225g "Reef in the Basement"

[Matze]

Hello

My name is Mathias and I'd like to share my freshly resetted tank with you guys.

First the set up:

225g display tank (200cmx80cmx60cm)
50g sump
45g refugium

All the nice reefing gimmicks:

Lighting main tank:
ATI Powermodul 3x75w LED and 4x54w T5 soon I will add two or more
Kessil 360AWe.

Lighting Refugium:
2 Dennerle Compact T5 with a total of 22w. Don't want to go LED here, because LEDs never have growen macro algae for me.

Pumps:

For current:
Jebao RW 8
Ecotech Vortech MP40
Tunze 6060
Will switch to a total of 4 MP40s during the course of the year, to get rid of the Jebao and Tunze.

Returns:
Jebao DC12000 sump to main display
Resun ehm 2500 or 3000^^ no idea to be honest. Sump to refugium

Skimmer:
ATI Powercone 250is

No name automatic refill sytem, that works awesome.


So far there is not to much livestock in the tank.

As for fish:
1xYellow belly hippo tang

1xMelanurus wrasse

1x Sailfin blenny



Got loads of inverts especially urchins and seacucumbers I love those guys

As for corals I'm striving for a SPS heavy (90%) tank with some LPS and Zoas I like.

My coral selction so far:

Dragons eye favia

Mint green duncan coral with yellow tips

Purple Stylo (we call it Milka, because it looks like the packaging of the famous german chocolate)

Pink hue Leptoseris

Bicolor blue tip Acro

Well thats it for the beginning
Later today I'll shoot some better pics with my camera

Greetings
Mathias

 

[trickedout900]

Aquascape looks good. The kessils will help out a ton as your not getting a lot of coverage with your current light. Looks like your off to a great start though.

 

[Matze]

Aquascape looks good. The kessils will help out a ton as your not getting a lot of coverage with your current light. Looks like your off to a great start though.

Thanks! I like it, too
Though it took me quite some time, to figure it out

Yeah, the best option would be to take the largest ATI, but I'm not up to spent that kind of money. The plan is to get rid of the ATI rather soon and replace it with Kessils.
Did think of Radions first, but I don't see the advantages for the extra money.

Next step though will be a trusty dosing pump, to add my Triton Elements.

 

[Matze]

Yeah! Finally my Sailfin Blenny was in the mood for a picture

 

[Matze]

Yeah finally my Sailfin blenny was in the mood for a picture.

 

[Reeferfourlife]

Nice tank. I was thinking about that light too. But will have the same problem as you. Too short for my new tank build

 

[Matze]

Nice tank. I was thinking about that light too. But will have the same problem as you. Too short for my new tank build

Thank you
Yes, I originally bought the fixture for my 1.2m long tank. I never intended to go bigger than that... funny how life goes
The light of the ATI is superb. But in my opinion not worth to spent the extra dollars for their largest version. So the plan stays, to buy a new Kessil every 4-6 months until I have 5 maybe 6. So my bank account can hold the pace. When I got all of them I'll sell the ATI.

Similiar thing goes for pumps. I thought I could save some cash buying a Jebao. But I had to replace several parts in the course of a year.
Had I gone for a second Vortech the first place, I would have paid 150 bucks on top, but could have had much less trouble.

But to a nice thing
I just aquired a beautiful monti cap. And placed the order for a 5 specimen group of Gramma loreto (I believe you guys call them Royal Grammas?)
Man I'm excited! Slowly things improve.

 

[Reeferfourlife]

Stocking the tank has always been the best part of setting up a new tank. Now you can get colors you like. If the fish is purple and yellow at the back half, we do call it royal gramma here in the states. Had one a longtime ago. My friend calls it the laker fish lol

 

[Gino]

Cool tank and settings.

 

[Matze]

Stocking the tank has always been the best part of setting up a new tank. Now you can get colors you like. If the fish is purple and yellow at the back half, we do call it royal gramma here in the states. Had one a longtime ago. My friend calls it the laker fish lol

Indeed any time I'm at the LFS it feels like beeing the kid in the candy store. Yesterday I bought a nice deep blue Acropora echinata online (even though the pic did look a lot closer to a Acropora caduus). You should have seen the looks my gf gave me for that purchase I feel some heavy duty shopping for new shoes and stuff lies ahead

Yeah thats the fish I'm talking about. Love those guys. This will be the first time, that my tank is large enough for more than one.
I like that Lakers fish idea, sounds much better than Royal Gramma in my opinion

Cool tank and settings.

Thank you

Here are some additions from yesterday.
Thanks to my friend Chris for all the stuff.

Green Monti cap

Red Branching Monti

Green Branching Monti unmounted

Some beautiful red algae

Well and thats how my skimmer went nuts after gluying all the stuff^^

 

[Matze]

Hi R2R

I wanted to give you guys a little update on my Triton run.

So today marks the 3 week point of using the Triton methode. When I first tested my parameters were mostly in line, with the exception of Zink, Copper and Iron. So I did some nice 15% water changes with Tropic Marin Pro Reef and changed my PO4 adsorber to the Triton aluminium based product. Due to those changes I got rid of Zink and Iron. The copper will slowly dissolve on it's own. I then started dosing the 4 Base Elementz. They suggest you to start with 10ml/100L. I soon lowered to 6.5ml/100L to maintain my KH at 8-8.5

After two weeks some things are quite prominent to see. First I got crazy polyp extension on my Acroporas.

The crappy phone picture does not really capture how things look. This specimen is hairy like Bigfoot.

I also observed that the corals do develop colored polyps on the underside of the branches.

That's something I have never seen previously.

Another thing that meets the eye is the rapid growth of yellow sponges.

Also the algae in the refugium does grow like weeds. Especially red algaes.

All in all I'm quite impressed on how good and stable the system became in such a short amount of time. I'll keep you updated

Matze

 

[SantaMonicaHelp]

Cool tank! Keep those pics coming!

SF

 

[Matze]

Cool tank! Keep those pics coming!

SF

Thank you I will. Today I might be able to do some shopping so maybe there's bew stuff tonight.

Matze

 

[Matze]

There's new corals in the tank


Yesterday evening, my buddy Chris amd me made a little tour to my favorite LFS around here. This guy has seriously thousands of different SPS varieties. It's just mind blowing.

You know I've been searching for some nice varieties, that are slowly coming in the country. Did I mention, that you all are freaking blessed with the giant selection of corals you have?


Anyways I bought to mini Acros

This is the first one

It was sold to me under the name 'Raspberry and Cream' . I've never heard that name but it actually looks awesome.
The base is cream white with a nice metalic green hint. The tips are bright pink with white polyps.

And thiiiisss is the other one and my whole pride

I've been looking for a frag of the Strawberry Shortcake Acro for years.
The first ones you could get over here, came in 2014. 1cm around 100€...
Now I got those two frags for 60€, which is still dang expensive for their actual size. But you know what? I don' t care They are awesome.

Lastly my this little guy came out to have a look around for the first time since weeks

Matze

 

[Matze]

Some better pics, taken with my DSLR.

Still have to do some resizing on the pic I see^^

 

[Matze]

My lighting issues

Currently I'm using a ATI Powermodul with
4x54w T5 and 3x75w LED from my old tank.

As you guys see in the full tank shots I took, that is nowhere near a good coverage.
So basically I have to options.

1. Keeping the Powermodul and supplement it with another light source.

2. Ditch the Powermodul and use a totally different lighting.

Option 1 would require at least to additional fixtures. One to the left and one to the right of the powermodul. I would need a fixture that gives me the Par and Spectrum I need for a full SPS tank. I don' t want Mh lights, because I simply never liked them to much, when I had them above my old tank. So LED is pretty much my only choice.

I looked at many different products, including

Ecotech Radions
AI Hydras
Kessils
Blackbox LEDs
Giesemann VerVves

But I came to no conclusion every time I seem to like a fixture in particular, I find tons of things argumenting against them.

Option 2 is much more difficult.
If I sell my Powermodul, I practically wouldn't get any money out of it, due to it beeing one of the first generation fixtures.
So I would need much more money.

My choice here would probably have to be a big T5 fixture. Which I honestly don't like either. An 8x80w fixture would mean an additional 360€ just in bulbs every year.
Plus I don't have any shimmer

So hard decision

Do you guys have some tips for me?

Matze

 

[SABOB]

Tank looks good......on a side note, I lived in Heidelberg when my dad was stationed there in the Army and my last name is Mathias

 

[Matze]

Tank looks good......on a side note, I lived in Heidelberg when my dad was stationed there in the Army and my last name is Mathias

Thank you
Heidelberg is so beautiful, my Ex girlfriend lived there and I loved visiting. So much history around
Funny, didn't know that Mathias is also a last name. Is this a common name with you guys over the pond?

 

[Live Water]

Lots of used good used fixtures out there

 

[Matze]

Lots of used good used fixtures out there

That is true, when it comes to the U.S. but in Germany especially for LEDs, prices are extremely high when it comes to second hand.

For example a 1 year old Radion is just a 100€ cheaper than a brand new one.


Friday I'm going to get an offer from a buddy of mine for a set of Radion Xr30s and Kessil A 360s.

He owns a LFS here, so he might is able to offer them a little cheaper.