250+ Gallon SPS PACKED Reef Tank Tour! Reef Moonshiner's RESULTS!

the trip of California continues we've made our way to Scott's house Scott thank you so much for having me another beautiful reef tank I'm letting you guys know C has some insane heat when it comes to reef tanks I'm letting the East Coast know you guys got to start showcasing some better tanks cuz these things are crazy let's get right into this tank Scott how big is the tank and what are the dimensions we're dealing with okay so we have a 7 ft long uh 24 front to back and 30 tall it's about 265 gallons and I got about a 60 Gall sump underneath and then how how old is this tank now at this point so I've had this tank for about 8 years now uh it was official only with live rock for the first four and then I uh got brave enough to buy a few corals this is the the first piece right here that was one head of one little H was it Raz zoa and it's now grown into a whole Rock piece so it's kind of exciting to see how things have changed over the last four years for sure the transition's really cool to see too you said you know it was fish only with live rock if you look at the tank now I don't think anyone would believe you if you said that I started out as a fish only I was doing eels and all those things like you said doing the Predator style what made you really want to make that switch you know you were just doing the fish only what made you kind of all of a sudden get Say Hey I want to get some Corals in there I want to do some more reef safe fish some more community fish what made you make that change yeah when I had the fish only with live rock I had cross atch triggers I had every fairy Rass and all these cool things and I was so excited about it but there was something that was always empty inside that it wasn't like a real hobbyist or a real reefer until I had some Coral and I definitely didn't do well on the front end and uh managing my nitrates and phosphates with something that I didn't really understand you know and I was just doing water changes but you know over time I've learned a lot about the Hobby and you know seeing where it's at today I'm like super proud of it for sure you said off camera earlier that you originally started out as a fish person first right and then you kind of transitioned into the coral let's talk about your fish selection right off the start if you guys haven't noticed Scott has an amazing selection of tangs all grouped together how are you keeping everybody happy and going inside this tank you know with such a wide group of fish and such a big group of surgeon fish tanks in general yeah I'd see the big thing is just feeding feeding feeding you know I pound this place with Nori pellets mes and just keep them Fe fed constantly and uh but I really switched to Reef nutrition I found that that stuff has been way better just from a quality product like the fish is fall fattened up everyone seems to really like it and it hasn't really messed with my nitrates and phosphates too much you know it's been a good food that I've switched to are you doing any food specifically for the corals or are you allowing the fish to be the food yeah so what I've been doing is basically I have a bipeds and I also do Reids and so I have one of the Trident NPS that I closely monitor every day and like if my phosphates get above one then I kind of go back to the benets and if it's like you know lower than a 0.1 then I'm feeding REO so just kind of like mix it up based on what my water parameters are with all the corals and all the you know biological load that I have in here everything just kind of like manages itself you know I wouldn't be able to do this if this was a one-year-old tank being that it's been around for eight years and it's cycled and everything's healthy I actually have to dose nitrates and phosphates sometimes too if I'm not here to feed I know everybody's been wanting us to talk about them they're the star of the show when it comes to this system let's talk about your corals you've got a wide selection in this tank you got a mixture of you know you've got some softies here you've got LPS mixed in as well some huge colonies of LPS honestly but you've got an amazing collection of SPS you also have what I think is really cool instead of utilizing the GSP on the back wall you went with on the back wall talk a little bit about why you decided to go with Sani I also see what looks like maybe an Acro or some SPS mounted on the back wall too yeah Kevin talked a little bit about some of the pling acros really enjoy when you get to Mount them on that sidewall they can really create such a cool structure but let's talk about the corals how you decided to go with what is now almost a truly SPS dominated system yeah of course so you know you can't frag a fish but you can frag an Acro pretty easy so I got into that real quickly this one piece that we have in the back over here this big monipur was literally this big and I've literally broken pieces off of it as it's falling off cuz it gets too heavy on the back wall and put it all around the tank and every one of the neighbors who has a reef tank has at least half a dozen of these too cuz I've been trying to get rid of it I don't know if I'd advise it for that my big tank that we're doing is going to be a maintenance nightmare but it's been a really cool addition to have that across the back wall and I've found that most people think that's unique to this tank for sure you you talked about it too when we first walked in you've got a nice rack of some TSA pieces what pieces did you pick up from us and they look nice they seem to be en crusing and doing super well in this tank yeah I think we have a BK CM we have a Unity we got a Walt Disney um we got a heym maker and uh there's a few other ones that I'm not like the best Reaper that I probably found on discount that day you know I'll be I'll be honest too I even work at top shelf and the amount of names we have on all the corals sometimes it's tough for every to remember those right but amazing pieces what ended up making you decide to kind of strive towards the SPs was it always an ultimate goal for the challenge the color did you like SPS originally or were you kind of leaning into maybe the flowy corals originally did you kind of transition at any point yeah so when I first started in the hobby I was really into rainbow aans I just wanted rainbow a can everywhere and I have a couple of them that are still in the tank uh to this day but you know they didn't really do too much for me they were kind of slow growing and like the color they were and what they were when I bought them was the same but seeing a little frag little stick Acro and seeing what it could be and just getting into that point where was like there's basically unlimited growth you know and you can put them all over the tank and they're beautiful and I do a lot of diving like this to see like a natural Reef in your mind you don't think a can you think like you know Acora SPS you know that's what I I've seen like when I've gone on trips and that's just like I I put my head in the tank with my uh snorkel on you know after a few years you probably not going to put that the video but I think I should yeah but uh you know everybody has their own way of doing it and like I just you know when you turn the blue lights on you get your little orange goggles and you really nerd out like it's just a real sight to see it's cool it is it's it's something to enjoy and sit back and relish on you know you obviously had a team come in and help you set up the tank but you are taking the you know the time and dedication to master the craft and create a beautiful reef tank and it it the proof is in the pudding let's talk about some of the equipment in the tank I see a bunch of low in here obviously directly behind you you got the Apex setup we've got the new Trident NP the Trident all kinds of different stuff let's go over our equipment we can also talk about this setup right here behind us too I also wanted to mention to everyone watching at home very unique aspect of what's going on with the tank right so this is a unbelievable reef tank but it's the only thing in the house there's nothing else in here cuz you're getting ready to move right and you have the new tank talk coming up let's talk about that first real quick great so uh everyone can understand this I have a wife and I have a six-month-old baby and we lasted here for about 4 months so last month we bought a house maybe Cong yeah thank you for that but uh you know it's funny I've been here as a bachelor for 10 years and I've always had my tank and everyone knows about the tank and where I live I leave the blinds open and every come and yeah checks it out at night so uh you know it's weird not being here and we were talking earlier about how the fish don't recognize me anymore so when I come in I have to be really slow and gentle otherwise they all go hide from me so they get Cy when they're not seeing people every day which is kind of a uni unique thing such a crazy thing for everybody watching at home you look at the tank it is unbelievable and for me it's almost sad knowing that this is going to get shut down but there's a light at the end of the tunnel because it's only going to get bigger and better in you know in the end let's talk about that new project how big is it you know you've got a fish room on the side let's just talk about the main tank though sure how big is that new tank going to be it's going to be 850 gallons it's a 10 ft long 4T tall and 3T front to back in the four Feet's going to be interesting you can swim in that basically yeah no we're joking that our first uh snorkeling experience for our daughter will be in the head in the tank I love that let's get back to the equipment now we'll talk about what's the heart of the tank you've got an apex on there correct is that the main heart of the system yeah I run everything off the Apex very happy with it you know I've had people tell me I should switch but I've never had any issues with it so I think it's a good system uh I'm very like religious about checking water parameters so this the regular trident the NP have been like really helpful for me cuz I love to feed you know everyone wants to feed their fish and make them happy and you can see when you over feed and get a high phosphate or nitrate reading that maybe you should cool it you know and sometimes you have to put noox in or a little lthm or something if you're being bad but you know having that back stop me as a hobbyist has made all the difference in the world like not having to manually do it water tests you know and then finding out a week later that you did something and a week ago you get ahead of a lot of your problems it's crazy how automated reef tanks have become over the course of time like you said this tank has been up for you know 10 plus years or so now the Hobbies changed so much in that time period I'm sure it's seen a an array of equipment that's come through and changed in and out of the tank let's talk about some of the flow in the tank you've got MPS I see some AI then you also have some GS too you've got a lot of different flow with all the SPs I'm sure you need a lot of it yeah exactly so the cool thing is so these are mp40s I bought 8 years ago for the fish only T and they're still running wow crazy original ones they've had to change the wet sides twice but you know good Testament to Ecotech yeah good job there um these XF 350s do a really good job kind of disturbing this top water flow um I like them a lot and then these neros are perfect because they don't have a whole the whole um pump assembly is inside the water so you don't have that MP that you need to stick on the back you can put these wherever you want throughout the course of the tank and you can put the tank up against the wall the new tank that's 850 gallons has an inch and a half thick acrylic on the back so no magnets going to work for that My Hope and goal is to maybe glue the inside magnet to the tank and try and work it that way so we can get some more flow gotcha yeah so and then down in the sump what equipment are we running down to the sump I saw skimmer couple skimmers and then what else are we running down yeah so these are the old school you know aquax q6s this is like back in the Marine Depot days if it don't if it isn't broke don't fix it right yeah and this first one works a little bit better and you know they always say that skimmers kind of compete when you have two of them so I kind of let this one do its thing and I like a little redundancy it could probably just run one but better be safe and sorry especially with the fish load that I have here say large fish load so not a bad idea to have the redundancy on a tank I'll be honest your sump is crazy clean you you have a super clean sump a lot of the time I open up the you know the stand or anywhere down below we're on these tank TS a lot of people like hey you know don't judge me for the tritis and everything underneath you got a crazy clean sump are you pretty religious about keeping it clean down there uh not at all I just did it a week ago for this video my hands are all cut up from doing it so uh if you want to see what it really looked like look at the skimmer bodies right there the entire wall of that looked like that but for the video looks nice and perfect for you we appreciate you cleaning up that's that's all for you guys this thing is nice and cleaned up so you got the skimmers anything else you're not running any filter socks here is it just direct flow right down I used to run filter socks and I had to change them so often and the way they set this up was a little bit tricky so it's just kind of a maintenance nightmare so I come in and I'll shop back out the bottom here and there when I have leftover stuff but I got a UV sterilizer which that's something I wanted to talk about um they set that up originally straight with within the flow of the tank and what's really important with the UV and keeping all these fish especially tangs like Achilles and all these other ones prone to ick you really have to dial in the flow for UV sterilizer like I had this issue with ick and all these other things you know cuz when I was first in the hobby I didn't do a good job quarantine things like I do now but when I dialed in the flow to a lower flow that's you know proper for that UV I've had no issues with any parasites anything for several years now yeah it's impressive to hear that too with like you said such a sheer size and group of fish and there's a couple of tangs in here that a lot of people call ick magnets right you know that Achilles the powder blue and I have to say that powder blue is truly gorgeous yeah right behind you too you've got a big water station is this this is obviously your auto top off here on the right and then on the left you have this is some water that's currently being mixed and ready to go for automatic water changes yeah so when I was doing automatic water changes I had this this is how much water I had to use to go in and Shop back out all the junk that I was telling you guys about there a decent water change then you ended up doing like 20 gallons on the tank right there but um you know for the most part this thing will stay full for almost a month so like if I wanted to I could be gone for 30 days and have no problem with the tank and just maybe have Rick and his guys come check it out here and there if I needed to truly automated yeah giving your you know giving all of your animals the chance that you know if you don't have the time or you know if you need to be out of town they're going to be set up for a long period for sure you said have the verses that you're using for dosing pumps you have another doser dosing pump up top any other equipment you wanted to mention before we got this is actually a big one so I had a big issue when we lived in this place so this is funny everyone talks about not wanting to see big tanks in people's Mansions this is a 900t apartment so I'm a man of the people um when we were in here and we had people over if there was too many people in the house my CO2 levels would spike through the roof and my pH would drop so I had to start running cow when I had all these people in here to keep up with my pH it was the funniest thing cuz I could literally see based on who was there including my my golden retriever you know what was going on the pH was going up and down but I religiously run Cal off this uh off this uh vasarine makes this this this unit and uh I'll probably running that on the new tank but that's really helped you know buffer all of my you know uh alkalinity calcium everything so big supporter of utilizing calw in a tank we use it a ton at Top Shelf I mean we go through gallons and gallons a day of C so was there a point when you decided I want to swap to Calas or if you kind of used it for aough long period I'll tell you guys about that too so I was running a CO2 scrubbers into my skimmer for the longest time and changing that media doing that was just a nightmare were you recirculating it or was it just straight scrubbing it uh I was recirculating it and even then you kind of still blow through media yeah I was blowing through media and it just was it was just not the right thing to be doing and then when I set this up it was a you know game changer for me and then I was running at 1 point 300 Ms of or alkaline calcium in two part a day just for the tank and now it's maybe like 100 so it's not too bad but like that would have got real expensive if I didn't switch to Cal for sure saw the chiller too on the ground the Arctica the jbj correct um yeah things been around for eight years too I was going to say those those are kind of solid they I've had one that's lasted a really long time are you running that 24/7 kind of just on to maintain make sure the temperature stays cange mini splits in here and we live at the beach so it's not too hot on most days but like you know sometimes in the summer this thing will run a little bit like if I don't run this fan or if I you know I have seven radons on top of this we can get into talking about that it can get pretty warm in here so um yeah running that Chiller has definitely helped out uh quite a bit I got battery backup systems for the pumps which should always make sure you test those every couple years because I had one go bad once and not good when we had a power outage so I keep extra batteries and a generator in the house too okay yeah so I'm like really religious about you know safety precaution and keeping all these animals alive staying on that same kind of topic maintenance you said you did water changes before on this tank you know you were into that and you've recently switched over to The Moonshiner method on this system let's talk about you know why you decided to go with The Moonshiner method how it's working for you and what your plans are with the future tank sure so originally I was doing 5 gallon water changes on a daily basis and it worked pretty well for me and uh it was just one of those things where I just got tired of mixing salt and I had a buddy tell me that I needed to switch over the Moonshine method and I just at that point started doing ICP tests and once I was getting those results back and I was doing my icps every 2 months once everything started getting balanced I didn't really need to do the water changes anymore it just seemed like a waste I still have like a full automatic water changing setup here and uh you know Auto top off and I can use it anytime I need to I was running it off the verses that I have here but for the most part you know when I've been manually dosing my traces and keeping up with certain things to get depleted like Florine poron bromine things that really get pulled out of my tank as long as I've been adding those I haven't really seen a need for water change it's Unique you know everyone reefs a different way and it's it's cool to see you know some people are just like hey I'll do some water changes and the trace elements will just kind of find the way whereas you you know you're taking that time you're dedicating doing the ICP tests checking those Trace elements and then trying to replenish them at Top Shelf we're really big into doing our icps we' got a lot of water we've got a lot of corals we have to take care of and I would say it's a testament to what you're doing for your tank I mean you taking the time to really focus on those exact numbers and levels they're looking for I mean the tank looks amazing honestly yeah no everything I do in this tank is all run off those ICP tests I had really good growth what I thought was good growth over the first three years I was running the tank and as soon as you start doing moonshine ICP and getting all that Trace elements stuff dialed like it just completely exploded as you can see like everything's touching each other we got Coral Warfare going on right here I need that 850 gallon tank at least that's what I tell my wife I need the tank right you know you need it yeah she's not here yet so we're still good we can talk about that you know it's only 600 gallons if she asked but uh for the most part like adding all those traces just got crazy po of extension just healthy corals like I haven't had anything no die off no nothing you know it's just been so so good ever since I changed talked about this a couple times you know I've seen it with several of the tanks that I've seen here in California as these tanks have developed they're bigger I see a lot of the fish having the chance to kind of act natural be in bigger groups having a larger group of fish is more possible obviously with a bigger tank that's you know what you need but seeing a more well-developed Reef you kind of see them act more natural crazy to see a group of gem tanks a group of blue hippos you have some interesting groups of these tanks you also have a beautiful Achilles let's talk about some of the other fish in the tank I see some antheus I saw some chromis too do you have some worker fish I saw a file fish swimming around in there a mystery Rass I just saw in the back corner let's talk about some of the other fish outside of the tangs we have yeah so most of all the uh rasses are worker fishing here I have a lot of uh you know nuisance things that they're working on cleaning all the time uh mostly like bristle worms they're like everywhere I know they're not too bad but if you pull up any one of these things uh all these rats are so fat from eating all those um all the antheus in here are kind of more ornamental we're working on a bigger tank that we'll talk about later but uh right now most of it's like the antheus and then you got you know some chromies that are kind of working in there but all these rasses and whatnot do most of the work for me I don't really have a whole lot of uh crabs or anything in the tank if you guys look talked about some of the equipment in the tank let's talk about what's lighting up the system and helping all these corals grow let's get into your lighting sure so I have seven radons on the tank right now I have two gen 4S uh three gen 5ivs and two gen sixes so it's kind of a mixed bag they all work together great on Mobius Mobius is a wonderful app you know it's so easy to use and uh I'm very happy with it you know but uh yeah there's so much light that I have on this tank I have a power meter that I use um even at the Bott bottom right here I'm like at 100 and up at the top it's close to 450 so you can see even some of these guys are getting a little bit too much so um you know we're going to have a 4ft tall tank so hopefully that'll you know all be working itself out we're going to change out the lenses though and use those uh high output lenses that you can put on there I think it's like a $20 fix you can change the lens we are starting to make that swap too in the farm because we're seeing that the ability to run a lower intensity while still getting that punch is really good for us cuz we're running 100 plus radons right for us the bill it could come down a little bit having that chance to kind of run that punch a little bit lower and also it kind of brings it back to that spread that the Gen 4 was originally that everyone loved and raved about so pretty cool to see those lens kits that everyone's kind of wanting to try out mentioned the Moonshiners let's get into the Moonshiners a little bit more talk to you go over to it sure we can talk about it a little bit more yeah so I I've been doing the Moonshine method for you know on and off nine nine months now more or less and I would say dosing all those individual Trace elements I can see the pp extension the next day like or within a couple hours on how happy things look and what's going on and I'm always depleting a lot of Manganese with the ganes love that stuff and then you got like uh iron's a big one that I'm adding um Cobalt um I can go through it there's uh vadium crazy right you would never think you're adding in iron to a tank Cobalt to a tank I think that's always interesting for a lot of people at home that don't get into the reef Moonshiners or know that much they're like why would I want to add an iron into my system why am I doing that from the start yeah this is the one thing I wanted to tell everybody that was like important to me is I was really nervous about starting the Moonshine method not being like an expert reefer you know like all this has been great and I've had my ups and downs but the moonshining method is much easier than you think it's really just being able to go in and send an ICP test plug all that data into an Excel sheet and it spits out what you're supposed to do and as long as you're like you know somewhat diligent with your maintenance if you miss a day you can just double those at the next day it's really not as hard and I'd really advocate for because that's been the difference for me not even doing water changes now and having all my parameters be stable the tanks just taken off two things I've noticed from the two tanks that I've actually done tank tours with that are running Reef Moonshiners method yours and Ian is a couple things one the color and how the growth is is extremely impressive they are really really nice the other thing is you guys are actively doing the dosing right you're doing that dosing I kind of like that in a way because you got to be in tune with your tank you're coming up you're getting involved with your system you're being handson directly with it we've talked about it in a couple videos this weekend honestly and it's something I kind of want more people to understand I think everyone needs to be a little bit more in tune with their reef tanks right be involved with your Reef I know automating it making it easy that's part of it right we want to make this as simple and easy as we can but also don't you know disconnect yourself from your reef tank yeah no I think that's super important I had everything automated at one point but when I kind of took it over over and I've had maintenance guys help me out like Rick's people help me when I'm not here and whatnot but if you're not the one maintaining your tank it's never going to thrive no matter how good your guy is or how often he's here if you don't care about it and you aren't doing the work yourself you'll never see the results that you want you know we're talking this you know absolutely it's once again proof is in the pudding we just mentioned a tip right there Jake Adams he did it every single tank tour when he'd come in I love asking every single Reaper CU we've said it earlier too everyone reefs a different way which is really cool you don't do the water changes but you're getting the success right we just visited a tank they did water changes they're having success what's a tip you would tell someone getting into the reef hobby or getting ready to start out maybe your tip is start with a Predator Tank and then you'll end up with an awesome reef tank is that the tip I'd say the tip is get what you like don't buy a coral cuz it's $500 and you can frag it and make money off it buy what you like I like day cans I kind of grew out of it I still have some but do what makes you happy and you know take your time with it because you don't want to have have major die off and major things happen and do it cuz you love it I'm a fisherman diver you know I love the ocean and the most joyous thing I have besides seeing my wife my new baby is coming home to the tank so if you don't have that feeling about your tank you'll never make it you know love it you know they're connected to us like family right just like our dogs are that's the way we treat our fish right we nerd out with this stuff we love it so much Scott thank you so much for letting us come into your house your tank is unbelievable I have to say though I've got to make a trip back once you get that new tank set up because I'm definitely going to want to see the upgrade and all of that I really had a lot of fun today checking out this system if you guys have any questions for Scott if you have anything you wanted to talk about for about his tank be sure to drop it down in the comments below if you guys have hung out all the way till the end I want to say thank you so much be sure to like subscribe and hit the Bell notification so you don't miss out on any future uploads baby on [Music]