Preface: I made this Reef Mentoring article series to document my recommendations to a hobbyist I have been mentoring. I am building basically reef tank with his setup in my house and maintaining it for over a year with weekly hands-on sessions.

After 22 months, this Reef Mentoring project is complete.  My clients finally moved in to their new house and we planned the move of his system out of my house this past weekend. We allocated two days for the this final segment, but we were able to finish the move and re-setup everything in one long day which started at 10:30am and ended at 1am on Sunday.

Here we go…

In the previous article, I outlined the preparation for this weekend.  My client purchased all the necessary items I suggested in an Amazon wish list I made for him. This included sealed totes that fit all the aquascape and livestock yet still can be carried by a single person. It also included all the materials needed to make batches of Randy-Holmes Farley’s original DIY 2-Part (Recipe#1) and additional Calcium Hydroxide for the dosing needed.

We followed the outlined process from the previous article. We were able pack everything in 4 hours. We made 15 gallons of fresh saltwater to top off which is almost a 50% water change. Calcium carbonate was also dosed to help clarify the water since a lot of nutrients were released from the sand. The tank was set up and running by dinner time.

The final livestock list:

• 2 Oscellaris Clownfish
• Splendid Dottyback
• Shark nose Goby
• 6  Line Wrasse
• Aiptasia Eating Filefish
• Yellowtail Blue Damsel
• Female Emerald Crab
• Conch
• Blue leg Hermit
• Random nerite snails
• Short Spine Urchin

Corals

• Green Nephthea
• Toadstool Leather
• Red Ricordia florida
• Turquoise and blue Discosoma
• Green Rhodactis mushrooms
• Yellow Polyps
• Anthelia
• 2x Rainbow Bubble Tip Anemones
• Meteor shower Cyphastrea
• Rastas Zoanthids
• Gorilla Nipples Zoanthids
• NY Knicks Torch corals
• Toxic Hammer Corals
• Neon Green Candy Cane coral
• TSA “The Fuzz” Acropora
• Peach Digitata
• Forest Fire Digitata
• Green Hulk Acro
• Red Montipora Capricornus
• Tyree Sanddollar Porites
• Ultra 24k Leptoseris

Tweaks & Final Thoughts

I customized the Kalkwasser doser a bit to have the peristaltic pump pull from the vessel instead of using the gravity fed method of the original design.  This allowed for a cleaner look that was desired.  The downside is that the client will have to manually refill the reactor regularly unless he wants to invest in a second peristaltic pump to refill from the ATO reservoir. I don’t trust using an ATO for this since the kalkwasser can compromise the float switch or optical sensors.

The remaining time was spent explaining how the Neptune Apex Jr was configured, transferring control permissions over to the client, making the RHF DIY 2Part additives, and laying out testing schedules.

I still have access to the controller to help monitor if questions arise… but it’s time to cut the cord and let the client get back to his hands-on, full-time reefkeeper experience.