My Reefing Method

To start a reef tank, you should have an end goal. What fish and invertebrates are you trying to keep? Is there going to be a theme and how are they going to grow together, like an all soft coral tank (eg. My 20g). What external threats are present in the location you want your reef tank(by a window, dogs and cats, kids, cleaning chemicals and air fresheners, etc). Are you going to move? How will you take care of the tank on vacations and other times away from the tank? How will you handle it when the power goes out for an hour or a week? Is clean RODI water easily accessible? There are many more questions, but these are probably some of the most important. There are so many different little factors that could negatively impact your aquarium so it’s important to have it very thought out.

Where do you start?

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Rocks

How you cure and cycle your rocks will have a major influence on the stability and health of the aquarium

This is the process of cleaning the rock so there is the least amount of waste products and other toxic chemicals. There are three types of rock out there, live rock, life rock and dry rock. Each has its own pros and cons, but they all need some form of cleaning. To clean up used or new dead rock, start with a bleach cure of 1:10 bleach to fresh water. It kills all the undesirable bacteria, eggs, spores and other things as well as break down organic material on the rock. 1 week in a brute container or other storage container is sufficient. Then if you have access, set the rocks out to dry in the sun for up to a week. If you don’t have access to this, drain the container and put RODI water in there with a product such as Seachem Prime to remove chlorines and chloramines as well as ammonia, nitrite and nitrate. Now your rock is cleaned and cured.
All of the rock types need additional bacteria and food added to aquarium. There are many different brands of bacteria supplements, and they all have different types and concentrations of bacteria. The most important bacteria to add in the beginning are nitrogen fixing ones to prevent ammonia spikes. Mine and many other peoples favorite is Doctor Tim’s One and Only. It provides a great base of nitrifying bacteria to help keep the aquarium parameters stable. This gets dosed once, while most other bacteria solutions need to be dosed weekly. The other bacteria supplement I recommend adding on a weekly basis is Reef Brite Live Rock Enhance. Live Rock Enhance is a blend of nitrifying bacteria, microbes, and pods that keep the pores of the rock and sand clean to enhance the efficiency of nutrient utilization and waste management. Food for bacteria is ammonia and should be dosed regularly to ensure that the bacteria population is numerous and can handle any fish load you put in.
After the rock is cured, it’s time to give it life and put it in saltwater. You can either keep it in your container or transfer the rock to the display tank and build the aquascape you desire. The rock needs flow so if it’s in a container, add a pump, if it’s in your display, get the tank running. The rock should cycle with the lights off for a month, regardless of when the nitrogen cycle was completed.
If you buy live rock, the aquarium needs to be filled with saltwater by the time it comes so that most of the life on it lives. Depending on where the rock came from, there is going to be die off, in which case, dosing Prime and running carbon will help. Live rock can come with life we may or may not want. Aptasia anemones, crabs, worms, sponges and more. Over the next two weeks to one month, with the lights, clean off the rock of the undesirable life forms and build your aquascape in the water. Since this rock is fully alive you should start doing water testing and water changes to keep the nutrient levels low. I recommend keeping these rocks without lights for the first 4 weeks, but since the rock is very alive you could turn it on after a couple days and start adding clean-up crew to the tank. If you do this, slowly ramp the lights up over several weeks. Pro tip: to reduce diatom bloom and ugly phase in the first few month, add a bag of Rowaphos to remove the silicates.

Filtration

To keep your corals and fish happy we need to filter the water to remove waste products from fish, coral, food, bacteria and other small organisms. All reef tanks should start with mechanical and biological filtration. Most small tanks, 50g and under, only need a filter pad and water changes to stay clean and stable. But if water changes aren’t your style, there are skimmers, refugium’s, and other methods to stabilize and reduce nitrate and phosphate.

The cycle establishes bacteria to detoxify ammonia and nitrite as well as keep parameters stable. These bacteria grow on the surface of everything, so the more surface area you have the more stable your tank will be. That’s why people who use sand in their aquarium have an easier time in the first year than those with bare-bottom tanks. I recommend 1-2 inches of a course sand so it doesn’t get blown around. Even so bacteria is growing on your rocks, and substrate, you should have a bio-filter in your sump or filter. Brightwell, PolypLab, and other companies sell bio-bricks or balls for the sump or filter. These are incredibly porous and have a lot of surface area for their size. I really like using calcium reactor media as both a substrate and filter. All my tanks have a mesh bag of this in the filter. If you have a very large sump, put in a lot of porous rocks for bacteria and copepods to grow. To enhance the uptake of waste, carbon dosing by Tropic Marin work great because they have a product for each nutrient scenario.
Mechanical filtration is the removal of physical particulates from the water column like food, poop and other things. Most aquarium filters are outfitted for a filter sock or pad, but I recommend switching out the sock for a filter cup so you can just throw away the waste instead of cleaning the sock. The filter should be changed out every week, or, if you have higher fish and food load, twice a week will be beneficial.
If you have ever drained your tank water into a white bucket, the water might have appeared yellow. This is the accumulation of pigments, dissolved organics, contaminants, and irritants. Luckily, it’s easy to fix with some carbon. The easiest way to add this to your aquarium is to put the carbon into a fine mesh bag and drop it into a filter cup/sock or somewhere in the sump that flow can go through it without tumbling it. Large aquariums can take advantage of a reactor. I prefer using BRS Rox 0.8 for carbon, but when I want an extra kick, I use Chemipure Blue because it removes dissolved wastes, odors, phenols, toxins, medications, and even phosphates and silicates. Most of the time, carbon should be swapped once a month.
An important factor for the reef aquarium that doesn’t get discussed enough is the ratio of nitrate to phosphate. The Ideal ratio is anywhere from 5:1 to 10:1 nitrate to phosphate. Reefers who use pellet/flake food and/or feed their corals will have elevated phosphates. In this case, a small fine mesh bag of GFO and Rowaphos are great at rapidly removing it over 2-4 weeks with one small baggy. Pro Tip: Always rinse media with fresh water before you add it to your aquarium.
When biological and mechanical filtration isn’t enough for your aquarium a skimmer is a great solution. This device sucks air into a pump and spins it to create a bubble factory that captures excess proteins, waste products and some particulates and puts it into a cup. They also help boost the PH of the aquarium by increasing the surface are that air meets with water. They have been known to work too well, so make sure you don’t bottom out your nutrient levels. Putting the skimmer on a timer would be the best solution to that.Item description
A refugium is a section that is separate from the display where you can grow algae and other organisms that can’t grow in the unforgiving high flow and high predator conditions. Most reefers will grow chaetomorpha or caulerpa because they grow rapidly by consuming the nitrate and phosphate in your water. Approximately 50% of the algae needs to be culled regularly. All you need is an inexpensive Amazon plant light to grow it. One thing to note is you need to replenish iron, cobalt, and manganese when growing algae because they are so effective at sucking it up. Chaetogrow by Brightwell and iron from Two Little Fishies works well. It is important to clean the chaeto while you grow it to prevent detritus and green hair algae from building up. You don’t have to grow algae in a refugium, some reefers have tried using clams as a natural filter. Others just put mud into it. I love growing soft corals in the refugium section. Anthelia and xenia are fast growers and also look better than just algae. .