Aaronhome27
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- Joined
- Sep 18, 2018
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So I'll make it as short as possible. Yeah I like to ramble a bit.
My tank is 9 weeks old. I did do a slight rushed.... Okay a rushed cycle. .. With reef tank water, Tim's, live rock and so on. It's a 24 gallon. My cycles kind of never happened. I have crushed coral bottom.. I had ammonia for all of 2 days and in 2 weeks I'd gone through nitrates and diatom. Everything was stable. So being that I hadn't done this year I started stocking. Numbers stay very stable and once phosphate and nitrates left I never saw them again. So I got some fish and coral. I went through about a 2 week algae bloom but it soon faded. I'm now a month in and still no nitrates or phos. I risk it and buy several more little frags. With in 5 weeks of start I have 9 coral, 7 snails, peppermint shrimp, and 3 fish. I figure I'll Wait now and hope my rush doesn't crash my system. Parameters still not moving. I do have slight usage of calcium. So I go with reefgrow product and follow the calculator for dosing. 8 weeks in nearly all coral have atleast doubled in size if not a lot more. Water is extremely clear. But I'm nervous as I can't get any nitrate or phos. Let back peddle a bit. I tried every kind of filter set up. It's a Nano and I really want the best I can get in case of an emergency. In the end. About 7 weeks in I go with skimmer, 2 tbs of carbon in a mesh bag directly in the flow, intank filter media, and a make shift algae scrubber. ( I won't mention the hundreds of dollars of stuff I bought and decided to not use)
Anyway I finally see a spec of coraline 3 days ago. Huh, cool. Finally. By that night I see maybe a dozen small specs. Okay it's only 9 weeks this will go slow but that's good. Nope, next day I'm seeing purple, pink, red and white in several rock. Now Im actually excited. I actually want nice coraline. But I notice my Duncan is not happy. What the heck. I just did testing 2 days ago and spot in with NSW. But I had decided to dose a bit extra and work up to elevated parameters. So I do another test. Calcium up 5 and dkh up 25. Exactly how I wanted it. . But Mag has dropped 150 in 2 days. Yikes. Note, now the tank has some extremely almost unbelievable coraline growth going. I had an island rock / old dead coral chunk with some gsp on it that is about 3 x 4 inch. That rock overnight has over half of it covered in white and purple coraline.
It's honestly pretty exciting as I haven't done a tank in a very long time. Although impatient as I have been going along I have been careful and check or test all the time. But I didn't figure I'd see coraline, let alone this heavy of a growth at 9 weeks in. Glad my Duncan is a trooper and always telling me what going on. I might have been in trouble. Now I need to watch this like a hawk. But how long will it grow like this? The tank is only 24 gallon and I need to figure out how to dose properly to keep up. Thankful for the reefgrow dose builder for now. I can use all the help I can get. Guess I better get my dosing pump hooked up and organize the cabinet. Heck I haven't even finish the cabinet or canopy!
View attachment 20181023_124033.jpg
My tank is 9 weeks old. I did do a slight rushed.... Okay a rushed cycle. .. With reef tank water, Tim's, live rock and so on. It's a 24 gallon. My cycles kind of never happened. I have crushed coral bottom.. I had ammonia for all of 2 days and in 2 weeks I'd gone through nitrates and diatom. Everything was stable. So being that I hadn't done this year I started stocking. Numbers stay very stable and once phosphate and nitrates left I never saw them again. So I got some fish and coral. I went through about a 2 week algae bloom but it soon faded. I'm now a month in and still no nitrates or phos. I risk it and buy several more little frags. With in 5 weeks of start I have 9 coral, 7 snails, peppermint shrimp, and 3 fish. I figure I'll Wait now and hope my rush doesn't crash my system. Parameters still not moving. I do have slight usage of calcium. So I go with reefgrow product and follow the calculator for dosing. 8 weeks in nearly all coral have atleast doubled in size if not a lot more. Water is extremely clear. But I'm nervous as I can't get any nitrate or phos. Let back peddle a bit. I tried every kind of filter set up. It's a Nano and I really want the best I can get in case of an emergency. In the end. About 7 weeks in I go with skimmer, 2 tbs of carbon in a mesh bag directly in the flow, intank filter media, and a make shift algae scrubber. ( I won't mention the hundreds of dollars of stuff I bought and decided to not use)
Anyway I finally see a spec of coraline 3 days ago. Huh, cool. Finally. By that night I see maybe a dozen small specs. Okay it's only 9 weeks this will go slow but that's good. Nope, next day I'm seeing purple, pink, red and white in several rock. Now Im actually excited. I actually want nice coraline. But I notice my Duncan is not happy. What the heck. I just did testing 2 days ago and spot in with NSW. But I had decided to dose a bit extra and work up to elevated parameters. So I do another test. Calcium up 5 and dkh up 25. Exactly how I wanted it. . But Mag has dropped 150 in 2 days. Yikes. Note, now the tank has some extremely almost unbelievable coraline growth going. I had an island rock / old dead coral chunk with some gsp on it that is about 3 x 4 inch. That rock overnight has over half of it covered in white and purple coraline.
It's honestly pretty exciting as I haven't done a tank in a very long time. Although impatient as I have been going along I have been careful and check or test all the time. But I didn't figure I'd see coraline, let alone this heavy of a growth at 9 weeks in. Glad my Duncan is a trooper and always telling me what going on. I might have been in trouble. Now I need to watch this like a hawk. But how long will it grow like this? The tank is only 24 gallon and I need to figure out how to dose properly to keep up. Thankful for the reefgrow dose builder for now. I can use all the help I can get. Guess I better get my dosing pump hooked up and organize the cabinet. Heck I haven't even finish the cabinet or canopy!
View attachment 20181023_124033.jpg
