stanleo
Valuable Member
Hi All, I'm Gabe, from Columbus, Ohio! Anyone else from around here?
Little back story on my experience with reef tanks. I moved in with my now husband about 3 years ago and he already had a 55gl reef tank. He didn't take care of it very well. His maintenance routine was whenever he felt like it he did it. Sometimes 2 months would go by before he did a water change. In 2 years I saw him clean the filters once. As a result, this is what the tank looked like.
I got sick of it about 7 months ago and I started reading everything I could get my hands on and joined 2 fish forums, one for FW and one for SW. The SW water was helpful to a degree (hopefully this one will be better) and I decided to tear it down but keep about 10% of the water, scrub everything, including the rocks, vacuumed the crap out of the sand. Put everything back together and waited a month to redo the configuration of the filters and clean those and replace the media so the rocks would get seeded in that month. This was the tank right after I did all this about 6 months ago.
I waited and tweeked for about 4 months before I added anything else to the tank. 3 days after I did all this I lost a yellow tang and some hermits. about a month later the lawnmower blenny died. I added a new clean up crew, 15 more hermits, 10 snails. I still had the green chromis, the oscelaris clown, and the six line wrasse, 2 leather corals, some GSP, a few hermits and 4 nassarius snails. My maintenance routine is very strict now. I will not let that happen to the tank again and I love this tank. ITS MINE NOW! This is the tank as of yesterday.
I have taken the large pump on the right out, put in a smaller one where the middle one is and put the bigger one on the right. The huge powerhead was too much flow. 2 months ago everything was stable so I started adding more critters. I got a pajama cardinal and 2 yellowtail damsels then. Last month I got a Duncan coral and a pincushion sea urchin, and last week through the mail (never done that before but everything was alive) I got a Maxima clam, an emerald crab and I had ordered a Halimeda plant but instead they sent me a sea hare (Aplysia juliana)! So I also have a sea hare. I love him, he's kind of awesome. I am planning more corals and some cleaner shrimp in the near future. Maybe some more challenging stony corals. I have not had anything die since the blenny 5 months ago. I think that is exciting!
So there it is, my crash course in reef keeping. Feel free to give me any advise you have or criticisms or anything. I am still very novice and I have a thick skin. It will be nice to meet you all.
Little back story on my experience with reef tanks. I moved in with my now husband about 3 years ago and he already had a 55gl reef tank. He didn't take care of it very well. His maintenance routine was whenever he felt like it he did it. Sometimes 2 months would go by before he did a water change. In 2 years I saw him clean the filters once. As a result, this is what the tank looked like.
I got sick of it about 7 months ago and I started reading everything I could get my hands on and joined 2 fish forums, one for FW and one for SW. The SW water was helpful to a degree (hopefully this one will be better) and I decided to tear it down but keep about 10% of the water, scrub everything, including the rocks, vacuumed the crap out of the sand. Put everything back together and waited a month to redo the configuration of the filters and clean those and replace the media so the rocks would get seeded in that month. This was the tank right after I did all this about 6 months ago.
I waited and tweeked for about 4 months before I added anything else to the tank. 3 days after I did all this I lost a yellow tang and some hermits. about a month later the lawnmower blenny died. I added a new clean up crew, 15 more hermits, 10 snails. I still had the green chromis, the oscelaris clown, and the six line wrasse, 2 leather corals, some GSP, a few hermits and 4 nassarius snails. My maintenance routine is very strict now. I will not let that happen to the tank again and I love this tank. ITS MINE NOW! This is the tank as of yesterday.
I have taken the large pump on the right out, put in a smaller one where the middle one is and put the bigger one on the right. The huge powerhead was too much flow. 2 months ago everything was stable so I started adding more critters. I got a pajama cardinal and 2 yellowtail damsels then. Last month I got a Duncan coral and a pincushion sea urchin, and last week through the mail (never done that before but everything was alive) I got a Maxima clam, an emerald crab and I had ordered a Halimeda plant but instead they sent me a sea hare (Aplysia juliana)! So I also have a sea hare. I love him, he's kind of awesome. I am planning more corals and some cleaner shrimp in the near future. Maybe some more challenging stony corals. I have not had anything die since the blenny 5 months ago. I think that is exciting!
So there it is, my crash course in reef keeping. Feel free to give me any advise you have or criticisms or anything. I am still very novice and I have a thick skin. It will be nice to meet you all.
