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It's been many years since I decommissioned my first 3ft tank due to my university studies. Now, with a half approval from my wife, I got a new Red Sea Reefer 350. Half approval because I did not get approval to have the tank at home, but I get to put it in my office. 100% happy with the half approval. Decided to start a tank thread to document both the progress and regression, of my new tank. Plus would like to share some tips and lessons I’ve learnt along the way which I wished I knew earlier. It took about 7 weeks from placing an order to delivery of the Reefer 350. Would like to take this opportunity to thank Francis from Red Sea. He went beyond the extra mile to ensure that information on my order was relayed as quick and accurate as possible. If any others who also bought/own Red Sea tanks and have questions or issues, just reach out to him and he’ll be sure to help you out. Initially, I thought I could just get live rock like in the past, but only after I bought the tank, I found out live rock is now ridiculously expensive as compared to before. Apparently, it’s under CITES now, so importing is expensive and a chore. In fact, even if you want to pay for it, it’s not that readily available too. A couple places have cultured live rock, but did I mention that it’s very expensive? Anyway, decided that since I had to wait for the delivery of my new tank, to go with the option of dry rocks instead. It’s not all bad as starting with dry rock has the advantage of being able to dry scape, which is much easier to do than scaping in water. Once scaping is done, if you have to wait for your tank like I had to, you can also cycle the rocks in advance. This would help shorten the time needed before adding fishes when the tank is finally here. As far as I’m aware, for dry rock in Singapore, there is the Marco, Stax, DD Aquascape, Aquaroche, Caribsea Life Rock and Caribsea Moani. You can google to roughly see how they look like or go around to the different LFS to look, which is what I did, and here are my here are my brief observations. Marco: Very white, but they had some nice shapes, especially shelf shapes if you buy loose. If you want to go for a “clean” look when starting, would be a good choice. Stax: Basically Marco but cut into slices. Cutting it into slices makes it easier to get creative and build interesting structures. Personally, I like a more natural look so not my cup of tea. But I can see why some people will like it. Probably a good idea to consider combining it with some Marco. DD Aquascape: Similar to Marco. Aquaroche: Had some big structures if you’re lazy to aquascape too much. Made of Ceramic. Caribsea Life Rock: Dyed purple. Have the option of some nice shape (eg. arches) for easy scaping. Good choice if you want to have a purple look right at the start without waiting for Coralline algae to grow over. Caribsea Moani: More yellowish as compared to Marco. Not dyed purple like Life Rock, but still had little purple specks. I went with this option as it looked more “natural” to me. Bought a box which came in random shapes, so your mileage may vary in terms of shape of rocks. After dry scaping, bought a tub to start cycling. Here’s a pic of the tub with the rocks: Used a 3 stage RO/DI unit I got on Carousell for water, 2 used Jebao Wavemakers I got from a reefer here for circulation, Dr Tim’s ammonia to cycle and a Seneye Reef to monitor. I ended up buying some Salifert test kits as well as the Seneye Reef was not what I expected, and not in a good way. For reefers who are thinking about the Seneye, I would say that it is absolutely not necessary or even recommended. The set up was not intuitive and instructions were not very clear. After set up, it was kind of clunky to use. You need a computer connected to the internet to access the data real time. I knew this before buying and thought the offline data upload feature was a fair compromise, but for me it always takes a few tries before I was able to uploading the offline data successfully. I hope to change my mind on it after I use it for PAR readings in the future. For starter bacteria, being the kiasu (aka Defensive Pessimism, learned this term from the new GCT book) Singaporean, I used Microbacter 7 for the first 3 weeks, and added Fritz Zyme 9 on the 4th week. In fact, I also added Dr Tim’s One and Only just in case after adding the cycled rocks to the tank when it arrived as well. Cycle was done by about the 6th week (Ammonia at or very close to 0 and Nitrate way above 50) in the tub, just a few days before the tank arrived. One of the issues I faced during the cycling process was low PH levels after just the first couple days. I guess being in an enclosed Aircon office contributed to this issue. The first couple solutions I tried was to open the windows overnight and increased the flow of the wavemakers. It did help and PH stabilized at around 7.6 for a day or two. But by the 2nd or 3rd week, PH went down to as low as 7.2 (in fact 6.9-7.0 on the Seneye but I found out that was inaccurate. Bought a separate PH meter to reconfirm). Tested KH and it was at about 6.5 with a Salifert test kit. Even though I received some advice to not bother too much about KH and PH levels during cycling, I psychologically couldn’t stand PH being so low, so I added a little Kalkwasser and boosted KH to about 10. If adding Kalkwasser, ensure add a little only at a time, as a little goes a long way. About a teaspoon boosted my KH from 6.5 to 10 for the tub pictured above. After that, PH rose and ranged from 7.6 to 8.0 depending on the time of day (lower during day in enclosed room with Aircon, and higher at night when windows opened). After about the 7 weeks, tank finally arrived. LFS faced some communication with the distributor, but Francis from Red Sea sorted it out promptly. The installers took about 45mins to set up the tank, and were pretty efficient in doing so considering that my floor was quite uneven. They did a good job levelling the tank. But a small issue was that they installed the overflow and inner downpipe incorrectly, by accident I’m sure, resulting in loud overflow water noises which couldn’t be adjusted. But the installer came down again to fix it literally in about 30mins after I called him, so kudos to him for that. The glass used by Red Sea is super clear and the set up looks clean and neat. It’s a well thought out system that most beginner to intermediate, and I dare say some advanced reefers, should be happy with. The only suggestion I would make to Red Sea is to have an option for a full-length sump without the side cabinet. I would probably still choose the stock option which I have, but I can see why some people would prefer a larger sump. But in any case, very happy with the purchase. Here’s some pictures of the tank with rocks. Does not look amazing for sure, but satisfied with the result because I think it looks natural and should be a good foundation for the future. I’m not the biggest fan of the branching complicated scapes I see a lot nowadays. But hey, different strokes for different folks. Some tips I learned from others online regarding Rock Scaping: 1. For those who are using Epoxy, you can use small pieces of rocks to cover the Epoxy joint areas. See pic for example below. 2. Try to leave space not only in the front, but also side and back of the tank. This is for easier maintenance in the future, especially cleaning of tank. Also, with more space around the rocks, it will help water flow planning and avoiding dead spots. (I plan to scrape the back of my tank too for the clean black background look of the Reefer 350, but I might get lazy so let’s see...) Top view of tank to as example, arrows for space, at least 3cm. 3. Try not to stack the rocks too high unless you really like the look or have a clear reason why, especially if planning to keep corals. Keep the height to about 1/2 to maybe 2/3 the height of the tank, as you want to leave some space for future coral growth. Also helps with flow planning. 4. This one not a tip, but just something I thought of after placing the rocks in the tank. I dry scaped with an overhang/arch (did not epoxy for this part), but decided against overhang/arch as I plan to keep SPS later, and figured IF I’m successful with SPS, it’ll grow into a natural overhang anyway. Another issue I had was with the sound of the return pump. I bought the Sicce Syncra Silent 4.0 thinking it was silent, as it says so in the name. But it is not really silent. There is a low humming sound which is pretty obvious to me. To be fair to Sicce, I have to admit I’m generally more sensitive to noise, plus my tank is in my office and I’m sitting literally only about 1m away from the tank. I even went to IKEA to buy those silicon food mats to put under the pump, which helped a little, but not by much. I think it’s ok if your tank is in the living room or you’re not too bothered by a little noise. But please don’t be mislead by the name of the pump. After some googling and reading, I narrowed my choices of quieter pumps down to the Reef Octopus Varios and Ecotech Vectra. I decided to get the Reef Octopus Varios 4 as from the reviews I read, it seemed a little more reliable. Also, I went down to Reefing Reality to “hear” the pump as they have it operating in one of their tanks. Btw, not going to give details as it is a security issue, the owner of Reefing Reality was extremely kind to accommodate my request to hear the pump. I live pretty far from his shop, but mental note made to try to support him with at least some business in the future. Anyway, just want to have a clear disclaimer that this is my opinion only, but for those of you who are sensitive to noise, the Varios pump is amazing. Its not dead silent, but I think it’s as close to dead silent as you can get for a pump. Was so satisfied with the Varios 4 that I got the Varios 2 for my Chiller pump. Try to support your local LFS, but if you can’t find the version of the Varios you want (I couldn’t find the Varios 2), you can get it direct from David at Reef Octopus. He’s was nice enough to arrange for me to pick it up on short notice too. Below is a pic of Varios 2 and 4 on a couple of silicon mats from Ikea, fairly close to dead silent. After about 3 days with the water running and rocks placed in the tank, I decided to get started on the refugium. I got the Miracle mud as substrate, as I’ve had great success with it in my first tank from years ago. I bought some glass food containers from IKEA to place the Miracle mud in, so that it’s easier to change it out if I need to, and just helps with general ease of maintenance of the refugium in the future. Got the Tunze Eco Chic 8831 for refugium lights, and I like it. Its waterproof so I can place it close to the water, and not have to worry about it getting submerged when I turn off the main return pump during maintenance. Got the chaeto from SAS as I thought their chaeto looked the "cleanest". I also got one pack each of the Algagen Tisbe and Apocylops pods from Fresh n Marine to seed my tank with them, and hopefully since there is no fish when I added them, they can get a small head start in established a small population. I read somewhere that pods eat diatoms, so maybe I can shorten the ugly phase with a pod population? Got a small bottle of zooplankton too thinking I can use it to feed the pods, or at least serve the purpose of ghost feeding a little to keep the nitrifying bacteria going. Pic of chaeto on day 1. Pic of Cheato under Tunze light after about 1 week which is quite surprising considering I have no livestock in the tank right now. I also bought an Ikea Stotta strip light and stuck it on the top of my sump. This is so I have some light when working with the sump besides the purple refugium light. I bought a mounting tool from Shopee so I can mount and remove the lights more easily. Wish the light was brighter though. And for those of you thinking where is the skimmer, please take a deep breath… but I plan NOT to run a skimmer. I ran my first tank without a skimmer for 4 years, and I could keep SPS and LPS without issues, so let’s see. I may add one in the future considering some skimmers in the market nowadays look quite cool, but I hope to not have to get one. So I’m ending here at about a week after setting up the refugium. I plan to go around the LFS’s probably this weekend to get my first fish, most like one or a pair of clowns. If you're reading this, thanks for staying for what I'm realizing is such a long read! Will update again as we go along

No prob. Waiting is probably quite sian, but try to endure. Use the time to think about other stuff like what fish you want to add! Salifert should be good! Good luck!

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What testing kit are you using? Some say API have some slight accuracy issues for ammonia. Cycling ammonia you should be able to get at most marine fish store. FnM has for sure, looks something like this: https://www.freshnmarine.com/products/drtims-aquatics-ammonium-chloride-2oz would recommend removing the prawn if you use this though, so easier and more accurate when monitoring the changes in ammonia level.

Wow, very nice 10G Nano Tank !

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