Now that you've got Thomas on board, you should take everything you've learned from the two year ULM experiment and have him do a full ULM build with best practices for beginners.
I would love to see some videos focused on coral and the existing tanks around the BRS offices. Team up with WWC or TSA and do some videos on how to remove existing corals from tanks, best practices of how to frag different types of corals, tips for mounting corals, tips for removing encrusted corals on rocks inside tanks, how to and best practices to build a coral QT, show off some fragging gear, etc. BRS team makes awesome videos but must are about the equipment, help us out with what to do after 3 years of growth!
For us, a tank crash while on vacation broke our hearts. After some years to heal, when we were debating getting back into it, we set some self-imposed hard requirements so that the tank could fit into our work and family lifestyle: (1) 7-day hands-off routine maintenance interval, (2) 14-day autonomy on occasion, and (3) Tank sitter doesn't need to touch anything unless there's some sort of failure. There were a few more non-ULM-related items on our must-have lists like auto-water-change again (been doing those since the early 2000's and swear by them), eliminating single points of failure, large reservoirs, etc, but as for how often someone _needs_ to lay hands on the system, those were our minimum standards or we just weren't going to even bother. You could say it was our version of "If we're doing this again, we're only doing it if we can do it _right_ (for us)." It's painful to recount, but the tank crash was an ATO reservoir that ran out of water. Tanksitter came in to the return sucking air. He panicked and just unplugged everything and didn't tell me!!! I blame myself for picking a non-aquarist and for not training them properly. It was an emergency trip away on very short notice. Shame on me for not having something set up ahead of time. Man, it was gut-wrenching to come home to a tank that's just off and dead. Another takeaway was learning that even in this age of Internet community, there's merit in hunting down local reefing clubs and networking with local reefers so that we can trade tanksitting.
Best statement of all! Ryan says" Hate to see corals die but when it happens its a learning experience and we come away from it learning something!" Its been 7 months. Ive lost some fish and I have lost some corals But the good thing that comes from it is I get wiser each time and learn something from it! Like when I suffocated my poor fish because I didnt relize that filling up tank to where there was no flow cut off their oxygen or when I traded my rock for someone else live rock that had been in a bucket for two weeks and lost some bacteria and cause ammonia spike and started my whole tank into a recyle that caused a tank crash and wiped out nearly all my corals! That was preceded by not calibrating my refractometer often enough then mixed water wrong and having crazy low salinty for over a week which had my corals half dead right before the recycle from the live rock! Calamity of errors and I have been nonstop watching your videos since especially setting up my new tank that is so different from a 10 gallon no skimmer! Thanks for teaching us all to be better reefkeepers!
I saw this videos later on, but I went from playing safe to accomplish a stable tank to a ULM tank. And without your knowledge I came to a very similar setup. I have a RSR170 and did weekly waterchanges for the first 1-2 years. After that I started a refugium and started dosing all for reef by a dosing pump. Now all I do is feed the fish daily, change out filter floss every few days and clean the skimmer cup once every 2 weeks. No waterchanges, no problems 😁
How about making a video on the pruning of the softie tank? I’ve not seen the proper way to do it, and I’m sure others have the same question. I would love to see how you remove some without hurting the rest. Thanks for the great videos guys.
PLEASE...RECORD THE SOFTIE TANK BEING WORKED ON. As others have mentioned here, we would all love to see a video or two on pruning, moving & removing unwanted corals. The Basics, Best Practices, Tips & Tricks. And ...SAND "The Later Years" : clumping, hardening. Outbreaks, what to ignore what to adress..ADDING MORE LATER...The WHY'S, HOW'S & WHAT TO EXPECT. Thanks!
Omg. I've been trying to research if a low maintenance tank was possible. I should have known you guys would have already done a video for me to watch 😍😊
Thank you for all you do. Hopefully these videos are building new and loyal customers. I am a seahorse hobbyist but look to you guys for all the latest information. BRS should be first stop shopping for all so that it may support all that you guys do to keep us updated on latest tech as well as success and failures .
Man you guys are so thorough, I know its stating the obvious but you guys really have taken so much work out of my Marine fish keeping learning curve. You have certainly made an impact in my life with all your vids. Thanks heaps BRS team.
It's great to see a wrap up of the ULM trials! Thank you for sharing the successes and failures. You'd started the series right as I was planning my first saltwater tank and between these episodes and others on getting into the hobby that you produced, I was able to get my first tank up and running with at least a small amount of confidence that I could succeed. My tank is now 18 months old and still going. Thanks for contributing so much to this hobby!
I've set two tanks now, 1 sand and bare bottom. I've personally not noticed a difference and would say go for preference. If you want cool CUC like Conch snail and fish like Gobies etc then sand is a must. SPS and new tanks are just money pits with higher loss
10 years ago there was a discussion about Deep Sand Beds and during that discussion it was suggested to put the DSB in the Sump instead of the display that way it can be managed easier. How about doing that for any sand especially when starting out? If there is enough benefit of having sand, but also at the same time enough benefit for not having it in the display tank, then why not put it in the sump? This gives you an area where the bacteria can grow and give you the starting benefits along with an easy area to drain and pull it all out if you want to remove it later once the main display has been established long enough.
just a thought on the aquamesh in the sump, I created a divider out of acrylic, its dirt cheap on amazon so a low acrylic divider (2 to 4 inches high) siliconed in with aquamesh mounted on top would work really well and would protect your heater, should your feed block and the sump pump out. Much easier than cutting glass and gives you the best of both worlds with minimal effort.
Had been awesome with a new project "ULM" and do it as good you can with your new experience and record it like once/2 weeks or so. Had been great and inspiring :-) Thanks for this!
I had the best experience with the "Tunze LED eco chic refugium" a small led light that you can put inside the fuge and achieves amazing grow. You guys should test it out
I have a 55g (standard tank) with a HOB filter and have not done a water change in 4 months. Corals are doing great, rBTA is doing great as well as fish and inverts. There are ways to run a reef tank with little to no real effort put in.
Ive always been curious if you guys are reading off of telprompters? Youre flow is pretty amazing and the language is rich with content. Really pretty amazing if u guys are just riffing off another
Sure would love to see a schematic of how you plumbed two COR 20's for my next build. I've been thinking about this hard and the only way I can think to make this work is with multiple check valves.
Would like to see that also. Without check valves, when one pump craps out, all the other would do is pump back thru the dead pump and very little, if and water, would get to the tank. Great video!
What about fully automated saltwater mixing where it auto adds salt mix and rodi and mixes to proper salinity. I’ve got a few ideas that could do that.
Not trying to be rude. But low maintenance sounds sustainable. I didnt want to use that word. I like water changes and not so much equipment that breaks or goes wrong. But sometimes tons of equipment is good with less water changes.
I am going to be setting up a bare bottom ULM style cube myself. I have a lot of established rock BUT.. one thing I am or have been getting started is using a couple of media reactors and establishing some aragonite sand in them. I will be putting about an inch of bottom of the tank sand in them and running them as a rapid sand bed in the sump for 6 months or more till the system gets established. I plan to put some cheap sticks in this tank from the start. such as purple stylo and pink birdsnets. then adding something I really want at about the 6 month mark. I will also be connecting this via sump to an already established bare bottom 40B. Any comments on this method are appreciated.
Regarding need for crush coral due to black bottom contrast, have you seen/tried white painted (or white stick on vinyl) to the underside of the tank? I can't remember where I saw it (probably reef builders, reef dork or uk reefer) but it looked nice. It at least reduces that contrast.
1. There needs to be a series on the rest of the BRS teams tanks. Start with Zachs sps tank. 2. I know you only carry the products you use and believe in but check out Tropic Eden sand. Their Reeflakes is the perfect size like you are describing. 3. Keep up the good work 😁
Great topic and helpful information. Not ever having had a tank. A question that I have, as I watch this video and consider a set up. the light while nice reflects from above the tank and water. Is it not a good idea to use some sort of dome dome light diffuser/cover (like what’s used in camera lighting)?
We haven't seen that used too much with LED fixtures, but in many ways, that's how metal halides and T5s are so effective. That said, it's less about redirecting the light from the water surface and more about redirecting the light from the bulb into the aquarium in those cases.
Equipment was discussed as a part of the BRS/WWC hybrid series. We've not done a video on maintenance, but would be happy to answer any questions you might have on the topic.
Bulk Reef Supply Thank you! I went through the whole series and see how you selected equipment for each tank at the end of each episode. Interesting that all it’s running is the stock skimmer and carbon for mechanical filtration. Just goes to show you that people tend to over complicate things.
Not as of this moment, but I can understand the concern. That said, failure rate on these are extremely low. If you were ultra nervous, you could also put high and low float switches so that you could be alerted if anything went wrong.
The whole sand concept from BRS perspective is very confusing, even in terms of ULM. Allowing a tank to mature could possibly mean less maintenance and less interactivity. Having sand always results in stirring, hands in, syphoning, etc. But the point of dry rock and going bare bottom for ~9 months, could be said for dry rock and sand. So that's my opinion and why I'm confused.
Hi guys, interesting video as always, I did use All For Reef, dosing at the recommended dose in my 70gal reef tank, but I found I was getting calcium spots ( not sure how else to describe it ) on my glass and power heads etc. So I had to stop using it, can you think why that may have been happening ? Since I have stopped using it, these spots have slowly faded away.
Most of the pumps we use don't add any noticeable amount of heat, especially the higher quality DC pumps like the Varios or Cor. We installed check valves on each return to help prevent any extra water back siphoning into the sump when the return pumps are off.
Ryan's favorite has been the IntelliFeed feeder or if you have an Apex, the AFS. To be honest, they're almost identical as you'll probably notice by looking at them side by side. If you ask me, the Eheim Everyday Fish Feeder is a great choice for those that don't have an Apex. A great balance of cost/performance/ease of use.
This one was sort of a wrap up for the entire series, but Ryan also did a similar follow up at the end of the series at this link here. ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-aYnxTH_Iitc.html
@@BRStv many ammonia test kits use the oxidation reaction of ammonia to to monochloroamine followed by reaction with salicylate. So yes, chloramine is detected by said test kits because its already part of the reaction. Perhaps it depends on the test kit reaction. If it's a metal complex reaction then it may not work. stuff.iorodeo.com/docs/colorimeter/lab_3.html
This video is in regard to our ultra low maintenance (ULM) series. Here is a link to the full playlist if you're interested 🙂 ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-tLsa8scMhjI.html
The tangs in these tanks are relatively small. I would guess 3-4" or so. The Gem tang in the center tank is a bit larger and will be rehomed to Ryan's 360 gallon system in the near future 🙂
Basically, for these tanks we drilled two return lines so each pump pushes water independently. We've discussed at length how to plumb two pumps into a single return line, but the fluid dynamics and lack of bandwidth to run testing has slowed the conversation. It may be doable, but we still need to figure out how and if it is possible.
60 cubes are pretty small for what we're trying to achieve here. That said, many of the same concepts here can be applied to a smaller or larger system.
I have an aquatic life 4stage rodi unit and it says it doesn’t filter chloramines. Should I use a conditioner in the rodi water? (Edit) I just checked the city’s water and they have 0.007mg/L chloramine on average. Should I still use a conditioner? One last thought, if my rodi water is 0tds, then that means there is 0 chloramine in it?
The fix for chloramines is actually super simple. All you need is an additional carbon block, preferably one that is specifically designed for chloramines (like our BRS Universal Carbon Block). This video is a bit geeky/data heavy, but if you want to know how efficient regular "chlorine" carbon blocks compare to the BRS Universal...check out the performance we tested. ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-shd6T2739pY.html
As to your second question, chloramines do not register as TDS in the water. The best way to test that you are removing them properly is to check the waste water line for any chlorine breakthrough. Easy to use chlorine test strips like these are the way recommend testing carbon block's performance. www.bulkreefsupply.com/insta-test-free-total-chlorine-strips-lamotte.html www.bulkreefsupply.com/brs-universal-carbon-block-filter-1-micron.html
