Daniel's RSM 250 SPS tank

nemodan

nemodan

New member
Hi All

I have been around for some months and today I decided is was time that the SPS experts of this forum take a look to my tank and tell me what honestly they think.

I will not make this a long story.

For who would like to read my full built and tank evolution, in a rainy/stormy day, here it is:

http://www.reefsanctuary.com/forum/index.php?threads/daniels-tank-upgrade-to-rsm-250.91241/

This is the evolution in a nutshell. Pictures are better than thousand words

In July 2013 I set-up a 13 G Mister Aqua book-shell tank

~original

All was growing OK. After 6 months there was a remodeling of a section of the house and I had the opportunity to move all the SPS to a new Red Sea Max 250 tank.

By June 17 (2014) I finish moving all the SPS to the RSM 250


On October 2014 , a few months later I won the TOTM at Reef Sanctury

http://www.reefsanctuary.com/forum/...-upgrade-to-rsm-250.91241/page-7#post-1272967

This is how the tank looked at that time


Tank info when I won the TOTM

Tank: RSM 250
Set-up: All standard. Refugium on Media Basket and chiller JBJ.
Lights: RSM T5 (the new T5 for the RSM C 250) + 1 36" Ecoxotic Purple and Blue LED + 1 TrueLumen Pro 36" Actinic LED + 1 24" TrueLumen Pro Actinic LED
Water: 100 % Petco Natural Sea Water
Water changes: Tank had a final water volume of 50G. I change ~7-8 G each weekend

Dosing: Ca and Alk (Kent Marine) and AcroPower (aminoacids)
From Yesterday at 10PM before dosing pumps start a new cycle.
Ca: 410
Alk: 9 dkh
Salinity: 1025

pH: 7.9 - 8.18 (night - day).

All happiness......but suddenly corals stop growing. Phosphates and Nitrates sky rocketed and what ever I tried to reduce them...I did it wrong and finish with this:

All coral brownish-ed, no polyp extension, Hair algae....RTN...etc etc. If you compare pictures you will see that some big bird nest colonies were already gone. February 2015


I decided to stop all artificial way of reducing Nitrates/Phosphates and let the tank evolve only based on biology. I was able to connect a 20G fuge tank


This fuge is filled with Macro algae and have 4 fish today. Hanging from it is an acrylic HOB fuge (3G) filled with Seacherm Matrix, to increase the bacteria population.

Last month my Nitrates and Phosp. were reading 0 ppm. I slightly increased the fish population (now 15 in total in a total volume system of ~ 78 G) and started to feed every day the fish (before it was every other day).

I see corals have recovered their color, almost all the survivors. There are very few (5) new frags added to the tank since the disaster.

July 30 tank picture:
 
Last edited:
1b69dd5f0d0dee037b12f29ee12fd019.jpg

Lol
93b1faaa7c820e183cf3805070f55491.jpg
 
Very pretty Conures !!! And the other looks like an African Grey, correct ?. That one is a real speaker.. :)

The tank is also a beauty..... Thanks for shearing !!!

Daniel
 
nemodan said:
Very pretty Conures !!! And the other looks like an African Grey, correct ?. That one is a real speaker.. :)

The tank is also a beauty..... Thanks for shearing !!!

Daniel
Click to expand...


Yup. The grey will talk your ear off with crazy off the wall stuff. If she is wanting attention while I'm on the phone she'll repeat everything I say. Or ask me to "get me out of here" when she's in her cage. lol
 
Some upside down pictures.

I do not have the correct tools, but you will see some nice colored corals. Unfortunately I do not see them in that way through the glass tank :-(

Sorry for the lights reflection. You can zoom the pictures to avoid been distracted by the lights in the water.


This was a half inch branch broken ~6 months ago. I will point who was the donor coral in a later picture.




At the bottom you have the donor coral of the 1st picture. At that time it was ~ 2".








2 Pictures with different focal planes







 
Some parameters

Salinity 1025- 1026

PH 7.95 - 8.45 (Daily variation).

Alk : 6.4 - 7 dkh (measured ~ every 3 days to adjust dosing pumps accordingly)
Ca: ~ 400 ppm ( I have to measured again after 4 weeks)
Mg: don't know

PO4. 0.02- 0.04 ppm
Nitrates. 0 ppm

I feed the fish every day , once and well, to avoid having Phosp 0 ppm

Dosing B-ionic 2 parts (dosing always same volume of Cal and Alk parts).

Nutrients exportation: The refigium full of Macro and a lot of Seacherm Matrix for bacterial growth. Every month I seed the tank with Biodigest (living bacteria)

Light : 6 T5 39W and 3 LED strips of 24 and 36 " ( Ecoxotic and Trulumen Pro)

Pumps : 3 RW8 In the 65 G tank

Dosing pumps : Neptune DOS
Controller : Neptune Apex
 
Last edited:
Daniel, I followed the link in Andrew's thread and I had to post here to tell you how impressed I am with your current set up. And how impressed I am that you took the leap of faith of just letting the system balance itself out by adding a Refugium.
Bravo!
Your system looks super healthy and you do not have a spot of algae in the display. Very nice.
I would like to take some inspiration from you.... I just have to figure out how, exactly. I will think long and hard about how to follow in your footsteps.
Your thread is very interesting in how your system has transformed...
I will follow your updates with interest!
 
reefmutt said:
Daniel, I followed the link in Andrew's thread and I had to post here to tell you how impressed I am with your current set up. And how impressed I am that you took the leap of faith of just letting the system balance itself out by adding a Refugium.
Bravo!
Your system looks super healthy and you do not have a spot of algae in the display. Very nice.
I would like to take some inspiration from you.... I just have to figure out how, exactly. I will think long and hard about how to follow in your footsteps.
Your thread is very interesting in how your system has transformed...
I will follow your updates with interest!
Click to expand...

Thank you Matt !!

I have been following your thread. Your tank looks great !!!. And those corals have great color. I am astonish on how you are manipulating the Phosp. and nitrates. I tried carbon dosing using NOPOX and all went wrong in my hands.

When my tank was full of Hair Algae and all the corals brown and some dying, as you saw in my pictures, I thought also using pellets, GFO etc. but I stopped myself. I travel a lot and I am not able to be at home to control all those artificial ways of nutrient export.

As a biologist I told mysel " Daniel, you can't have a tank that will fulfill the biology of all SPS, you do not have time to control the mentioned methods for nutrient export, so you have to let biology do the work....like in the ocean".

I was able to connect a decent refugium (20 G bare bottom for a 50 G real volume tank - after sand/rocks-). I did the mistake of adding too much sand and not the correct one on my tank. To increase the bacteria population I used Seacherm Matrix. I filled an acrylic HOB (3G) refugium that Is Hanging on on side of the 20G refugium. I started seeding the system every 15 days with live bacteria and..........wait.

I also decided to stop buying ocean water. It was expensive and every weekend I started to do 15G water change (before was 5G). So I got my RODI system and during the WC the system went from ocean water to Reef Crystal.

The system was equilibrated at 7 dkh (ocean water) and the water brand change didn't modify that value. So I setup my dosing pumps to keep that ~ 7 Dkh.

I said to myself....what lives...lives. There was anything else I could do. After 2 months I started to see the changes.

And here we are today..... Very simple system with every day always the same parameters.

Of course, every day I am at home I am doing some maintenance. If I see that my macros are not growing at a nice rate, then I feed more that week.
 
Last edited:
Awesome tank and awesome recovery nemodan! I hope to have mine looking that good eventually. I'm currently dealing with nuisance algae ie dino and cyano, and i think its the cause of my corals stunted growth. Keep up the great work!
 
sh8g8delik said:
Awesome tank and awesome recovery nemodan! I hope to have mine looking that good eventually. I'm currently dealing with nuisance algae ie dino and cyano, and i think its the cause of my corals stunted growth. Keep up the great work!
Click to expand...

Thank you Anh !!

Yes, if you have high nutrients, like I had, your corals stop growing. The first thing I noticed in my tank was lost of polyp extension, brownish of most SPS, STN, almost no growing and bleaching in my bird nest colonies. Tomorrow I will try to post some closeup pictures of the corals during my high nutrient period and now.

Cheers
Daniel
 
Dan, thanks for following my little marathon thread.
All of my systems in the past (and there have been many) have run like yours and they were stable and successful..
I really want to ditch my biopellets but am afraid to. I have to find a way to reduce them slowly while letting the other parts of my system take up the slack. I have too much invested to just take them off and watch.
I have a large cheato ball growing like crazy already and a small dsb as well.
Recently I added a second skimmer as well..
I still find that I have to run my pellets pretty hard.. And add significant amounts of nitrate to keep phosphate down.
I think I'll try adding more light to the cheato and deepen my dsb and then try to back off on the flow through the pellets.. At least get to a point where the n additions aren't necessary..
Question: throughout the process did you ever do anything to your sand bed in the display?
Also, you have 0 n and small amounts of p.. Are you ever tempted to try to switch these two numbers?
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

C
RSM Max Nano XL Plan / Build
2
Replies
21
Views
267
griss
griss
Lebowski_
Why do SPS need "aged" tanks?
Replies
5
Views
394
shred5
shred5
K
Help: SPS peeling strangely.
Replies
5
Views
145
griss
griss
Old Newbie
Old Newbi tank questions
Replies
7
Views
284
griss
griss
mixedreeflife
Reefer 250 GEN1 leak proofing...
Replies
3
Views
71
griss
griss
Back
Top