My Red Sea MAX (RSM) has been running for almost 3 months now. I ordered the RSM in October 2006 and it finally arrived in January 2007. I hadn’t seen the tank before as I had ordered it just on the promotional material at my Local Fish Shop (LFS). I was very impressed as it seemed was what I was looking for in my first marine aquarium and at a reasonable cost which was better than any similar model in the shop.
I decided to get the RSM as it was an all-in-one package. I hoped that my wife would like the neatness of the tank rather than a messy looking build-your-own with tubes, wires and all sorts of things.
My first impression of the tank, when I had set it up, was “it looks a lot bigger than I had thought”. The reason was that I had the tank partially set up in the dining room. My wife came home and straight away the tank was moved to the hallway where it fits in with the décor better and it made my wife happier.
The set-up was relatively easy and I had planned that what I wanted for the RSM was up to 4 small fish, 15kg of live rock, clean-up crew and mainly soft corals to start off with. The cycling of the tank was relatively straightforward as there was the diatom build-up, very little green algae and no cyanobacteria. My clean-up crew consisted of hermit crabs, turbo snails, and nassarius snails. The control unit makes it easy to turn off any part of the system for maintenance. The one-plug system is definitely a plus for my wife as she was worried about the possible tangle of wires from the tank.
I have added other invertebrates to the tank, including two candy shrimps, a single cleaner shrimp and a sand-sifting snail. The only losses I have had were through the blue legged and red legged hermits fighting over shells in the tank.
I have added several pieces of coral including a large furry mushroom rock, feather leather coral, pulsing Xenia (standard & Red Sea), a toadstool coral and a larger mushroom. I have been very interested in coral frags from my LFS and from people on the internet. I have fragged (coral propagated) my own corals and have been successful in sending these to other people in the UK through the post.
My first fish introduction was approximately 6 weeks after the set-up. I purchased a pair of captive bred percula clowns from my LFS. The fish have settled in really well and the size of the tank suits the clown fish and they are pairing off at the moment. The clowns have recently started to host the toadstool coral.
My latest fish addition, a month after the clowns were introduced, has been an adult bangai cardinal which was purchased off a marine keeper in West Sussex. The Bangai cardinal has settled into the tank and has been feeding on frozen brine shrimp and mysis.
The parameters of the tank have been fine and are stable to the best of my abilities. Salinity 1.027, pH 8.2 – 8.4, temp 27C, Ammonia 0 – 0.25ppm, Nitrite – 0.1ppm, Nitrate 2.5 to 5ppm, Phosphate 0 ppm, etc. I have some caulerpa algae, which came with some of the live rock pieces I had purchased during the set-up. Thankfully this has been helping to keep the nitrates down.
I have been harvesting this alga from the rocks, bagging it and sending it to other hobbyists across the UK for their sumps and tanks. I have also some stowaways which also include some stony corals including a type of turbinaria and other stony corals that I haven’t managed to identify. All of them seem to be growing really well within the RSM.
I haven’t modified my RSM in anyway apart from reducing the mechanical filter sponge and adding filter wool in the first stage of the treatment centre. I have seen that people have replaced the filter media with live rubble and have added a sump in the form of a modified power filter.
I would like to carry on as the RSM was designed for a while. It has been really good so far and to top things off last night I had my first shrimp spawning – one of the candy shrimps had been gravid for the last two weeks and she finally released her babies last night (5th April 2007). In the future I plan to add further corals and also to encourage further exhanges of corals over the internet to help stock my RSM further.
My folks have come round to see us recently though they did spend quite a bit of time around the RSM. Most people love to watch the RSM when they visit and it is developing nicely now and is looking really impressive as the corals grow.
I am looking forward to the next 3 months and beyond…
Jon Cranfield
April 6, 2007
