at the low end. I didn't want to end up with a terrible algae issue and because the tank was new, I decided to get them both to zero for now. I ran out of phyto so did not order more. I started adding a small amount of reef chile in once per week and that was all. My chaeto was not at all growing, but not dying back either. I just was not confident that it was going to get nitrate and phos to zero soon enough to avoid an algae problem. I decided to try Chempure elite and see what that did. to this point, I had not decided on a GFO/carbon reactor so I thought to try passive filtration with the chem pure. After three weeks of running it, my phosphate went from .28 to .26. My nitrates stayed at around 4 which was not bad. I was starting to see a little growth of GHA on my rock, so time for a CUC. I read through many different CUC threads, watched the CUC episode on the BRS 160, and read descriptions of all the different types. I settled on dwarf red hermits. Seemed like they were the most mild mannered and helpful. I only purchased 12 and that seemed to really be more than enough. I then decided to go with trochus snails, but did not want to add them until growth on the glass and back became a problem. Adding my first pet's (I know it sounds silly, but I considered all 12 of these guys my pets) was really fun. I enjoyed watching these guys crawl around everywhere and nibble on stuff. I have been very happy with these guys. I think they are a great scavenger, and have not been at all problematic.
My girls have been collecting shells from summer vacations in southwest Florida for years and had a bunch of shark eyes, murax, and conch's I put in the tank for them so they wouldn't fight for each others shells. It has been really cool to all of sudden one day see a molted shell in the tank and one of girls shells crawling around. Here is a pic I took of one of them. Meet Sheldon!

 

[Bradley Keck]

After two weeks of the hermits doing well, and the chemipure now in for 6 weeks, I checked parameters again:
Salinity = 1.024
pH = 8.25
Alk = 8.0
Phos = .24
Nitrate = 4
Ca = 430
Mg = 1600
Not seeing much drop in Phos, everything else staying fairly steady. The Mg was still bugging me though. I was getting the itch too add something else. Should I go with corals or fish? I had not yet decided whether I was going to quarantine my fish or not, and if so, I did not have a quarantine tank up and running. I decided to pay Premium Aquatics a visit and check out some corals. Yet another exciting moment for me. To know I could now actually buy a coral and take it home was awesome! I debated about what I wanted to start with, but knew I wanted some softies. I really like the toadstool leathers, yumas, and ricordeas. After looking around here is what I settled on:

 

[Bradley Keck]

One shroom, a green polyp toadstool, and neon green trumpet. The mushroom was just Ok, but I sat there and watched the toadstool first retract, and then open back up, looked at the glow of the trumpet from the Kessils, and was just in awe. This was way cooler than I even thought it would be!

 

[Bradley Keck]

I watched my hermits, new corals, and other little reef critters for a week. Everything doing well. It had been three weeks since my last WC, so decided to do 35g change. Next day I checked parameters again.
Salinity = 1.024
pH = 8.24
Alk = 8.1
Phos = .22
nitrate = < .25
Ca = 455
Mg = 1600 ;Shifty

I was not seeing the coralline spread or form anywhere and the glass was starting to need cleaned about once per week. My skimmer had been on since I added the corals and was tuned in pretty good. I also thought I could see what looked like the start of some kind of brown colored algae growing in the middle section where the Pukani did not have any of the pacific rock on top of it. Starting to get a little nervous about an algae attack. I was glad to see my nitrates down, but not happy with the phosphate. I wasn't happy with running the GFO/carbon passively and decided to buy and install a BRS carbon/GFO reactor with the mj pump. I ordered up some ROX 8 and high capacity GFO and got it installed.

Picture of the skimmer going


The carbon/GFO reactor I was able to hang on one of the cross supports right above the return section. I put the pump in the return section as well. Input and output all in the return section.

 

[Bradley Keck]

I used the recommended amount for low bio load on the ROX 8, but only used 1/4 of what was recommended for the GFO. I let everything run for another week and retested again.
Salinity = 1.025
pH = 8.21
Alk = 7.9
Phos = 0.02
Nitrate = 0
Ca = 420
Mag = 1500

My numbers were good and I felt it was time for my first fish. I decided to not go with a quarantine procedure. I debated a lot about this, but in the end, I am just way to busy during the week to keep a quarantine procedure stable. I plan to stock lightly, probably no more than 8-10 fish total. I wanted to try an easier fish for the first time. I decided to order up a midas blenny from Fishy Business aquatics. He was named by my girls, and his name is Boopert.

I also decided to add two more corals. I was seeing more and more hair algae I wanted to start stocking up the corals


Went with an Acan and a red Monti. Glued the Monti directly onto the rock and used putty and super glue to mount the acan plug. Snapped the stem off with set of bone cutters from BRS. Mounting was easier than I thought. took a little practice to handle the glue right and the Tunze coral putty, but works well for most situations.

 

[Bradley Keck]

After two weeks of having the Acan and Monti in, I noticed algae starting to really take off in my tank. Boopert is doing great. Eating and has a place near the top where he likes to hide at night. He loves to swim around, and I think enjoys having this 5ft tank to himself. With my Chaeto not really growing (not dying either), nitrates and phosphates reading 0 consistently, algae starting to grow in the sump and on DT live rock, I paid a visit to premium aquatics, and they just so happened to have a 2in yellow eye kole tang. I was thinking of either a zebrasoma, white tail bristletooth, or yellow eye. I will admit it was a bit of a spontaneous buy, but I went for it. It was very shy in their holding tank and would not come out of the PVC pipe. I acclimated it just as I had the blenny. Getting a tang for the 2nd fish was not my plan. I had planned on one tang only and to add it last as it would be the most aggressive and largest fish in my planned stocking list. But the algae growing on my rock and starting to get around the Monti had me worried. When I released the tang I noticed s bare spot above the right eye, and thought Oh no, I just got a sick tang. I had garlic extract(Kent's), Selcon, Pe mysis, and organic Nori. It would not touch anything for over a week, but it did CONSTANTLY nibble at the live rock and systematically cleared off nearly all the algae! It didn't look too good for the first week and white slimy areas started to devlop along its tail and other side of it's body. I was really worried, but when I fed Boopert, I would always try to get it to eat. It developed a relationship with boopert after about two weeks and would follow him around. Finally after almost three weeks of not eating anything but algae off the rocks, it ate some mysis. I started loading up the mysis with garlic and selcon, added bits of Nori, and before long it was eating well! After about two weeks of eating and using selcon and garlic everyday, all the spots healed and only a small trace of the original spot remain today. My wife thinks it is girl because of the way she acts. She said it not me This one tang has kept all my DT algae under control and was the smartest addition I had made to my tank thus far. Meet Frankie!