The Long Battle and the now winning

[fish_bucket]

Since starting the hobby over a year ago, I have had two major fails.
1. A pump failed while on holiday, wiping our the tank & leeching copper into the water.
2. After failure one, I had mysterious coral deaths, turns out unknown to me my heater had failed, while the tank was reading correctly during the day @ night it was dipping ultra cold.

Winning
It has taken some time, and some neglect after the second failure (failure hurts) but now I think I am winning the battle. I wanted to firstly share my parameters and then take you through my strategy moving forward.

My Tank

• 55L AIO tank with a skimmer
• 2 Clowns
• 3 Hermit Crabs
• 2 Turbo Snails
• Mixed reef
• 1 surviving nassarius snail

Parameters
dKH: 10
PH: 8.2
CA: 420
NO3: 5
MG: 1,000
NO2: 0
NH3: 0
PH: 0

What is working

• Parameters are not textbook perfect but they are stable, I am no longer chasing numbers. MG + CA are slowly going up. NO3 is slowly coming down.
• I am using the Aquaforest Balling method, it's easy enough for manually dose daily 13ml daily and seems to be working for my levels.
• Chemi-Pure Blue - without a proper sump this helps with some of the nutrient export, with a small tank I feel far more comfortable having this in my filtration.
• Weekly water change every Saturday 10% without fail never missed has to happen.
• I have an upside down water bottle with a "ATO" top thing - this bottle is kept topped up with RODI water daily without fail, this can not be missed
• I dose one drop of aminos every second day.
• I am dosing vibrant as per the bottle.
• Feeding reef roids for my corals 3x per week.
• Skimmer neck is being cleaned every 3 days
• Manual remove of Algae (this is done bit by bit, the Algae is not causing any issues)
• Blasting rocks with turkey baster to stop sediment building

So whats happening

• Coraline Algae is exploding and it's so satisfying, wave-maker, glass, rear of the tank and power-heads are covered
• Polyp extension on things like my Toadstool is the most I have ever seen
• It seems everyday I look at my Zoanthids there are new heads
• Algae that was in the tank from months of neglect earlier this year is slowly disappearing and not returning

A final word
So for anyone starting out who starting out.

• Buy all your test kits Salifert or Red Sea work for me
• Ask your local fish store for a simple dosing routine something that can work for you
• Test weekly at a minimum
• Don't fill your tank with fish
• Don't be upset when you fail, get straight back on your horse and go again

 

[Flippers4pups]

Glad you shared your experience and how you dug in your heals and overcame all of it!

 

[Smarkow]

Nice persistence. Glad it is paying off. Any pics?

My tip - don’t buy expensive coral in the first year hahahah (oops)

 

[Flippers4pups]

Nice persistence. Glad it is paying off. Any pics?

My tip - don’t buy expensive coral in the first year hahahah (oops)

My advice would be use two smaller heaters on a controller for redundancy.