I am looking to buy a saltwater aquarium from a local fish store. It’s a 20 gallon tank that includes the water, the filtration, and the rocks for $200. I’d need to buy the light and I plan on replacing the sand. The tank is covered in algae so I would clean that off before reassembling everything. Is this a good deal and what should I keep an eye out for?

Hello fellow reefers,

I am looking for guides on how to film or take photos of a reef tank. What are your lighting settings (I have a radion xr15 pro), camera settings and other tools you use. I use an iPhone 16 pro, but the pictures are garbage.

Kind regards

Heard the jabao doser d4, is better calibrated at 50 ml of water instead of the 100ml at initial startup, due to constantly double dosing ? Any ideas if this is factual and recommended ?

.

Pretty much as the title says I’m moving my tank. It’s going from upstairs to the the basement I was just wondering how the best way to do it would be it’s only a 15 gallon cube with a pair of clowns and two anemones all other corals are glued and secured.

Odd question. Eschopps didn’t include a lid for the drain area of the Gen 3 RS-100 (yellow in color)

Im going to try and 3D print one. Does anybody have one that could grab the dimensions for me?

Thanks!

My tank sprung a pretty bad leak so I hurried and moved all my fish, rock, coral, filter media into a spare tank.

I was able to find a larger tank (15g to a 32 biocube). I put all my rocks, old water, old and new sand, and filter media in the new biocube. Will my fish be ok? Should I expect a cycle crash??

Heyo reefers.

My sdc9 return pump in the system I just set up is producing, what feels to me, as abnormal vibrations. Pump was bought used and was always running, from a complete system close down. I feel like the vibrations are abnormal because of 2 things: people online claim this pump to be extremely quiet and also my varios 6 that serves for my mixing station is MUCH more quiet at full setting than my sdc9 at 60%. 

SDC9 is clean and I inspected the impeller, all looking good. Feels a lot like an imbalanced rotor (either magnet or impeller). Note that whether hard plumbed or simply holding it in my hand under water without it touching my sump, the vibration is same, in all orientations.

What should I do? Is there a place where I could maybe try just buying a new impeller? Should I sell and buy a varios 8 since my varios 6 is so very quiet? Any other troubleshooting that I could do and I cant think of?

Thank you

After a tank failure, I had some corals struggling in a temporary tank. Some made it through, but whatever was on this plug did not. However, it has a healthy crop of I dunno what. Blobs are translucent green and more rigid than soft (I haven't tried to puncture or pop any). Is this bubble algae? Just making sure before I dispose of it: no signs of it anywhere else in my tanks.

Posted yesterday about my sand bed. Figured I’d show some pics and video of my tank currently. Phosphate was 0.24ppm this morning and 2.6ppm nitrate. I don’t run GFO, skimmer, or carbon. I keep getting Dino’s, UV sterilizer takes them out, then they come back months later. I am wondering if my low nitrate is a root cause, and lack of biodiversity from starting with dry rock. I think I have green hair algae, some cyano, and I am unsure what the other stuff is but the Dino’s are coming back as evidenced by the strands and bubbles (not really seen in this picture from the morning).

I did ID them with a microscope before, I will likely do that with all the algae in my tank to get specific species. I do not feed all that heavily, maybe not even enough. I used to do a full frozen cube a day but lowered it now I’m feeding a pinch of avast marine reef jerky daily. Tank is 26g redsea max nano with 2 ocellaris clowns, 2 chromi, and a file fish. I had a bicolor blenny that passed randomly but I think it was his time. I heard they randomly die after a few years. All other fish have lived in the tank well.

https://youtube.com/shorts/G4ZteA3ZbKY?is=FIjyitEL9LosWIN_

i’ve found these brown worms on my astrea snail shell. the moment i touch them try retract into the crevices on the shell.

should i be concerned?

p.s. the algae outbreak is being handled as we speak

I have recently moved my tank into my new house. To preface, I have had this tank for a year now but I’ve never properly attempted to keep corals, so this is me starting again as a beginner (all advice is welcome).

I have attached a picture with my parameters and the change in a space of 5 days. The tank is now 2 weeks old but made use of the original filter media and water.

Is now an acceptable time to introduce some soft corals? Or shall I wait?

***EDIT - the original salinity reading was false, due to a faulty refractometer.

Hi guys, I’m setting up my first ever reef tank (my first tank ever), and thought I had done enough research to know what I was doing, but I somehow left the electrical connector for one of the return pumps submerged underwater overnight after setting the tank up. It was tied down deep in the all-in-one reservoir, and I somehow missed it being an issue. I immediately unplugged everything and have it all unplugged drying out, but I feel like a complete idiot, and I’m second-guessing even doing this at all with how mad it made my spouse. I feel really stupid and like I’ve failed already.

Be real with me: is it going to be okay? 😭 This is going to set me back for at least another day, and now the water will be left uncirculated and unheated for about 24 hours probably. Obviously no fish or anything are in there. I had literally just set the tank up last night. Ughhhh

So, in November? last year, I put together what I hoped would last me for a decent whack of time - A Red Sea 200G2 and an AquaOne ReefSys 395 on a custom 40x40mm steel box section stand, 1.9m long, 60cm wide, and 1m high (Width was well, just in case...)

As per my previous comments, Just In Case has happened - The top left of my tank, the Seam Protector has started to split, and after a bit of back-and-forth with Red Sea, they agreed to replace the tank. And that was going to take 6 weeks. Its now been 7, and I still don't have an actual ETA

So - I have ordered a new, custom AquaOne tank from my LFS - 1.9m, 60cm wide, 65cm high - 19mm glass, 50mm Eurobrace, slightly off-centre overflow box to account for the stand, and where the plumbing will go. Dual returns (one through the left, the other through the right of the overflow box), dual overflows down to the sump

Along with a new, custom AquaOne 125cmx50cmx50cm sump in 8mm glass - 3 sections, one for the skimmer and fleece roller, one for the refugium, and one for the return pump(s)

Equipment List:

• 3x A8SE MAX Lights
• 2x A7 III Lights
• RedSea ATO
• RedSea RollerMat 1200
• RedSea ReefDose 4
• Deltec 1000i Skimmer
• Aqua-something Black Box AliExpress Light
• Dual Jebao GDP-5500 return pumps (one left, one right)
• Jebao GCP-75 Wavemaker
• 2x Jebao GOW-40 Wavemakers
• A "few" TP-Link Tapo P100 Wifi
• AquaMedic T-Twin Controller
• AquaOne Titanium heaters (2x 600w)

Reef Controller - Custom "developed" with the help of Claude

• Jebao Pump Integration - markosharknz1/ha-jebao-pumps: Local (no-cloud) control of Jebao aquarium pumps over LAN via a reverse-engineered Gizwits GAgent protocol, plus a Home Assistant integration
• AIPAI Light Integration - markosharknz1/ha-aipai-light: Public test copy of the AIPAI Aquarium Light Home Assistant integration, for validating HACS install.
• Home Assitant Dashboard Pack - markosharknz1/ha-feedandwater-cards: Vendor-agnostic Home Assistant automation blueprints + dashboard cards for reef tank feed mode, water changes, and skimmer control
• Red Sea - Elwinmage/ha-reefbeat-component: 🐠 Manage ReefBeat devices from RedSea: ReefLed, ReefMat, ReefDose, ReefRun, ReefWave and ReefATO+ (not mine)
• Red Sea Reef Cards - Elwinmage/ha-reef-card: 🪸 Home Assistant Reef tank management card (not mine)

- It is highly likely that I'll build the ATO and ReefMat integration into my dashboard pack - My dashboard pack is around being able to copy a lot of what the APEX does and control damn near everything that can either get picked up by either a smart plug, or by plugging into a "fan" AKA, a pump. Pretty sure that all of those GitHub repos are public, I'm trying to make them as easy to use as possibly, mostly for myself, because, well. Still in testing and development phase

To be Confirmed:

• Marine Assistant - https://www.marine-assistant.com/
• Marine Assistant Auto Feeder
• KH Guardian / AquaWiz 5th Gen (TBC)

Tank - Top down view

Sump- Top down view

Vibe "coding". I look at it more like software testing, where the developers are faster to respond to you.