Reefgrrl
New Member
I’m sharing it to show that despite these limitations, it has been doing much better than I have any right to expect. It is JAMMED - this Reef was in my Red Sea XL425, which was shallower but about 4” larger front to back. So everything, all around, is touching the glass, making it hard to clean the front and side glass.
I use two canister filters - a Fluval 406, and a SunSun HW 303B (has a small UV bulb). They get cleaned about once every 3 months (never at the same time) which isn’t often enough.
Lights are a pair of Luxbird panel LEDs along with a pair of Orphek OR2 120s supplemented at one end with a very cheap Chinese LED puck LED light. I run all blue, no white light.
Heater is a 500W Finnex titanium tube run by a Poniie controller.
Skimmer is a SeaClone 100 HOB that I bought used years ago, and found in a box in my basement - and it works flawlessly.
Flow is from the filter outputs, plus 4 Nano wavemakers - a Tunze 6040, 2 Jebao propeller pumps (they change the names so often, I’ve lost track of what they actually are) and a Jebao SLW-10. All but one of the wave pumps are aimed at the surface to help with gas exchange.
I’ve lost 3 corals since the move, all LPS, I believe from insufficient light and flow. I’ve lost fish because of a stupid mistake I made, then lost a couple of millepora colonies when I treated the fish-death-related ammonia spike with Ammolock (should have read about it BEFORE I used it). All of the acros took a hit, but all the ones that lived are coming back. Further to this, nutrients bottomed out because (I think) of an algae bloom after my foxface and tomini tang died. So all of the montiporas (caps and digis) faded out almost to white, but they’re coming back now that the algae problem is under control.
Current fish are a green wrasse, yellow tang, Aurora goby, lawnmower blenny, and three mollies. I also have about 8 turbo snails, a bunch of blue-leg hermit crabs, and a blue tuxedo urchin.
Sumpless Reef tanks WORK! If this was in my own house, I would have many more options to solve problems, and I’d have the amount of time I need to stay on top of things.
If you’ve got this far, thanks for reading and I’m happy to answer questions if there are any. This is well-documented in videos on my YouTube channel, Reefgrrl, if you’re looking for details of the story.