60 Gallon Build

[otzhorse]

Oh man no bueno! Hope you get everything back under control soon and the water on the floor didn't ruin anything.

Luckily it is laminate flooring and I got it cleaned up pretty quick. I'm just hoping the SPS frags I have hang on and come back around. I had just told my wife I was done for a bit until some of the corals started to grown out and I could figure out space. Oh well. Stuff happens so you live and learn.

 

[about76gnomes]

Luckily it is laminate flooring and I got it cleaned up pretty quick. I'm just hoping the SPS frags I have hang on and come back around. I had just told my wife I was done for a bit until some of the corals started to grown out and I could figure out space. Oh well. Stuff happens so you live and learn.

Absolutely! Gotta take everything in stride

 

[otzhorse]

@Jersey Corals shipment arrived today and all I can say is I have found another outstanding place to buy corals from thanks to reef2reef. All of the corals are in the tank and looking forward to watching them grow.

 

[otzhorse]

Over the past two weeks I have wanted to drain my tank and throw everything out the window. My tank has been operating flawlessly for nearly a year but all of a sudden I started noticing upside down brown snot with bubbles in my tank. I am pretty regular about checking my alk,nitrate, calcum, and mag. and I had checked it a few days before and all was good. So, of course, I came to R2R to see what my issue could be and realized I likely had the dreaded Dino. I quickly tested and my nitrates had gone to 0. No clue why, and the only change was mounting quite a few frags. So now I have lost all of my SPS, and some of my LPS is looking pretty rough. Sucks! I keep dosing nitrate and it stays at 0. No clue why. Doing a 72 hour blackout, skimmer is off, and we will see what it looks like in a few days. Also, noticed yesterday that I could get the temp over 75, yep heater went bad too. Fun days in reefing. Oh well, it will bounce back.

 

[otzhorse]

72 hour blackout concluded, nitrates are on the rise, phosphate stable and I still have a few corals. I lost about 20-25 frags and quite a bit of dollars but certainly could have been much worse. As soon as I'm stabilized I'll focus on building my frag population back. I also learned to always have a spare heater available.

 

[otzhorse]

It has been a while since my last update so here it goes. I have lost almost all of my coral at this point and have been fighting water that will not get to reasonable parameters. My fish are in good shape though. Current parameters.
15 DKH
33 NO3 down from well over 75ppm
.09 PO3
500 Calcium
1500 MG

I've been dosing microbacter 7 and vinegar for a month now and have been working it down nitrates. Parameters are crazy and I have done a ton of water changes. I cannot figure out how to get the alkalinity down. I'm holding off on anything new until I can stabilize the water. I am incredibly frustrated at this point. I don't really have room for a sump but I'm thinking I may have to figure it out. My canister is just not doing what I need it to do. I am struggling right now but hopefully it will improve. I'll keep changing the water for now!

 

[otzhorse]

So I think I have finally stabilized the tank after months of fighting large swings in Nitrates, Phosphates, and even Alkalinity. It has been a nutty few months. I lost all of my corals with the exception of 2 Duncans.

Lessons Learned:
1. Have a backup heater
2. Don't, I repeat don't, start dumping chemicals in your tank trying to solve the problem
3. PATIENCE


@RiptideAquaculture thank you for holding onto my coral order for a long time while I practiced some patience. The corals are already doing great. Now I am waiting on an order from @SBB Corals that should arrive on Thursday and I will post some picks when I get everything in the tank. Good news is, dealing with Dinos and Cyano I convinced my son to let me get rid of the spongebob decor.

 

[otzhorse]

The corals from SBB showed up today and they look awesome. My parameters in the tank have been solid for a few weeks now everything else seems to be okay too. My alkalinity keeps creeping up but I am controlling that with some muriatic acid but I am confused how it is going up versus staying the same or going down but oh well. I refuse to chase a number.

 

[otzhorse]

It has been quite a while since my last update. Reefing is a difficult hobby to say the least. Since my last post, I have completely redone my aquascape, added several new rocks, lost some corals and some fish. I think I finally figured out some of my issues. When I built my original rockwork I was mid-tank was the highest level so my lights were not strong enough to keep my SPS growing and it would die off. I have since built the rock up to where it has low spots, islands, high arches and shady spots. I'm hoping this will help with the dying SPS issue. I haven't had a huge issue with LPS other than when I had a really bad outbreak of dinos and the tank crashed but I've never had a lot of success with SPS. Gonis on the other hand, I have had some success so far.

Nitrates: 3.6
Phosphate: .13 (a little high but mine stays that way
Alk: 8.3
Calcium 550
Magnesium 1500

 

[otzhorse]

I has been a long time since I posted last and there are several reasons. I keep spending a lot of money and losing a lot of coral for one reason or another. I am down to 1 Branching Hammer, Kyptonite Candy Cane, a Goni, a few mushrooms, and some GSP. Everything else has died. I cannot figure out what I keep doing wrong. My parameters will stay in acceptable ranges with very few changes and the coral still die. My fish are great. This is an incredibly difficult and frustrating hobby. Then you see the posts from the people who seem to have the midas touch with everything related to the hobby and are both encouraged and severely discouraged. I am working on setting up a sump and refugium instead of using the canister filter I have. It seems that the only difference I can find between what I do and what others do is the canister. I'll hope for the best.

 

[otzhorse]

I bought some more corals today but I stuck with LPS for now. Once I can keep some less sensitive LPS alive for a while I will consider dipping my toe back in the SPS pool. Right now, I am doing decent with LPS.

 

[otzhorse]

Thanks at @RiptideAquaculture for the quick delivery of some new coral. Hoping I can keep them alive this time. Also, this weekend I had to replace my Marineland C360 because it was leaking. Nothing I did made it stop leaking so I upgraded to the Fluval 407 canister. I considered upgrading to a sump but the room under my tank in the cabinet is very limited. At some point, I will get a much larger tank and I will do a sump with my current tank. Until then, I will keep working with my canister and fighting the good fight.

 

[otzhorse]

I haven't posted an update on my tank in quite a while, so I figured today was a good day. The Fluval canister that I bought is 1000x better than the Marineland, and I wish I had done that from the beginning. We live and learn, right? Over the past year, I have learned quite a bit about my tank and how things in this hobby work. It is true what everyone says about being patient. I was the first person to throw whatever chemical would fight whatever symptom I was having. I killed thousands of $$ worth of coral and had countless algae outbreaks, dino outbreaks, etc. I have learned to let nature do its thing. If all the parameters are in line, adjust one thing at a time to see if it helps or hurts. My fish are doing well, I have green-haired algae, I can't keep a clean-up crew alive for some reason. and I have held steady with only about 5 or 6 pieces of coral including 2 hammers, 4 gonis, 1 zoa, and 3 different mushrooms. Not much, but I have learned to buy things slowly and stick with the things that you are good at. I will be acquiring more Zoas because I like them and I haven't killed them. I believe I have enough gonis for now and enough hammers. I really want to get the top of my tank filled with SPS but I will again be very slowly adding pieces.

 

[otzhorse]

So I participated in the @Living Reef Orlando sale 2 weeks ago and decided to dip my toes back into SPS and of course, fill in with more Zoas. The sale was great and I bought 5 SPS and 10 zoas. I trust LRO, and I wanted to get the corals from a place that I know delivers quality products. They did not disappoint! Coral arrived and in great shape. I've got them still acclimating on the bottom of the tank. Once I get them glued down I'll add some pictures. I also just prepared my first ICP test for shipment. I cannot wait to get the results to understand how my water is.

 

[otzhorse]

Rebuilding the tank from scratch. All corals are dead and the rock are covered in algae. As I've said before I hate this hobby and love this hobby. I'm going to tear it all down and try again.

 

[Gumbies R Us]

Rebuilding the tank from scratch. All corals are dead and the rock are covered in algae. As I've said before I hate this hobby and love this hobby. I'm going to tear it all down and try again.

Sorry about your loss! Hoping the best for your new tank!

 

[otzhorse]

Sorry about your loss! Hoping the best for your new tank!

It's okay, it's because I keep trying to build a beautiful reef tank cheaply. I've decided to just invest in good equipment and tools. Buy once cry once right.

 

[otzhorse]

I spent the weekend removing the old sand, cleaning the tank top to bottom, changing out my filtration, removing almost all of the rock (hand to leave some for the fish to hide. Next step is to cleanup the rock, remove the rest of the sand, build out my rock formations, and keep a close watch on ammonia so I don't kill all the fish. I expect to go through a full cycle and the uglies. I'll keep everyone posted. If this all works I am going to be amazed.

 

[otzhorse]

All the rocks except for 3 pieces were removed from the tank, the canister filter lines were run cleaner, the skimmer was relocated, the rocks are getting cleaned, and all of the old sand was removed. Put egg crate on the bare bottom, filled with special grade caribsea live sand, and I'm letting the fish and rock mature the tank. Once the other rocks are clean I intend to redo a minimalist type of aquascape. Since I have cleaned everything out I've realized I really like a clean tank. So I'm going to put just enough rock in to sustain the tank and give me a place to put coral. Also enough to provide some hiding spots for the fish. All and all I'm glad I finally decided to just start over and stop fighting everything. I checked the parameters tonight and had 0 Nitrate, 0 Phosphate, 6.5 Alk, no ammonia, and 35 ppt on salinity. Since I have no coral I'm okay with 0's. I will figure out what stable is once I add some rock back in and really dig in.

 

[otzhorse]