After sitting on my *** the last few weeks recovering from a torn achilles tendon and healing from the surgery, I thought I would do a summary of where we are with the tank. I also wanted to reflect on things that have worked and things that have not in my tank journey in the last 20 or so months since the tank has been up and running.
Since my last bit of fish loss, Ive tested all the water from numerous sources and have thoroughly cleaned every last bit of the tank. Ive done weekly water changes and adjusted the fan in my fish room and have managed to get the temp stable between 80-80.5 in the summer. In the winter time I expect the tank temp to drop more.
We have not added any fish recently- and the good news is that we have not lost any more fish. Everyone that is in the tank is healthy, swimming and eating like a champ. So it seems that whatever issues we were having, seem to have settled down. Im planning on not having any more problems - Well, at least that is the plan.
So in looking back over the last year and a half, here are my lessons, the things I think we did well- and things that didnt go so well.
1- Do the type of tank that puts a smile on your face, not on the face of others. When I first started planning my tank, I had planned on doing a FOWLR. In posting my thread online, the community is very much into SPS. I got sucked in and tried to do an SPS tank with lots of corals. I had limited to no success. I tried dosing pumps, dosing calcium, Alk etc. I was just not able to keep my chemistry proper and therefore my corals didnt thrive like they should have. Likely it was a lack of experience and a lack of knowledge and in hindsight I put a lot of equipment in such as dosing pumps and reactors and such which just made the problem worse. I should have stuck to my plan of FOLWR and slowly over the years, added more coral. The good news is that I simplified my equipment- I sold my dosing pump, I sold my storage vats of calcium and frankly with just more frequent water changes, Im finding the water chemistry more stable than its ever been. Right now we are running a FOWLR but that may change if things remain stable.
2- Less is more. I have the best equipment money can buy. And when first starting out with the tank, I thought I had everything I would need. But then I started reading about dosing pumps and algae scrubbers and all sorts of other little gadgets. I added them to the tank. I started to get wires all over my clean and beautiful fish room. I poked holes in the walls as I mounted one piece of equipment after another. What I found was most of this while fine and dandy, isn't critical. I got rid of it all. all I have now is filter socks, massive protein skimmer and carbon and GFO reactors. This and frequent water changes seems to have settled down the tank significantly and water is more clear than its ever been.
3- Quarantine- nothing more needs to be said. I ignored the warnings. I thought I was buying from a trusted source. Until at one point where I had my tank full of some GSP and hammer corals and a few others and then one of my tangs got ich. I panicked. If I ran medication, the coral would die. If I didnt the fish would die. I screwed up and lost both fish and coral. Never again.
4- Go slow- It became a weekly adventure to visit the local fish stores and just buy whatever I felt I needed to buy to add to the tank. There is no fast way to grow a tank. go slow. Take your time. These are your fish that become a part of you and will be with you hopefully for a very long time. dont rush it. Take your time.
5- Learn from others. There have been some great people on this thread that have provided countless bits of wisdom and advice. You are all too kind and too numerous for me to mention one by one but just know that I am eternally grateful to you for helping me with my tank
6- Acrylic scratches. Man oh man, I tried so hard to avoid it. But after about 2 years, I need to get someone in and polish the tank on the inside. Just little scratches everywhere driving me crazy. Luckily I have thick enough acrylic that it wont be an issue but good lord acrylic scratches easily.
7- Planning is key- as much as I screwed up on the tank as we got it to mature, I have to say that all of the planning on the front end (once I figured out not to keep adding random crap to the tank)paid off. We have had no leaks, no issues with plumbing or any of the equipment. Buy the right equipment- most of it from Royal Exclusive- and you dont have to worry about coming home to a broken pump or cracked sump. the equipment has performed flawlessly.
8- Set up a good water change system - I was first using the Renew from Reef Genesis and while there was nothing wrong with it, i dumped it. Im still using the Storm auto top off which is fantastic but I just wanted to clean up some of the pipes and tubes in the fish room and getting rid of the Renew helped to do that. Now water changes take about 5 minutes. Im doing about 150-200 gallons a month. Super easy - flip a few valves. Let the water drain into the sump from the tank. Drain the sump and then fill the sump back up with water from my salt water mixing container.
9- APEX is your friend. I tried to avoid it for the longest time. Why, i have no idea- just to be stubborn and I didnt want to learn how to program it. Part of the reason is that my fish room is remote and I couldn't get my head around setting up the APEX but not being able to control my powerheads and lights. I finally just set it up in the fish room and left the lights off it. It was a bit of a learning curve but now I use it to monitor my ph, tank temp, turn my pumps on and off. Its great. some day Ill figure out how to do float values and shut off my skimmer and return pumps if the water level drops- really not super critical right now but I am enjoying the capabilities of the APEX. Highly recommended and as some of you know, you can go crazy with this equipment.
10- No one takes care of the tank as well as you do. Ive had a few folks come in and help maintain the tank. Even though I set it up to be fairly self sufficient, the gravel needs to be vacuumed, the acrylic needs to be cleaned. So to solve this, we lowered the gravel level significantly. Now i can easily clean the glass, do my water changes and clean out skimmer and filter socks. I do have a service that comes in once a month now just to verify water chemistry and make sure Im not doing anything wrong but most of the maintainance I do myself. Its rewarding and its fun.
Thanks for allowing me to share. Its been quite a journey. I think (hope) that all the bad things are behind me now and really to make the tank thrive I just needed to slow down. Just needed to not try to do everything at once and let the water changes maintain the chemistry of the tank. If they didnt make it so difficult to post pictures and videos, Id post more here but honestly its a serious pain in the ***.
