THE ATLANTIS

[Raheel]

Hi, thank you for taking the time to read through. 

Whats the Atlantis, Atlantis is what i named my Red Sea Reefer 350. Why name it Atlantis ? Atlantis has always fascinated me. And The Red Sea Reefer being my current dream tank build, the only thing i could think of naming is was The Atlantis. 

I bought my Reefer 350 second hand from a fellow reefer. The tank was only used for a few months, 5 months to be exact. Well the tank was collected today. And i did the delivery myself. So i guess ill start this thread by writing my experience on how the delivery was done, and what you guys could learn from my mistakes. 

My friend and i, yes 2 people. We went down to collect the tank, in my van.  Lesson no 1, have more help. Despite the tank weighing 64kg, we had issues carrying it. issues faced was lifting the tank up higher due to the piping, instead of sliding it off the cabinet. Second issue faced was loading it into the van. It was an issue because again of the piping we could not slide it in and had to carefully place it.  Now my van isnt that big. Its just enough to fit a 4 ft tank.  Second issue faced, i decided i did not want to dismantle the cabinet and that we just put it in the van standing. Well it did fit, but due to the size of my van, it was just nice about 5-6 cm away from the door closing in. And the sump tank was just kissing the cabinet. 

In my opinion, get more people to help. Also have some boxes or cloths to protect the tanks, because when i was driving, there were instances i had to brake hard, and in one of those breaks the sump slide forward and hit the tank. Luckily nothing happened, we stopped over at the patrol pump, got everything placed properly again and put cardboards between them just incase 

Once the tank was home, it was a breeze to set up. Firstly the previous reefer had already set up the overflow pipes for me. All i had to do was fix the drainage, emergency drainage and return. 

Now the tank sits, while its Rocks, salts, sands and biomedia come. Also going to do a leak test before filling it up with salt water. 

 

Edited September 13, 2020 by Raheel
Pictures werent opening.

[Evolutionz]

Another Red sea reefer!  Always exciting to set up a new tank. Enjoy the process!

[Muw]

Nice.. got the same tank..


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[Admiraltian]

Enjoy the setup process and welcome to Reefing!!

[Harlequinmania]

tank matching well with your house reno .. looking for more updates !

[Evolutionz]

Another thing to take note, having a rimless tank so near electrical appliance is not ideal.. There's alot more salt spray than you might expect.

[Raheel]

On 9/14/2020 at 9:59 AM, Evolutionz said:

Another Red sea reefer!  Always exciting to set up a new tank. Enjoy the process!

 

On 9/14/2020 at 10:32 AM, Muw said:

Nice.. got the same tank..


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21 hours ago, Admiraltian said:

Enjoy the setup process and welcome to Reefing!!

 

1 hour ago, he said:

tank matching well with your house reno .. looking for more updates !

Thanks !! Yup will surly keep updating. 
just waiting for my things to arrive 

 

[Raheel]

1 hour ago, Evolutionz said:

Another thing to take note, having a rimless tank so near electrical appliance is not ideal.. There's alot more salt spray than you might expect.

Thanks for the tip. Didn’t consider that at all. 

[Raheel]

Today was the day, that i decided to fill the tank up with water. I knew it was going to be a long day ahead. With my RODI unit rated at 400L a day I started to calculate how long would it take me to fill my my reefer 350. According to my calculation, It takes my RODI unit 1 hour to fill my pail which is 24L. It would take me about 15 hours to fill the tank up. What sucked is that, there was no way i could attach my RODI so that it could fill the tank straight, neither did i have a pail or water container big enough to store that much water. So i had to gather as many pail as i could find in my house, which was only 4 pails. Decided that since i have some work to complete and will be up for a few hours, i should just start filling now. And before i slept i filled up all the 4 pails and woke up early in the morning to start filling them again after transferring the water into the tank. Also made sure all the water going in was at 0TDS.

 

 

Knowing its going to take hours, to fill the tank i decided to take out the sump and give it a good clean to get rid of any algae and salt creeps from it. 

Well now the hard work began. Carrying pails and transferring water every hour. 

Fast forward, once the tank was half filled, i decided to test my pump to see if it was working, as i had just bought it off from a reefer for a really good price.  

since the pump was working well, i decided to dump in the whole bucket of salt and let it start mixing.

And finally 15 hours later, the tank was filled, though i had an issue to figure out the water level for the sump. But a quick google search solved that. 

Tested my salinity and found out it was only at 1.024. I used a refractometer to test but for ease of reading in a photo i used a hydrometer. Which isnt so bad can just top up with salt water later on.

As im still aquascaping my rocks, i just decided to add in media from my old tank and a piece of live rock so i can have a cycle started, i know its not going to do much. But the rocks are going in next week so should be fine and when the rocks go in ill do a proper cycle. For now i just put in microbactor 7 and 3 piece of pallets. I hope you guys like my aquascape for now hahaha. 

 

[R0B]

Love the aquascape. Haha. Minimalist is the way to go!

Just a hint for cycling. Bacteria use energy creating a membrane to fight off saline water. Hence if you lower the salinity to say 1.15 or 1.18 then the bacteria will replicate faster as they dont need to expend energy just trying to survive. Also as they reproduce the oxygen levels in the tank will reduce, so make sure the water is moving around a little to allow for gas exchange.

Looking good. Can't wait to see the tank progress. Good luck.



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[CalvinKlein]

Wont you have troubles with the curtain on the left side? I would also put a background to hide the left panel instead of looking at the curtain in the tank. Just a suggestion.

[Raheel]

I finally got my rocks !!! The rocks i used for this aquascape was the caribsea life rock. Also i had gotten some super glue and cement, stone fix by AF. i also had gotten the brightwell quick cycle starter kit to properly start the cycling process once the rocks were in.

I planned out how i want my scape first by supergluing my rocks together. And once i had my final scape, i decided to cement them into place. Which did not go so well. I tried 3-4 of cemeting the rocks together, it will dry and the moment i pick up the rocks thats it the cement would break. I kept it to dry overnight as well no difference. Gave up and in the end just put the rocks into the water and super glued them together in the water. Not the best plan, in the near future will be getting som epoxy to properly secure them.