Red Sea Max E-170 build!

[CoastieFlo]

Alright, so I've been holding off on this build thread for a while...but here we go. I started this tank on March 13th, 2021. Gonna post more pics throughout the week to catch up and better sort through my gallery. Here is the list:

-Red Sea Max E-170 with Reef LED 90
-35 ish pounds "real reef rock" that was dead from BRS
-about 30 pounds Carib special grade alive sand 1 inch bed
-Red sea coral pro salt
-Salinity 1.025 at 77 degrees
-200w BRS titanium heater
-inkbird wifi heater control
-XP aqua duetto ato
-AI Nero 3 powerhead
-fiji cube HOB medium refugium
-Innovative marine 90w chaeto max grow light
-red sea screen
-custom built canopy made from black starboard marine grade hdpe

Livestock:
-2 mexican turbos
-5 nassarius snails
-1 Hawaiian Red reef lobster
-2 ocellarus clowns
-1 royal gramma
-1 lawnmower blenny
-1 red brittle star
-2 emerald crabs

Corals
-1 gsp
- 2 frags of party pack zoas, one of them on some type of live clam or mussel
-pulsing zenia

RIP: wards sleeper goby, leather coral my fault I learned some hard lessons...

 

[Zach B]

Nice tank!

 

[Lost in the Sauce]

Nice tank. You've acquired quite a bit of kit since your welcome thread.

The tank looks great. A few questions. How often do you plan on having the blinds open on that window and does it receive direct light?

What sorts of corals are you planning for this tank? Reason I ask, emerald crabs are iffy around coral. Some munch, some don't. Keep an eye on your corals and crabs. If they start nipping, they will likely need a new home.

With the new fish and corals going into the system, are you proactively quarantineing?

 

[CoastieFlo]

Nice tank. You've acquired quite a bit of kit since your welcome thread.

The tank looks great. A few questions. How often do you plan on having the blinds open on that window and does it receive direct light?

What sorts of corals are you planning for this tank? Reason I ask, emerald crabs are iffy around coral. Some munch, some don't. Keep an eye on your corals and crabs. If they start nipping, they will likely need a new home.

With the new fish and corals going into the system, are you proactively quarantineing?

Thank you, all of the questions you ask I've looked into. Main concern I had was being near my window, I receive about 10 minutes of direct light every morning then shaded throughout the day, so far I do had minor algae growing in the substrate where the light hits in the corner but the lawnmower and snails have been doing a great job. I did go through a short ugly diatom stage but that has passed and I am hoping my small refugium will help maintain nutrients along with my weekly water changes. My thought is to stay consistent and not allow nutrients to be excessive in the first place but I am aware of the risks of an extreme ULN system. Before I even added chaeto, my nitrates/phosphates were fairly low, this API kit is showing near 0 across the board. As for the crab, I did have a toadstool leather which was picked by the emerald at first and then died but I think that was due to my tank not being fully cycled (I took bad advice knowing better). I think the crab was just taking advantage of a dying coral because he doesn't bother any of my frags and I keep him busy with a small bit of nori daily. All but one fish has been quarantined prior to adding as well as corals being dipped. I do want to slow things down a little and take my quarantine more seriously, my wife just landed a job at my LFS this week and added the starfish before quarantine so that does concern me. My goal is to have an LPS/soft dominant tank and I really want my next coral to be a hammer torch as soon as I am comfortable the tank is established enough which I think should be soon. Ultimate goal about a year from now is to have a spotted mandarin, as soon as I know my chaeto is growing healthy I will be adding copepods and establishing a good population. I have also researched into buying captive bred and training them to eat frozen foods along with the live copepod diet to supplement (probably the other way around) I have currently have a 10 gallon quarantine tank I plan on keeping fully running as I progress.

 

[CoastieFlo]

Nice tank!

Thank you!

 

[CoastieFlo]

Added a piece of left over dried rock to make a pulsing xenia island...have it set up in the back so they can grow in the lower flow area....already one of my favorites

 

[CoastieFlo]

Added my first LPS... trumpet and favia.

 

[omar91]

Loving the setup. I just bought the same tank, it should arrive soon. I would like to add a refugium as well, how’s your working on?

 

[CoastieFlo]

Loving the setup. I just bought the same tank, it should arrive soon. I would like to add a refugium as well, how’s your working on?

Thanks, I took it off for the time being, I don't think I had enough nutrients to really grow much chaeto, along with proper flow in the fuge so it just collected cyano. Seemed like a really good idea but completely not necessary at this stage.

 

[CoastieFlo]

Little update on my tank, added a torch of some kind, and some rainbow and some of kind of pink and purple encrusting montipora, some pink plating monti, some jackolantern leptocerus and even a pink goniopora. Along with a bangai cardinal...his buddy got caught in my power head and died, I feel terrible. There's a picture, its a little green because I just fed some red sea ab+ but I thought it looked cool.

 

[CoastieFlo]

Some more photos

 

[omar91]

Little update on my tank, added a torch of some kind, and some rainbow and some of kind of pink and purple encrusting montipora, some pink plating monti, some jackolantern leptocerus and even a pink goniopora. Along with a bangai cardinal...his buddy got caught in my power head and died, I feel terrible. There's a picture, its a little green because I just fed some red sea ab+ but I thought it looked cool.

Looking good. I like your aquascape. Sorry to hear about the bangai cardinal. I lost an anemone one time for the same reason. Have you put a nemguard on the Nero 3?

 

[CoastieFlo]

Looking good. I like your aquascape. Sorry to hear about the bangai cardinal. I lost an anemone one time for the same reason. Have you put a nemguard on the Nero 3?

Thank you! And yep, have the guard on there...ended up getting another larger cardinal for cheap and changed some flow and all seems well....also speaking of the nemguard...got my first coralline algae spot growing....basically a huge deal for me I've been waiting 4 months lol

 

[CoastieFlo]

A little first time birdsnest frag, and my first hammer...so I'm super cool now

 

[omar91]

Thank you! And yep, have the guard on there...ended up getting another larger cardinal for cheap and changed some flow and all seems well....also speaking of the nemguard...got my first coralline algae spot growing....basically a huge deal for me I've been waiting 4 months lol

lol that's great about the coralline algae, you should be getting more spots soon.The corals are looking good, loved the torches.

 

[johnrb3]

Alright, so I've been holding off on this build thread for a while...but here we go. I started this tank on March 13th, 2021. Gonna post more pics throughout the week to catch up and better sort through my gallery. Here is the list:

-Red Sea Max E-170 with Reef LED 90
-35 ish pounds "real reef rock" that was dead from BRS
-about 30 pounds Carib special grade alive sand 1 inch bed
-Red sea coral pro salt
-Salinity 1.025 at 77 degrees
-200w BRS titanium heater
-inkbird wifi heater control
-XP aqua duetto ato
-AI Nero 3 powerhead
-fiji cube HOB medium refugium
-Innovative marine 90w chaeto max grow light
-red sea screen
-custom built canopy made from black starboard marine grade hdpe

Livestock:
-2 mexican turbos
-5 nassarius snails
-1 Hawaiian Red reef lobster
-2 ocellarus clowns
-1 royal gramma
-1 lawnmower blenny
-1 red brittle star
-2 emerald crabs

Corals
-1 gsp
- 2 frags of party pack zoas, one of them on some type of live clam or mussel
-pulsing zenia

RIP: wards sleeper goby, leather coral my fault I learned some hard lessons...

Luv love the tank and setup! Very nice looking.

 

[CoastieFlo]

Little update to the reef, I added some birdsnest and some gorgonian. Had a minor dino outbreak but things seemed to have cleared up with a little bit of patience and changing out the filter floss every few days and adjusting flow. And my corals are starting to blast off, I just started dosing and keeping the alk at a steady 9. Other than that I have finally learned to stop messing with stuff lol.

 

[CoastieFlo]

Luv love the tank and setup! Very nice looking.

Thank you!

 

[CoastieFlo]

An update to my tank...added 8 new frags and some new pics of the progress.....8 months old tank and really taking off. I did have some bryopisis starting to grow on my sandbed, gonna try some reef flux rx, will post photos of results soon.

 

[cprice86]

An update to my tank...added 8 new frags and some new pics of the progress.....8 months old tank and really taking off. I did have some bryopisis starting to grow on my sandbed, gonna try some reef flux rx, will post photos of results soon.

nice looking progress man! I have not altered anything in the back of mine, but it seems to get like, air pockets underneath everything in the back? Water levels all look normal, return nozzle starts putting out micro bubbles, and when i turn the pump off and turn it back on, the water lever in the back is half empty. Any experience with anything like that?