100 Gallon Soft Coral HEAVEN! Blaine's Home Reef Tour!

What's going on reefers? Blaine here. In today's video, we are taking the chance to check out my own personal reef tank here at my home. This is a tank I've had set up for now almost 2 years. And today, we're going to dive into the ins and outs of it and talk all about my fish, my corals, my maintenance schedule, and all things just like that. Obviously, a little different than our normal tank tours. Normally, I'd be sitting here with someone else asking them the questions, but I'm going to try to hit on all the points that I normally go through on all those tank tours. So, let's go ahead and dive right into it and let's get into the tank itself. So, the tank itself is a Red Sea Reefer 425 G2 Plus XL. So, the volume on the display tank is 91 g, and then the sump down below is 24 g, making it a total of 115 g. The dimensions on the tank are 47 in long, 22 in high, and 23.6 in deep. Now, this is probably the biggest tank I've ever set up myself. I wish I could have gone with a bigger tank, but of course the wife didn't want me to get anything bigger here in the living room. It's the first thing you see as soon as you walk in. But I absolutely love this tank. I set it up back in September, the end of September. About the 23rd is when I ended up getting the dry rock in, and then it got wet on the 25th of 2023. So, we're coming up on 2 years now that this tank has been running. As for the livestock, let's talk about the best part of this tank. We'll go ahead and talk about some of the fish that we have in this tank. Now, the two clown fish that you're going to see are actually the clowns I picked out personally from Pro Aquatics way back when when I ended up doing that video at the Pro Aquatics wholesale. That was a ton of fun. And being able to handpick some clown fish was really cool. And then for the rasses in the tank, we've got three Rasses currently in the system. We have a possum rass, we have a biota cleaner rass, and then we also have my yellowtail tamarind rass. Those are all my rases currently in the system. And then we also were able to snag up two fish from Leo. If you guys don't remember Leo, we ended up doing a tank tour at his home and he was breeding Bangai cardinals. I ended up snagging two of them and I have two of them here in my system. I'm hoping they've actually paired up which would be pretty cool. But we ended up grabbing two of those. And last but not least, we have two tangs. Now, I have a couple workers here in the system. I have my blonde naso tang that I actually got from a tradein that came into the shop. It was a little tiny baby and it started to grow out pretty nicely. Really excited to see the coloring coming in on it and also hopefully the streamers will start developing as well. And last but not least, the oldest fish in my tank is my yellow tang. Now, my yellow tang is probably over 10 years old now at this point. when I ended up moving down to Topshelf down to Florida. I came all the way from California and on my way down here I ended up getting stuck in Phoenix just about an hour outside of Phoenix and blew a tire out on the budget rental truck and I was waiting for about 7 hours in the heat and it was about 117° and I ended up losing everything other than my yellow tang. My yellow tang was the only thing that ended up making it. So, I had kind of a decision to make when I got to Florida here. I was trying to figure out whether or not I wanted to set up a tank or just kind of shut down for a little bit of time, but I still had my yellow tang. I'd still had my oldest fish that I've ever kept and I pretty much could not give up on him. So, ended up setting up this system here, and he was the first one that ended up living in this tank. He was kind of the starter fish for this system. Moving on to the corals. Now, as you can see, I love soft corals. Everybody at TSA loves sticks. They love SPS. And I am the complete opposite. I love soft corals. I have a really wide range of selection when it comes to toad stools. I really like sarcoitans. I think they bring some really nice movement to a tank. Right smack in the middle, I have two biota willows. Now willow is kind of a loaded term in my opinion, but I have two biota willows. Um it used to be just one single head and it's developed into two really giant heads. And then directly behind that, shout out to Remy Bahama Llama coral. I ended up getting a frag of his weeping willow. Now, that coral is something that I really hold near and dear to me. It's one of my favorite pieces. It's also really cool cuz it's part of the reaper's code. He ended up fragging me a piece once I ended up losing pretty much my entire livestock and made sure I got a brand new piece of the willow once this tank was rolling. I also have another green long polip toad stool right next to Remy's willow, which is also supposedly a green weeping willow. I haven't really seen it develop super long tentacles yet, but we're going to give it a little bit more time. Just above that is another really nice green toad stool that has a really cool purple base to it with some super bright green polyps. And then all the way on the other side, we've got the stinky toad stool from Tyler, my good buddy inland reef. He ended up hooking me up with another piece of a toad stool that's actually been growing in my desk tank for quite some time, but the nems are really starting to take over my desk tank. So, I needed to move that out cuz it was getting stung too much and I thought this was the perfect tank to move it into. So, grabbed that as well. And one of the newer pickups is up top is that Fiji yellow leather, the Fiji toad stool. Now, this is one I've been hunting for for quite some time. And when Fiji shut down, it was obviously impossible to be able to pick one of those up. But once Fiji opened back up, Top Shelves ended up bringing in a couple specimens. They really do not ship well. They're actually one of the harder toad stools to ship around. And I was able to snag one and get one into the system. So, really, really happy about that. Moving on to some of the other corals in the tank. Down on the bottom, you're going to see some pretty crazy bounce mushrooms. I have a wide selection of mushrooms in here, but kind of the two showcase pieces are my Godzilla bounce mushroom right smack in the front. A lot of these corals, I'm gonna kind of say it over and over again, were gifted to me by people. And I have to thank every single one of you guys for being able to create this awesome reef tank and make this happen for me. When I ended up losing everything, Kade Chamansky, a really, really great friend of mine, hooked me up with a Godzilla bounce. It was just one single bounce and now it's turned into this ridiculous mother colony with a ton of babies underneath it. He also hooked me up with an OG bounce and that has now turned into four OGs. Now at this point I have two of them here in the display and I've also got two down in the sump that I'm constantly kind of cutting up, fragging up and trying to grow a OG bounce army. I really like OG bounces. They're beautiful pieces and so definitely something I wanted to have in the tank. Above those OG bounces, I have a soft coral that I've yet really to identify. This is a really, really weird one. I ended up snagging at a wholesaler when we were down at Vibrant Corals. We were checking it out. It was something that I really liked personally, so I asked my boss. I asked Frank if we could buy it up and send it back to TopShelf. We ended up fragging it up a bunch and I took a frag home and now it's hanging out in here. So, if you guys know what this coral is, be sure to drop a comment and let me know because I'll be honest, I don't really know. And then next to that, we have a green Kenya tree, which is looking really nice, nice and full. Really cool to have some nice movement to the tank. I think ultimately, that's why I love soft corals so much. They bring some amazing movement to a system and they're super forgiving. It makes it nice, especially with me traveling for work and at times when I come home, I don't want to be super concerned about my reef tank. I just want to enjoy it. So that's kind of why I lean into soft corals mainly. And then next to that is a pulsing sileria. A really nice piece. And then directly below that is a nice little finger leather that's kind of purple with some green polyps. Now some other mushrooms that I have in this tank that I really enjoy are my jawbreaker mushrooms. Way back when we ended up going to California, we ended up doing a trip to Art's house and he had a wall of jawbreakers. A ridiculous amount of jawbreakers. And I ended up getting lucky enough where he asked me, "Do you want to take a couple home?" And I said, "Of course I do." So he gave me about five or six of them. I put them into a bucket. I kept them alive inside of a bucket for about 4 days while I was still in Cali. Every time I'd get to a new tank tour, get to one of the local shops, I'd swap out the water, change things up, put a little bit of new carbon in, and they were able to fly their way back here to Orlando. And they're doing well. I have one on the left side of the tank and then I also have a group of them tucked in the back over here on the back side that you guys will be able to see. Now up in the front I have a nice little zoa garden I've started. We've got utter chaos, purple monsters, a couple of other zoas, but overall I feel like that's one thing this tank is lacking a little bit. I want to add in more zoas, especially to that front section. There's a lot of room. As you guys can see, there is a ton of rock space still available. So, I do need to keep putting in more and more corals. So, that's definitely something I want to try to do is continue to fill out this tank. I've always told everyone it takes about a year to get to the point where your reef tank's kind of heading into its stride. I think it's almost 2 years now at this point. I think once you get almost to 2 years, you're really at a comfortable place where your reef tank has become mature and it really is heading in the right direction. As for the rest of the corals, I have a really nice big fluffy gorggonian up at the top. It's a corky sea finger. Really nice. I love how it kind of moves around. I think I do need to trim it though a little bit just because it seems to be messing with the willow just below it. So, I need to frag up those two branches you see dropping down a little bit because I think they're just kind of starting to agitate one another. Obviously, I run carbon heavily in this system with all the different soft corals I have in it. So, I have a bag of carbon that I'm replenishing probably every two to 3 weeks to try and keep things nice and clean. The torch colonies up at the top, got the pink tip. We've got a TSA pot of gold. We've got a couple different variants. Right below the torch garden, we have a rainbow hammer little mini colony. And then we also have a couple heads of a gold hammer. I like the fact that I've made this into yes, a mixed reef, but it's highly focused on soft corals, but there's a mixture of some LPS with the torches, the hammers. There's an aan down below, there's a chalice on the backside, but mainly we're focused in on the soft corals. I've obviously talked about the soft corals in my tank, some of the LPS corals in my tank, and I didn't mention any of the SPS in my tank. I only have one piece of SPS in my tank and that's going to be the Contraband Digitata. Now, I was lucky enough, Frank, as you guys know at TopShelf Aquatics, the best sales guru there is at TSA. He ended up hooking me up with a nice chunk of Contraband Digi. I really like that coral. Super cool. Great contrast of the red and green. As you've heard time and time again with a lot of my pieces, a lot of them have been gifted to me. And so, all of these have stories. They're very special to me. And also same with the fish, you know, whether it be Leo's cardinals, the Proa Aquatics clown fish, I really like a story when it comes to your reef tank, you know, and I think that's what makes this tank so special to me and I really enjoy sharing those stories with you all. When we're talking about maintenance and some of the cleanup crew, the cleanup crew in this tank is very snail focused. Now, it is Astrella snails, margarita snails, turbo snails, trocus snails, conchs. There is a ton of different snail species in here. I don't really like crabs that much. I don't keep many crab species in my reef tanks. I ended up putting in a couple blue legs early on and I've been catching them out one by one because they always tend to look for a bigger home and they end up killing my trocus snails or any of my nicer snails and so it makes it difficult to keep the crabs in the system. And also my yellowtail tamarind loves to hunt for snails. So, the Estrella snails, you'll see kind of a littering of flipped over snail shells in the sand bed. I end up having to replenish the uh population of the cleanup crew in here quite frequently. I don't really mind though because I love that fish so much. The fact I've been able to get a really healthy and nice specimen, I wanted to make sure that I, you know, kept them happy. Regardless of what goes on with the cleanup crew, I talked about it in the RAS video. If I could, I would try to do more feedings throughout the course of the day. I do it on the weekends when I'm home, but obviously with me working, it's really hard to get more feedings in. You'll see an auto feeder up top, but I don't actively use it too much unless we're gone on vacation. If we're not gone on vacation, then I keep it off for the most part and then I try to do a quick little feeding when I get home during the day and then near the end of the light schedule, I end up going ahead and feeding them one more time. I do feedings of PE micis when it comes to the fish and of course the corals are grabbing up some of the celery as well. I use a ton of reef nutrition products whether it be the oyster feast, the roe, the pack pods. There's a lot of different stuff that I have shoved into my refrigerator over there. I know my wife hates it but it's whatever. She has to deal with it. I know that she doesn't like it too much, but the fish benefit from it. So, I have a whole kind of row of fish food that I have in the fridge. And then also for the corals, I think one of the biggest foods sources that they're getting is from the fish themselves, right? So, it's the waste from the fish are really feeding the corals. But also, I have, you know, down below in my coral tool belt, I utilize benipets and also reefids. As for nori, I don't give that much nori to my fish. And I think that's for one particular reason. And I think the main reason why I don't give noras is cuz I want to make my tangs work. You guys need to work for me. You're my working fish. Work for me. And so I have kind of a minimal amount of times I'll usually feed the Reef Genetics seaweed. Every once in a while I'll put the clip on. You guys will see the clip up top on the tank, but I don't like to feed it too frequently. I think it's kind of something that's more of a treat for them. And also if I see my phosphates going too low, then it gives me the opportunity to feed a little bit of green seaweed. When it comes to dosing this tank, I really don't do that much dosing. I feed some of the reef genetics phytolanton. I do all three of the different flavors and then also I utilize two little fishies trace elements. I've been just starting to do that about 3 weeks ago or so. We've been utilizing it in the studio tanks and I've seen some really nice coloring and benefits from it. So, I decided, let's try it out in this system. So, I've been dosing the trace elements. I think I really want to get on to calcer at some point here soon. I need to bump up the pH in this tank because we have myself, my wife, my dog, my daughter, all of us in here mouth breathing, taking up all the oxygen, and I think I need to really try and work on bumping up that pH in this tank. So, I think calcer is definitely one of those things that I want to implement here in the near future. As for the rest of the maintenance that I do on this system, I do a water change every 2 to 3 weeks. And I do about a 10 to 20% water change. So, anywhere from 10 to 20 gallons in total. The salt that I'm using is the Tropic Marin Pro Reef salt. I really like that salt. I scrape the uh tank about every couple days or so with a you know, I use the flipper and I just scrape up the tank. And then I also give the MP40s an acid bath probably every 3 to 4 weeks, trying to keep those super clean so that way they can keep pushing as much water as possible. Now that I've kind of mentioned some of the equipment, let's dive into the equipment in the tank. As for inside the system, my goal ultimately is to keep a majority of the equipment out of the display. I don't like when there's a bunch of equipment in the display, especially I don't like when there's cords in a display. So that's it primarily why I went with the MP40s. Big shout out to Ecote Tech. I have them currently running on an alternate pulse mode. So one will pulse, the other one will pulse, and it kind of goes back and forth pushing water across. As for underneath in the sump space, we've got a roller mat. We've got the RedC 500 roller mat. I really love the roller mat. That's easily my favorite piece of equipment that has come out in quite some years. I say that in pretty much every video that we mention roller mats in general. I just love them. I used to do filter socks. I used to do filter floss. That's a pain in the butt. I really, really like the roller mats. They make things super simple. I also have a Regal INT skimmer in the back. It's a 150. That's a really nice skimmer. I haven't had to run it too much lately because the roller mat is keeping things extra clean and I'm trying to, you know, keep the nutrients up a bit because it's a soft coral base tank. So, I like running my nutrients a little bit higher in this system. And then other than that, down in the sump, we just have a Vectra M2 that's pushing water as the return pump. And that's pretty much it. Trying to keep it as clean and simple as I possibly can. Minimal stuff, minimal equipment. Up top with the lights, I have two Radeon Gen 5 XR30 Pros. Now, I really like the Pros because I am more of a white spectrum person. I like a natural look. I know I get flack from Kevin all the time when it comes to coloring. He loves his blues. Most people like that Gucci mode, but I'll be honest, I really like the way that the pros put out some good colors for the corals, especially for my soft corals. And then also, it looks really nice with the fish. The fish get some really nice coloring. The light schedule, I have the lights turning on at about 9:30. They're starting to ramp themselves up and they ramp up for about an hour. And then after they ramp up, they run all the way till 8:00 and then make another ramp down for another hour. So, I try to run them a little bit later in the day just because I want to come home and be able to enjoy the tank when I get off of work. And also with my daughter, she's a young, so I want to make sure I don't have blue light bleeding out all the time. So, I'm kind of forced to turn them off at about 9:00. I have an atto here on the side of the tank with a reservoir. It's a Simplicity reservoir that holds about 10 gallons. And I have the Red Sea ATO that's running the auto top off system. As for the brain of the system, I have an Apex controller underneath. You guys will see underneath this side of the tank. And I am a prime example of what a rat's nest looks like. My wire management is not a skill that I like to uh show off, but I am here to be raw and truthful with you all. It is a hot mess down below, and that's something that I'd probably like to work on at some point. As for the numbers on the tank, we're kind of shooting for a lot of the similar numbers that we're shooting for in the TSA farm. I've got salinity at about 1.026. Uh alkalinity I've been trying to keep at right about 8 to 8.2. I'm keeping my alk just a little bit lower. I struggled with alkalinity early on with this system. And I'll be honest, I do not know exactly why. It got stuck at about 11 to 12 for a really, really long time that made it difficult to get it back down. And now we're sitting at about 8 to 8.2. Calcium's at a 450 range. Magnesium is about 1300. Phosphates I run just a little bit higher. Once again, just like my nitrates because I'm trying to make this more based on a mixed reef with soft coral dominated. So my phosphates are going to be at about 0.1 to 0.12. I really like that range. Obviously if I go a little bit higher than 0.15, I'm going to be running some GFO. And if I'm anywhere below 08, I'm going to be feeding actively with reefoids to try and juice that number back up. My nitrates I keep at about 10 to 15. Sometimes I let it flutter even higher. Sometimes I let it get to 15 to 20 because I notice specifically with my mushrooms, especially my bounce mushrooms, they really like kind of a higher phosphate level and a higher nutrient level. So those are kind of the numbers that I am shooting for. But this tank has been a lot of fun. It's a work in progress. Obviously, I have a ton of rock space still to fill in, but there was a lot of issues with this tank. I will not lie. This has not been the easiest tank for me to set up. And normally, I'm a nano tank guy. So, I really like my smaller tanks. As you've seen, my desk tank. I really like nano tanks. They're kind of easier to work on, easier to kind of tinker with. And this bigger tank has been a bit of a challenge for me. Uh, I struggled as I talked about earlier with super high alkalinity for quite some time and then at one point I ended up getting a ridiculous outbreak of clataphora. So claaphora is a species of turf algae and it covered the entire rockcape. I mean the entire scape was completely covered in this crazy algae and I ended up enlisting every urchin possible. I still have the tuxedo urchin. That's another part of the cleanup crew I forgot to mention. But I enlisted every urchin possible. I tried to get a bunch of turbo snails and they still just could not keep up with it. So ended up doing a fluconazole treatment on it and that was fairly detrimental to some of the corals that were in here. But I ended up killing off that algae thankfully. I'm lucky though with my yellow tang. He, for some reason, has always been really good at eating nuisance algae. Whether it be bubble algae, biopsis, hair algae, he pretty much loves it all. Even when I pull up the scraper from underneath and put it in the tank to do a little bit of scraping, there's always a little bit of hair algae kicking around on it, and he always comes over and ms that down. Also, recently, I had a crazy green cyano breakout. So you'll see my sand bed is super nice and clean right now, but beforehand it was a hot mess. So I ended up running Chemical also in this system. And I will be honest, I think Chemical is kind of godscent. This was an awesome thing I ended up using in the system. Of course, I'm kind of destroying the bacteria and a little bit of the microbiome whenever I run that in the system, but I think honestly a lot of the corals really benefited from it. The bounce mushrooms looked insane for the couple weeks that I was running it. The only thing that was detrimental to the tank really was I had a really, really nice purple plating sponge. Of course, to my own ignorance, I didn't realize why I was losing the purple plating sponge. But thankfully, Evan reminded me that cyanobacteria is inside of most sponges and that's something that's essential for their health. So, I was killing it from the inside out and I wasn't even realizing it. So, those are definitely some of the things that I've dealt with in this tank. There's been some highs, there's been some lows, but overall, this is a tank that I like to come home to, sit back on the couch, the couch is right here on the other side of me, and just kind of relax and enjoy. That's pretty much it for this system. Pretty cut and clean, super simple. I know you guys had been asking about it, wanting to see this tank. So, I wanted to take the time to bring myself back home with all the camera gear and show you guys exactly what my system looks like. I usually ask every single person to at the end of these interviews, what would be a piece of advice that I would give a brand new reefkeeper? And I think my piece of advice that I would give to any brand new reefkeeper is reef your way. I think a lot of people are probably going to see this video and wonder to themselves, why doesn't Blaine have a bunch of SPS from TopShelf Aquatics? It's the premier place in the country to buy SPS. Why isn't there more SPS? Yes, I have the small contraband Digi I got from Frank, but outside of that, I I don't really like sticks. It's not what I like when it comes to reef keeping. So, I think ultimately that's my biggest piece of advice is reef your way. Enjoy your reef tank. Don't just go for the hype. Don't go for what everyone else thinks is cool. Get what you like. I love toad stools. Yeah, they're super simple and thankfully a lot of them are out and about today playing nice. They're not shedding today, so they look great. But sometimes they have all their polyps sucked in and it looks kind of goofy. But for me, I've always loved soft corals. And it's just something that I'd like to push on people more is to not follow the hype, not try to do what everyone else is doing. Even though I might be at top shelf and I should be buying all the super sick SPS corals that we have available, I think I just kind of want to keep the reef tank that I want to keep. If you guys have enjoyed this one though, I want to say thank you so much. Thank you guys for, you know, kind of pushing me to show off my tank. I've been kind of holding back on wanting to do this for quite some time. I feel like every system we've shown on the channel is ridiculously nice, super nice, and it kind of puts my tank to shame. But I wanted to showcase my tank. I wanted to show off my system that I have here in my home and let you guys know that yes, I may be the guy talking to you all on the YouTube channel, but I'm a reef keeper at heart. I'm a hobbyist and I've always loved this hobby since I was a kiddo. Something I didn't mention, I've been keeping reefs for over 20 years now. It's something I've always loved to do. Ever since that first reef tank I set up from mowing lawns for a whole summer straight to be able to buy and enjoy in my tiny little room that I was able to get going, that 30-galon tank. But now looking at where this system is now, I can look back and I'm sure the kiddo in me is really excited and happy with the reef tank that I've developed. If you guys have hung out all the way throughout the course of this video, I want to say thank you very much. Be sure to like, subscribe, and hit the bell notification so you don't miss out on any future uploads. [Music]