What was your biggest difficulty in reefing?

Rakie · Jun 7, 2018

Everyone has had problems. Everyone I know can point out they've had this, that, and the other, but what REALLY brought their tank to it's knees was X.

Mine was Dinos. A little more than 6 months of dinos. Lost most of my SPS at the time.

Tank at the time

So what was your biggest struggle? What almost killed (or did kill) your tank/enthusiasm for reefing?

rkpetersen · Jun 7, 2018

I don't want to talk about it.

Nah, actually I have had a number of near disasters. I call them Extinction Events, because typically several species become extinct (in my aquarium, anyway.) One example: I trimmed back an overgrown softie, that I had trimmed previously, no problem. This time, after less trimming than before, it up and died. Took a nearby beautiful spongodes and few others with it.

ca1ore · Jun 7, 2018

I let majano anemones get completely out of hand once ...... once! Tried everything before hiring an Asfur Angel. Also ate Zoas though.

tenurepro · Jun 7, 2018

Dinos also! Got them last September. Was thinking about it down. But I managed to win the battle
Tank then
Tank now

Salt1972 · Jun 7, 2018

Clorox is pretty rough on the livestock. I forgotten that I'd put some Clorox in our salt mixing barrel after a routine WC. On the next WC, I mixed it into the new water and... That sucked... and really continues to.

Jason mack · Jun 7, 2018

For me it was a combibation of dino’s and ich , lost half my fish , couldnt stand too look at or go near my tank .. beat dino’s with peroxide and good husbandry , tank is back on top almost now ... but i realised that most of the time Your only an incident away from disaster with a reef tank !!

norfolkgarden · Jun 7, 2018

Lol, patience.

Learning to go from saturated DSB to lots of live rock Bare Bottom.

Scooter90254 · Jun 7, 2018

Dino’s caused me to take a 2 year break from the hobby.

Rakie · Jun 8, 2018

Ouch! Sorry to hear about you other guys who went through dinos, I feel your pain!

Patience is a good one... I've got a few friends who suffer from that themselves

Dierks · Jun 8, 2018

I had a issue that barred me from even getting out of the gate. I cycled my tank 3 times before figuring out that I had stray voltage the whole time. I had my water tested out of my faucet, RO/DI system and Tank with everything coming back great. The second I would place anything in there, dead withing 24 hours. after 3 months of struggle and about to just give it up I had a random text come through... "Did you check for electricity in your water?" No, I thought.... All my equipment is new, how would that be, well needless to say the answer was yes!!

I am very grateful for that text, and now I am battling a case of the uglys as well, but I am happy to do it at this point! Happy to have my reef up and running and happy to report everything has lived since figuring out the issue!

Rakie · Jun 8, 2018

Dierks said:
I had a issue that barred me from even getting out of the gate. I cycled my tank 3 times before figuring out that I had stray voltage the whole time. I had my water tested out of my faucet, RO/DI system and Tank with everything coming back great. The second I would place anything in there, dead withing 24 hours. after 3 months of struggle and about to just give it up I had a random text come through... "Did you check for electricity in your water?" No, I thought.... All my equipment is new, how would that be, well needless to say the answer was yes!!

I am very grateful for that text, and now I am battling a case of the uglys as well, but I am happy to do it at this point! Happy to have my reef up and running and happy to report everything has lived since figuring out the issue!

Ouch. Good on you for staying, hopefully it's all worth it!

Feels a little weird liking these posts.. "I had this horrible catastrophe that almost ruined everything!" <Rakie likes this>

MTBake · Jun 8, 2018

Aiptasia and bryopsis were the 2 bad ones for me. Took down a 75 because of them.

norfolkgarden · Jun 8, 2018

Dierks said:
I had a issue that barred me from even getting out of the gate. I cycled my tank 3 times before figuring out that I had stray voltage the whole time. I had my water tested out of my faucet, RO/DI system and Tank with everything coming back great. The second I would place anything in there, dead withing 24 hours. after 3 months of struggle and about to just give it up I had a random text come through... "Did you check for electricity in your water?" No, I thought.... All my equipment is new, how would that be, well needless to say the answer was yes!!

I am very grateful for that text, and now I am battling a case of the uglys as well, but I am happy to do it at this point! Happy to have my reef up and running and happy to report everything has lived since figuring out the issue!

Have not had that experience yet. [emoji52]

Glad you are safe!

Could you tell us a little more about how you trouble shot that and what the final culprit was?

Thanks!

jakeh22 · Jun 8, 2018

Get a sick sump setup with correct algae in the fuge and h380 you will see a diff

reeferfoxx · Jun 8, 2018

I've had a lot of difficulties going from all live rock to all dry rock. The most difficult was over coming Dino's. Of course, knowing what I know now, its no longer difficult.

14 foot reef · Jun 8, 2018

old tank syndrome ....... After 17 years, had to completely break down my tank, muriatic acid, then chlorine, then rinse then complete start over in my 850 gallon reef. Everything new, substrate, carribsea life rock, all old thrown out.

Scraping Out The Filthy 17 Year Old Substrate

14 foot reef
Feb 22, 2018

Temp Home

14 foot reef
Feb 22, 2018

6 Months in, the best thing I ever did !!!!

NY_Caveman · Jun 8, 2018

Mine seems to be tank integrity. I had a modest freshwater planted aquarium that sprung a leak (cheap tank, but ran fine for ten years). I had to break it down and took that as a sign to return to reefing.

So far I have had two reef tanks delivered with damage. Technically that makes three problem tanks in a row. The replacement replacement tank will be delivered next week, so hopefully the difficulties will end.

Funny, I have had aquariums all of my life, often multiple tanks at once. This past year was the only time I had issues with tanks themselves and it happened three times. Guess I was due.

Dierks · Jun 8, 2018

norfolkgarden said:
Could you tell us a little more about how you trouble shot that and what the final culprit was?

Thanks!

You can find my path here...

https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/3rd-time-is-a-charm-kinda-starting-to-lose-hope.395720/

Looking back the biggest tell I would say is that if you have a cut on your hand and you get a stinging feeling in it when you place your hands in the tank. I ended up having about 10 Volts running through my nano tank... You can find info in just a couple posts if you do a search for "Stray Voltage." So if you are having any issues keeping small inverts, or your fish are dying for no reason... Might be something you look into.

As far as for a solution, I simply bought 2 Grounding Probes... (Like $14 each - Just google for it) One goes in my tank and one in my Sump. I know it's overkill but redundancy is a beautiful thing in our hobby as things fail all the time.

NY_Caveman · Jun 8, 2018

Not overkill in my opinion. The stray voltage will take the quickest path to the grounding probe. If you have it stray in the DT it may pass through everything before hitting the grounding probe in the sump (or vice versa, stray in the sump to the probe in the DT).

For my AIO I will have all equipment in the compartments except for one gyre unit. That unit is by one of the overflows, so I put the single grounding probe in the near compartment.