Breaking ALL the rules....

[ctlegacy]

Okay, so I'm sure I will catch all kinds of flak for this, but I want to know if anyone else has broke just about every saltwater tank rule and had it turn out okay?

First, I started with a used NANO 14 tank. Waited about 4 minutes to add WAY TOO MANY FISH to it. On day 3 I added a RBTA (which I still have to this day).

I then bought a second NANO 14, BRAND NEW, and pretty much did the same thing. Even keep a H. MAG in this one. My local responsible fish store owner talked me into trading the H.Mag for another bubble because he said there was no way that I could keep it that nano without killing it, and although I'm a rule breaker, I didn't want my stupidity be the reason I kill a beautiful anemone. Bottom right corner in the tank pic.

I will say that I did lose one SABAE anem, because it crawled under a rock and never came back out. Also, I lost a dragonnet. Everything else thrived. My corals got HUGE and my GBTA split twice. I had both Nano's for about 3 months.

So, here are the "rules" that I think I broke.....twice with the nano's.

Not waiting for tanks to "cycle"...before adding fish (I'm not known for my patience)
Over crowding....
Over feeding....
Adding anemones to tanks that were only "days" old.

Now even my local pet store is amazed that the tanks have survived,let alone thrived. As is just about anyone I tell what I did to them. I credit the success of these tanks SOLELY on water changes. Because I had over populated and over fed the tanks so much, I was forced to do 25% water changes WEEKLY to keep the nitrates at 0. I also bought USED SAND from established tanks and tried to get 50% used water when I first started them.

I'm only admitting all of this because I want to know who made the "rules" that everyone seems to adhere to??? Can technology beat "Nitrate spikes"??? I never experienced an amonia or nitrate spike in my tanks because anytime I saw ANY amonia or Nitrates, I would do a water change.

After my Hippo Tang (another broken rule) started growing larger than I knew the Nano could handle, I decided it was time to start talking the wife into letting me have a 150g tank, so about a month ago I picked up a used 150. It was very poorly treated, had 2 living fish (one clown and one cardinal) 50% of the water had evaporated from the tank leaving these 2 fish living in EXTREMELY high salinity and very poor water conditions.

When I picked up the tank, I rented a cargo van to accomodate everything in one trip because it was a 2 hour drive to get the tank. I also brought 2 50 gallon drums so that I could keep as much of the "crappy" water as I could.

So I tore the entire tank down. Loaded all the rock into 5 gallon buckets (12 of them) scooped out the entire sand bed into 4 more buckets, and relocated this beast to my house.

Dumped the sand back in, stacked the rock back up, then I started to fill it back up with the bad water. Once all the bad water was pumped out of the drum (only needed 1 drum after filling the rock buckets with water), I needed to add another 45 gallons of RO water to bring the water level back to normal. When I did this, I checked the salinity and it was just a little low, so I dumped a little salt into the tank (another broken rule) water until it was back to 1.024. I went and bought a Magnum 350 canister filter to speed up the clearing up of the water.

5 hours and 3 filter changes later I could finally start seeing the rock in the back of the tank. So in my mind it was time to start adding fish. (Did I mention I'm not patient.) I broke down my Nano tank upstairs and placed all the coral, anemones, and fish in the new tank. It obviously looked pretty sparce (what I could see of it , so I went to my office and tore Nano tank #2 down and added that tanks contents to the big tank. The tank is about 8 hours old in it's new home at this point and things are finally starting to be visible. I stopped at the pet store and picked up couple more anems and a dozen or so fish, and added them to my salt water soup!

Day 2:
Here is where the story starts getting interesting....I hope.. I had 2 empty 50g drums, and since I think the name of the game is WATER VOLUME, I plumbed one of the 50 gallons into tank. I guess bringing my system to 200 gallons.

Day 4:
I own a machine shop so my next idea was to build my own sump/refugium. I bought a sheet of 1/4 acrylic and used one of my cnc machines to cut it into a design that I found on melevs diy page. Glued it all up with some kind of glue that they recommended. Waited about 2 hours for the glue to dry, then test filled it in my garage. (Read the instructions later and found out the glue is "supposed" to cure for 48 hours....oops! Add that to the list of broken rules.) I left it in the garage for about 2 hours to make sure it was going to hold water and not leak. It didn't leak, so I drained it and took downstairs to be piped in with the rest of the tank. It holds about another 30 gallons of water bringing my total water to about 230 gallons. I added a protein skimmer, a Mag 9 pump, 3 inch sand bed (used again), and some live rock and let 'er rip. Has worked great since day one. Oh, had to build my own overflow too. That took 3 tries, but ended up with a great design.

I'm in the process right now of adding a 18x18x18 cube that will hold 25 gallons to make water changes easier and also add another 25 gallons to the system.

I've NEVER experienced a nitrate or amonia spike in any of the tanks, again I say water changes, water changes, water changes. My anemones are extremely healthy. My corals seem to be doing great, and I haven't lost anything in the big tank accept a blue cromis that just disappeared.

Here's a pic of my big tank:

Tank parameters:
Nitrates: 0 to 5 (I done 2 water changes at 2 week intervals)
Nitrites: 0
Amonia: 0
PH: 8.2
Calcium: 480
Salinity: 1.024

Maybe I'm lucky... Maybe I'm still minutes away from disaster... I just don't know what everyone panics about. I think it's just like everything in life where a little maintenence goes a long way.

I've since added:
-calcium reactor
-phosban reactor
-auto water top off unit

I can't be the only one that has done this, but I might be the only one that admits it.

 

[romsoccer12]

i have always been a big rule breaker.
i added a nem first month of having 72watt PC's on my tank.
it thrived for a long time. i think i was lucky because it had the ability to stretch its foot up to a foot so it could be very close to the lights.
its really lots of luck. sometimes you get that adaptable anemone. sometimes you get that mandarin that eats anything and just does really well. sometimes you get that pygmy angel that does great and never nips a coral. its really the luck of the draw, but most of it ends in a negative consequence.

 

[SNAKEMANVET]

The main thing that helped you so much is the key thing in reef aquaria, is water change.I did my 120 the same way.I did 50% water twice a week for a month. btw Nice looking tank.

 

[COreefer]

I keep 2 sebae anemones in a 20g with 28w T5's...They look better there than they did with metal halides. I also keep a toby in the tank with them.

 

[Slickcg33]

very impressive...

When i first started the hobby. I had a tank cycle with a potters angle, clarkii and a condie in a 10gal. Never checked params never did water changes... Had the potters for a year and a half and i still have the clarkii.

 

[ctlegacy]

yeah, it's funny because I knew there were more people like me that just said, I'll do what I want and hope it works out.

I'm excited because tomorrow my RO SYSTEM arrives tomorrow. Can't wait till I don't have to haul water from the store.

 

[NCSUsalt]

i wouldn't measure success by saying you've had them going for 3 months. come back in a few more months a let everyone know how that clarki is doing with those ocellaris

 

[jupiter]

Experienced aquarists can usually break more "rules" than newbies because simply, they know what to do when things are starting to go wrong. It usually isn't a conscious thing either. They just "know". The so-called "rules" are meant for newbies.

As for success, I don't consider any tank a success until you can maintain it for 3 years without relatively major changes. For example, keeping an anemone in a 14 gallon cube for a few months isn't success ... yet. I was able to keep condy anemones alive in my 10 gallon tank under normal fluorescent lighting for many months but eventually they did die. I overstocked that 10 gallon tank and everything was beautiful, until the red slime slowly took over and the fishes died one by one after about 8 months.
Also if you need to use Phosorb or something to remove chemicals from the tank, you haven't had success yet. The tank isn't stable. I consider things a success when I don't have to do anything but add whatever has been extracted from the water by the organisms in it, e.g.: calcium, iodine perhaps, etc.

And another thing to consider is that marine animals can be pretty tough when they are good specimens and if you're providing most of their requirements. If, after 1 year, you've moved your fish to a larger, better tank with more stable parameters, I wouldn't call that a success with the small tank either. Essentially the small tank was just like a quarantine tank for that year.

However, I also think a lot of rules are spawned from the backsides of so-called "experts" and they are propagated on internet BBs and forums by newbies who are eager to join discussions without really understanding what they are recommending to other newbies. Once you get experience, you start to realize which rules are real and which are a little hokey.

 

[ctlegacy]

i wouldn't measure success by saying you've had them going for 3 months. come back in a few more months a let everyone know how that clarki is doing with those ocellaris

He's already mean as hell if that's what you mean, but they pretty much stay on opposite ends of the tank. The clarki is the boss of his anemone. That's for sure.

 

[ctlegacy]

jupiter... I am definately not considering myself an expert, and I don't think you were implying I thought that either. I just think that "common sense" applies in most areas.

I don't use phos-obsorb or any other "reactionary" chems. As in "Oh no! I have a problem...let's dose it!". I try to create a system that avoids the problem. a.k.a. the phosban reactor. Again, I say "maintain" your system, and I hope I can avoid most problems.

I am hoping to be able to say next year that everything is still the same only better!

 

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[WDLV]

Good husbandry will circumvent 90% of the problems you encounter but it takes time to learn to tell the difference between the good the bad and the ugly. Ugly isn't bad. It's just ugly.