My first tank: Red Sea Reefer 170!

[Lowlandreef]

Just keep doing what you are doing and maybe do a few more tests to see if the levels continue to decrease. Don’t do anything drastic. The lower parameters are still fine. Continue and keep close track. It might be time to start thinking about how you want to eventually deal with dosing if there is ever a need.

Yeah I figured my parameters were still fine indeed. I've heard you need to try to keep the same parameters of the salt mix, I'm a bit of if that's the case. I will do a few more tests the coming days and if the consumption is a lot higher now, I will look into dosing. If not, I will do some waterchanges to raise the parameters a bit. Thanks for the advice!

 

[Lowlandreef]

I just tested my water again (exactly 24 hours later), to make sure there isn't any crazy consumption going on all of a sudden. My tests were almost identical to yesterdays. So I will do another test in a few days, but I don't think it's anything serious. Will just do a little more water changes the coming weeks to get the parameters up again, and everything will be as usual again

 

[jk_s124]

Good to hear! Hopefully everything balances out and stabilizes.

 

[Lowlandreef]

Small update on the waterparameters.

I did a 37.5% waterchange today and all parameters have improved a lot.
For instance, my dKH went up from 8 to 9.6. I used to have it around 11, so another water change next week will fix that. Next week I'm gonna try to test a bit more as well to get a better understanding what the tank consumes daily. If I think it's necessary, I'll start dosing. For now I think my tank consumes around 0,1 dKH daily. Usually I try to do a waterchange every 2 weeks, so it might be worth it to start dosing to keep the tank more stable.

 

[code4]

I see a larger tank in your future. ;Cat

 

[Lowlandreef]

I see a larger tank in your future. ;Cat

I see it too hahaha
Hopefully I can work something out in the near future.
To be continued...

 

[Lowlandreef]

Haven't posted in a while since I'm pretty busy finishing my college year. So I figured to put in a small update, to keep this thread going. I was having a hard time feeding my sun coral because my fish and cleaner shrimp would steal the food. So I tried the well known bottle technique. The trick every NPS owner needs to know.

As you can see in the pictures it worked really well. Happy coral, happy me!
Besides this I'm still planning to keep a mandarin dragonet. I've spotted a lot of copepods already so that's already a good starting point. However I'm still having some issues with my refugium, so I want that to be stable first. I will continue to seed pods over the coming weeks. I want to make sure I have a healthy population in my refugium as well.

 

[jk_s124]

Looks good adriaen! Glad to hear things are going well.

 

[154162]

Awesome tank bud! Following

 

[Lowlandreef]

Awesome tank bud! Following

Thanks a lot!

 

[Lowlandreef]

Sooo I'm really bad on posting updates so there will be a few coming haha.
I came home from holiday a few days ago and there's a heatwave over here in the Netherlands. Normally my house doesn't get very hot since we have screens that keep most of the heat out. Unfortunately they were open when I was on holiday, so my house got very hot. The tank was 84 degrees F (29 C) so that stressed me a little bit since I normally keep it at 77 degrees F (25 C). Everything in the tank seemed fine, so I was very happy about that. Nevertheless I wanted to bring the temperature down a bit. First I tried to cool it with frozen bottles of water in the sump. This only brought it down to 82 degrees F (28 C), and after 30 mins it would get back to 84 degrees F...
So today I decided to buy some cheap tank fans to help get it down.
I got the hobby aqua cooler v2, and I love it already! It's very easy to install and is pretty quiet. My tank temperature is now around 80 degrees F (26.5 C), which is pretty okay I think

 

[jk_s124]

Everything looks great still from what I can see in that picture! The cooling fans sound like they were a great solution.

 

[Lowlandreef]

Everything looks great still from what I can see in that picture! The cooling fans sound like they were a great solution.

Yeah everything is pulling through fine I think. My sps frag is having a hard time but I will come back to that later, since that has a little story around it

 

[Lowlandreef]

College is starting again next week, so I figured this was a good time to visit my LFS for some new additions

Bangai Cardinal

Acan & Mushroom

 

[Lowlandreef]

For a pretty long time I feel like I was only doing waterchanges to replenish elements and not for nutrient export. For the longest time I have undetectable phosphates and nitrates and even my chaeto died because of it. There was also so little algae in the tank my snails were dying! So I have been experimenting for the last couple of weeks with my tank to stop doing water changes and dosing Tropic Marin All-For-Reef. I've read a few threads on here lately of more people not feeling the need of doing water changes, so I figured let's give it a try.

The first few things I noticed is that little bits of algae started growing in my tank again. My snails are doing much better and even started to reproduce again. The algae is also making my bicolor blenny to thrive better, because he can snack again. I clearly see how much more active he became last weeks.

To replenish elements I did needed to dose obviously. I didn't have a dosing pump, so I was doing it manually every few days or so. I haven't seen much difference in my corals, but that's probably due to the lack of stable elements. I wanted to wait with buying a dosing pump to see how things went first.
So here comes the exciting part!
On instagram @the_reef_junkie was doing a giveaway with @grotech_official. I joined it and won the TEC 1 NG dosing pump by Grotech! It came in the mail today so I'm about to set it up and move up my reefing game.

I'm very busy with college last weeks, so I'm a bit behind on testing my water parameters. I'm gonna test everything again very soon and set up the dosing pump. If my nutrients are finally a bit elevated I can also restart my refugium again and buy some chaeto. #roadtoselfsustainingreef

 

[Lowlandreef]

Oops haven't posted in a while...
I'm very busy with my study this semester. I want to do an internship in Asia (preferably Indonesia), but in order to do so I need to keep my grades up and pass some very hard classes. So that's obviously my main focus at the moment. Over here in the Netherlands we have a new kind of lockdown, so that doesn't make things easier as well. For so far my excuses of not posting.

Reef is doing well! My last waterchange was back in July, so already 3 months ago. I saw some dino's in the sand around that time and decided it was better to try to raise nutrients. This worked well and haven't seen them again. I might have mentioned it before, but for some reason I can never detect nitrates/phosphates when I test my water. The last time I detected them, was during the cycle of my tank. The only way for me to tell how my nutrients are is by looking at the corals and for algae in the tank. As soon as algae started growing again I new my nutrients were getting up. So I added some new chaeto and the refugium is back. Chaeto is growing well and I have no algae problems. So basically everything is very stable. Happy tank, happy me!

I still have been dosing manually because I wasn't able to set up the dosing pump yet. My Alk consumption is around 0.2 dkh a day, so manually dosing is fine for now. I will setup the dosing pump when I have time, but I have to do some cable management first and make room in my tank cabinet to put the dosing pump.

For so far this tank... I've been planning for a new tank which I'm already pretty excited about. I'm one of those guys who get's more excited about fish, so that's the main reason I want a new tank. I'm pretty sure I will be going for the Waterbox AIO 65.4. I like the AIO because I want to do a simple tank, and the 4 feet length will make it suitable for a small tang. It will probably be fish only, with maybe a few soft corals and some algae. I like the idea of adding mangroves as well so will try get my hands on a few. However this plan will stay on hold for now, since I might be on an internship on the other side of the world next year.

 

[jk_s124]

Any updates!

 

[Lowlandreef]

Any updates!

Thanks for the reminder!
I haven't been very active lately, but the tank is doing well. Here are some pics I took today:

My neon green caulastrea grew to a pretty nice colony. I bought it as one of my first corals with only 2 heads, now it has around 20! Since it was doing so well I also bought a bicolor and mint caulastrea. Such cool corals
I also added a few rhodactis and acans which are all doing good.

Like I mentioned earlier I basically stopped doing waterchanges since september. I dose alle for reef and have a refugium to keep all parameters in check. One time I had a bit of cyano coming up in the tank. I did a waterchange to syphon it out and turned down my refugium for a while. I also did a korallen-zucht cyano treatment. Luckily everything stabilized in a few weeks.

For a while I'm having a bit of struggles with vermetid snails. I figured it was time to take some action to get the vermetids under control. I had a massive smash vermetid session to kill as many as I could. After that I used coral snow since people seem to have good experience with it. Didn't really notice much difference so I stopped using it. I got a new yellow wrasse (one of my favorite fish), hoping it can help control the vermetids. My previous one ate all of them, but of course this one doesn't at all haha! But since yellow wrasses are so pretty, I don't mind it. Some people say bumble bee snails also eat vermetids, but they are super hard to find in The Netherlands, so I ordered some from Germany. The bumble bee snails are often around vermetids, but I have no evidence they actually eat them. But it's been over a month, and everything seems to be under control.

Since everything is doing well for such a long time, I wanted to try SPS again. So yesterday I got a small red montipora frag (upper right corner in the second photo) and a small motipora undata frag. I have a bad track record with SPS tbh, but it's been a long time so let's hope I will do better this time.

 

[jk_s124]

Thanks for the reminder!
I haven't been very active lately, but the tank is doing well. Here are some pics I took today:

My neon green caulastrea grew to a pretty nice colony. I bought it as one of my first corals with only 2 heads, now it has around 20! Since it was doing so well I also bought a bicolor and mint caulastrea. Such cool corals
I also added a few rhodactis and acans which are all doing good.

Like I mentioned earlier I basically stopped doing waterchanges since september. I dose alle for reef and have a refugium to keep all parameters in check. One time I had a bit of cyano coming up in the tank. I did a waterchange to syphon it out and turned down my refugium for a while. I also did a korallen-zucht cyano treatment. Luckily everything stabilized in a few weeks.

For a while I'm having a bit of struggles with vermetid snails. I figured it was time to take some action to get the vermetids under control. I had a massive smash vermetid session to kill as many as I could. After that I used coral snow since people seem to have good experience with it. Didn't really notice much difference so I stopped using it. I got a new yellow wrasse (one of my favorite fish), hoping it can help control the vermetids. My previous one ate all of them, but of course this one doesn't at all haha! But since yellow wrasses are so pretty, I don't mind it. Some people say bumble bee snails also eat vermetids, but they are super hard to find in The Netherlands, so I ordered some from Germany. The bumble bee snails are often around vermetids, but I have no evidence they actually eat them. But it's been over a month, and everything seems to be under control.

Since everything is doing well for such a long time, I wanted to try SPS again. So yesterday I got a small red montipora frag (upper right corner in the second photo) and a small motipora undata frag. I have a bad track record with SPS tbh, but it's been a long time so let's hope I will do better this time.

Great to here from you Adriaen! Looks like your tank is doing fantastic! Geweldig rif mijn vriend! The montipora is in good hands. I’m sure it will do well. I too love the caulastrea corals. I was recently gifted a green caulastrea and hope it looks like yours soon! Good luck on the vermitids! Unfortunately I don’t have any advice for these. But, the yellow wrasse was a fantastic addition, regardless of his vermitid hunting ability. Happy reefing!

 

[Lowlandreef]

Great to here from you Adriaen! Looks like your tank is doing fantastic! Geweldig rif mijn vriend! The montipora is in good hands. I’m sure it will do well. I too love the caulastrea corals. I was recently gifted a green caulastrea and hope it looks like yours soon! Good luck on the vermitids! Unfortunately I don’t have any advice for these. But, the yellow wrasse was a fantastic addition, regardless of his vermitid hunting ability. Happy reefing!

Yeah I'm very happy how things are going! Your Dutch is impressive, bedankt voor het compliment
Nice addition on the green caulastrea, can't wait to see it develop like your other caulastrea colony!