- Joined
- Jun 7, 2016
- Messages
- 3,259
- Reaction score
- 5,449
- Location
- Lathrop, CA
- What state or country do you live in
- California
Greetings, fellow reefers!
After spending the better part of 25 years SCUBA diving, I decided that it was time that I brought a bit of the ocean into my home. Ever since I started diving, I've wanted to own a reef tank so that I could spend more than an hour at a time looking at the wonder that is the ocean. I've finally reached the point where we (my wife and I) have the resources to devote to a tank that will - hopefully - meet (dare I hope - exceed?) my expectations.
I must admit, the purchase of the tank wasn't all that well thought out. Went into the LFS and started talking to their staff about what they had on hand. After several rounds of, "Well, if you want bigger, then...", the recommendations settled out on the Red Sea Reefer 525XL. It was sold as a "ready to go" system ("just add a pump and some lights"). Ahem. No. But that's okay; I love the tank and it fits great in our home as a central piece of our main living space.
In addition to the tank and sump with a Rio pump, I've set up three XR15's for lighting, two Hydor Koralia 3G pumps, a BubbleMagus Curve 7 skimmer, and two Finnex heaters to round out the "gear". That, plus the live sand, rocks, a bucket of salt, and a test kit started us off. When we got everything home, we put the stand together (easy), set it all up, mixed up the salt to 1.025 (I've been a brewer for years, so SG is nothing new) and filled the tank. Off we went!
It was about this time - when the sediment was so thick we couldn't see our rocks - that I began to think to myself, "Hm. I should likely do some research on what happens next..."
So now, three weeks later, we've added an RO/DI system to our garage (our water is horrible with chloramines, it turns out) and I've picked up an alkalinity tester, as well as adding four Marinepure plates to the sump. I also drained the tank and sump, cleaned it all out, reorganized the rocks ("aquascaping" wasn't even a term I'd heard about the first time), and then re-filled it; this time with RO/DI water - again mixed to 1.025 (at least I got that right). I picked up three of the Red Sea Reef Mature Pro Kits and re-programed my lights to be lower intensity and shorter run-time. I also modded the return port to have two Loc-line returns to keep the sand in the front of the tank from being blown to the back.
So now we're on day 5 of the tank reboot. I love this hobby already, and the only thing we have growing so far is some brown algae...
After spending the better part of 25 years SCUBA diving, I decided that it was time that I brought a bit of the ocean into my home. Ever since I started diving, I've wanted to own a reef tank so that I could spend more than an hour at a time looking at the wonder that is the ocean. I've finally reached the point where we (my wife and I) have the resources to devote to a tank that will - hopefully - meet (dare I hope - exceed?) my expectations.
I must admit, the purchase of the tank wasn't all that well thought out. Went into the LFS and started talking to their staff about what they had on hand. After several rounds of, "Well, if you want bigger, then...", the recommendations settled out on the Red Sea Reefer 525XL. It was sold as a "ready to go" system ("just add a pump and some lights"). Ahem. No. But that's okay; I love the tank and it fits great in our home as a central piece of our main living space.
In addition to the tank and sump with a Rio pump, I've set up three XR15's for lighting, two Hydor Koralia 3G pumps, a BubbleMagus Curve 7 skimmer, and two Finnex heaters to round out the "gear". That, plus the live sand, rocks, a bucket of salt, and a test kit started us off. When we got everything home, we put the stand together (easy), set it all up, mixed up the salt to 1.025 (I've been a brewer for years, so SG is nothing new) and filled the tank. Off we went!
It was about this time - when the sediment was so thick we couldn't see our rocks - that I began to think to myself, "Hm. I should likely do some research on what happens next..."
So now, three weeks later, we've added an RO/DI system to our garage (our water is horrible with chloramines, it turns out) and I've picked up an alkalinity tester, as well as adding four Marinepure plates to the sump. I also drained the tank and sump, cleaned it all out, reorganized the rocks ("aquascaping" wasn't even a term I'd heard about the first time), and then re-filled it; this time with RO/DI water - again mixed to 1.025 (at least I got that right). I picked up three of the Red Sea Reef Mature Pro Kits and re-programed my lights to be lower intensity and shorter run-time. I also modded the return port to have two Loc-line returns to keep the sand in the front of the tank from being blown to the back.
So now we're on day 5 of the tank reboot. I love this hobby already, and the only thing we have growing so far is some brown algae...
