Newbie Reefer

[rickynho]

Definitely a newbie, especially after the week I've had. I purchased a tank 9 years ago when moving into a new home, and it had been empty until recently. With the home purchase, kids shortly thereafter, and general life, I didn't have money to fill the tank. Saved some money over the last few years and finally 6 months ago I added water and started adding some corals after multiple cycles and water parameters established.

Over the last week, I have lost about 10 corals due to ultra low salinity but in reality a complete failure on my side for failing to recognize the impact of 4 ATO overflows.

Here I am, a long time lurker and supporter, looking to immerse myself more into the hobby, and learn from others. At this point in my journey, I have about 15 fish, and no corals remaining having serious thoughts of redoing the aquascape and substrate altogether. I have had enough experience with my own tank to know that perhaps the rocks aren't positioned well enough for waste to properly reach the overflow, leaving spots on the sand bed where you see some obvious waste left behind. When I try to move the two ReefWave 45 and MP40 lower in the tank, the sand gets sifted around leaving some spots in the bottom of the tank bare. This makes me think about my sand and it being too fine, and if I should get something more coarse or leave the tank bottom bare.

Sadly, after 6 months and going through this emergency, I am having to rethink a lot about the current setup that was installed by a local store. Fortunately, without corals I can think about this a little more, but sadly with fish, I am limited to what I can do. For example; I wouldn't be able to add new rocks without them having gone through various tank cycles. Any way, looking forward to interacting with you all.

More on my current situation here [your opinion is greatly appreciated]

 

[TX_REEF]

I read through your posts. Sorry about your losses! One thing I do to prevent my ATO from ever overflowing the tank is I plug it into an app-controllable timer outlet that only allows the ATO pump power for 1 minute every hour. Virtually impossible to have such a catastrophe with this set up, and I highly recommend it. Product links are below if you are so inclined.

As far as what to go doing forward, you are right to slowly raise salinity back up to 35ppm.

For adding new rocks, that should be fine to do. As long as you don’t remove the mature rock, you will not have a “new cycle”, and the new rock will be populated with beneficial bacteria from the old rock over time.

For flow, you are also right if you have fine sand, or any sand really, you will have sand storms unless you have the flow pumps in the upper half of the tank. You can remedy this by removing the sand and running bare bottom(I do this in my frag tank, check out my tank thread if you wish), moving the pumps up (if you have a gyre style pump, it should create a gyre flow that moves water over the sandbed as well), or introducing coarser sand. Caribsea special grade is what I use in my display, and it generally stays out unless I REALLY crank up the flow. I have 2 MP40s in the upper 1/3 of the tank, and 2 Jebao gyres a few inches below the surface.

If you come up with any other questions, we will do our best to help.

App-controlled smart plug: https://amzn.to/3VvCpKG

App-controlled power strip: https://amzn.to/3VdzBR0