Red Sea Reefer 170 Build

[Blitheran]

Alright guys! Time to start a new build thread. I recently started a 10 Gallon Innovative Marine Nuvo SPS dominated Build. I was just beginning to add corals, when I stumbled across a local refer selling a red sea reefer 170 and I had to have it. The ability of having a sump far out weighs AIO in my opinion. They look great, but I love the idea of a sump. I love running a skimmer and I did not have the room to run much equipment or proper filtration on my little nano.

There were a few complications that I came up when I upgraded, I did not have enough light... one XR-15 won't provide enough par for a full SPS dominated reef. Which made me have to purchase a second one, it worked out as I love the look.

My current rock scape was very... very... VERY small when I put it in the tank. So I spent the next few days, slowly glueing and building a rocks cape which is the new white structure you see in the tank. I love how the structure turned out.

I needed a second MP-10 which was an easy find to find a used one.


Tank: Red Sea Reefer 170

Lighting: Two XR-15 Gen 4 Pro
Supplementing with 2 t5 ATI Blue Plus

Flow: Two MP10 QDw, one MP40 QDw

Controller: Neptune Apex EL

Rock: Rubble Rock glued and expoxied

Protein Skimmer: Bubble Magus Curve 5

Return Pump: Jebao 4000

ATO: Avast Marine

Reefer Ato Fuge Modification: Kessil H160 for fuge lighting with cheato

Dosing: Two Neptune DOS

CO2 Scrubber: BRS Scrubber and Media

I am super into keeping things sleek and tidy. I bought a nice cabinet from amazon that fits perfectly with the red sea reefer cabinet, and it houses all of my electrical perfectly.

 

[Blitheran]

Current tank inhabitants are two ORA Black ice Snowflake ClownFish, and Skunk Cleaner shrimp. I plan on adding a tomini tang for a year or two and handing him of to a buddy who has a 125!

 

[NY_Caveman]

Nice start!

 

[Blitheran]

Tank is doing amazing! I am getting a huge Diatom bloom, mainly due to the 10-15lbs of new rock I have added to the tank. Super happy with how the aquascape turned out.

I have decided I would put the heater in the overflow box, as it is huge and cumbersome. It fits perfectly back there and the cord is hardly even noticeable.

I had a lot of options for a protein skimmer, so I decided on the bubble magus curve 5! Super happy I went with it, it is a work horse! This picture is only two days of poop!

I needed light for under the stand, as I was not going to try and use a flash light overtime. So I found these rechargeable motion activate lights, which work perfectly! I love them. I open the stand and the lights flick on, perfect!

My rock structure only makes up about 20-25 pounds of rock, not nearly the goal of 1 pound per gallon. I need more biological filtration! I decided I would take any extra rock I had, and condense it into one area. I took the rock and made an Egg crate box and threw it all in there so there is more surface area for bacteria!

I also added seachem bio matrix media to help establish even more bacteria! So I feel as I stand right now my biological filtration is well over what is needed, and with only three fish, I feel as though I will be able to hand a heavy feeding regimen.

 

[Lota Reefer]

Following with interest.

 

[Blitheran]

Well little update! Been modifying a few things. Skimmer is kicking butt. You will see in a few pictures how black the skim mate is, it is pulling out!! Very impressed and silent only noise is the air draw. I have it in 8inch of water.

I added a 3/4 inch salfin tang... I know what you are thinking the F&@%k you thinking boy!!!? But hear me out. I have kept tiny tangs before and moved them out once they get to large for the aquarium. I can simply take them in and trade him out for a different tang. I just love tangs for their algae control. And this guy is doing great! He does just fine and will be gone and in a better sized aquarium once he grows up more.

Next on the agenda of items to cover is the red sea reefer ATO. I wanted a refugium, I feel as though a refugium offers more biodiversity and tanks just look and feel healthier with one. Mission was to turn the 1-3 gallon ato into a fuge.

First step I took was buying a diamond drill bit. I looked on amazon to find a cheap ones, I made sure there were free returns as well in case I got the wrong ones. Sure enough the “1/2 inch” drill bit was to small. It was only 26mm so I needed a little bit bigger bit. So I returned those and got a 28 and 30mm bit. STILL TO SMALL!! I was annoyed at this point. I went and paid a little bit extra for a 30 32 and 35mm diamond drill bit. Finally the 35 was perfect, fit right over the 1/2 bulkhead. Now it was time to drill, only thing was I have never drilled glass before. After watching countless hours of people drilling Red Sea reefer atos and glass in general, I felt confident enough, even though if I broke it, replacing it was going to be nearly impossible...

Well Ta da! Everything went very smoothly. Happy that it is over. As you can see on the left hand panel I have the bulk head where the water is coming in, and then the 1/2 bulk head on the bottom is where the water will exit the aquarium. I designed it like this so that any and al refugium water will be pumped into the first chamber of the sump, passing through the filter sock chamber to help keep algae debri out of the tank.

Everything fit perfectly.

I have the refugium ready to go, now I need a light! I have done the cheap lowes/homedepot light and the amazon cheap led in the past and they do “okay” but if I want my aquarium to be the best, and I want my refugium to function the best. Why not give it the best light? So I went with a kessil h160! I believe this is a newer model they just released.

The only kicker about this refugium light is that it is pricey!! $230 bucks!!! Not wanting to spend that, so I was surfing around on the internet when I saw a nice lady selling a brand new kessil h160 on Facebook. She ended up back out on her new tank, so had to sell all the gear she bought. She was selling it for $150, I jumped on that deal so fast, I think she had posted the ad for 8 minutes and 4 minutes later she had the money in her paypal!

So after I received the light, I started to think, where am I going to mount this light?? This cabinet where sump is, is small and crammed. I don’t have a lot of room to work with. I had a ton of different ideas. Make a small stand, put a piece of acrylic over the fuge and place the light on top, the list goes on. When I received the light, kessil provides little hokes to drill into the cabinet, so you do not have go out and buy any. I started to think maybe I should drill into the top of the stand... big scary moment for me.. drilling into the cabinet of an aquarium while it is running, risky business, I don’t even know what kind of wood or material is used for the top of the tank stand. Well after looking at the hook and seeing how thick the wood was, I noticed it only went 1/2 way into the wood. Perfect.

After a lot of contemplating and debating, as my orginal plan was to buy a kessil goose neck and hope I could cram the light in, but now this changes the whole ball game!!

Now I have to spend extra money to return the kessil goose neck, *** lol.

I am a man of faith, with that said, I was absolutely terrified so I prayed and hoped everything would be okay, turned some air1 music on (christian music) because why not? Needed all the help I can get.

I drilled two holes and screwed in the two hooks and wha la! Everything went smoothly!

Looks super sweet and I am happy I did it. Now I have to debate if I want to put a black screen on the left side to reduce light spillage it the sand to prevent nuisance algae, but for now I will just leave it as is.

Last piece of equipment need is a second eb8. I am out of outlits to plug into. I am using one eb8 and a small 6 bar outlet and 3 of the outlets are taken up for my apex wireless connector, so I am going to change some things up. Also I was going to buy a timer for my refugium light, when I thought... hey I have an apex. And I need a few extra plugs why not buy a second eb8 and utilize the timer function on the eb8.

 

[Blitheran]

Tanks is doing well! Ordered a few frags from budmans corals, so going to start filling this tank up with sps!

 

[The_Harris_co]

What were your par readings with 1 xr15? How are you controlling it

 

[Blitheran]

What were your par readings with 1 xr15? How are you controlling it

I do not know what my par readings are. I have yet to get a par meter and test yet...

 

[Blitheran]

New corals are in!

All of the pictures were taken under a whiter spectrum for better photo quality.

Tri color

Forest fire digi

Blue tip stag

Ora pearl berry

Pc Rainbow

Reef raft canda aussie gold

Purple tip turaki

 

[infinite0180]

Hows the avast ato? How often does it kick on? Which pump are you using?

 

[The_Harris_co]

I do not know what my par readings are. I have yet to get a par meter and test yet...

Ahh I’m hoping to get readings on my 170 next Monday with my xr15 pro and an aquatic life t5 hybrid. I’ll let you know how it goes

 

[splitting_lanes]

Awesome idea for where to put the heater in a 170. Mine is getting crowded in the sump so if I get too tight I’ll put the heater in the overflow.

 

[Blitheran]

Awesome idea for where to put the heater in a 170. Mine is getting crowded in the sump so if I get too tight I’ll put the heater in the overflow.

Thanks! it fits perfectly back there and there is a ton of room if I were to add a second heater!

 

[Blitheran]

Hows the avast ato? How often does it kick on? Which pump are you using?

I love it, the basic setup of the ato is pressure based. You place the tube into the water at your desired level, and as the water falls the pressure decreases which kicks on the ato. It has a few extra parts and plugging it into the apex was a bit cumbersome but I managed. Also the outside magnet is actually quite weak... I can pull the bracket with ease, so I tested the outside magnet with a hydor one, and it slapped it into place. Only complaint would be that. Other than, that I love it.

Here is my setup I bought

 

[infinite0180]

I love it, the basic setup of the ato is pressure based. You place the tube into the water at your desired level, and as the water falls the pressure decreases which kicks on the ato. It has a few extra parts and plugging it into the apex was a bit cumbersome but I managed. Also the outside magnet is actually quite weak... I can pull the bracket with ease, so I tested the outside magnet with a hydor one, and it slapped it into place. Only complaint would be that. Other than, that I love it.

Here is my setup I bought

Ya ive read great things about it. You got the version that plugs into the break out port on the apex or no?

 

[Blitheran]

No, I don’t have the break out box port sadly... I went with the standard A/C outlet.

 

[Blitheran]

Alright! So I have placed the corals around the tank. They are all slowly opening up and looking better. Sadly though, my reef raft aussie acro as begun RTN... I have no clue why. My alk, cal, and mag which I test daily for has not spiked or had any problems. My phosphate and nitrates are both in acceptable ranges. So my only other theory is if acros are too close to one another that may spark corals to RTN but we will will see, I have it alone on the frag rack and it is starting to not lose it’s flesh so maybe that was it? Anyhow...

Fuge is doing well! I put a small 80gph pump in the fuge, which is causing the cheato to tumble which is perfect! Can’t wait to see the growth.

I want to get my levels up in my tank. So I am going to start dosing now and get them and maintain them at the respected levels. I want my DKH at 8.5, currently sits at 7.7 but I just dosed today which should bring it up to 8.1 I will test tomorrow and adjust as needed. I will be dosing alk and calcium in equal parts so whatever my calcium turns out to be when I get my alk to 8.5 will be my new calcium level. It currently sits at 413.

 

[Blitheran]

Nice little video of the tumbling cheato!

 

[Entz]

Stalking..err following

Love the way you did the standpipe in the Fuge. I did the normal 2 holes on the one side and its a bit harder to tune without making noise.

Awesome idea for where to put the heater in a 170. Mine is getting crowded in the sump so if I get too tight I’ll put the heater in the overflow.

I have no idea why I didn't think of this. I am going to steal the idea as well I agree the sump is small enough as is, need all the room we can get.

A slight benefit is that if our returns ever die, in theory having a box with warm water in it, should help keep the tank temp from going down super fast.