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300 Gallon Reef Overhaul Part 1 – One Last Look

By Fish of Hex on

Travis: Hey, what's up everyone. Welcome back to Fish FX my name is Travis. Today's video is going to be part one in the 300-gallon display overhaul and I'm really going to use this video to give you guys a last look at this system before I make some pretty big changes. Now, I'm going to go over those changes, talk about everything that's going on, the reasoning behind it, and, yes, so I'm pretty excited. I'm also pretty stressed out but I know this needs to happen so let's go to start with each rock structure and I'll go through the changes that are going to happen.

Now, when it comes to the left rock structure here, nothing's going to change, I'm not making any adjustments, not moving anything around. Probably the only thing that I might do is do a little bit of trimming because things are starting to touch, especially in the back with the poison ivy and the Barney coral. Definitely got to get in there and cut some of that up but it's not so much of a priority compared to the rest of the tank. Now, moving over to the middle left rock structure, this is the one that's going to take the biggest hit out of the tank.

Now, as I mentioned in previous videos, the WWC has been STN-ing. It's going to be difficult to see but basically slow tissue necrosis all the way over here mainly because it's getting touched by the red Monte capper, looks orange in the video but trust me it's red. It's getting touched by that and it's just shading itself out. Now as I mentioned before, I know this is natural in the ocean. Corals get shaded out, it dies, it turns into rock and that's how the ocean floor grows, but this is not the ocean floor. This is my display tank and I have to stare at ton of STN because of shading and I don't want to stare at it anymore.

The second reason why that colony is going to be completely removed is because, nothing underneath it can grow. There's so much light being taken up by this tank or this colony that nothing here has a chance of getting any light. There's big bare spots, it's just awful, so that entire colony which is about the size of a basketball is going to be completely removed and fragged out. I will save some chunks of it to put into the grow-out system. I already have some pieces in there and I probably see if I can fit something in the 40-gallon but it's pretty tight over there already, that's what she said. I wasn't going to do it but I know somebody just said it for themselves.

Anyway, the red monte cap, or orange to you guys, that entire thing got hit by Big Bertha here, all right. She smoked that thing and ripped the whole base off, it dislocated from the rock. It's just teeter-tottering on there now, it's balancing against the back wall and, of course, the acrow so that entire colony is coming out. I'm going to frag that up. I'm not really sure where I'm going to put everything but we'll talk about that here in a minute.

The next colony is the green Digitada, the entire themes coming out, green Monte Cap, going to get all that out of there and then this panicky bird's nest, which I call the fish killer, that entire colony is coming out. I thought it was a good spot originally, just to move it from being stuck under here way before but the fish come around and swim smoking to that thing get all cut up. See, there's not a ton of swimming room in here.

It's pretty tight on both sides, I'm not going to say it again by the way, and it just shreds the fish because of how pointy it is. It's like running into pricker bushes, I think. Well that's what we call them around here pricker bushes and they hurt. So, that's basically what's going on with the fish are swimming and they're getting knocked out by that bird's nest, so it's got to come out completely as well.

That means we'll have one, two, three, four, five colonies just right here removed and it's just going to be bare. Well, it won't be bare for long because we're going to replace it with Acropora but that's all going to happen on that one rock struck so you can imagine it's going to look pretty weird for a while but I've come to terms with that. Moving over to the next rock structure, the purple Stylophora, which by the way, I fragged out 40 frags just two days ago and it doesn't even look like it, doesn't look like I touched it.

That entire colony is going to be removed and same thing for Hydnophora, both of those will be gone. The green Digitada will also be removed at least the majority of it. It's going to grow back because I've already removed it completely a couple of times and it just keeps coming back so it's not much I can do about that unless I get in there and grind it off like I did over here for the Monte's that were originally there, which by the way have not grown back for those of you who were placing bets didn't grow back after I buzzed it.

That's it for the changes for this rock structure just remove these two colonies, free it up and then be able to put in some nice acrows to fill in the spots and hopefully, it will grow together at some point and look pretty good.

Now, as for this rock structure, not making any changes. There's nothing I can really do other than maybe remove this fan, the sea fan. It grows but it's pretty slow, it's not that great looking and then if I remove it, then I can throw a couple more acrows behind here and let them grow out to the side. I'll probably do that and just relocate that fan over to the 40-gallon.

Speaking of that, I can't really put too much over here because the grooves gorgonian gets along with the Pocillopora so I don't want to remove the Pocillopora. I might trim it down because you can see it's getting pretty big and taking over a lot of room. It gets along with each other so I'm just going to leave those the way it is and not really make any changes. That's what's going to happen to the 300-gallon over the next couple of weeks. I am going to start today I've had to order, stepping on stuff, had order a whole bunch of frag plugs in, of course.

Now, speaking of that, let's look at the available room for frag, so over here I do have a little bit on the front, not much. Then it probably this much of the rack I can take up, so there's probably 50 maybe to 100 frags depending on how far I go over. That's okay but then the real issue is this rack that I added the other day, that's all the room that I have left. It's going to be interesting. I might just have to leave big chunks of coral in these tanks for a while and just let them sit there until I could find room for frags.

I do have some available spots over here where I can put some grow out disc in this tank. This one's pretty full as well and there's some big colonies back there that need to be fragged up because they're growing into each other. I do have a lot of high-end across in here that will be dragged. They're going to be small so we're going to be knocking off little chunks of across, which will go into the 300 and hopefully turn into something nice and beautiful someday.

Now, for this tank as I mentioned before, I'm only keeping it up for probably another year and a half to two years max. I haven't really decided yet. I have big plans for the future and I just need to do it correctly because it's my livelihood, it's my business so I need to make sure well we're building a house around the business. It's something that has to be planned out thoroughly and things can't be missed because you can't go back and just add certain things if they're in the wall already situation.

It's a lot of work and I'm not really in a rush because I enjoy being here and the system and the way it's growing and the way to businesses so I'm not really in too big of a rush. Plus getting the kids through the destroy the house phase is nice to do that, not in the new place. Yes, so maybe we'll get a year and a half, two years worth of growth on the new colonies and we'll see what this tank turns into. You guys know that I started fragging at six months in. It's two years old now it's two years and what, four months, five months old and so it's spent through a lot it's been fragged and tore down and thousands upon thousands and thousands of frags have been pulled out of this tank. That's not even an exaggeration. Thanks for all the support and everything you guys do for the channel and for the business.

This is the last look at the tank, there's no reason to keep rambling on. Hopefully, it will look just as good if not better here in the future. I guess only time will tell. I will record as much of this process for you guys that I can. It is a little stressful so we'll see how it turns out but I will do my best to put some videos together for you. Hence, this is part one, we'll probably do a two, three, and then a final part four. Part four will only have corals in there and it's done and empty.

That's about it for the video. If you guys have any questions let me know and I will see you guys later, all right, peace.

About Fish of Hex

Travis’ main reef display tank featuring many small-polyp stony coral (SPS) is a 300-gallon custom glass aquarium setting on a welded iron stand, both from Custom Aquariums.

"Here you will find everything you need to know to be successful in the saltwater aquarium hobby. I have several video series such as "Beginner Guide to Saltwater Aquariums", "300 Gallon Build" and "How to & Diy". I will teach you how to avoid common mistakes and prevent tank disasters. With thirteen years of experience in the hobby, I plan on sharing all of it with my subscribers. I take great pride in helping others and seeing their tanks grow into amazing works of art makes the time I put into making these videos worth it. Follow me and you will have an amazing reef tank in no time!"

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