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

SPR

Well-Known Member
How are the new fish getting on?
‘Swimmingly’! Lol

2 are MIA. The convict tang, but I though he was dead on arrival and I got a refund fortunately. He seemed to recover but I found him later.

The white faced tang has not been seen since I added the powder brown. They looked very similar apart from the face patterns so I’m assuming the powder brown ‘won’.

Everyone else is fine and dandy.
 

Nobbygas

Well-Known Member
Good luck with the Powder Brown. I love both the Blue and Brown but unfortunately I have never been able to keep one longer than six weeks. I have now accepted the fact I will not have one of either.
Sorry to hear about the two MIA's.
 
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SPR

Well-Known Member
Good luck with the Powder Brown. I love both the Blue and Brown but unfortunately I have never been able to keep one longer than six weeks. I have now accepted the fact I will not have one of either.
Sorry to hear about the two MIA's.
I won’t get a blue because I’ve done a lot of research on them and not worth the risk as they get bigger. I really like them but....
 

PSU4ME

JoePa lives on!!!
Staff member
PREMIUM
Beautiful. I’m losing my lyretails one by one. Feel like they are going mad, shutting down, hiding and then never to be seen again. My male is currently being weird
 

Nobbygas

Well-Known Member
Beautiful. I’m losing my lyretails one by one. Feel like they are going mad, shutting down, hiding and then never to be seen again. My male is currently being weird
That's the same as me. At one point I had four Lyretail and four Bimaculatus Anthias. Now I'm down to one Lyretail and two Bimaculatus.
 
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SPR

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So today, and because some idiot called Boris has closed the golf courses, you know the wide open spaces, a bit like parks which are open, were you aren’t near anyone else, I was very bored. I was going to go to the garden centre, which are open, and mix with all the old and vulnerable people who hang out together there in groups, but I thought it might be to dangerous.....

Anyway, my fish won’t even speak to me because there sick of me staring at them, so it was time to clean the DD 80w UV-C sterilisation device and change the bulb

Now for those who haven’t seen the 80w UV-C, the quartz cover gets covered in white calcium deposit so needs a soak in citric acid or cleaner of your choice to remove this. The quartz cover is a bit cumbersome to soak in anything because it’s long and thin

So using my superior brain power, what could I build, and what parts did I have left from the big build.......

Wallah! The patented quartz cover cleaning device!

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SPR

Well-Known Member
This coral has grown at an incredible rate

I’ve also today added another 40 hermit crabs and 20 Astrea snails because they were on offer at 50% off and I like a bargain!

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SPR

Well-Known Member
Today I’ve added 8 Banggai Cardinalfish, Ive never had any before and there quiet sweet actually

Here they are getting ready for their new home in the big house

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SPR

Well-Known Member
Nitrate levels in the big tank are still around 25-30 despite on going water changes, the ALR2 light reactor was working and growing a bit of chaeto, but is rated for only 50% of the capacity needed for this system. Now I know these levels are not the end of the world, but long term it’s to high and I definitely don’t want them any higher

The 56 litres of Seachem Matrix can’t bring it down on its own, although the levels haven’t increased they’ve stabilised

Water changes will work, but it’s going to be an ongoing expense because of the water volumes involved, and I don’t like changing to much because it upsets the water parameters

So what’s a boy to do....

Firstly I put the ALR2 on the auction site with £100 of the new price and it sold within about an hour

So now were going to the ‘nuclear’ option, and hopefully the long term control of nitrates within the system. Ive been researching these for months, control etc. The principle is fairly straight forward so we shall see.

Deltec NFP512 Nitrate Reactor
Kamoer FX STP2 - to control the constant drip rate through the reactor very accurately
DD P1 Pro dosing head - automatic addition of the nitrate fluid, vodka

Now for those of you with eagle eyes, you will see a bottle of ATM Colony and also a bottle of Seachem Stability

I ordered the Colony to seed the reactor. But I thought about this, and Colony is designed to cycle a new reef tank and as far as I can establish only contains aerobic bacteria, to complete the nitrogen cycle. We don’t want those.

I don’t want to complete the nitrogen cycle, I want to convert nitrate to nitrogen gas, and the principle of the reactor is to establish a colony of anaerobic bacteria to do this. Seachem Stability contains a mix of aerobic bacteria, but also anaerobic bacteria amongst other things, which is what we need to give it a good kick start, so that’s what’s going to be used.

Anyway here’s the equipment just delivered and as usual the Deltec equipment is very solid and well built

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SPR

Well-Known Member
We have a slight delay in starting up the Deltec NFP reactor because it’s got a crack in it!

If you look at the picture above, the pipe to the left above the name Deltec the tubes cracked. I had hoped it was a scar but unfortunately not it leaks.....
 

SPR

Well-Known Member
For the S650 I’ve now mixed up all 3 alternatives to the Red Sea foundation elements and finally today refilled the calcium container with Calcium chloride Dihydrate 77% food grade and mixed it to a ratio of 1kg to 1.8 litres of water

It warms up like it’s supposed to with an exothermic reaction, it looks the same ‘tea’ colour, probably because it is the same!
 
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