Red Sea 250D Max

[wkopplin]

I recently re-entered the hobby. The tank is up and running very nicely. I must say, I was leary of getting an all in one system, but this Red Sea tank is nice. Everything has worked very well. I have seen tremendous growth in my corals in a very short period of time. Troy Valentine was nice enough to set me up with some great frags and starter pieces.

Not sure how many of the people I knew are still around, but a little about myself. I was on the Board of MAAST for a while, in fact, I was Treasurer before Sherri. I think I might have been VP too, but I forgot. I had a massive system that featured a display tank in the house and a whole series of tanks in my garage. ScubaSteve used mine as a model (and greatly improved it) for his gigantic setup.

I did not have the time to deal with such a large system, so I sold it to TexasTodd and Gator in 2006. I have been out of the hobby since then.

I am a firm believer in that the more natural the tank is, the better it will run. I utilize way oversized refugiums, dislike UV sterilizers and medications of any sort. I think the health of the tank starts with the fuge and the biological diversity that can be created from it. Call me a weirdo, but I like the fuge more than the display. I can almost always tell how healthy a tank is from looking at the refugium.

As such, after much deliberation and thought, I finally added a huge to my Red Sea, which was not easy. I ran the out line on the chiller and had an external huge built to gravity drain back to the main tank. Wet Acrylic (Mr. Cobs) built it for me. I am in the process of stocking it right now and have found some really unique macros through a couple of my old online sources to add to the setup. I need to get a good selection of worms, sandbed clams, pods and other critters in there as well. I love Xenia in a fuge as well. If anyone has any interesting macros or critters they would like to donate to my project, I would be happy to reciprocate down the road.

I am looking forward to easing back into the hobby in a not so gigantic manner.

[Troy Valentine]

Blake you've got a sweet setup:) Your knowledge, and "natural" approach to this hobby will be a welcome addition. This system has tons of potential with you behind the wheel.... Glad to see you back!

[REBridges]

I love my red sea. You will be happy with it. Only issue I had was w/micro bubbles for the first month until the skimmer was broken in. The self timer is also a plus. Best all in one tank I've ever bought. My eels sure do love it!

[wkopplin]

I had problems with the micro-bubbles as well, but they have gone away. It was a combination of the skimmer breaking in and fine tuning the size of the sponge in the left chamber. I am currently looking into adding some led lighting into the canopy to get just a little more ability to have some sps in the tank.

I did pull the filter sponge between the skimmer and the right side return and placed it into a bucket to let it drain out. When I looked in the bucket, it was full of pods. I took a better look at the sponge and there must have been several hundred pods crawling around in it, so I threw everything into the Fuge including the sponge. Figured I would just let the pods find their way out of the sponge and into the refugium ecosystem.

[wkopplin]

Blake you've got a sweet setup:) Your knowledge, and "natural" approach to this hobby will be a welcome addition. This system has tons of potential with you behind the wheel.... Glad to see you back!

Thank you! Thanks for all the goodies you hooked me up with to get the thing going.

[REBridges]

If you find any good LED lighting lmk...I've been wanting to do the same to my red sea, but without a lot of modifications to the hood

[wkopplin]

I will post on this thread when I come up with something. I have no interest in modifying the hood to any great extent, so it will have to be easy.

[txav8r]

Looks great, Blake! Glad the fuge worked out for you.

[wkopplin]

Thanks Jack, everything is working like a charm. The fuge is slowly getting stocked up, just looking for some worms and some other little critters.

[wkopplin]

Fuge is up and running. Got my first delivery of macros in yesterday. Pod population is increasing. Using a mix of chaeto, turtle grass, red gracy, halimeda, and saltwater ferns. Threw a little caulerpa in there too, but that is not my favorite, will probably pull it out soon, or separate it in the refugium. Also got a huge rock covered in maiden's hair. Right now, I just dumped everything in there, but will get it all sorted out this weekend. I have an ispf order coming in tomorrow with some cool stuff (lots of worms) so it should be fully seeded. I also threw in a group of small fan worms and a little xenia. I have already noticed a difference in my main tank. The added water volume has helped a lot, my corals are expanding nicely. I am going to continue to play around with the fuge and tinker with the plant mix and see what works best. I like some of the slower growing plants because they are easy to manage. Sorry to ramble, I am just fascinated with the refugium and everything that can be done with them.

[wkopplin]

I also have noted that I am using way less top off water since installing the refugium. On a 66 gallon tank, I was adding about 7 gallons per week due to evaporation. Now I am adding roughly 2.5 gallons / week for a 66 gallon tank and a roughly 25 gallon refugium.

[danvan75]

beware of that caulerpa, it can get out of control and take over the rest of that macro you have in your fuge. I had some type of grape caulerpa, and it grew very fast.

[zerreissen]

My feather caulerpa is taking over my chaeto and dragon's breath in my fuge, and it's only been a couple of weeks. I already need to trim it back, it certainly grows very quickly!

Pardon my ignorance, but what is ispf?

[Troy Valentine]

http://www.ipsf.com

This is a great place to get critters for your sand bed. We used them a lot years ago.

[wkopplin]

I took out the caulerpa, I just don't like it. Threw the stuff away.

[wkopplin]

http://www.fosterandsmithaquatics.com/product/prod_display.cfm?pcatid=21598

I think these strips are what I will be using. I am going to take out the T-5's in the canopy and go with these. Not sure how many I will need, I can probably get by with four of them, but I have room for 6.

[wkopplin]

Still have not ordered the LED's, but I have a good idea as to what I am going to do.

The fuge is humming along and all my corals are doing extremely well since the fuge has been established. I put a couple of seahorses in the fuge and they are doing well. Also added a small cleaner crew.

The macros are growing very well. the Ulva is probably growing the best. I suspended it from the outflow pvc pipe that I ran across the top of the fuge. It just hangs down and flows with the powerhead. The seahorses like to come up to it and hunt for pods. Pretty fun to watch.

I need bristle worms and pods so if anyone has any to spare, give me a shout.

[johnyardavid]

Those LEDs will probably be perfect for a fuge, I don't know much about LED lighting except that if you are looking for coral or macro growth you really need a PAR meter to see their effectiveness; unless of course the LED's are a well documented series like CREE. Thank you again for taking the ponies off of my hands. As soon as you left I pulled that 40gal and cleared out my Saltwater Laboratory haha. You'll have to let me know if they have babies again. I was never able to tell if the male was pregnant because the whole time that he wasn't he would swell his pouch to show off to the girl. Does he still chase her around as soon as the lights come on every morning? I will hit you up on Saturday for the Ulva. I have half a bucket's worth of really fine sand if you could use some? I've already washed it and it's not silt that doesn't settle, it settles pretty quickly, just fine grain like refugium mud. Anyways, I'm liking the setup you have going on.