20 YEAR OLD Reef Tank! Keys to a Mature and HEALTHY Reef Tank!

what's going on reefers Blaine here in today's video we get the opportunity to see a reef that's been up and running for almost 20 years our New York tank Tour series is up and continuing and today we're going to be checking out Joe T's unbelievable Reef system let's Dive In [Music] reefers we are here with Joe tusi Joe thank you so much for having us here thank you for coming man no this is amazing I've been wanting to see this tank for so long we've talked about it we met up at Aqua shella we shared a couple drinks and the last thing I said to you before I left was I have to see this reef tank we've talked about it off camera you said this is a 17-year-old system correct so this has seen so many different styles generations and different tanks when was so when this was put then originally what was the plan with it when when you got it set up and you said you do some resets throughout the years yes I mean believe it or not when I installed the St I didn't install the stank I hired somebody to install the stank I didn't know nothing about the hobby believe it or not I mean crazy for you not that I know too much today but I didn't know anything I was basically I paid someone to to uh install it customize it build it it's a custom tank Clos Loop and all of that um it was done by um um a company in Texas I had to learn pretty quickly because it was costing me a lot of money every week so that's how I got into the Hobby and I started to learn and and obviously I learned from other Reapers you know research and so on and so forth then yeah as I succeeded Through The Years obviously it was an LPS tank mostly and that's why I did the Clos D because like I said in other you know um conversations is that I didn't want powerheads showing this that and the other I wanted to clean look but then I switched to SPSS and um you need flow you definitely CL Loop is not enough I love the corals you've selected you've got so many nice SPS but in the mix of it all right it it is mainly SPS but you have a mixed Reef in away you got some gorgonians you got LPS was SPS always the goal when you were looking at getting the tank rolling no originally it was all LPS and then I switched over to SPS because I felt that it's more delicate more complicated more challenging to grow SPSS um versus growing LPS and that's why I went that route and then you know I guess I succeeded too much because I got to do it every two years where I got to like reboot it where I take everything out out set up my whole office with tubs lights skimmers like another system by itself where while I'm doing the thing the animals are a lot you know happy and living um and not being you know so stressed um and like you see it's time again you know where a lot of this stuff is frags that in 2 years they're just out of control it's so funny to cuz earlier we were all sitting here we were gawking over your tank and you were complaining right you were saying that oh man this this and that I always say the grass is greener right everybody looks at their system and sees all the things wrong with it and all of us here me Kevin Garrett everybody's looking at this tank and we're like what is actually wrong with it right I love your fish in here you've got an amazing selection of fish the blue tang actually is the oldest tang in this tank um that was purchased to me by my son when I started out um my uncle passed away and I was destroyed and he says come on dad let's go for a ride and he took me to P stor and he bought me that and a purple tank um the purple tank is not here for a reason is and that reason is when the black tank showed up M they didn't get along so one had to go right and obviously it was going to be the purple t yeah got to keep the black I love fish and we had this conversation earlier on what do you like more corals of fish most of the time I will probably tell you fish because I do like fish especially rare fish which more challenging if it's the feminin r getting him to eat if it's the lonardi don't ask me how many I bought to have the one that's that are in my than so fish could be also very challenging as the same thing as an Acro being challenging um and that brings the inner part of you of how in depth you want to be in the hobby how you want to succeed right it's not about having a tank are you being s you know successful having a tank if it's a fish or a coral it doesn't matter it it relates to both um to me you know um it's all in relation um so if you're going to have a good tank you're only allowed to have 20 30 fish be selective that's basically where it came down to selecting uh specific fish is that once you read that quota the more you put in there obviously you have bigger problems to control your nutrients and other things right so you want to have that balance and that's why I I'm I I came with that decision of choosing the best I could do at the time and a for at a time but it's time like I said it's time to reboot it because as I was saying earlier I mean to get your hands into this side of the tank it's it's you have to remove half the corals yeah I mean all the corals are basically on the glass at this point yeah and as you can see that's why you see a lot of fresh glue here and there is because I had to remove Cor right to to get you know to fix a coral or like I have this Coral here who got stung by this chalice and I would love to get in there and clip it off so I don't have to look at it like that um but I can I can't reach it I got so excited about talking about the livestock right away what's the size of this tank how how big is this tank what's the dimensions on it it's um it's a 180 custom um it's 60 in Long 20 uh 2 or 23 in tall and I believe it's 24 in deep and then for equipment on here I see the MP series you got running for flow what else are you doing for equipment on here lighting wise things like that inside the tank so basically I have two MP 40s there I got tunies on this side one here and two on the other side um it's a closed loop system so as you can see these pipes down here they're pushing flow up from from the bottom um I have a Reflow pump in the other side where the water goes down into the sump and then from the sump is taken out to the chiller and brought back you know so it keeps the water chills because I'm running meta hairlights t5s and some um Reef bride LED strips you know to give that blue PP and then down below in the sump what kind of mechanical filtration are you running down there um it's simple system it's basically a costum reactor um um a good skimmer you know a bubble King skimmer and then I have a um a coasa reactor which I dose claser in in in the system and to keep my pH up as you know you know we're in the basement right um and I do have the Z light reactor you know to help with bacteria and stuff like that and the rest is a is a sock you know you like to you like to keep it simple right I mean we talked about it while we were enjoying dinner you talked about the idea of adding in corals than adding in fish adding in corals adding in fish kind of that natural method of keeping things stable this tank is obviously showing that a lot of these corals are old huh we've got some birds nest in here you said that's probably around 17 years old at this point these B for example they were purchased as a frag from o when I started out I mean think about it 17 years ago there were no very limited tenes these calls keep like from a frag I keep like bringing them back for 17 years um uh I like the OG the old corals you know today obviously we have a lot more available to us um and obviously that's what made this hobby even bigger and greater because there's so more available to us we know so much more colors you know husbandry you know uh keeping them and so on and so forth but um yeah I mean the old ogs will always be the old OG's the OG's will be king right like the old the old OG's will always be when you're talking about some of your numbers in the tank are you striving for certain numbers in the system you looking for stability what are what are you looking for on your main parameters stability stability is the key whatever parameter you choose to stick with your calls will adjust to it you know it takes time to some calls more than others but stability is the key um you want you want to stay at 70 KH God bless you you know stay with it but a guy that's keeping it at nine he's doing nothing wrong in my opinion um I keep mine at 8 8 and A2 DK 42440 calcium you know around 1400 in magnesium and I like to be in those areas as stable as I can um other than that the hobby is a very simple hobby it's I feel that we complicated for sure what about your nitrate levels are you looking to what what kind of numbers are you looking for nitrates on here I like them to be at about 5 PPM nitrates between 5 and 10 let's put it that way okay but the key is that I like 100 to1 where if my my my nitrates are at five I like my phosphates to be at 005 not 010 you know and an imbalance of 200 to one at that point the best numbers of for color and growth that I experience in this tank is 005 phosphates to five nitrates someone else will have the same success at higher or lower the the the thing that I always said about numbers that we read is basically we're reading what's left over you know in the water so the higher the numbers are the dirtier the water is in a sense but your corals are not going to consume more than they're already consuming every day um that's how I Reef again no one is going to agree with me everybody going to be agreeing with what my method is but it works for me I was about to say you know everyone has their own reefing method I mean every Tank's going to be different even when you look inside and you got your other tanks in the room over here those tanks are different too if they're not tied together right they're going to be completely different exactly you've got some utilitarian fish right you got some file fish in here you've got some rasses I'm looking at your Cleanup Crew what are you doing for cleanup crew in this tank um I do have a 17-year-old sandbed that everybody is afraid of same same sand it's been the same sand sand I never changed so when you're pulling all that corals out the rockscape stays right and the sand stays I never vacuumed my sand but in 17 years and then you read about the old tank syndrome you read about this that and the other um I always believed in nature we don't go in vacuum sand beds in the ocean um we don't medicate the ocean we we don't do anything to the ocean right except polluted right in a sense right um so I always looked at reink in a natural way so I have Nara snails one per gallon so there's 180 to you know an average of 200 Nar snails hidden in the sand but that they will come out at night and turn it over and this any other and I always kept that from day one cuz somebody told me that and I spend a lot of money every year I probably in a small 180 gallon tank like this I probably spent about I would say $5 to $2,000 which is a lot of money in inverts mhm right now we spend $2,000 in corals or fish that we're enjoying every day we don't buy we don't look at it like it's a lot of money but for inverts it's a lot of money so that's one thing the rest is hermit grabs um you know conscious you know and things like that nothing more you know special but the key to a guy that have his hand bed is his Nar snails in my opinion every now and then basically you know I clean up all like you know broken branches of corals every now and then I go in there and siphon that because I don't want to look at it I want to see a nice white sand bit you took the words out of my mouth we're kind of part of the cleanup crew right like we are one of the cleaners in this tank when you're talking about your maintenance right you talked about you know kind of cleaning up your sandbed tidying it up what other things are you doing you mentioned you do automatic water changes what other kind of Maintenance and dosing are you doing for this tank here basically I dose race elements every day which I use the Tropic Marine a enk um um I do carbon dose you know um to maintain my nutrients because I don't want to use gfos um I don't use carbon you know I truly believe that they remove a lot of Trace elements so you're trying to clarify the water and you're removing Trace elements with gfos when I was doing gfo and carbon dozing I had a lot of issues with rtn I did put in an Al reactor and um I dose iron every day iron and manganese every day and I m I was able to maintain the um the nutrients that way my nutrients are intact without using gfos and carbon and I was very happy with that because I used to hate going to clean that gfo just like especially in the winter time right right you know uh you can't clean that in the sink I mean the orange and the rust so I that's how I got over that what are you feeding the tank what do you got what do you got going on for feeding for your fish and then for your corals are you just actively letting the fish be the feeding for them you know fish poop being the food or Bas I like to make a mix of all frozen food I don't feed dry food I don't I don't feed pallets or flakes or anything like that um which by the way it does have a lot I'm not going to say negative effects but they do the dry forms carry a lot more stuff than it's what people used to think frozen foods do I do feed a lot of like small particulates if it's cyclopes if it's all of that in a Frozen mix feed the fish feed everything right you know that's basically every now and then I do oyster feed liquid you know at night and that's basically it I've never like spot fed corals or you know like uh particl you know like these uh REO and things like I did receive some bopet um foods that I've been testing you know because some of it's supposed to remove let's say your nutrients yeah yeah you know so um I've been doing that you know uh behind the scenes kind of a thing but I have not seen any effects yet I mean again don't forget it's 17 thou you know 17y old tank for sure so so you know lowering levels in a tank like this could be a little bit more challenging than a newer tank absolutely we utilize benets a lot at the farm we are mixing it in kind of our Coral cocktail that we feed all of the systems we like to use both Reids and benefits kind of as a tool in our tool belt like we have a multi-tool belt when it comes to the farm Kevin and the whole team have all kinds of different ways they can you know change and alter the levels to get to the right stability we're looking for and we've seen that benets has been really beneficial to be able to still feed the system and not kind of bump up those phosphates and nutrients so it's been really nice to have benets in our tool belt and to utilize them you know with our live phop Plankton and things like that we talked about the fact this is a 17-year-old tank right this is seen a lot of time right this is this is an old system have you you know throughout the course of time obviously you've been reefing for a couple years now with it being 17 years old would have been some of like the kind of the biggest trials and tribulations the things you've kind of some of the hardest things you've worked through to be able to get to the point where you have a tank like this and I know you look at this tank and you see the little tiny details that aren't going so great but when everyone's going to see this tank on camera I mean they're going to be blown away it's amazing so what have you kind of gone through to be able to get to this point where you do have this Forest of corals never had serious issues about growing corals the biggest issues I've had through the years is really like a bobit worm in a tank taking it apart to catch him um and things like that maybe two years ago I almost crashed it by even though as they say you know newbies mistakes happen to all of us regardless how long you've been in the H because it's always come to a time where you're under distress of something Family Matter my ghl computer decided to crap up so now I'm switching over everything to Neptune and I had dozers on the ghl which now I don't have dozers on the Neptune and I was selling my kids to dose this this and this and I forgot that I was carbon dozing so I came back and my nutrient levels were through the roof corals were stressed out and and then to top it off as soon as I came back my Chiller outside crapped out so now I have rains it pours yes so then now I have corals that are stressed out temperature rising Coral dying and Bloom and losing fish I come down here the tank is white as a cloud I thought I was Lo losing everything and how I saved it I'll be honest with you I have no idea because I thought I lost so those are the problematic things in terms of like the 17 years that I had everything else I never had C bacteria I never had hairology I never had to deal with with things like that um you mentioned the F fish earlier on um I do have one pest which is the mijo and that's why I have the file fish and he keeps them in check he keeps them clean you mentioned doing resets right so we're looking at this tank we talked about it at dinner you said maybe species specific what are you thinking about for the maybe the next run of the TC Reef what's what's going to be the next kind of generation of this system I've been thinking about doing one species possibly you know besides bsiness and stuff like that if it's um if it's all tenes or some or all smooth skins you know I always had that dream of I love smooth skins of course if it's Granny's if it's you know anything that's smooth mhm um where I was thinking of like how about having a than only smooth skins you know and that's what I've been thinking about because they maybe grow a little slower um which will give me a little bit more time that I don't have to do this every so often um and it keeps it more open I'm getting a little tired of this congestion of corals and of things killing each other the forest of corals The Forest of corals so I've done it I passed it something something new that I haven't done so that's that's what I've been thinking is like if it's just Granny's and maybe sposa um Red Dragons dragons and things like that it's it's always fun you know I get to do these tank tours and I get to come into people's homes I get to you know get in tune with you guys get in tune with your tanks and everyone has a different way to reef and you know recently I did a tank tour where The Moonshiner method was his way and he loved it and for you you know the old school reefing method is what you like and what works and it's kind of one of those things like if it ain't broke don't fix it exactly and and and again I have nothing against people who are doing that absolutely you know what but what I'm trying to say is that you could be successful in many different ways and people used to say oh you have a salt water tank oh my God that's so hard it's it's not it's really not it it's it's it's find a method find a way that you're comfortable with but stick with it don't look at me because I'm doing this now you're going to change what you're doing to do what I'm doing because that could be your downfall you know and vice versa you know what I mean it's find a metod but again the key to what you said Blain is stability absolutely no matter what you do right is stability and time helps too right I mean you've had so much time for this tank to truly mature right like you look at a lot of tanks and people are like oh my Tank's getting mature right and it's a year old it's a year and a half old right like that's truly not mature in the grand scheme of things I think of the OG SPS you know display tank we have in the farm and that's you know nearing almost 10 years at this point this tank is almost double that like we have a microbiome that's truly as diverse as it possibly can be and that's something that I think is a great attest to why this tank is doing so well it's um it it's it's it's all it's all in imbalance and and a mature tank um from initial to cycling because people think once the tank is cycled you're good yes you are to a point but you have a resaturation you so many things to come that I always said a than will mature minimum two to three years in where you reach saturation everywhere if you have a sand bit if you don't have a sand if you have live rock if you have a fake rock if you have a concrete Rock there's we used to have one fake rock now we have 20 you know what I mean so there's so many things that are changing and everything is different um but yeah it takes a long time I would say it would two to three years to tank to be 100% mature 100% stable if you choose to keep it stable um if you don't start changing things in between because Kevin's way is better or Joe's way is better or Blain's way is better um just do your research like a tank there's plenty of Reapers like myself who are very successful beautiful tanks do what he does stick with it if it's The Moonshiner not The Moonshiner and choose a good salt and stick with it and don't start changing because oh I'm going to change my salt because that could even be a difference what salt are you running on this tank you just mentioned salt you know picking the right kind of salt what salt are you currently running right now I were I was using the Tropic marine and I am contemplating is starting to switch slowly to possibly to naos um why because Tropic Marine is very high on manganese and um low on other things and I want to try to find a Sol that's more stable across the board because the precipitation of Manganese obviously precipitates other elements with it um so that's where I'm at but for the majority of all My Success have been Tropic Marine Pro you at the end of these interviews I always like to ask you know whoever I'm interviewing their biggest piece of advice for any Reef keeper you've if anyone if you guys haven't been paying attention in the video already I'm going to let you know there's a lot of nugget of advice throughout the course of this video but if you had to pick a one solid piece of advice that you'd give anyone either joining into the hobby that's been in the hobby what would you give those people you know Jake Adams always did it whenever you did a tank tour her and I'm trying to take that and kind of carry on that tradition of grabbing all these pieces of information from all of these reefers across the country right we all have different systems right you've got a 17-year-old tank I talked about it with someone the other day they had a one-year-old tank they had a piece of advice you know they wanted to give I want to hear from you you know with all your years experience what you would say it's really it's a really simple piece of advice um you are luckier than I was 17 years ago today that there's so much more writeups you know I mean you mentioned you know rest in peace Jake Adams right 17 years ago was not the same Jake Adams says 17 years later absolutely he was still learning he was still exploring he was still bringing us all the education that he researched on his own and traveling that he did you have a lot of information out there keep it simple choose one and you're going to be fine choose a successful one you know um I don't believe that there is one better than the other I really don't but stability again that word continues to come back is the key I feel like every time I get into the farm I start to get a little you know I I I I feel like I'm making these videos for everyone at home right I I you know this is a passion of mine but I'm a reared heart right so I get this opportunity to sit down with you sit down with Kevin do these videos in the farm do these videos here and of course I'm making it for everyone at home but I am sponging all of this information in at all the time and so Joe I just want to say thank you so much again this hasc this has been so much fun thank you for the Chinese food for the beer for all the things this has been a blast your tank is absolutely amazing to be able to see it in person is great I can't wait to come back again once you end up going with that next generation of the tank maybe it'll be 20 years at that point who knows but well maybe I'll be closer to you which will be a different tank and much bigger that would be even easier for me not a nearly as long of a travel it might be a little warmer who knows right right right well if you guys have watched all the way through this video I want to say thank you so much for tuning in checking it out and hanging out with you guys you know just doing this reefin thing if you guys haven't done so already be sure to like subscribe and hit the Bell notification so you don't miss out on any future uploads thanks [Music]