Red Sea Reefer 525 XL Build

[nanchil]

Not at the moment. Been just emptying into a cup when it gets full.

Thanks. I lost the cap to close that. Have to look at HD whether they have anything to close that outlet. Thanks

 

[mjlash22]

Thanks. I lost the cap to close that. Have to look at HD whether they have anything to close that outlet. Thanks

Hopefully you can contact Bubble Magus customer service and see if they can send out a replacement.

 

[nanchil]

Hopefully you can contact Bubble Magus customer service and see if they can send out a replacement.

Thanks. Will try.

 

[mjlash22]

Have had this in for a couple days now, but thought I would post an update. Installed the doser and currently only having it dose the NoPox for now. Have another bottle of Red Sea KH Coralline grow to use then I’m going to dose Alk, Cal, and Mag for the other 3 heads. Unit is a coral box WiFi doser, 4 heads. Overall love the unit. Switched out the stock tubing with mini airline tubing from petsmart. No air in the line and it is consistent with the dose when I check calibration.

Currently battling my skimmer at the moment. Originally I was dosing 15ml/day of NoPox and my skimmer is over skimming like crazy! Reduced down to 5ml/day and purchased another marinepure block to rise the skimmer another inch. Still over skimming with the gate wide open, but a lot better than what it was. Could it be because I was over dosing the NoPox? Skimmer to low in the water? Fact that I went from dosing in the DT to now in the sump? Any advice would be greatly appreciated!

 

[1bitereefer]

Awesome tank build. I am upgrade from a 250 to a 425xl, like your manifold, i will be doing that with my new build

 

[mta_morrow]

Mjlash22. Hey, I was dosing nopox as well and heads up, my mesh socks filled with a bacterial slime. I stopped dosing as nitrates dropped quickly and I now have my algae reactor up and running. So, watch closely for slime!

 

[mjlash22]

Awesome tank build. I am upgrade from a 250 to a 425xl, like your manifold, i will be doing that with my new build

Thanks for the view! Good luck with your upgrade!

 

[mjlash22]

Mjlash22. Hey, I was dosing nopox as well and heads up, my mesh socks filled with a bacterial slime. I stopped dosing as nitrates dropped quickly and I now have my algae reactor up and running. So, watch closely for slime!

Thanks for the tip! I don’t use filter socks so hopefully I’ll be ok in that aspect. I currently am only dosing 5ml a day. Skimmer was my biggest issue with the over skim but it has since calmed down after a few days of lowering the dose amount.

 

[mta_morrow]

Thanks for the tip! I don’t use filter socks so hopefully I’ll be ok in that aspect. I currently am only dosing 5ml a day. Skimmer was my biggest issue with the over skim but it has since calmed down after a few days of lowering the dose amount.

Great! Glad to hear

 

[mjlash22]

Haven't posted in a while. Been super busy around the house with other projects! Oh the joys of a new build.

Tank is still doing well. Water parameters are good, testing once a week now to fine tune dosing and ensure ammonia and nitrates are good.

Still using Red Sea's Coralline KH Grow, almost done with the last bottle I had, then I will be switching over to Red Sea A/B/C for my supplement dosing.

Livestock is still the same, but I do have a few additions coming Thursday! Adding some more inverts. Replaced my cleaner shrimp, few more snails/crabs, and got a sand sifting star.

Also adding a couple chromi's, fire fish, and a watchman goby.

I'll post some pics when they get added in!

 

[Eric Smith]

Nice setup. I just got mine and it is black inside like yours. Did you see if they can send you a white interior? I agree we paid for white, and with no notification of the change it is very unprofessional.

 

[mjlash22]

Thanks for the read! Red Sea doesn’t offer the “all white” configuration anymore is what I was told. Helped keep costs of the tanks down by making a universal cabinet and just sending the doors and sides separately. At least, that’s what I was told.

 

[mjlash22]

Haven’t posted an update in a while. Tank has been up and down since it was started.

Equipment wise, the coral box doser is completely up and running.

Purchased some adhesive zip tie mounts off amazon to manage the tubing.

Dosing NoPox, calcium, KH, and magnesium daily. Depending on the mag level, may have to go to every other day or more for the dose, as I’m only doing 1ml/day and it rose a decent amount already. Replaced the tubing it came with with some Drew’s dosing tubing from BRS. Haven’t had any air bubbles yet and the calibration seems to be a lot better than the mini airline tubing I was using from PetsMart.

Also thinking about switching to BRS's new pharma pouches as I have also added Red Sea's coral colors program for trace element replenishment. I'm currently dosing all Red Sea products, but the foundation products are getting expensive to replenish. I feel the cost savings will far out way the actual product differences.

For livestock, can’t say things have been going well. My most recent purchase have almost all passed or gone missing, including my 2 year old peppermint shrimp. The watchmen goby and shrimp were found victims to the snails/crabs. Both pairs of chromis and fire fish have also gone missing. I felt I appropriately acclimated them so I’m not sure what went wrong. I know the fire fish made a small cave under or near the center rock, so maybe the snails/crabs got them and they couldn’t get away?

I’m going to lay off purchasing more livestock for the mean time.

I think this is part of the tank being new but I’m experiencing quite a bit of a brown hair like algae on all the rocks and most of the sand. Nitrates and phosphates are almost undetectable so I’m assuming just part of the tank maturing?

*I know it looks like a purple slime in the pic, but it's not, it is a brown hair like algae appearance, the blue lights don't do well with my iPhone camera*

 

[Gene Ashton]

Today’s update.

Got the two cabinet doors on for the sump compartment. My OCD kicked in so that took about an hour to get them as close to perfect as possible. I’m happy with the results, tiny difference in the gap from top to bottom of the two doors, but hardly noticeable.

Got the sump into its compartment. This may seem like common sense but I’m going to share it anyways. You have to install the doors before putting the sump in! You won’t be able to screw in the brackets once the sump is put in. Also included a pic of the acrylic filter socks. Huge shoutout to Anything Acrylic for these filter cups. Hit them up on Facebook if you want some for yourself!

Last project for today was installing the floor jacks in the basement. Those that have been following along know that I’ve been debating on whether or not I thought this was necessary or not. In the end, for about $150 in materials, I decided it was a cheap safe guard and went ahead with it. Did my best to measure it out so that each stand is 40” apart which leaves 10” of tank weight left and right. Based on how far is sticked out from the wall upstairs, I only needed to support 2 joists. Cut 2x4’s 20” long and married them together, two per stand. Stand is centered between the two posts. Happy with the results and loved these stands. Easy setup and also liked the fact that these came with a tightening rod vs other models where you have to use a wrench to tighten.

I will be doing exactly the same thing. My concern is my wal'sl in the basement are all floating walls. Under the area I want to put my tank is storage so I plan on putting water systems etc. great thread.

 

[Gene Ashton]

Looks beautiful! And I think that's a great idea to reinforce the joists below. You'll have over 1,000 lbs sitting mid-span on those two joists. Much better to be safe than sorry.

As a bystander whose done some structural framing work, I would recommend bracing the two joists laterally. At this point, the likely failure mode would be the torsion of the two joists as they try to twist themselves out of being sandwiched between the weight of the tank above and the upward force of the lolly-columns, below. If you cut two pieces of 2x12 to the dimension of the spacing between the two joists (probably 14 1/2") and put them above your 2x4 spanning blocks and secured them to the top and bottom chords of your joists, it would keep the joists from twisting under the load. At that point I think you'd have every imaginable scenario covered.

Of course you'll probably never need this...

I'm thinking about the same. I would think I could put the lolly columns under lateral bracing and not have the 2x4's under the joists at all.

 

[Gene Ashton]

Love the color of the pvc!

Where did you buy it? the blue I mean? Or could just buy all white and paint it up to match. You should put some blue led lights under the cabinet

 

[mjlash22]

I will be doing exactly the same thing. My concern is my wal'sl in the basement are all floating walls. Under the area I want to put my tank is storage so I plan on putting water systems etc. great thread.

I'm thinking about the same. I would think I could put the lolly columns under lateral bracing and not have the 2x4's under the joists at all.

Thanks for the read! Everyone's situation will be a little different based on how the basement is set up. What I did as seen in the pics worked best for me. The only thing you want to look out for is to ensure you spread out the load. If you put all the load onto one point, you risk the chance of torquing/twisting the joist. I decided to spread it out over 2 joists and a few months in, I haven't seen any negative effects to the structure of the joists.

Where did you buy it? the blue I mean? Or could just buy all white and paint it up to match. You should put some blue led lights under the cabinet

I got most of the plumbing from bulk reef supply. The rest I got from pvcpipesupplies.com as they had better pricing on the fittings, at least the ones that both websites had. Some fittings only BRS had.

 

[Gene Ashton]

If you do then make sure you use abs pvc glue and not regular pvc glue to join the pvc to the overflow tubes. I had to dremel around the end of the pvc pipe to fit into the red sea overflow tubes but it is rock solid.

The only downside is it is permanent and if for some reason I ever had to take out the overflow tubes I would have to cut the pvc pipe and redo. So I made sure to lube the orings when I installed it and filled the overflow with water to test for leaks before gluing it to the schedule 40 pvc valve unions.

If I was to do it again though I would still do it the same way. There is zero chance of a leak at those connections. Even when I dry fitted them I almost couldn't get them back apart.

I'm also running my vectra m1 at 100% and couldn't take the chance of a failed connection.

What did you lube your O-rings with?

 

[OriginalUserName]

Haven’t posted an update in a while. Tank has been up and down since it was started.

Equipment wise, the coral box doser is completely up and running.

Purchased some adhesive zip tie mounts off amazon to manage the tubing.


Dosing NoPox, calcium, KH, and magnesium daily. Depending on the mag level, may have to go to every other day or more for the dose, as I’m only doing 1ml/day and it rose a decent amount already. Replaced the tubing it came with with some Drew’s dosing tubing from BRS. Haven’t had any air bubbles yet and the calibration seems to be a lot better than the mini airline tubing I was using from PetsMart.

Also thinking about switching to BRS's new pharma pouches as I have also added Red Sea's coral colors program for trace element replenishment. I'm currently dosing all Red Sea products, but the foundation products are getting expensive to replenish. I feel the cost savings will far out way the actual product differences.

For livestock, can’t say things have been going well. My most recent purchase have almost all passed or gone missing, including my 2 year old peppermint shrimp. The watchmen goby and shrimp were found victims to the snails/crabs. Both pairs of chromis and fire fish have also gone missing. I felt I appropriately acclimated them so I’m not sure what went wrong. I know the fire fish made a small cave under or near the center rock, so maybe the snails/crabs got them and they couldn’t get away?

I’m going to lay off purchasing more livestock for the mean time.

I think this is part of the tank being new but I’m experiencing quite a bit of a brown hair like algae on all the rocks and most of the sand. Nitrates and phosphates are almost undetectable so I’m assuming just part of the tank maturing?

*I know it looks like a purple slime in the pic, but it's not, it is a brown hair like algae appearance, the blue lights don't do well with my iPhone camera*

Looks like diatoms?

 

[mjlash22]

What did you lube your O-rings with?

Besides the stock barb, I do not have any O-Rings. Just a little bit of water to slip the stock barb into its housing did the trick.