Princess Hockey's Red Sea Max S-400

[Princess Hockey]

Howdy from Texas! Figured I'd start a thread to keep track of my progress. I

This is my second saltwater tank and the first one I've owned with a sump, so I enlisted my LFS to help set up my tank in my office. Sumps have always terrified me, so I decided to go with the Red Sea Max S-400 so that I didn't overwhelm myself. I figure I will make changes along the way as I learn what I need! For reference, it's a 97 gallon display with 13 gallon sump, so total 110 gallon system.

We had a few bumps in the install process, the guys were a little new and forgot to put the foam cradle under my return pump...so the first night was quite noisy.



I was getting crazy gurgly noises too, and learned that my return pump also didn't have a downspout on it...which is why the install guys didn't leave the foam cradle since it was lifting the pump up too high. A bit of googling and they sent the technician back to my house to fix both issues! I'm including all this since someone else may have these issues down the line


My initial live rock layout looked like it was giving you the finger...


So I took EVERY rock out, laid it out on some cardboard on the floor, began to hate life when I couldn't get it back in the tank looking like the way I had it laid out and then the water got so cloudy I couldn't see what I was doing.



But after waiting for the "dust to settle" and moving things around the next day, ended up quite happy with my final result.



Added a square of eggcrate to the back of the tank that can be easily removed to get to the water valve, but noticeably helps with the noise.

At my LFS recommendations, did 7 days of bacteria dosing with Seed by AquaVitro. Saw brittle stars, strawberry anemones, feather worms, chitons, and a few other hitchhikers early on in my cycle.

Learned that my ATO wasn't hooked up, had LFS technician come back to hook that up.

Purchases: Red Sea test kits, salinity refractometer, Prime, julian's thing, long gloves that go up to my arm, turkey baster, small pump for easily filling my ATO without lifting jugs so high, extendable fish net, magnetic cleaning tool, algae scraper tool, ammonia alert, digital thermometer, RO/DI unit, red sea coral pro salt, macro lens for my camera, shelving for my cabinet to store a fraction of the aforementioned stuff... going to have to eat a lot of ramen to afford this hobby

Will add my livestock additions in my next post...

 

[Princess Hockey]

Cycling was quick, or at least I hope it was. I had some questions about whether or not it was cycled and got advice here that I had skip cycle live rock, and that my tank was showing signs that it was cycled. My LFS tested my water and confirmed the results I had, and told me I could add livestock, so naturally I did!



Started with a small clean up crew, 5 turbo snails, 5 nassarius snails (love these things), and 10 hermit crabs. 1 turbo didn't make it home and was being eaten by everyone else in the bag by the time we got home, boo. LFS overcharged me for an ocellaris ($25?) who immediately hid in my tank. Didn't quarantine. Bad Princess Hockey, bad!





Within 24 hours, all my reading told me I should have gotten 2 clowns from the same tank to start with, so I went back to the LFS and got a small one from the same tank I'd gotten my first. Manager gave me a small discount after my hubs joked about my dead snail, and magically this clown was the standard $18. Also not quarantined, I figured whatever he had....my other clown would have as well.

They spent 5 minutes on opposite sides of the tank, and then have been inseparable ever since! The smaller one is pretty food aggressive and already has started taking food right from my fingers...they learned FAST about where the food comes from! Constantly in my face if I come up to the tank and it's feedin' time.

Explored some of the other LFS in the area, having had sooo many various issues with the one that set up my tank. I guess I didn't mention in the other post that they backed their truck up into my HOUSE the day they delivered... thankfully our stucco guy repaired it at no cost to us, but LFS sai they would pay for damages. They lucked out on that one. So far they've: hit my house, forgot to set up ATO, forgot to install downspout on return pump, forgot foam cradle for return pump, and today I discovered they didn't install the skimmer properly.

I've been running my skimmer since the day I added livestock, and Red Sea's skimmer is LOUD as all getup. I've read that it's overkill for the size system I have and recommended that I consider swapping it out. Anyways, 7 days after running it still hasn't made any bubbles..I'd read there was a 1-3 day break in period but clearly something was up. Nearly came here posting my woes today but thankfully remembered they'd left the install manual and walked through it step by step. Turned the water level lever the direction it told me to which overfilled the collection cup, so I immediately had to learn how to remove that (which I was going to have to learn eventually anyways at least) and discovered a random unconnected tube inside. Turns out they'd not hooked up the airline tubing so of course the skimmer wasn't making bubbles. Ugh. After fighting with it a bit, not the easiest thing to attach when it's wet and dark and you don't know what you're doing. Managed to get it hooked up, filled my tank with a zillion microbubbles, and now we're skimming away. Will probably have to adjust the water level a couple times...just happy its doing what its supposed to be doing! Had I not had a small tank in the past, I would not have had any idea that the skimmer wasn't doing what it was supposed to be doing.

Clowns love to get in my face when I'm trying to take photos of anything. Particularly the little guy....he seems super aggressive about being fed. I've been assuming that the larger one will be the female, she is a little more chill and follows the smaller one around EVERYWHERE. The smaller one will sometimes lead the way, and swim where he wants to go and the female plods along behind. They both seem obsessed with my magnetic cleaner and will hang out whichever side of the tank it is on.


Experienced my first moment of panic on night ~7 of having the pair. Came home late after dinner and observed them both vertically swimming in the corner of the tank...slowly, bumping into each other on occasion, was convinced they were both dead. Turns out they just sleep like idiots.

Anyways, bought some frogspawn because I was about to burst without having any coral to look at. I plan on having lots of frogspawn...love the stuff. Got a big frag of it after testing all my other parameters and having good numbers across the board. (Magnesium was high, but I read that was ok if the other numbers were in line). Bought some mysis shrimp to spot feed it and hope it encourages growth. Came home with mysis shrimp and random zoa frag, because that's how these things go. Dipped. Tons of critters were on the zoa frag. TONS. Dipped again.





Put the zoas in the sandbed, they were much brighter in color at the store. All their zoa frags were $25 and this one had a ton of heads and was a pretty neon orange color. I guess they were just much closer to their lights and they had bluer lights on. Wondering now how to determine what color lights to have on...and if things would look nicer in my tank if I cranked the blues up (or if that's a bad idea for overall health). Trying to figure out which rock would be a good place to start a zoa garden.



Here's where we are today! Zoas in bottom left corner where I can keep an eye on them. Frogspawn I plan to move to the rocks on the left. I read they like to sting other non-frogspawn so I figure I'll make that smaller island frogspawn heaven and keep other stuff on the big side.

Trying to come up with a fish stocking plan now. Hope to have a yellow tang and a starry blenny, but right now I need to wait til my QT tank is set up before I add anyone else. Amazon has been busy delivering all the parts for it and I just filled it today. I think I need to order a lid for my tank so I can add a sixline wrasse.

That's all for now. Going to contact a coral seller near me who talked to me about putting together a starter pack of easy stuff!

 

[Princess Hockey]

Forgot to mention, we're going through brown diatoms right now, not sure if visible in the photo below, but the rocks have gone from white to light brown. I also spot hunted 2 aptasia with lemon juice today.



Now that the skimmer is skimming, already seeing less floating particulates in the water.

 

[PanchoG]

LOL... clowns are not exactly smart, they are brave or idiots depending how you want to see them [emoji16].

 

[Princess Hockey]

LFS didn't have what I wanted this week, waiting for them to get some starry blennies in. Ended up getting some more frogspawn though! I'm obsessed with the stuff, I look forward to when I have my entire left rock covered in different types of it.

Brown algae is pretty much a thing of the past. Ever since I got the skimmer working and added the extra hermit crabs, things really cleared up quickly.



Also added some xenia. My plan was not to get xenia, it was to get a blenny or a dottyback and my LFS did not have any that I wanted. My QT is ready, moved my filter media over and added a wavemaker but I didn't like the colors on the dottyback my LFS had. They did have some nice looking lawmower blennies but I have my heart set on a starry blenny, which they said they are getting 2 in tomorrow.


I am wondering if I have my skimmer tuned correctly. What do you guys think? Do I need to raise the water level or add more air? Collection cup doesn't have much of anything in it.

 

[PanchoG]

Hello, good to see the progress, it seems to me your skimmer is working to humid, you can tune it to generate larger dryer skimming. During the first weeks this can be a bit difficult as the tank completes its cicle and the skimmer settles down.

About the Xenia, I recommend you to keep it isolated in a single rock to avoid as it spreads fast.

 

[Princess Hockey]

Yeah, I've been warned of xenia taking over! I had it on my tonga rock since that one is easy to remove if I need to cut some off, but they weren't pulsing, so I moved them down to the sandbed for now to see if I can't get them pulsing. My LFS had a huge bush of them pulsing away which I just found completely beautiful and had to have some! I don't care if they're beginner corals...some of the best looking stuff (to me) is labelled beginner and that's alright by me

Had 2 turbo snails die today, I'm thinking from lack of food since all my water parameters appear to be fine. Going to get some algae wafers and see if that helps the remaining 2 out. There's some yellow/green coloring to a few of my rocks that I thought was algae growing, not sure. Found the 2 flipped over with hermit crabs taking care of the rest. Only had 4 in there to start with.

 

[PanchoG]

If you like the Xenia, got it, similar to me, I like the Green Star Polyp coral, its green and movement is pretty to me but it can takeover the tank if it is not isolated. Good to know you took the precautions to isolate the Xenia.

Regarding the turbo snails, unfortunately they are been hunted by the hermit crabs. The crabs look for their shells and kill them, it is very common. After a couple of years of having to replenish my turbos I finally banned the hermits from my display tank.

 

[ndrwater]

Welcome to R2R!! Looks like you have made a great start!! Love the pics too!! Keep em coming..

 

[Princess Hockey]

One of those thought-to-be-dead turbos decided it was alive after all

New inhabitant in my quarantine tank! A very skittish Royal Gramma is the first to head into QT. I was actually headed in looking for a starry blenny, but all 3 of my LFS were out, so I ended up with the next planned guy on the list, a royal gramma. He does not seem remotely interested in the PVC tubes that I put in the tank for him to hide in, and instead insists upon trying to squeeze himself under them. Gets super annoyed when we turn the bathroom light on (QT is set up in an unused bathroom).



Here is my QT set-up currently:


It's a 20 gallon tank (Dollar per gallon sale at Pet Supplies Plus last week), Aqueon HOB filter, removed the carbon and put the other filter media in my main tank's sump for a week. Heater, LED lighting, lid, PVC tubes, ammonia alert, thermometer. Some freshly mixed water, some water from my tank.

Also picked up some GSP since I love the stuff. I guess I got two different colorations because one is much more of a lime color than the other.

The above one is the typical stuff you see everywhere. Got a big chunk of it and put it on a little island in my sandbed.


This piece was much smaller and the tips are a minty green color. Flesh is a lighter pink, mouths are still white though.





This is where we are today. Also made some skimmer adjustments and raised the water level a bit further. I think the bubbles are high enough up now for proper skimming?



This may be a question for the newbie forum, but I'm struggling to understand my Red Sea nitrate test results. Rather, I consistently get "less than 2" nitrates from the test, and when I enter "1" into my Aquarimate app, it isn't happy. The app wants my nitrates to be less than 0.2ppm for it to consider that "good" but my Red Sea test doesn't go to numbers that low. Perhaps my Aquarimate app is just set up incorrectly because I believe having 1-2ppm nitrates is okay.


Anyways, happy reefing everyone!

 

[Princess Hockey]

Sadly the Royal Gramma did not survive his time in quarantine. Made it just beyond the LFS warranty period of course. Not sure what went wrong, didn't observe anything visible on the body. He was extremely skittish and terrified whenever anyone would enter the room and turn the light on. Wouldn't take food, although some food that was left at the bottom of the tank eventually disappeared (filter maybe, or he ate it later, not sure).

I wasn't treating for anything...seemed to be two schools of thought on here about that, treat everyone or treat as needed. If it WAS a disease, I assume my QT tank is now a carrier, so now I need to research what to do there.

 

[PanchoG]

Sadly the Royal Gramma did not survive his time in quarantine. Made it just beyond the LFS warranty period of course. Not sure what went wrong, didn't observe anything visible on the body. He was extremely skittish and terrified whenever anyone would enter the room and turn the light on. Wouldn't take food, although some food that was left at the bottom of the tank eventually disappeared (filter maybe, or he ate it later, not sure).

I wasn't treating for anything...seemed to be two schools of thought on here about that, treat everyone or treat as needed. If it WAS a disease, I assume my QT tank is now a carrier, so now I need to research what to do there.

Unfortunately some fishes are traumatized or poisoned during capture and they are already declining when we buy them. In the outside we cannot distinguish it.

 

[Princess Hockey]

Unfortunately some fishes are traumatized or poisoned during capture and they are already declining when we buy them. In the outside we cannot distinguish it.

The part I'm worried about...since I don't know if was a disease or not, I'm not sure if my QT tank now is a carrier of something. Maybe I should just pre-emptively treat the next fish that goes in it?

 

[OffTopic]

I love your scape! Great job with the tank, I cannot wait to see it mature

 

[dantimdad]

Looking good!

I always empty, sterilize and start the QT over again after a round or lose a fish.

I make sure to either cycle a new filter pad in the current sump or dose with bacteria before a fish goes in the QT again.

I don't think I ever treated a QT tank with medicine except a powder blue that, as always, developed ich.

 

[cromag27 Verified Sponsor]

nice tank. more importantly, are you a dallas stars fan?

 

[Princess Hockey]

nice tank. more importantly, are you a dallas stars fan?

Watched one of their practices the other day, got to play on the ice after they were done! They've had a pretty decent start to the season! Some good new blood on the team.


Time for a tank update! Last time I posted was about my Royal Gramma that didn't make it through QT. Since then, I ordered a few fish from LiveAquaria, first time buying fish online, so that was fun! They had a large foxface on sale so I got him, then added a few more things to my cart to get free shipping. So my package contained a Foxface Lo, a Yellow Clown Goby, and another Royal Gramma, along with a toadstool leather coral. Dipped the coral and put him into the tank, haven't found a great spot for him yet...he's attached to some weird shaped small rocks that has made my life difficult in terms of placement.

Foxface, Gramma, and Goby went into QT. Royal Gramma died maybe 16 hours later. I guess I'm just not meant to have a Royal Gramma. LiveAquaria refunded my money immediately for him, so I have no complaints about them. When I was acclimating, I was in a bit of a rush, so they only got about 30 minutes drip time. The pH of the bag the foxface was in, was 7.4 so I was worried about him the most. The goby and gramma had pH's much closer to their destination tank.

Having never ordered fish online, getting this out of the box was a little bit of a thrill, I immediately had to show it to my husband:



This was the required proof for my refund of my Royal Gramma, thought it was kind of weird his mouth was locked open upon death:


The Foxface was much bigger than I was expecting! Had to go get a larger piece of PVC for him to hang out in. Noticed he had kind of a scar looking mark on his left side. I wish I could say that was his only blemish, but things haven't gone super smoothly for him since joining me.



So he seemed to be doing terribly in QT. I was super worried. Initially he wasn't nearly the scared fish that every other fish has been. Didn't seem to care about the drip acclimation, didn't care when the net was in the tank, didn't care at about a thing. But by day 3, he still was refusing to eat everything offered, and was swimming frantically back and forth. I got a little concerned about my QT tank size for him (20g high, not long). So on day 5 with no improvements, I jumped the gun and added him to my display.

Well, first, he jumped out of my net and landed on the bathroom floor. Ok not true, he flopped into an empty bucket that I keep under my tank and I tried to pour him into the transfer container but I missed and THEN he ended up on the tile floor. Being afraid of his stingers, I was trying to get him back into the net and doing a terrible job of it, didn't have my gloves nearby. Started yelling for my husband to help me while foxface flopped on the floor a bit. After maybe 30 seconds, managed to get him to flop back into the net and into the container. So basically I stressed the everliving heck out of this poor fish. Got him into the display tank and noticed he had some new marks on his side...dark dots and scratches, I would describe them. Marks he must have gotten from either the bucket or the floor. Great.

SINCE then, he has done wonderfully in my tank. He is an absolute PIG to the point where I'm worried about the other fish getting enough food. I got one of those magnet clips for nori and my blenny also likes to eat the nori off the clip. Foxface also eats my sinking pellets that I feed my clowns. Even seems to eat some mysis on occasion. Basically puts everything in his mouth, like a toddler. Worried that I'm overfeeding but he always acts so frantic when its feeding time, seemingly desperate for more. Actually I KNOW I'm overfeeding because I had another round of brown algae bloom this week after finally getting that under control. Ugh.



This was the last we ever saw of the clown goby. Hung out like he was the king of the world at the top of the tank. I don't think I researched him well enough, didn't realize how ridiculously tiny he was. We spotted him on day 2 of being in the display tank, hiding under a rock, but never saw him again. He seemed to be doing fine in QT, moved him at the same time as the foxface under the logic "well, if I've got disease in this tank, it went into the display with my foxface" so he went in. This was 8 days ago, haven't seen him in 7 days. Checked the sump and overflow and never found a body, so I have no idea where he went.


Did I ever mention anything on this thread about my Starry Blenny? He is my FAVORITE fish!





SOO much personality and so much fun to watch. My husband was not impressed when I bought him at the store "He's kinda brown and boring" I believe were the words, but now he's super bold and loves to come swimming up to the surface at feeding time for flakes.


Corals are going okay. I've taken a breather from adding stuff, trying to let everything get situated. Here's what I've got:

• Large wall frogspawn colony - My biggest coral but it was purchased this size.

• 2 headed torch coral - I think one of the heads is splitting, excited about this one.

• 2 heads of hammer - I'm not sure they're doing great. I think I was bleaching them with too much light so I've re-positioned the thing like 5 times, it doesn't seem as fluffy as it used to be.

Here's those three:

• 2 heads of purple tip frogspawn - My first purchase. Later learned how to determine what a healthy frogspawn looks like, and learned that it was definitely NOT healthy when I got it. No pink flesh at the base of the head, although I'd say it's gotten about 1mm of pink flesh growth at the base so maybe I'm bringing it back to health.

Here's a before/after, I think it looks healthier based on what I learned about the pink fleshy part at the base?

• Medium pulsing xenia colony - No visible growth on this one yet, despite everyone calling it a weed.
• 3 pieces of GSP, various sizes and 2 color varieties. No visible growth on any of these yet. I isolated one on and island and then stuck the other two wherever. I have PLENTY of rock to cover, so I'd rather have some overgrowth than a naked tank forever!
• 3 ricordea mushrooms. I think 2 are florida and 1 is yuma. One doesn't look so great, so I moved it to a more shaded area and I think its recovering.
• Some clove polyps - Small frag although this one is having the most noticeable growth of any coral in my tank. About a 2cm long arm has appeared off to the side, trying to grab on to the rock and 2 new polyps have formed on it. Not the prettiest color thing unless its under blue lights only. And today's picture..it looks all crappy....

• War coral
• 2 favia corals, one that is neon green and purple, love it. Ordered it from AquaSD and it is a great pop of color in my tank.
• 2 Acan corals, one is bright red and one is "swamp" color. The red, obviously my favorite.
• Toadstool - My hermit crabs favorite coral to knock over. I've picked this thing up so many times off of the sand. I hate where it is right now but it's the only place I can wedge it into place for now.

• 7 varieties of zoas. My single polyp White Zombie zoa now has 4 polyps, so I've seen the most growth there by far. Utter chaos ones are pretty in color, finally staying open most of the time now. I think I love my Dragon Eyes zoas the best, just the prettiest color green and I think they're the first to start growing off their frag plate onto rock. I've had the WORST luck with my watermelon zoas. Can't get the dang things to stay open. I've swapped placements with happy zoas to no avail. Put them back onto the sand. Nothing works. Finally just stuck them in a spot and left them alone, maybe 1/3 of the polyps are barely open...not sure what the deal. Worst purchase has to go to the "Aussie Pink" zoas, also from AquaSD. Very, very ugly zoas. They're curled all the time instead of fully open? Color is very boring. I'm actually about to go open up the photo from the website to see if mine look remotely like the picture I bought, perhaps there is something wrong with them.

Here's a smattering of pictures of my zoas:
(These are the ones I think are super ugly and they're "curled" up at the edges all the time)
Feather worms have decided to live in this no-name colony of zoas I bought.
These are probably my favorites, Dragon Eyes. Always open with long pretty eyelashes.



Okay I'll finish this long post up with a full tank shot, sorry about the brown algae bloom and then a question.



Okay...now for my question, what is this purple hair stuff? It's growing only on one of my rocks.






I've had cyano before in an old tank, it doesn't look anything like that to me. It's very hairlike, not slimey. No bubbles on it. It's very high in my tank, on a rock that I believe is covered in coral skeleton. High light and flow area.

 

[Princess Hockey]

Found the original photo of those zoas. I mean most of it is probably lighting, but I've never once seen these zoas lay flat like all the other ones. All my zoas are in the same place in my tank, and I've shuffled them all around so many times (in part because someone keeps knocking **** over) that it can't be a simple flow/light issue. It's a picky-picky-princess-zoa issue.



I do think it was a WYSIWYG, but I'm sure they were like $5, I bought during a 40% off sale so I don't mind. In all of this coral buying business, I've determined that I really have to buy the neon colors because everything looks so much more muted in my tank.

Also I have another question, why are my Utter Chaos zoas so dang tall? Seems like in the past week, the stems of the polyps have stretched way up, so the zoas themselves are all spaced out now.


I'm going to call them giraffe zoas from now on.

I don't have a good before photo, this is as close as I've got, but you can see they're all clustered together and low on the frag disk, like all my other zoas.

 

[Princess Hockey]

Oh and I should add my water parameters as of this morning:

Temperature: 74.7 - See note below.
pH: 8.1 - Steady between 8.0 and 8.1 for the past month.
Salinity: 1.025 - Steady
Magnesium: 1600 - Has always been high since I started testing this.
Alkalinity: 8.8 - Was low 6's until about a month ago, got some advice from my local coral seller. Purchased the 2 part dosing stuff but after 2 doses, its been high and steady, so maybe I overpurchased? Haven't had to dose anything but the sodium ash yet. (BRS)/
Calcium: 440 - Steady
Phosphate: 0.1 - Steady
Nitrate: 0 - Steady, haven't had nitrates since the first week or 2 the tank existed. Which is confusing because I swear I've been over feeding this week and the brown algae seems to agree with me.
Ammonia: 0 - Was checking to see if the clown goby would register here, but I guess the water volume is too high for that. Or maybe he's still alive... =P

Texas hit a bit of a cold streak this week, woke up one morning and the temperature in the tank had dropped from a steady 76 down to 72. Purchased 2 Eheim Jager heaters, I think I got two 150W? Now I've completely forgotten. Both installed in the sump. Set to 77 but they seem to be holding the tank close to 75, so I guess I should turn them up a little. I bought 2 in case one fails, plus my sump isn't very big so I wasn't sure if I could fit the next size up in there.

 

[Princess Hockey]

Still tweaking the settings on my heaters, setting them at 77 was keeping me mid 74 temp range. I've cranked them up to 79 and re positioned them slightly, and we're up to 76.4 now, so that's good.

Everything looks the same today as it did, I started a separate thread asking for some advice. Jury is out on whether its diatoms or dinos or just some new tank uglies. My clove polyps still seem to be semi-*****, same with the xenia. Decided to go to my LFS today to get some snails. Ended up with an urchin (pincushion) to work on the red hair algae, and a conch to get some sand sifting. I've wanted an urchin for awhile and the guy thought a conch would be a better option than just throwing more snails at the algae.

Also since they had royal grammas for $20, decided to give that species a THIRD try. Picked the biggest fattest looking one they had (they had a LOT).