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BlueZReef's 210 Gallon


Blue Z Reef

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This is my journey to 210 gallons of fun! A rebuild of my thread since site crash :(

 

I started keeping reef tanks after college (FOWLR only during). My tank before the upgrade was a 90 gallon. Overall a great size tank and I really enjoyed it! Here’s a pic before the teardown.

 

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Softies/LPS LOVED this tank! I really wish they could get back to that now but some sacrifices must be made.

 

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Here’s the tank when I first got it with a super low crap stand. Needless to say, that wasn’t gonna work!

 

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Our roommate at the time was good at woodworking and helped me a TON with building the stand.

 

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Poor Z had to sit in the cold for a few weeks while we cut, sanded, stained and prepared the beast!

 

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Got the stand inside, looked massive next to the 90!

 

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Started to work on the tank, had 2X 2” holes drilled in the top right for drains. CNC cut the overflow box. Weirs were massive…wasn’t thinking at the time but hey, it was my first large scale build so mistakes were made lol!

 

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Installed

 

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Here is the sump, a 40B converted. It is basic and has been modified since but again, due to first time building, this was as big as I could fit (it barely made it in!).

 

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At the time was running a bubble mag curve 7. Was pretty undersized but I was on a budget at the time.

 

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Got the plumbing all done and started the RODI filling it up!

 

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The second tank under the stand was a 20 gal tall remote fuge.

 

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I had most of my water from my 90 in rubbermaids with all my livestock. I was hurrying to get everything back to the tank so acclimation wasn’t probably as long as it should have been. Didn’t lose any corals except my large toadstool that never recovered after the move.

 

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Lighting consisted of 3X ReefStar 120w (3w) fixtures from his group buys. I eventually added a single t5 to help out.

 

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I bought a 3 head Marine Magic doser to take care of parameters and “upgraded” the skimmer to a RPS3000 external skimmer.  

 

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Switched over to Ca Rx instead of 2 part dosing (which I wasn’t doing properly and almost crashed the tank) No pics of it though :( 

 

Skimmer upgraded again to Reef Octopus Elite 220…BEAST MODE! Thanks to my lovely wife for letting me buy the most expensive piece of equipment yet!

 

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I’ve had a few different fish over time, they include:

 

Blue hippo tang

2 False perc clowns

3 yellow tangs

4 blue chromies

Carpenters Wrasse

Melanarus Wrasse

Orange Back Wrasse

Bangaii Cardinal

Pink/Yellow anthias (forgetting name, recent add)

 

Some didn’t make it:

Yellow coris wrasse (RIP carpet surfer)

McCroskers wrasse (RIP carpet surfer)

Bartlett anthias (RIP disappeared)

Tamarin Wrasse (RIP unknown cause of death)

Big Eye Soldier Fish (Taken to LFS, was eating other fish from his large size)

2 fire fish (RIP soldier fish food)

 

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The corals have come a long way over the 2 years this tank has been running:

 

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Never had a problem growing purple cap and blue stags....

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Shagggg

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Shhhhhhhh!!! Corals growing!

 

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Some things I learned along the way:

 

Vodka dosing is not always your friend. It works well for nutrient reduction, however, when you hit 0 you need to back off. In doing this in combination with upgrading to a larger more efficient skimmer plus not having a huge bio load my corals were NOT happy. Colors were very dulled/light. After basically shutting it off and adding more aminos, feeding more, relying more on chaeto and skimming, corals have been coloring up better than before!

 

2 part dosing must be done equally….noob mistake but I was dosing out of equal and went from a Ca excess to a crashing down in the 300’s and Alk as well. Testing more regularly would have prevented a lot of this. Praying for a day when the tank tests itself LOL

 

 

 

And that’s about it! I’ll try and update along the way. If anyone wants to come check it out, my doors are always open!

 

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Got my Archon up and running thanks to Eric at DA! Decided it was time to get the spaghetti wireoni out from under the stand and get all my controller bits mounted together. Not fancy by any stretch of imagination but really cleaned up under the stand! Future tanks I'll go the fancy controller box route :D

 

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Here's what the web interface looks like. Overall it's ok but could be better. We'll see how DA runs with it (or the users for that matter, apparently editing isn't too difficult if you know web design).

 

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Haha just trying to keep up with the Clarkdashians :P

 

Overall the programming is similar to how it was in MyReef, but I did find it a bit less user friendly. I think without previous knowledge of RK programming it would have been much more difficult. If anyone has any questions about a new Archon, I'd be more than happy to help where I can. There are some good helpers on R2R too!

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  • 2 weeks later...

Tank really looks sharp! Corals have come a long ways.

 

What do you dose for Ca and Alk? BRS?

Thanks!

 

I have a Ca Rx with Reborn media and some BW Mag media in it too. I love how easy it is now that it's dialed.

 

I was using BRS 2 part on my doser but switched over after almost crashing the tank with unequal dosing. Now my doser has mag, Acropower, and vodka. I keep the vodka to an absolute minimum lately and the corals have been much happier.

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  • 1 month later...

It's ok, I've had some ups and downs with it for sure. The good thing is that they are always working on updates so that is promising that eventually it will be up to par. I had one issue where the system would randomly shut itself off and not restart...needless to say this was not nice to come home to the tank being off all day while I was at work. A firmware update seems to have remedied this issue. They just added a webcam page so I look forward to getting that setup one of these days.

 

My main issue is the graphs just aren't as nice as the apex ones and the interface still feels lacking. As a system though it does everything I need it to. Still a few months out according to DA until we can use our old head units to control (sometimes it's a pain to get the phone out every time I want to mess with something. So if I could rate it if give it like a 7.5/10 with the potential to keep moving up.

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A few photo updates, thanks all for the compliments :biggrin2:

 

This blue stag is trying to get out...not sure how that's gonna pan out once he does....

 

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These two are growing into each other, don't know who's winning but I should probably scoot one over a hair :stupid:

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Sticks crowding all over each other, hate trimming them but think I will have to.

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I got this tri color from Jace as a tiny 1" frag. Growth has really been exploding on it lately.

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Clown lovin on the elegance as usual. Photobomb crew on the move...literally messed up half my shots with a big yellow blur :doh:

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