This Tank was PACKED with Torches! 300 Gallon Reef Aquarium!

Trip to Miami continues on and we are checking out a tank that is probably one of the most packed euphilia tanks we've seen in quite some time here on the channel. I'm here with Josh. Josh, I don't even know where to start when it comes with the stuff inside the tank, but let's talk about the tank itself. What kind of tank do we have here and what's the size of it? This a water box 380. Displays a 290. We got 20 on the atto and the remainders in the sump. Uh came with five of the Radon uh was X30 Blues. There we go. And you really just can't beat it. They do an all-in-one package. So financing was 0% of the time and said, "Let's do it." You were talking about it off camera with me. You said originally you guys were it [music] was going to potentially be a little bit smaller of a tank. There was a hiccup in the whole situation of getting this tank here, but now we were able to get a bigger system, right? So that worked out even better. Water box made it happen. And they [music] said they couldn't do residential delivery of the bigger one. So then they called me back and they're like, "Well, we can get you a forklift and bring it to your house." And I was like, "Yes, let's do it. Absolutely." So, they made it happen. We got a delivery all the way from Jacksonville and it's it got in the house that day. I am taking a wild guess. You like euphilia. It looks like you really do like euphilia. The flow in this tank is crazy. If people are looking for a tank that has a lot of motion, this is the tank to look at. Let's talk about the corals you ended up deciding with. You've got a mixture kind of all kinds of different things, but let's talk about all your different favorites. You know, why you chose, you know, so heavy euphilia and heavy LPS. So, I fell in love with the corals uh that that flow in general. It used to be the hammers and stuff until I really got into torches. When I saw the colors on holy grails and nicks, those give super contrast and I I absolutely love them. Now, those ones I was able to keep alive pretty easy and that's why I went with them. Gondaporas, absolutely love them, but I hadn't had much luck with them until going into this tank once I upgraded to the size and better lights. Um so, flow is my thing. Uh, I'm I'm recently getting into the meats, the the eanthos and the scoloies, but that it's more new for me. Mushrooms become a little bit more of a thing, [music] but the the color spread is just so unique for each individual species of of the torches. That's why I like it the most. Absolutely. You got a really wide range of different colors. Something that caught my eye right away was a couple things in the tank. One, that carpet nem is to die for. I love the hot pink. Looks super cool. And then you also have well, you know, we talked about maybe it being Colorado, Chicago. Hard to [music] kind of determine exactly what they are, but you've got some nems in the tank. Let's talk about the nems and how you've kept those happy. Specifically, let's talk about the carpet nem right now. So, the carpet nem was uh that was a a great purchase, right? It it was advertised around 12 in. I got to say it's [music] got to be at least it's big. Maybe 16 in right now. So, that one I feed it uh frozen shrimp with a little defrost for it twice a week. I give it hard hard pellets probably twice a week on top of that. So almost every other day it's getting food at least. I I don't want it to go after any more of our fish. It's had fillet dinners. We'll call it [laughter] maybe maybe sea bass of the sea, right? Um for the other NEMS, the black widow is a super traveler. So currently it's in rehab and it's in one of the little catch tanks. [music] And then we put an not sure if it's the Chicago, but I think it's the Colorado up there too. So it wasn't going to float over into this power head. The other ones, they just found home with this rock structure over here with all the SPS's. That's their favorite spot and they haven't moved in [music] weeks at all. And um they're doing great there. So [music] with all of those guys, I power feed them with reefoids twice a week and [music] uh do a little bit of phto with it, a little bit of cams plus. Curious with the clown fish. You've got a pair of clowns in the tank. Were the clowns in the tank before the nems were added in? The clowns came with the old tank and they actually came with the old NEM. The old NEM is sitting in our sump right now. It's a Haitian blue [music] temp. It uh and it was I don't know maybe another 14 incher and they they cohabited that one and once they got these colorful ones they switched. Now they've also rotated to that side of the tank and came back and then they still like these Chicago here. Yeah, I feel like that can be one of the bigger issues for people when they bring in clown fish into their tank if they have nems or do the opposite. bringing nems in with their clown fish. Sometimes it's hard to get them into that actual [music] home, right? Getting them to go that way. To get one into the carpet, but no one's hosting it yet. Now, nems are one of those things that move a lot, right? Normally with their foot, they decide they want to just walk wherever the heck they want to go. I'm curious to hear, how did you get the carpet to stay right there? It it it decided that it wanted to be line in the middle of the day while I was at work. Threw a whole bunch of my corals I still had in the sand bed. So, we had to find a solution. And Victor from Coral Fast like, "Hey, bro, have your wife run up to Home Depot or Lowe's and go grab a flower pot. [music] $3 flower pot. We put it into that thing. It sucked itself to it and it stuffed in the corner and now it's sitting there opening up like a rose and it it's loving it. It doesn't move at all." I think Nems, we've seen it with Ritter Eyes, we've seen it with the carpets. I think if they have somewhere they can dig their foot into and hide it away from a lot of things. Don't let anything peck at it and it's kind of in seclusive spaces, I think that's where they start to kind of settle in and really kind of stay in the right place. So, that's a really good hack for people at home. If you're trying to figure out how to get your big ne to stop moving around, try to either a build a little boulder situation where they can kind of root their foot down or get themselves a nice little pop. Just drop a little rock into the base of it, too. Most of these plastic pots [music] all float, too. So, we just took a little piece of clay, set it in it, and it's probably stuck to both of it. You've got a lot [music] of corals in here that probably like to eat. Are you doing any specific feeding when it comes to your skullies? The eanthos, obviously, they're a little new. And then for all of your LPS, too, what do you feed them? So, my skullies love the formula 2 pellets. I I just drop them in under no flow, and I let them sit there for 30 minutes and eat. And I do that probably twice a week. Um, I'll still hit everything at least once a week with the Reef Royids and, you know, do target feeding, but this is this is what fattens them up really for sure. It's just dropping it in there for them. We talked about the clown fish. Let's talk about some of your fish now. You've got a really cool selection. You've got a fish in this tank that I personally [music] have not seen in a reef tank in quite some time. You got a sweet lips hanging out down underneath. So, let's talk about your fish, why you decided to go with the fish you have. All right. So, everybody's aquarium has to have a dory, a blue hippo, and a couple clowns. So, we started there. I've always wanted the yellow tang. We had one. It didn't make it. So, we ended up getting another one. The uh the purple tang was kind of a prize fish for a little bit, but man, that thing is just so it's it's very There you go. It's battling. [music] It goes after the yellow tangs. Um the Achilles was always a a goal of [music] mine. I I got one, it didn't work out. Came with with it and we went for another one. Gave it another chance. The gem tang was luck and the yellow tang was luck. Someone else [music] had some misfortune with their tank, so I took on hosting them permanently. Rasses are one of my favorite species, [music] so I like to do a little mixup on those. We currently have a melaneris. We have three six lines for picking up any bugs and flatworms we don't want or anything like that. I've got a Christmas rass. We had a carpenter fairy rass, but she's not in in there anymore with us. The the carpet anatomy got it. Um, the sweet lips is really pretty fish. We [music] had two. It also just wasn't going to make it with this tank. The um one of my favorite fish though is I went diving here recently for [music] many season or open season. I don't really go out for many season anymore. And the Atlantic blue tang, [music] it's it's really unique because it starts off yellow and it becomes into a blue tang later on. And its colors, I've watched it switch colors from bringing it from the pet store to this tank and then when it got unstressful, there it is sitting there. It's no longer uh blue. It's back to yellow. So, um one more we've got in there is a lavender. Um, the koi tang, I like it cuz it's yellow eye, but it's it's not very friendly. So, that kind of wraps up most of the fish there. And then you've got some other fish that might not be within that utility group, right? You've got the angel fish. You've got some antheus just for a little color fill, right? And then the dwarf angel, the flame angel fish. You've got a really nice mixture. Now, we talked about some of the coral feeding. What are we feeding the fish themselves? The fish, they eat better than we do. Uh, so [music] seaweed alone, they probably get three pieces, three half sheets a day. Um, you see I've got some fresh brine right there. Thursdays is fresh delivery day from my local pet store for for live brine. We do I get two full cups of that and they [music] get that for maybe 4 days. A little split here and there. I've got everything frozen [music] in the in the freezer right now. So twice a week at least I do power feeding. Right before you got here they got spirulina with brine mix. [music] Uh, I'll do another day where I'll throw in krill, another day where I throw in micis, and then I do a little bit of fish eggs here and there, too. So, they almost every day they get a little bit different nutrition. Um, you know, if I'm seeing that somebody's not [music] looking too hot, then I'll throw in a little garlic guard in there to make them eat and spice it up. Nice. Now, this tank itself being maintained by Shout out to Victor. He's helping out with Coral Fascination. He's the one that's maintaining the tank. We recently saw another system of his. I want to hear, you know, from you. How how often is Victor coming out and doing the maintenance on the tank? It's nice to see that you're heavily involved with your system as well. So, he's scheduled at least for once a month, but he likes to drop by cuz he's in the area a couple times. He's like, "Hey, you need a little bit of help." So, yesterday he was here alone helping me do some [music] final placements on stuff, but uh I'd hope to get back up to like every two or twice a month so I don't have to be as into it, but for right now, still once. And then he helped me set up all the outdoor side of it, so the maintenance side is a lot easier. So, I have I have two 40 gallon um trash cans already mixing with RO right now. So, we got water changes down to a 10-minute goal, you know. So, changing it out is not too bad. So, his his job is a little bit easier coming to our house than some others, I'm sure. Absolutely. [laughter] Now, for the salt on the tank, what salt are we using? We're using Reef Bristles. Um you know, one bag is pretty much almost perfect for the the setup that we have per trash can out there. It does give us a little bit higher alkalinity than some of the other products out there. This tank, the torches love like right at 9 9.0. The SPS though, they like it more about the 8.5. So, what I do, I try to let the alkalinity drop a little bit lower before I do the next next water change cuz I know it's going to give it a slight bump up. And then for equipment side of things, let's talk about some of the equipment. Obviously, you mentioned you have the XR30 Blues up top. Let's talk about the other equipment inside the tank and then we'll talk about down below. I will say love the fact there's minimal equipment in the tank. You're focused on the tank itself. Yes. Yes. So, we got two of the MP60s. [music] Having it magnetic on the outside of the tank is great. They almost put out too much flow, especially cuz Victor does some 3D printing. He made me these special NEM guards. Okay, they're they're soon as we upgraded to those, the amount of flow has got to be 200% more. So, I had to dial it down to let these guys run at like 5 or 10%. Versus before I was running 30 to 40%. Um, what else for equipment? I mean, everything's hidden underneath there. So, [music] that's that's a great thing with the with the size of this tank. Instead of having a three panel, we have a four panel. We can fit everything underneath. Uh we've got energy bars, we've got do setups, we got the Apex system. [music] Vic helped me program almost all of that completely. We did uh reef mats 1 1200 setup. Um what else we got in there? Calquaser going. We're we're doing carbon and GFO is set into the sump. Nice big DC protein skimmers down there. Um and then uh we just recently added an ultraviolet. Nice. So you mentioned calcers. So, is that one of the driving forces for the tank when it comes to dosing? Absolutely. No, that's it's brand new. It's only a week into it. So, I have been doing BRS dosing for myself. I've been getting the dry cams all this time and once a week I just go do a little bit of top off. Okay. And uh so I try to keep it within a range. My my calcium is always, you know, within a 20 to 30 difference. And then I'll just go grab a gallon jug of water from the tank. I mix it up with whatever I'm going to add to it and I dump it back into the sump and slowly add it in. [music] Gotcha. And then your alkalinity said shooting for about you know obviously as it dips lower to 8.5 you kind of bring it back up. What are the other numbers outside of those? We'll check it out right now. I think right now we're around 8.7 on the alk. Our calcium is 425, magnesium's 1325 and then [music] our pH is 7.9 right now. Water temp 78. Um OP 335. And then you said you've recently drilled a hole so that way you could start getting some fresh air into the tank, right? Yes. Yes. We have a CO2 scrubbers, but we have the got two CO2 scrubbers in line, but pulling from fresh air from the outside. So, god forbid there is any contaminant in the air outside, we're definitely already scrubbing it. Helping out with that redundancy factor, right? Saw a nice little refugeium down below. Do you big supporter of refugeiums? You like those? The bigger the better. And if you can light up your sump, do it before you get the tank set up. Yeah. So, I threw the LED strips in there. Make sure you get the ones that are for outdoor. And then, uh, but they're a little bit hard to keep glued up there. The glue needs to be a little bit, you know, stronger. But, uh, if you want, we'll open it up and we'll take a look. I I ran some nice LED stripping so you [music] can see the whole interior lit up. It's You really made a good point with the fact that the four panel gives you so much space for equipment and things like that. And I feel like that's something we're constantly adding on to tanks at this point. Right. Tanks used to be super simple. I ran an underravel filter at one point in my life and it's like the only thing I ever had on my tank and that was it. And now we've kind of taken it to a whole another level, right? It it's science at this point. You've got so much going on underneath, but you're able to kind of put things that are a little bit bigger. I've [music] noticed that too. It seems like you really like to kind of go a little bit bigger than what you need so that way you're not running it at 100%. Just like these, you're not putting it, you know, pushing it to its max capabilities. I think that's a really good testament [music] to what you should be doing with your products on your reef tanks. I mean, if you push it too much, then you're [music] kind of running out its longevity of its life. That's kind of what I thought about the pump system. So, if you're if you got one that's meant for double the, you know, its output, then you won't have to work it as hard. And then I didn't even ask you from the start, how did you get into reef keeping in [laughter] general? Right. How did you get to this point where we have this tank here? So, my best friend, he was over last night. We were talking about it. He had his fish tank at his apartment. He was moving locations and he couldn't bring it to the new spot. So he's like, "Can I keep it here at your house?" It ended up staying there for almost a year and that was I don't know about 12 13 years ago and it was maybe a 40-gallon tank and and since then it was sitting on my nightstand. I've always wanted so we got our first apartment together. We put one in there and then uh when he got his place we found one in Miami and and upgraded him to a 110 or something like that. Upgraded me to a 150 and just kept on going at it. That was that was my inspiration. Also growing up, my babysitters about six to 10 years old, they had a peninsula one mounted into a wall. They had a predator tank with lion fish and ever since then, I've always wanted to do one. Yeah. I feel like there's always something that kind of pushes you in that direction. Curious, you know, looking at this tank, it seems like you're more of a coral guy. You like your corals a lot. Would you say you kind of lean more heavy into like loving your corals, but obviously you like your fish, too. Is that more what you kind of been focused on? I was debating on whether I was going to do a coral tank or a fish only tank cuz I really wanted to do a fish only tank cuz I knew how much I was going to spend on the corals. And in the end, I battled it out and I was like, I like peilas too much. So, we we we did a mix. We did a mix. I've see some different 3D printed stuff you've got mixed throughout the tank. Something that not many people have in their systems. Let's talk about some of the 3D printed stuff here. So, it's a little bit of hidden gems. So, we're we're festive for holidays and [music] we decided we were going to do some little Halloween themes. So, I've got a jacko'lantern, a little couple mini ghosts, a small little pumpkin, and in my wife's little bio cube, we also added a little skull and we put a gonopora sitting in the skull so it has some hair coming out of it. And then uh a friend of mine said, "Hey, you know, you've got a nephew that likes Pokémon. How about I print you some Pokémon? We'll put that in there, too." I was like, "Yeah, absolutely." I'm a big fan. What's What's crazy in my mind was you sent me some pictures. I don't know what that may have been a couple weeks ago. Yeah. Y and there was racks [laughter] all over this tank. It was covered in racks. There was racks here, racks there. [music] You still have some racks in the back, but it was like your your sand bed literally was covered with racks. I didn't have any more room. Mo's like, you can't buy another piece until you get it all on the rock that you you spent so much money on. I'm like, okay, next 20 hours is me gluing everything. Yeah, it seems like you've definitely started to kind of group things all into specific kind of gardens if that is that what you're trying to create here. So you got your like ganie garden and things like that. That's exactly what we were calling it too. She said that she wanted me to make a ganie garden and uh well made it happen. The rock flower in the back. Only one of those or do you have a couple of them in the tank? There's two left there. There's that one. There's one on the opposite side that's [music] it's paired up next to some zoas. But the carpeted enemy may be making it move. I'm not sure yet. Um those were the Florida Key Rock enemies and I love those. They small 25 bucks [music] and you get a ton of color out of them. You know what's been the biggest challenge for you in this tank? What's been, you know, [music] obviously you've kept some tanks for a couple of years now at this point. What's been one of the bigger challenges for this system? Color blindness. [laughter] Totally. So, it's kind of a joke, but you know, a lot of men are color blind. So, I I do have a red green deficiency. So, trying to like do good contrast and determine where I want to put things. I've got to get up, get down, pull back, and see. All right, let's go replace this one more time. And then then you think you've got a system of where you want to place everything. then you see, oh, this is going to look better. Let me pop all these pieces and go redo it. [music] It It really isn't about the uh the chemicals or the filtration and all that stuff. That all kind of came easy. It was more about figuring out what I wanted to do and stick to it. [music] Some people are hands off from their tanks, right? They don't put their hands in the system. It seems like this is a tank you're actively kind of messing with, getting in and kind of touching and being around. Yep. I love it. And I really don't depend on Victor. It's just nice to have a backup. Plus, my dog's welcome into the house, so he can come on in and take care of the tank. Let's say I'm out of town, too. And uh what we'll do is we'll set up right here. We'll set up one of the cameras, baby monitor cameras as extra. We'll monitor the tank while we're away, too. That is one of the perfect things. You know, there's like the whiz cameras now. You've got the Google cameras, all these different kind of things that you can kind of keep a eye on them. Yeah. I mean, Josh, you've really killed it with this one. I'm Victor, big kudos to him for helping out with this tank. Again, one of the cleaner sand beds I've seen in quite some time. What are you doing to try and keep this sand bed so clean? So, from the start, I was like, we're going to just pump this with a cleaner crew. I've got about five uh starfish that have got to be the size of my hand or or just about maybe a few more smaller ones. We added of the tiny neria snails. We did I don't know, maybe about 80 of them. Dumped them right on in. Threw about 20 Mexican turbo snails in there. And that's done a lot of good for it. every water change I throw a little bit of quick start back into it and [music] you know that way we're keeping some of the the nitrates and and everything going right right the proper way. Um we we do a little bit of uh waste away also in there too. Okay. And then for the rest of the cleanup crew outside of what's kind of working on the sandben what else do you have for cleanup crew in here? Uh the diamond goi. The diamond goi is it's a great fish. It looks beautiful. It's cool what it's doing. You can watch it throw the sand through its gills, but it makes sand mounds. And it doesn't decide where it wants to stay. It decided this whole tank is its home. And if you mess up anything, it's going to tell you it messed it up. Now, I ask everybody whenever I come into their home, uh, you know, Jake Adams used to do this for all of his tank tours whenever he was going around and talking with different reefers. And I think that's what's so special about the tank tour series here on the channel is we get to learn so many different things from so many different systems cuz no tank is the same, right? Every tank's going to be completely different. If you had to give a piece of advice to a new reef keeper, someone that's been in the hobby for a long time, what would your piece of advice be [music] to get a system looking like this? Cuz I mean, if anybody likes torches, they should [laughter] probably listen in right now. Start with some of the cheaper torches to make sure that you can acclimate everything right. Once you see that they're living and working well, then you can start [music] buying into some of the higherend ones. Really, a PAR meter though, that that will definitely help you. I don't run any UV on this one because these these Radeon 30s put out so much power. I have to dim dim dim them down to about 30% of just blues and royal blues and um the UV I found was burning a lot of my stuff. So definitely a PAR meter and you know placement that's that's the key. See how things are working and then if it doesn't work there drop it back down a little bit lower. Maybe that'll be a bit better of a spot. That's a really great point. I think that's the first time we've heard that here on the channel is the PAR meter. And I think you're making a great point because sometimes people just throw the corals in, put the lights on, set an intensity, and don't even think about it. Getting a PAR meter. You can rent them at your local fish store. You can go ahead and buy one yourself. But go ahead and set up a map, right? Go in with an orange Sharpie and write all the numbers out on the tank itself. Take a picture and then you can kind of go back and then you really can kind of focus in on, you know, where the placement's going to be. I think we checked that we're somewhere around 80 at the sand bed and about 200 around where the SPS's are at [music] the top right now. So, we got a decent variety because you're doing that. Then you can put all sorts of uh corals in and not just be limited to and you can know where you're going to stack them. I have to ask, what's the plan for the sweet lips when it gets too big? [laughter] I don't know yet. Maybe donate it. Maybe when it gets too big, it would be time for us to get a new house and we'll go to a bigger fish tank. Maybe a saltwater Maybe a saltwater pond or something, right? That would be awesome. We have a the saltwater pool, a 10,000galon saltwater pool [laughter] there. So maybe it'll go back there. Well, Josh, I just want to say thank you so much, man, for letting me come by, check out the system. This is a euphilia person's dream tank. Honestly, the torches, everything about it. Coral Fascination's doing a great job with this system. You're doing a really good job of being on top of it. But overall, man, I just want to say thank you so much. If you guys have any questions for the tank, be sure to drop them down in the comments below. And if you guys have hung out all the way till the end, I want to say thank you very much. Be sure to like, subscribe, and hit the bell notifications so you don't miss out on any future uploads. Thank you, guys. There we go. Promise [music] not to. [music] Promise.