Rovster's Custom Reef Savvy build......FINALLY!!!

Thanks. Its really a nice coral. Underrated if you ask me. The photo above is the best its looked. Had a lot of blue and yellow on the tips. Currently its a lot bigger and on its way again. At one point it lost almost all the blue and yellow. Its starting to come back now and most if not all the tips have some degree of blue. I know when its happy it gets a lot of blue at the tips like in the pic above. I think Roger had a huge colony of this.


And FWIW, that pic of the tricolor was taken when I was on Radions, no T5 LOL!
 
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rovster said:
When choosing the equipment for the build, I tried to go with all solid components. As far as the tank goes, I chose Reef Savvy for their impeccable reputation. I decided to go custom because I wanted to squeeze the most tank I could in the space I had, and to be honest, I LOVE rimless and shallowish tanks. I say shallowish, because I my tank is now what I would consider a true shallow, but its width is greater than the depth. Its no secret that Reef Savvy tanks are not cheap. I tried to offset that cost with building my own stand. I will later post in exhaustive detail how I built and finished my stand. The dimensions of the tank are 52" x 26" x 19"tall. The closest stock tank to these dimensions is a 120, but I did not like the 24" height. So my tank is pretty much a 120 with the top chopped off. Here is an equipment list:

  1. Lighting: 3 Radion G2 Pros with Ecotech Hanging Kit. When I bought my lights, there was no pro, and no G2. When I upgraded my lights to pros, there was no G3. This has been the only sour point in my build. Had I had some forsight, I would have not bought the lights when I did, and probably gone with an ATI hybrid. That said, I have faith that these lights will work out well, and I can't wait to prove to Eddie that LEDs work, LOL! I had great success with LEDs in my biocube, so there's no reason these shouldn't do great. I am of the mentality that LEDs biggest shortcomming is not power but spread. If you notice, I could have easily got away with 2 Radions. I chose a third to get better spread of light, and more even distribution. I rather have more modules run lower, than less run at peak. I feel lots have problems here and it leads to more hotspots and burnt corals. We'll see if my theory pans out.
  2. Skimmer: SRO 2000 XP (Cone). Its a little overrated for my tank size, but I wanted to do SPS dominant with hopefully a good fish load.
  3. Flow: Origionally I had 2 MP40s. I added a third recently to better compliment my scape. Again, same theory as with the lights. More units turned down, then a couple at full blast.
  4. Return: Water Blaster 5000. Origionally I had an Eheim 1262 but quickly realized it was not enough pump for what I wanted to do. I also chose the WB for its supposed efficiency and quietness.
  5. Controller: Apex Lite. I chose the lite because I knew I was going with Ecotech lights and pumps, so all the controllability is built into those. I added a WXM for enhanced control of the lights and pumps.
  6. Sump: 40 BR DIY. More info on that later.
  7. Reactors: 2 Vertex reactors for Carbon and GFO.
  8. Dosing: 3 BRS 1.1 mL/min pumps. Right now planned for 2 part and Vinegar. Controlled via Apex.
  9. ATO: Tunze Osmolator. Love this thing. I had a custom acrylic ATO container made that holds about 10 gallons.
  10. Ecotech Battery Back up.
  11. 250 watt Eheim Jager heater, controlled via Apex


As far as sand and rock, I chose Tropic Eden Reef Flakes for my substrate. I chose it because everyone raves about it and being that I was going for tons of flow, I wanted a slightly larger grain that would stay put, at least mostly stay put. For rock, I got my stuff from BRS. Its mostly Pukani with some shelf and Tonga. I ended not using much of the shelf at all and will probably be for sale soon.
Click to expand...

Are you still running the 3 BRS dosers? What are your thoughts on them? How has it been with the Apex? Any issues with them not turning off?
 
Yes all my equipment is the same as day 1, except the addition of the extra light.

The BRS dosers are fine. My only gripe is they are terribly off in terms of calibration. My Cal and Alk dosers are off by 17%. Its not a huge deal because I know this, and know when I adjust my alk I just set the cal to 17% less. I do have a Calcium Reactor on standby but I'm not sure I'm going to set it up. All I need is a CO2 tank and extra pH probe and media but I'm going to wait a bit and see. It was an impulse buy on a great deal used but I have it there in case I get tired of my dosers.

The third doser runs the vinegar, which I don't care if its calibrated as I adjust it based on how the tank looks and testing results.


A quick word on Apex. I LOVE the OSC command. I use it for all my BRS dosers. I have no clue how much I'm dosing all I do if I need more I give a little extra time, if I need less I take away. The amount is irrelevant, I go by time my dosers are on.
 
How do you avoid them staying on after its turned off? I heard these things can continue because of voltage or something
 
itz frank said:
If that's the case, you may have just solidified my purchase of the brs starter kit with dozers.
Click to expand...

I bought that kit when I started with SPS in ~2006. You really only need to dose 2 part. Mg can be bolused with no issues, or replenished with water changes.
 
I see roster uses the 1.1 ml dosers. Eddie, do you also use the 1.1 ml dosers or the 5 ml?
 
Don't use those outlets for dosers, use them for bigger stuff. Can't remember if it's one and five or if it's four and eight. Look it up lol....
 
Thanks Eddie. I should probably start dosing or get my reactor on line.
 
rovster said:
Quick little update. Things are slowly improving and last night my testing revealed my alk consumption is going up again, confirmed by Salifert:D

I also added some Siporax in a reactor I had sitting around doing nothing. I origionslly got the idea from the Brazilian reefers and sort of put it on the back burner until recently when Sahin's thread got me all excited about it again. It does make sense for me because I don't have a ton of rock and I do plan on expanding my fish load now that the terrorist is gone.

I don't really have nutrient issues but by no means is my tank ULNS anymore.

Here's a quick shot of the reactor....


Going out of town on CE so we'll see how things look when I get back.....
Click to expand...

How much siporax is that and what size reactor? Trying to figure out what reactor I need to pick up to give myself ample room.
 
itz frank said:
How much siporax is that and what size reactor? Trying to figure out what reactor I need to pick up to give myself ample room.
Click to expand...

That is a 1.5L reactor. I have 3 other bags of Siporax in the sump just thrown where they will fit. I had initially bought them to use in another tank that never happened but still may happen soon but so far so good. I tested nitrate yesterday and its almost undetectable. I've been adding 6mL of my NaNO3 cocktail twice a week and things seem to continue to color up. Just yesterday I was noticing that colors are definitely becoming more vibrant and I'm getting all kinds of cool color streaks through a lot of corals. Growth has kicked up too and I'm still trying to dial my Alk in (having a hard time keeping it up).

Now how much of this is attributed to the new T5, the Siporax, or just the fact that I haven't had an alk spike in 2 months I don't know. Regardless, things are headed in the right direction.
 
How much fit in just that reactor? I want to start my tank up with that along with gfo instead of playing catch up like I always do in my current tank. Also, going from 0 fish to 8 fish is going to be quite a jump for a new tank me thinks.
 
Lets see, a 1.5L reactor, well, just under 1.5L:p

As far as getting ahead of anything, Siporax or Matrix does not actively remove anything from the water. It just adds surface area, like having extra live rock. Read the thread in the SPS forum. Its not a miracle pill. My tank does not have a TON of live rock, plus I carbon dose which in my opinion was a great situation to use this stuff. It won't hurt to use it and it can only help.

To help with the shock of adding 8 fish, you are better off adding some bacteria to help with the initial processing.
 
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