jhatfield
Active Member
- Joined
- Jan 28, 2016
- Messages
- 227
- Reaction score
- 123
- Location
- Santa Barbara, CA
- What state or country do you live in
- California
First update in a couple years... 43 Gallon Red Sea Reefer still going strong. Mostly easy corals here.
Started with the birdsnest (upper right) and stylophora (upper left) from small frags 3 years ago. Both have been trimmed a couple times. Now they are getting large enough that shading is becoming an issue. The rest, including clove polyps, euphilia, duncan, monti cap, are pretty much unstoppable. Whenever the monti breaks off I move the pieces to a new part of the tank and it just picks up where it left off. After a slow start the Euphillias keep going no matter what I do.
Have a couple more challenging acros and favias that have only started to take off once I raised the ph a bit. Unfortunately things got out of hand and I'm not in the middle of a pretty bad precipitation episode. I'll post details of that in the Reef Chemistry Forum.
Only two fish... Melanurus Wrasse and Saphire Damsel. Early on had a few clowns (two separate orders from reputable online retailer) that didn't last a week in quarantine. Opted to ditch the quarantine and just get some hardy colorful fish instead. Originally had three damsel after hearing that Saphires were a bit less aggressive. They went at each other from the git go so gave two of them away. Various snails, pistol shrimp and a skunk cleaner shrimp.
Gear:
Started with the birdsnest (upper right) and stylophora (upper left) from small frags 3 years ago. Both have been trimmed a couple times. Now they are getting large enough that shading is becoming an issue. The rest, including clove polyps, euphilia, duncan, monti cap, are pretty much unstoppable. Whenever the monti breaks off I move the pieces to a new part of the tank and it just picks up where it left off. After a slow start the Euphillias keep going no matter what I do.
Have a couple more challenging acros and favias that have only started to take off once I raised the ph a bit. Unfortunately things got out of hand and I'm not in the middle of a pretty bad precipitation episode. I'll post details of that in the Reef Chemistry Forum.
Only two fish... Melanurus Wrasse and Saphire Damsel. Early on had a few clowns (two separate orders from reputable online retailer) that didn't last a week in quarantine. Opted to ditch the quarantine and just get some hardy colorful fish instead. Originally had three damsel after hearing that Saphires were a bit less aggressive. They went at each other from the git go so gave two of them away. Various snails, pistol shrimp and a skunk cleaner shrimp.
Gear:
- Return Pump, Sicce Syncra Silent 2.3 : Original was super quiet and worked non stop up until a month ago. Replaced with the same model which isn't nearly as quiet.
- Skimmer, Eshopps x-120: Fantastic skimmer. Just turn it on, dial it in and forget about it.
- Dosers, Kamoer X1 and Zetlight. I've tried them all, at least the cheap ones (jebao, coral box, zetlight, kamoer.) Both jebao and coral box lasted less than a year. So far the Kamoer seems great and has the easiest set up by far.
- Light, single AI Prime Led: No issues whatsoever.
- Carbon filter, BRS mini reactor. Wish it was smaller but works great. It a sump this size I really need something smaller.
- Wavemakers, Jebao PP: Can't believe these things are still going! Probably the most reliable equipment on my tank. Wasn't expecting much but pretty decent water movers.
