My Planet Aquarium Tideline 47 gallon AIO was started Feb 2024. This is my first reef tank. I also set up a 5g quarantine tank at the same time for fish. I purchased the stand with the tank and added shelving, and some wood for the back of the stand. I painted the interior white. I’ll post equipment pics later.
Equipment
Pump (upgrade): AI axis 90 running at 40% power. Also, I replaced Tideline’s crappy return with a MADD REEF dual head return adapter.
Lights: 2 Radion XR15 G6 pro. I added diffusers and shades from Printed Reef to cut down on light spillage.
Heater: Helio PTC dual 100W elements
Flow: 1 Vortech MP10. I originally purchased two but only have needed 1 so far since the return pump provides a lot of flow.
Controller: Neptune A3 Apex Pro + Trident tester + MXM module to control lights and pumps
Dosing Pump: Neptune DOS adding 10 mL AFR daily. I’m thinking of also adding NO3, PO4, and iodine since these are usually low.
Skimmer: Tunze Comline DOC 9004 (most recently added)
ATO: Neptune ATK pulling from Bashsea 20g reservoir, which is refilled bimonthly.
Media Tray (upgrade): from Kreative Reefer. I replaced one filter sock to use a media tray for GAC.
UV sterilizer: Innovative Marine 10W aquashield. I used this initially after fish introductions or when algae has been bad.
Cover: Kraken Reef
Rock: Caribsea Life Rock. I forget how much.
Sand: Caribsea Arag-alive. 1.5 bags for a deep sand bed.
Salt: Red Sea blue bucket. Salinity at 34-35 ppt.
Fish
All fish currently except a Randalls goby are captive bred from Biota. Most are pretty small at the moment but some will need to be re-homed or moved to another tank as they get larger. Long term for this tank are a mated pair of mandarins, pair of snowflake clowns, Banggai card, coral beauty, grey watchman goby, skilletfish, yellowheaded jawfish, and the Randall goby.
CUC
Snails: 10 Astrea, 4 Nerite, 4 Cerith, 4 Nassarius
2 tuxedo urchins
Hermits: 3 blue legged, 2 scarlet, 1 halloween
Shrimp: Randall’s pistol, Tiger pistol, cleaner shrimp, blood red fire shrimp. The pistol shrimp are paired to Randall and Watchman gobies.
1 Fighting conch
The MVPs of the CUC are the urchins and conch. The Astrea and Nassarius are next most useful.
Corals: 5 torches, 3 hammers, 1 frogspawn, 2 Duncans, 3 leathers, 5 Montis, 1 stylo, 2 acros, 3 gonis, 1 chalice, 1 scoly, 7 zoas, 2 palys, 1 cyphastrea, 1 pipe organ, 1 birdsnest, 1 candy cane
Other inverts
1 Crocea clam, 1 BTA, and at least 1 Pom Pom crab
Initial setup (Feb 2024):
I had this odd alcove in my living room to put the tank. The blue light makes the outside look like I have a weird science experiment going on my house, but the light shades have helped quite a bit with that. Coincidentally, house plants next to the tank have grown pretty well.
1 month later (Mar 2024):
The tank took about 3 months to finish cycling even after using bottled bacteria, ammonia dosing, and fish food. In hindsight, I wish I used some live rock. The first fish added was a firefish. However, this fish passed a week after going from QT to DT. I tried again with another firefish and same issue. I still don’t really know why these fish died, as I was testing NH3, NO2, and NO3 everyday. No obvious signs of disease in QT or the DT.
4 months later (May 2024):
I added the UV sterilizer and introduced a Biota snowflake clown directly to the DT, which has survived. I then shortly added a mandarin, another small snowflake clown and Yellow tang in sequence from QT. The 1st clown, male mandarin, and tang, which my wife calls Wang, are still doing well. The 2nd clown introduced didn’t survive the 1st month and was replaced with another snowflake, and these two clowns have continued to do really well. Wang the tang is about 4” currently. I didn’t initially intend to add the most aggressive fish early, but i was grateful to get over fish losses. Wang is soon going to be getting a new home since he’s nearly outgrown this tank. I also added a BTA before corals hoping that it would find its happy spot. This worked pretty well for a while. However, the BTA recently decided to go for a walk, and I’m actually not quite sure where it went. I’ll likely be moving the nem once he re-emerges to a recently set up frag tank.
5 months later (Jun 2024):
My mandarin pair:
In June, I purchased a female mandarin from Biota. Oddly, my male turned out to be female and the female turned out to be male once they got a little older, and I could clearly see their dorsal fins. Luckily these fish have done well together. The male does frequently chase the female at night, but most often they’re swimming in unison like the above video. I guess these are mating events, but I haven’t seen any spawn.
11 months later (Jan 2025):
I purchased some more fish since my wife gave me a Biota gift card for Christmas. Most of the fish are pretty small at the moment. I had to increase feeding significantly and thus added a protein skimmer. Surprisingly, my NO3 and PO4 only spiked slightly to 10 and 0.05 respectively, and they’ve since dropped back down after a couple weeks. Several of these fish will be going to a frag tank that is being set up.
Scoly in the morning:
I picked up a scoly at reefapolooza NY in August. This is probably my favorite coral along with my torches.
Current (Feb 2025):
Below shows the tank currently. I’ll be filling in the back top rocks with some more SPS and left rock with more LPS. I’ll likely need to frag the right Duncan shortly, which has grown a lot.
Tank video:
Equipment
Pump (upgrade): AI axis 90 running at 40% power. Also, I replaced Tideline’s crappy return with a MADD REEF dual head return adapter.
Lights: 2 Radion XR15 G6 pro. I added diffusers and shades from Printed Reef to cut down on light spillage.
Heater: Helio PTC dual 100W elements
Flow: 1 Vortech MP10. I originally purchased two but only have needed 1 so far since the return pump provides a lot of flow.
Controller: Neptune A3 Apex Pro + Trident tester + MXM module to control lights and pumps
Dosing Pump: Neptune DOS adding 10 mL AFR daily. I’m thinking of also adding NO3, PO4, and iodine since these are usually low.
Skimmer: Tunze Comline DOC 9004 (most recently added)
ATO: Neptune ATK pulling from Bashsea 20g reservoir, which is refilled bimonthly.
Media Tray (upgrade): from Kreative Reefer. I replaced one filter sock to use a media tray for GAC.
UV sterilizer: Innovative Marine 10W aquashield. I used this initially after fish introductions or when algae has been bad.
Cover: Kraken Reef
Rock: Caribsea Life Rock. I forget how much.
Sand: Caribsea Arag-alive. 1.5 bags for a deep sand bed.
Salt: Red Sea blue bucket. Salinity at 34-35 ppt.
Fish
All fish currently except a Randalls goby are captive bred from Biota. Most are pretty small at the moment but some will need to be re-homed or moved to another tank as they get larger. Long term for this tank are a mated pair of mandarins, pair of snowflake clowns, Banggai card, coral beauty, grey watchman goby, skilletfish, yellowheaded jawfish, and the Randall goby.
CUC
Snails: 10 Astrea, 4 Nerite, 4 Cerith, 4 Nassarius
2 tuxedo urchins
Hermits: 3 blue legged, 2 scarlet, 1 halloween
Shrimp: Randall’s pistol, Tiger pistol, cleaner shrimp, blood red fire shrimp. The pistol shrimp are paired to Randall and Watchman gobies.
1 Fighting conch
The MVPs of the CUC are the urchins and conch. The Astrea and Nassarius are next most useful.
Corals: 5 torches, 3 hammers, 1 frogspawn, 2 Duncans, 3 leathers, 5 Montis, 1 stylo, 2 acros, 3 gonis, 1 chalice, 1 scoly, 7 zoas, 2 palys, 1 cyphastrea, 1 pipe organ, 1 birdsnest, 1 candy cane
Other inverts
1 Crocea clam, 1 BTA, and at least 1 Pom Pom crab
Initial setup (Feb 2024):
I had this odd alcove in my living room to put the tank. The blue light makes the outside look like I have a weird science experiment going on my house, but the light shades have helped quite a bit with that. Coincidentally, house plants next to the tank have grown pretty well.
1 month later (Mar 2024):
The tank took about 3 months to finish cycling even after using bottled bacteria, ammonia dosing, and fish food. In hindsight, I wish I used some live rock. The first fish added was a firefish. However, this fish passed a week after going from QT to DT. I tried again with another firefish and same issue. I still don’t really know why these fish died, as I was testing NH3, NO2, and NO3 everyday. No obvious signs of disease in QT or the DT.
4 months later (May 2024):
I added the UV sterilizer and introduced a Biota snowflake clown directly to the DT, which has survived. I then shortly added a mandarin, another small snowflake clown and Yellow tang in sequence from QT. The 1st clown, male mandarin, and tang, which my wife calls Wang, are still doing well. The 2nd clown introduced didn’t survive the 1st month and was replaced with another snowflake, and these two clowns have continued to do really well. Wang the tang is about 4” currently. I didn’t initially intend to add the most aggressive fish early, but i was grateful to get over fish losses. Wang is soon going to be getting a new home since he’s nearly outgrown this tank. I also added a BTA before corals hoping that it would find its happy spot. This worked pretty well for a while. However, the BTA recently decided to go for a walk, and I’m actually not quite sure where it went. I’ll likely be moving the nem once he re-emerges to a recently set up frag tank.
5 months later (Jun 2024):
My mandarin pair:
In June, I purchased a female mandarin from Biota. Oddly, my male turned out to be female and the female turned out to be male once they got a little older, and I could clearly see their dorsal fins. Luckily these fish have done well together. The male does frequently chase the female at night, but most often they’re swimming in unison like the above video. I guess these are mating events, but I haven’t seen any spawn.
11 months later (Jan 2025):
I purchased some more fish since my wife gave me a Biota gift card for Christmas. Most of the fish are pretty small at the moment. I had to increase feeding significantly and thus added a protein skimmer. Surprisingly, my NO3 and PO4 only spiked slightly to 10 and 0.05 respectively, and they’ve since dropped back down after a couple weeks. Several of these fish will be going to a frag tank that is being set up.
Scoly in the morning:
I picked up a scoly at reefapolooza NY in August. This is probably my favorite coral along with my torches.
Current (Feb 2025):
Below shows the tank currently. I’ll be filling in the back top rocks with some more SPS and left rock with more LPS. I’ll likely need to frag the right Duncan shortly, which has grown a lot.
Tank video:
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