MohReef Red Sea XL300

[MohH]

Hi all, i just wanted to do a very short build of my Red Sea Xl300, which started at the end of October 2021. This tank was acquired and setup a bit hastily after the bottom glass of my 36’x36’ cracked…( still dont know why). A bit of my personal opinion on the Red Sea package… its ok for a starter tank, the sump size and configuration is limiting, i had to remove sections to fit a clari-sea roller-mat and the plumbing size and config was not to my liking, also had to make provisions for a VU filter.

 

[MohH]

Since the bulk-heads of Red Sea tanks are sealed in place and i wanted to increase the diameter of the pipes used…i cut all the fittings off the bulk heads, bore the bulkheads a few mm bigger, made some bushings and stuck everything back together( i guess having all the equipment at work helped… lol) now my main drain is 1.25 inch return line is 1 inch and secondary drain is 1 inch.

 

[MohH]

Since i had rocks, sand and water along with the fish and a few surviving frags from my previous tank(that cracked) in my QT system (about 50 gal) i just transferred everything to the Red Sea tank.

 

[MohH]

I started off with two xr15 blue but since the tank is to be an SPS only tank i added a third xr15 shortly after. Flow in the tank is provided by a tunze, one mp40 and two gyres with the return pump being a cor20 running at 55% currently

 

[MohH]

I quickly came to the conclusion that lots of flow and a sand bed is not going to workout… i was blowing sand off from the rock-work daily …and that was with the pumps running less than half capacity, so i vacuumed out all the sand(each time i did a water change i took a little out) now its totally bare bottom

 

[MohH]

The sps frags that survived all the stress of being moved from one tank to another within a short time did not want to start growing… i guess the tank needed time to settle in also(altough rocks etc were from an existing setup) i also added a few new frags, i lost a few of the more delicate ones to stn. Now its at the one year mark the tank seems to be stable and frags r doing better