Hello everyone -
I am newly back to the hobby. I had a 46g fish only saltwater tank several years ago that was decommissioned after a move and finally replaced it 8 years later. Unfortunately, I've forgotten most of what I learned from that experience, so I am reeducating.
A few weeks ago I purchased a 125g existing reef set-up with:
(2) 175w metal halides
(2) VHOs
30g sump
Reef Octopus skimmer
LOTs of live rock (so much that some had to come out..)
Frogspawn LPS
Bubble Coral ( I literally just found out that's what it's actually called, I've been calling it "the bubble thing"... who knew!)
Button Polyp
Some other coral type thing that I think is alive, but I'm not really sure about...
Hippo Tang
Yellow Tang
Flame Angel
(2) clown fish
Engineer Goby
Challenges:
Having never had a sump / refugium, I'm having to learn all I can. It came with an LED strip light, a bag of de-nitrate, and a some white plastic crating(?) in the return end. I see conflicting info about the need for substrate and have yet to find anything definitive about what exactly should be in the sump and how it should be set up.
Lighting - Learned the hard way that while the VHOs make beautiful nightlights, they are not, in fact, nightlights.
Red slime algae - I suspect partially related to the nightlights providing a great environment for Cyano to thrive, I've been battling a pretty heavy red algae bloom for about 10 days. A couple cycles and ChemiClean and a couple days of lights out and I think it's turned a corner.
I'm sure there is more, but that's all I can think of at the moment. Any advice, criticism (preferably constructive), and encouragement will be appreciated!
WT
I am newly back to the hobby. I had a 46g fish only saltwater tank several years ago that was decommissioned after a move and finally replaced it 8 years later. Unfortunately, I've forgotten most of what I learned from that experience, so I am reeducating.
A few weeks ago I purchased a 125g existing reef set-up with:
(2) 175w metal halides
(2) VHOs
30g sump
Reef Octopus skimmer
LOTs of live rock (so much that some had to come out..)
Frogspawn LPS
Bubble Coral ( I literally just found out that's what it's actually called, I've been calling it "the bubble thing"... who knew!)
Button Polyp
Some other coral type thing that I think is alive, but I'm not really sure about...
Hippo Tang
Yellow Tang
Flame Angel
(2) clown fish
Engineer Goby
Challenges:
Having never had a sump / refugium, I'm having to learn all I can. It came with an LED strip light, a bag of de-nitrate, and a some white plastic crating(?) in the return end. I see conflicting info about the need for substrate and have yet to find anything definitive about what exactly should be in the sump and how it should be set up.
Lighting - Learned the hard way that while the VHOs make beautiful nightlights, they are not, in fact, nightlights.
Red slime algae - I suspect partially related to the nightlights providing a great environment for Cyano to thrive, I've been battling a pretty heavy red algae bloom for about 10 days. A couple cycles and ChemiClean and a couple days of lights out and I think it's turned a corner.
I'm sure there is more, but that's all I can think of at the moment. Any advice, criticism (preferably constructive), and encouragement will be appreciated!
WT
