Shaun's 2000 Litre (530 USG) Living Reef & Red Sea Max S 650 LED Design & Build

Nobbygas

Well-Known Member
Ah, that's a Naso in the bottom right corner! At first glance I thought it was a Powder Blue.

Since I've added the second Yellow Tang it is noticable that they both like to be near each other. They are together most of the time, even 'turning' in the water at the same time. I'm considering getting a third as I think that would look even more spectacular.
 

SPR

Well-Known Member
Thanks guys, and yes it really is a full blown coral reef! Amazing and the pictures don’t do the systems justice!

There are 7-8 Tangs, maybe more and yes they all get on and mind their own business. The tank is generally a happy place and they just peck the rocks. The Regal has grown and gets a bit boisterous from time to time and clumsy bless him.

I love the yellow tangs as well, and if it wasn’t for potentially upsetting the existing one, who is a beautiful fellow, i’d get 3 or 4 of them (Nobbygas hint! Lol) and get them shoaling.

While I was away, one of the wrasse has disappeared and I only noticed the other day as he was always at the top of the water looking down. Labouts fairy wrasse I think.

So unfortunately I might have to ‘happen by’ the LFS’s we’re i haven’t been for ages and boost their profits!
 

SPR

Well-Known Member
Here are a few more pictures of the Regal Angelfish, he is a beautiful fellow.

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SPR

Well-Known Member
Well it’s been raining here today so I’ve been unable to hit my little white balls around and go and find them in the trees, so I thought I’ll go off to the LFS. I’ve not been for ages so off I went.

They order me a discounted 22kg bucket of Red Sea standard salt to stop me going to one of their competitors (or try! Lol) when I need one, so resolve intact off I went with good intentions.

Well that all collapsed when I found the selection of sweet little tangs they had in stock!!!

So my coral reef now includes:

Blue Eyed Tang
Vampire Tang

And at that point bags on the counter I made a swift exit before getting to carried away! Lol

So the current ‘Tang list’ (ok I can hear the Tang police sirens!! lol) consists of:

Yellow Tang
Regal Tang
Purple Tang
Chevron Tang
Freckle Face Tang
Kole Tang
Blonde Naso Tang
Blue Eyed Tang
Vampire Tang
Tomini Tang

The only bad point of going to the LFS is that it brought back the strong addictive urge to purchase as much as I could carry, maybe like some form of ‘reef junkie’!

The pictures below are just quick ones with the new iPhone XS max so not to ‘normal’ standard

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emvanburen

Well-Known Member
The tank looks great. It’s interesting that you need matrix etc to lower nitrate and I am fighting the other way. It runs at zero for me - I had to remove my chaeto and am even dosing Brightwell neonitro to keep it between 1-2 ppm - trying to keep red algae at bay.

But I guess with all those tangs... [emoji3]


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SPR

Well-Known Member
The tank looks great. It’s interesting that you need matrix etc to lower nitrate and I am fighting the other way. It runs at zero for me - I had to remove my chaeto and am even dosing Brightwell neonitro to keep it between 1-2 ppm - trying to keep red algae at bay.

But I guess with all those tangs... [emoji3]


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It’s simply that I have a massive bioload, but they are all happy and get on with each other. The tank is very peaceful most of the time

I am slowly dropping the Nopox dose at a rate of around 1ml per day per week and am currently at 15ml per day. At one point I was at 24. The nitrate has been around 7ppm for a few weeks but I don’t want it any lower and ideally around 10 so I’ll just adjust Nopox until it’s were I want it, without chasing numbers.

If your struggling to keep nitrates up, just add some more fish and feed them, then you can enter the world of keeping Nitrate down! Lol

If you raise your nitrates you’ll hopefully get rid of the cyno bacteria and you will also probably find the corals look much healthier with some food in the water.
 

SPR

Well-Known Member
It’s been a miserable weekend here in the UK (so no white ball hitting!) so yesterday I thought I might do some of those maintenance jobs that I don’t really like doing. Infact the ones I hate doing.

So after about 2 hours sitting there thinking shall I, well I can’t really be bothered, but I ought to really, no I’ll just leave it, I decided to take out and clean the rear circulation pumps. It’s been nearly a year to the day since they were last cleaned.

So I took out the first 2, shoved a couple of filter floss balls into the holes to stop fish swimming through, and left them to soak for an hour in a solution of citric acid. I prefer this to vinegar just because it doesn’t small as much.

While the pumps were soaking, I replaced the 4 rear circulation vent covers with my spare set, and I also took out the rear flow overflow combs and soaked them for an hour or so. These are something easy to forget and like the vent covers, will get encrusted with coralline if left to long which makes them much harder to remove.

After an hour most of the coralline algae had dissolved from the hose outlets and the pumps were as good as new. To be honest apart from the casings, the impeller and inside were not to bad so I might leave it 2 years before the next clean! Lol

So I set to work taking the final 2 pumps out to soak and putting the first 2 back into place.

The following picture shows the rear section with all pumps removed and you can see all the anemones, probably Aipstasia on the combs. Ignore the Apex sensor holder on its side it’s not normally in that position

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You will note the 2 pieces of filter floss in the holes. Whilst clambering to put the 2 pumps back, I was looking down from the back of the tank thinking those are unusual sponges. It was only when I poked one of them I realised it was the back of the filter floss sticking through (what an idiot! Lol)

2 pumps back in, I stuffed the 2 pieces of sponge/filter floss into the other 2 holes for the other pumps and waited an hour for them to soak. When I went back to refit them, I looked into the rear chamber, and in the few minutes before I blocked the holes, a stupid Wrasse has gone through the hole into the rear chamber. And then decided to hide. It was pure luck I spotted him.

So a 2 minute job took me another 30 minutes whilst I tried to catch this stupid fish.......

So with the all pumps cleaned and up and running I also cleaned the Apex salinity probe as it had been 3 months and it usually freaks out after that period so while I had the back off, cleaned and then recalibrated.

So today (yes it’s raining!) I thought in for a penny...... I’ll make some beer and some wine... yes I’ll digress slightly but bear with me I’m going mad with boredom!

So I’ve made some English Old Suffolk strong ale, picture of finished version below after conditioning and ‘one I made earlier’ (8%!) and some Pino Grigio and white Zinfandel (winexpert selection kits if your interested - I also mainly make the winexpert Eclipse Reds which are excellent)

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Anyway after replenishing my alcohol stock, I though I know Ill change the main pump, so I did and it took just 2 minutes to swap the pump back to the original and put the spare into soak and storage. It had been in for about 6 months and was pretty clean inside.

I’m sure the original is quieter than the spare but......

The picture below is of my excel spreadsheet up dated including a ‘clean rear overflow weirs’ section.

You can also see clearly under the nitrate test results were I changed the test kit to the NYOS and added 6 litres of Seachem Matrix. The drop is very noticeable.

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So maintenance done, alcohol replenished..........
 

Pancho75

Well-Known Member
Well my friend, you are putting to a good use that spare time... sorry for the little white ball but look the bright side your tank is humming and looking good in your house. [emoji1360]


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