How the Professionals REEF! Checking Out the TSA Retail Display!

what's going on Reapers Blaine here today we are in the retail store I'm with Chris one of our Coral Specialists here in the retail store today we're going to talk about a tank that's in the retail store and I think doesn't get enough love it's kind of tucked away over by a couple of our Coral aisles here in the retail store but today I'm going to let Chris take it away he helps maintain this beautiful system Chris I'm going to let you go ahead talk about this Red Sea reefer what tank are we talking about here what's up guys I'm Chris Co specialist here at Top Shelf Aquatics uh yeah so this is a Reaper 350 V3 from Red Sea it's pretty much the Max lineup so it's got everything that Red Sea would include in their Max uh I guess package when you buy the tank so ref d90s uh you've got the GS from Red Sea uh Red Sea return pump Red Sea skimmer Red Sea roller mat all the bells and wheel is from Red Sea gotcha super similar to what we're running in the studio we've got a fullon red SE setup we've got the reef wave we've got the reef run Reef mat everything in between I talk about it with a lot of people on the channel the reef matat how do you like The Reef matat do you think oh man it's it's a game changer I put one on my personal system it's amazing yeah I think that's easily one of the yeah greatest products that's come out recently red SE kind of knocked it out of the park with this one what's the size of the tank how big is this one again so the display to my knowledge it's around 70 gallons like 72 73 gallons uh the whole water volume is I think 93 so the rest is in the sunm gotcha 93 so down in the sunm below and then how long are We R running the lights for what's the schedule duration typical 12-hour cycle uh so it's pretty much maxed out uh as far as the intensity goes but mainly just blue there's a little bit of white that goes on from about like 1:00 p.m. to about 300 p.m. and then it goes back to Blue so and then I'll kind of circle back to the reef waves and the reef run what are you running percentage wise on the reef waves and then for the return pump too how how strong are you running that so it maxes out again at 100% on those um I both of them just on a on a pulse mode um they're not at the same rate so one's slower than the other but we've managed to kind of get away with um you know running that amount of flow especially with all the sticks gotcha you just mentioned it you said you got the sticks you've got some torches as well this is obviously a complete mixed Reef right so was that the plan all along I know at Top Shelf we have a ton of sticks I know we want to showcase those but it looks like we're trying to create like a full-on mixed Reef yeah and that's really the the idea behind the original setup was just a mixed Reef your normal achievable mixed Reef that you could have uh pretty much uh right out of the gate you know it took us a while to get to mainly sticks here but yeah it's always been a mix streef I think you hit it right on the nail talking about that word achievable sometimes you know I feel like a lot of these tank tours we go on WE showcase a ton of really big systems right we're talking about 5,000-gallon tanks we're over at Polo Reef with a 17,000g tank you know these aren't tanks we're going to normally have in our home whereas the Red Sea reefer is actually a system you could keep in your home and it's cool to see something that's a little bit more obtainable for reefers at home you know whenever some people come into the retail store people can check this out and I think it's an awesome you know inspiration for people as well let's get into the livestock though let's talk a little bit about the fish first what fish did we go with in the tank so we've got a pair of Bartlet antheus uh I have a little school of chalk bassets uh there's also a blotchy antheus in here that's one of my favorite fish of all time there a biota yell Tang here uh he's been here since he was a little baby uh he's he's definitely gotten much more uh mature and yellow in color clownish I can't forget those they they hide away in the Duncan right yeah so they've been hosting that Duncan ever since we put it in that's crazy yeah but uh yeah the pair of uh I think those are extrem Miss bars uh but they're pretty old they're like a few years old they're big chunky kind of aggressive when you put your hand in the tank for sure what do you what do you feed in the tank obviously you got a good range of fish you know you got some fish that are more herbivores you got some more carnivore fish what do you feed in the system so every day we just put a sheet of nori in uh sometimes we'll do it twice a day but really it's just m shrimp or whatever the systems get normally was just would just be M shrimp we showcased that in a previous video you know what we feed here at TSA I'll make sure to leave a link above where you guys can check that out you know what we're feeding in our retail store tanks what we're feeding in the farm systems but it looks like all these fish are super chunky and happy let's get into some of the fun stuff right let's talk about some of the corals obviously we can kind of work from our top down but let's go ahead start with kind of the bottom stuff let's work our way up so let's talk about some of the zoa Gardens I know you got a Bernard aora garden over here let's talk about some of the corals you chose yeah so yeah from bottom up I could start with the Bernards so it's just a mixture of all the the pieces that we would have normally uh for sale even uh but yeah these are all Bernards we kind of had to separate them cuz they can get a little stingy um yeah a little Zoe Garden here little baby Grill some torches some of my favorite uh LPS Coral psycho Rainbow Rim from Jason Fox my Miami chalice from Jason Fox as well little Rainbow chalice we've got a cool um plating sponge that's a very uncommon one I think it's a weird sponge that just plates like a monat really cool yeah I got a big colony of uh gamma knife hyno it's one that can sting that's why it's kind of tucked away there but it's a really nice piece uh I mean starting with the sticks Shortcake latella Garf Bonsai you can't go wrong with that I mean every tank should have a gar Bonsai Classic No Doubt definitely a classic little nebula Acro red Cadillac the fuzz danaco this actually this Daydream was was there since it's was a tiny little frag tiny little yeah it's one of the little frags we first started out with and it's a easy accur if you guys wanted to try something out you know I know we made a big change recently you know there was a big swap in livestock originally it was a lot more LPS right and then we've kind of made a shift to showcase a lot more of our sticks you know obviously we've got the dragon in the back got the Contraband digitata we've got a huge mix of different species which I really like right there's the dragons there's the digies there's the acros there's a huge mix I even see that tiny little speciosa fragar hiding down there there's a lot of really nice sticks was that kind of the plan all along did we want to just get this tank rolling get it situated and then kind of work our way to get the sticks in there yeah so I think the biggest thing with like uh like having acros in a store when they're little frags is that L A lot of people get to see the colonies yes right uh so the reasoning behind maybe I think having all these colonies is showcasing what they would look like when they're a little bit more mature than you know having just a little frag right so yeah a lot of times when when you know someone's looking at an Acro I I'll Point them out to the system here and it's a it's you know it's a good representation of how they might grow when they're when they're big yeah for sure hard to appreciate when they're that small it is it's true I talked about that in a couple videos before especially the Favia video you know I think you see a lot of the frags you know they're tiny in form but when they kind of grow out and you get a full Colony you really going to appreciate all the different colors of them let's go ahead and start talking about some of our favorite signature TSA pieces though I want to mention about that baby Grail though let's talk a little bit more about the baby Grail you know this is one of the euphas that actually was spawned in house and it's really an amazing story I've talked about it before but you know many many years ago Kevin had a bunch of baby Grails or Grails in general in the farm one of them spawned out we ended up having that little tiny head pop out and over a course of about 7 years or so it grew into this giant Colony that now we're able to Showcase and be able to bring into the market and give to you guys frags but really cool to see a baby Grail in this tank I love that you guys are showcasing that any other pieces that you wanted to mention before we kind of got into some of the maintenance things like that yeah so I mean one of my favorite Pieces Just to note is one of the newer pieces that we just put in we they calling that a sour tsunami and when we first put it in it was a little more paler but it's actually starting to get a little bit better color when I put it in I accidentally fragged a piece off when I was gluing it so I put a uh little piece down there and it's taking off too man that's one that's a really cool piece that uh it's coming out now so it's another one you could add to your tank that's a great little tip that's an awesome tip too I mean obviously when you're fragging some of these corals some of them are a little bit fragile you might end up breaking off a tiny little piece in reality you could do a couple different things right the reaper code you could give it to a friend let him grow it out you could move it to a different location see if it likes it a little bit more that's really cool I love to see that let's talk about some of the maintenance what do we doing for maintenance on this system so we just do about uh 20 30 gallon water change depending on how the nutrients are sitting uh weekly so that's about every uh Monday uh just a simple drain fill you know our our actually mixing station right there so it's very simple even better you know we dose uh I can't ex know exactly for sure right now how much we're dosing but we just dose A&B okay uh you know as as needed you know cuz obviously there's a lot of growing sticks here so it's it's consuming more than average sort of mixed so that's it as of right now the A and B and just water changes y pretty much just water Chang are we doing any specific feedings for the corals are we doing any phyto feedings things like that obviously we have our Reef genetics line things like that so we we'll feed phyto uh another one that's kind of I think basing it off of the nutrients so um we'll try and feed phto almost uh any chance we get cuz that's a really good feeding to for everything here I mean it'll benefit everything at some point it's the number one thing at the food chain so yeah uh we feed phytoplankton we'll feed amino acids every now and then as well no real schedule with that uh it's just kind of an uh you know as needed kind of thing you know but about once a week once every two weeks when we do that kind of thing right on I'm looking at the rock that was in here originally what rock was this is this the carab SE shapes and arches or is it a mixture of things it's kind of a mixture of things but I mean as far as the the shapes and arches it really just is shapes and arches got uh maybe a little bit of the base Rod kind of tucked away in the back but it really is just shapes and uh you can really get away with you know I I think making a cool Aquascape with just that definitely uh it's it's easy to make caves and stuff like that with just that let's talk about the cleanup crew too obviously we're going to be a big part of the cleaners that are in this tank obviously we're going by it every single day got to make sure this tank looks nice and clean in the store but let's talk about some of the people we've enlisted in the tank to actually help with the cleaning too yeah so the biggest thing I think keeping the sand bite clean is one of the bigger ones cuz that's what reflects uh light under it uh so we have a bunch of neria snails sand sifting starfish um we'll occasionally Stir It Up manually every now and then to get in those Corners where they they really can't reach uh uh blue legs red legs is what we kind of go for hermit crabs um Scarlets can get a little bit big so they can kind of tumble over stuff and they can be a little bit a hassle but um I've got really just that as far as uh Cleanup Crew goes as far as the main cleanup crew right it's just sand sifting starfish hermit crabs uh just your general you know sort of cleanup crew that you normally get at a fish store one of the recent tank tours we did with noi he has this amazing tank it's 17-year-old reef tank that he's had a 17-year-old sandbed and he swears by neria snails he has said they are the best thing that's ever come to his system he has so many of them in there so it's cool to hear that we're utilizing them as well in our systems I've asked every single person whenever I come and do a tank tour obviously this isn't the tank that you have at home we might have to make that happen at some point but we you know we're talking about a system that you take care of you've been reefing for some time now i' ask everyone you know if you had one tip to give any beginners when they're starting out in the hobby you deal with I'm sure a lot of beginners as they come into the store so what's that one tip you would give any new person coming into the saltwater hobby I would say try and keep it as simple as you can without making it a burden to do that kind of Maintenance like all the time right A lot of people will try and like dose everything as needed when simply you could just do water changes to mitigate any of that right so everything you do should be be in my eyes something that you can replicate all the time so it's not a burden on yourself at the end of the day this is a hobby so you're trying to enjoy it for the most part you're not trying to be the this this thing you have to do all the time right so enjoy it make it as simple as you can and you'll have the success as long as you enjoy it I'd say for sure at the end of the day it is a hobby right I mean we're taking care of animals obviously we want to do the best possible thing for these living animals that we're taking care of but it's a hobby at the end of the day got to make sure you're having fun well Chris I want to say thank you so much for taking a little bit of time today I know it's busy around the store you're the coral specialist you got a lot of animals to take care of I want to say thanks for tuning in with me I want to let you guys all know though if you're looking to pick up this package right here like Chris mentioned earlier you can pick up this package on our website right now if you head over to our website you'll see the fullon package going on you can pick up the tanks you can pick up the reef waves The Reef run anything in between if you guys are looking to snag it head over to our website now if you guys have hung out all the way till the end be sure to drop a comment down your favorite thing about this system in our store and be sure to like subscribe and hit the Bell notification so you don't miss out on any future uploads [Music]