noobtothereef
New member
Hres the deal, 5 months ago i set up my 120 gallon dt with 150lbs marco rock and also has a 33 gallon fuge and about 25 gallons in the sump, my tank and fuge both have 2" sandbed of sugar sand from marco rocks, i have a reef octo extreme 200 skimmer with the red dragon pinwheel, 2-250w mh's 14k hamiltons and 2-54w t5 uvl super actinics. Flow is 2 reeflo darts, 1 for return powering the fuge, and reactors in the future, 1 on a closed loop.
After the tank was filled i added 2 small clownfish and 2 bottles of bio spira, tank took 7 weeks to cycle( i will never do a fish cycle again). Then i prematurely added some sps etc and the nitrates and phosphates were through the roof 3ppm phos, 20-30 nitrates.
I do a 25% water change every 2 weeks, and 4 months into it i added a dual brs gfo/carbon reactor, it dropped the phosphates to 0 on an api test kit after 2 weeks and changing out the media 3 times. my nitrates are at about 15ppm right now but am only feeding the tank 1 time a week and feed lightly at that but nitrates will not go down no matter what i do, my cheato and caluerpa in the fuge isnt doing so well, alot of clear/dead leaves on the feather caluerpa and some die off on the cheato and cant figure out why.... it should be going nuts with that high of nitrates and phosphates.
A month ago i got some free corals from a friends tank breakdown, a couple caps and an acropora of some sort thats actually going nuts, it has encrusted an entire 2"x2" rock that i glued it to, its green with red/maroon polyps so it must like the dirty water but the caps are now starting to turn a little lighter and have little polyp extension. My alk.calc, and mag are all good and dont dose anything for that yet as my water changes keep up with it. I also have a frogspawn thats doing fine but has a few large bubbles on it. i also have some anthalia thats going nuts.
Heres my plan, i did build a coil denitrator but am not going to use it so i ordered a koralin sulfur denitrator and also i am upgrading my brs dual reactor to 2-jumbo reactors, 1 for gfo and 1 for carbon, the dual reactors cartridges are just too small for 180+ gallon system, i can only safely fit about 1.25 cups of carbon and gfo in it, i know thats enough for the gfo but i like running more carbon. Also running seperate reators i can indapendantly adjust the flow in both reactors. Some day i also plan to add a frag tank to the system so the larger reactors will be better for me. Tomorrow i am going to start doing a 10% water change every other day for the next 2 weeks to try to drop the phosphates and nitrates and will also start to feed the tank 2 times per eek to raise the bacteria level and then get the sulfur denitrator up and running and also the new reactors online, after that instead of a 25% wc every 2 weeks im going to do about a 10-15% wc every week. My tds in my rodi system is at 0 and has always been 0, its a rental unit and is serviced whenever it reads above 0.
I know i did some things wrong when starting this tank, mainly adding fish to soon and also corals too soon but am trying to get back on track before everything goes to ****. Let me know if my ideas sound ok or sound like ****, im all ears and want to have a thriving reef, and im open to any suggestions.
After the tank was filled i added 2 small clownfish and 2 bottles of bio spira, tank took 7 weeks to cycle( i will never do a fish cycle again). Then i prematurely added some sps etc and the nitrates and phosphates were through the roof 3ppm phos, 20-30 nitrates.
I do a 25% water change every 2 weeks, and 4 months into it i added a dual brs gfo/carbon reactor, it dropped the phosphates to 0 on an api test kit after 2 weeks and changing out the media 3 times. my nitrates are at about 15ppm right now but am only feeding the tank 1 time a week and feed lightly at that but nitrates will not go down no matter what i do, my cheato and caluerpa in the fuge isnt doing so well, alot of clear/dead leaves on the feather caluerpa and some die off on the cheato and cant figure out why.... it should be going nuts with that high of nitrates and phosphates.
A month ago i got some free corals from a friends tank breakdown, a couple caps and an acropora of some sort thats actually going nuts, it has encrusted an entire 2"x2" rock that i glued it to, its green with red/maroon polyps so it must like the dirty water but the caps are now starting to turn a little lighter and have little polyp extension. My alk.calc, and mag are all good and dont dose anything for that yet as my water changes keep up with it. I also have a frogspawn thats doing fine but has a few large bubbles on it. i also have some anthalia thats going nuts.
Heres my plan, i did build a coil denitrator but am not going to use it so i ordered a koralin sulfur denitrator and also i am upgrading my brs dual reactor to 2-jumbo reactors, 1 for gfo and 1 for carbon, the dual reactors cartridges are just too small for 180+ gallon system, i can only safely fit about 1.25 cups of carbon and gfo in it, i know thats enough for the gfo but i like running more carbon. Also running seperate reators i can indapendantly adjust the flow in both reactors. Some day i also plan to add a frag tank to the system so the larger reactors will be better for me. Tomorrow i am going to start doing a 10% water change every other day for the next 2 weeks to try to drop the phosphates and nitrates and will also start to feed the tank 2 times per eek to raise the bacteria level and then get the sulfur denitrator up and running and also the new reactors online, after that instead of a 25% wc every 2 weeks im going to do about a 10-15% wc every week. My tds in my rodi system is at 0 and has always been 0, its a rental unit and is serviced whenever it reads above 0.
I know i did some things wrong when starting this tank, mainly adding fish to soon and also corals too soon but am trying to get back on track before everything goes to ****. Let me know if my ideas sound ok or sound like ****, im all ears and want to have a thriving reef, and im open to any suggestions.
