My tank was up for 17 years and was struggling with coral living and growing. MAny triton test showed just a mess of a water column. So I decided to break the tank down. I moved all fish and old live rock to a 300 gallon Rubbermaid in the garage. The break down started. Emptied system (850 gallons) cleaned removed everything, the crushed coral was concrete plates cover a sewer pit.
Fast forward, 850 gallon system empty, filled it with well water and started the clean out. Once the system was full, turned on the 2 Suntal pumps that run a total of 8500 gallons and hour. poured in 8 gallons of muriatic acid and let it run for 3 days. Emptied and filled the system thtree times, once per day. 4th day refilled, then 8 gllons of bleach went in, Ran for 3 days, filled and emptied 3 times, one time per day. 4th day, refilled and did a dechlorinator. 7 days later, drained entire system, and started making RODI water. added CaribSea substrate and 15 cases of Caribsea Life Rock, built my aquascape while the RO was making water. 10 days later system full ready for pumps to turn on. TDS test are at Zero, water is as clear as possible. With those pumps runing, doesnt take long for water to be up to temp. Slowly mixed Fritz Pro Salt per their instructions. System runnning well salinity at 1.025 35 ppm. I cycled the system with amonia chloride from Dr Tim. I used the seachem aquavitro bacteria culture. amonia and nitrite went off the charts for 3 weeks, dosed religiusly per seachem's instructions. System cycled in 30 days. The 8 foot sump has a 4' section with Seachems Pond MAtrix in it for bio load, there is 10 gallons of it in there. Week 8 moved fish back into system, 30 + fish and inverts. All old rock was discarded. system never showed any spike. The system is set up with Triton method. The 14' tank is now lit with 9 kessil awe 360's and 12' of the AI hybrid T5 fixtures running Act+ Blue+ Coral+ Purple+
So now the nightmare, I'm 3 months into nussaince algae and dynos, tried everything possible Vibrant knocked algae out, but after dosing over, algae cam back, of course with Cyno. So treated with Chemipure, knocked it out, only to come back with more algae and now dyno's. Just did a three day black out while dosing 1ml per 10 gallons of hydrogen peroxide. Took the black plastic wrap off and still Cyno, Dyno, and nussaince algaes. I'm going to continue to dose the HydrogenPeroxide for at least 2 weeks.
So frustrated, I thought I did everything correct. Monday a UV from Aqua Ultraviolet will show up. Its the SL 200 (Commercial UV) I'm going to add a Ecotech L1 DC pump to directly run it. the kill rate should be off the charts, so I will use their programming to control flow rate.
Am I ever going to win this battle, is there aanything I've left out, anything else I can try?
Fast forward, 850 gallon system empty, filled it with well water and started the clean out. Once the system was full, turned on the 2 Suntal pumps that run a total of 8500 gallons and hour. poured in 8 gallons of muriatic acid and let it run for 3 days. Emptied and filled the system thtree times, once per day. 4th day refilled, then 8 gllons of bleach went in, Ran for 3 days, filled and emptied 3 times, one time per day. 4th day, refilled and did a dechlorinator. 7 days later, drained entire system, and started making RODI water. added CaribSea substrate and 15 cases of Caribsea Life Rock, built my aquascape while the RO was making water. 10 days later system full ready for pumps to turn on. TDS test are at Zero, water is as clear as possible. With those pumps runing, doesnt take long for water to be up to temp. Slowly mixed Fritz Pro Salt per their instructions. System runnning well salinity at 1.025 35 ppm. I cycled the system with amonia chloride from Dr Tim. I used the seachem aquavitro bacteria culture. amonia and nitrite went off the charts for 3 weeks, dosed religiusly per seachem's instructions. System cycled in 30 days. The 8 foot sump has a 4' section with Seachems Pond MAtrix in it for bio load, there is 10 gallons of it in there. Week 8 moved fish back into system, 30 + fish and inverts. All old rock was discarded. system never showed any spike. The system is set up with Triton method. The 14' tank is now lit with 9 kessil awe 360's and 12' of the AI hybrid T5 fixtures running Act+ Blue+ Coral+ Purple+
So now the nightmare, I'm 3 months into nussaince algae and dynos, tried everything possible Vibrant knocked algae out, but after dosing over, algae cam back, of course with Cyno. So treated with Chemipure, knocked it out, only to come back with more algae and now dyno's. Just did a three day black out while dosing 1ml per 10 gallons of hydrogen peroxide. Took the black plastic wrap off and still Cyno, Dyno, and nussaince algaes. I'm going to continue to dose the HydrogenPeroxide for at least 2 weeks.
So frustrated, I thought I did everything correct. Monday a UV from Aqua Ultraviolet will show up. Its the SL 200 (Commercial UV) I'm going to add a Ecotech L1 DC pump to directly run it. the kill rate should be off the charts, so I will use their programming to control flow rate.
Am I ever going to win this battle, is there aanything I've left out, anything else I can try?


