Hello every one, I'm new to the forums and very experienced with my own setup. I like to keep things simple and i have done extensive trial and errors. I will be as help full as i can be. My vast knowledge is over reef aquariums up to 70 gallons.
My current setup has 4 years. The first two years were awesome and the last two have been hell. My heater wouldn't turn off.. Causing my tank to have an algae bloom and eventually killing off everything, except my duncan coral and two blastos. It took me over two years to get it back to the way it was. I had to throw my live rock away anyways due to aptasias.
After fighting with my aquarium for two years, I left my bulbs alone and never changed them (running two 21' 65 watt power compacts and two T5 on a 55 gallon deep). I didn"t want to change my lights because i wanted to see how long the could grow coral with old bulbs (I would usually change them once a year. Now i have had the same bulbs for 2 1/2 years and corals look great.) I had very good success with corals. Everything I put in the tank would survive. I did not have any acroporas at the time.
I don't want to blame the heater itself, even tho it was a big issue. After the crash i took out the heater, and currently not running one. Thanks to the A/c unit of my house, temp. stays at 79 degrees, but i'll have to keep a close eye when winter comes along. Around the time of the crash I added two T5. For some dumb reason i also changed my dosing chemicals (Alkine & calcium and stopped running magnesium.) This was the biggest mistake i've done. Currenlty using ESV B-ionic alkalinity and calcium, Kent Marine magnesium (Dr. G's magnisium is really good also) and Carib sea Purple up. If any one is having trouble with coralline algae, Try this setup. This stuff is like the fountain of youth for aquariums. After two week i'm getting back my coralline algae and those small white dotted barnacles.. You have no idea how happy i am XDDD
My water filter setup is very simple. I don't get to complicated because it's more cleaning time and I'm scared of leaks.. I have a single Marineland Penguin BIO-Wheel Power Filter 350 and a 600 Hydor Koralia. That's it!!
Now, there's one draw back to an easy setup like this. You will not be able to put in a lot of fish. I recommend two or three medium sized fish. I also had a couple of nano fishes .. My total fish count was about eleven, which is a NO NO!, but they were so small it only looked like i had four fish.. I added them one by one towards the end, making sure they will not create a large amount of detritus. I had a six line wrasse, clown fish, a harptail blenny, two chromis, a cardinal, two neon gobbies, a hector goby, orange spotted sand cleaning goby and a green mandarin... If the aquarium does not have regular cleaning , dont put in as many fish as i did. There is a rule for fish, which is around 5 gallons per fish. Some fish needed huge tanks or feed on corals. Since I knew my tank was doing bad i gave them back to my local fish store. Lucky my tank had no rocks and i was able to save the blenny, spotted gobby, two chromsis.. It also helped the tank get back to normal because i reduce the biological load. Plus they didn't suffer which was my concern. I stayed with the six line wrasse and clown fish. These two are best friends, weird because wrasses are mean. I think it's because i bought them both togehter and the came in the same bag. The others didn't make it..RIp. At one point my wrasse was unhappy due to not having any rocks for him to hide in. The clown fish would tread water right next to wrasse, like if he was pushing water threw his gills..
I do water changes once a week by hand. Maybe 5-10 gallons per water change. That's about 95% water change at the end of the month. Some people will advice against it, scared that the corals will get shocked. Not true. After researching automatic water change drip systems, I've noticed a lot of other hobyist are also averaging about 100% water changes a mouth. The trick if to do it very slow. Alkine, calcium , and magnessium will not change drastically if done slowly and over a period of a month. A day after water changes i will check alk, calc, and magn. and add if necessary.
I've reduced my sand bed. I have about 1/2" of sand in some place and other areas have less. I might change it to a very fine sand, so the detritus wont sink to the bottom of the sand bed. Today I saw some black tube like fish in my sand bed. I'm 100% sure it's not a worm. It's most definitely a fish. I didn't think any kind fish would survive in my thin sand bed..lol.. I also like to stir up my sand bed at least twice a week and vacuum once a week when i do water changes. Stirring up the sand is great. I stir it heavy. It brings up all the detritus from under the sand into the water column, so that my filter can pick it up. Recently I haven't been stirring it up so hard because nothing lifts up out of the sand.. XD. It also feeds the corals when I stir the sand... Also blow out the detritus from the rock.
Live Rocks or fake rock?.. Again everyone will have there opinions, but what works best for me is fake rocks. I don't think live rock filters the water as much as people say they do. Also i don't like live rock because they come with a lot hitch hikers. Some very good and other not so good. I had an out burst of Aptasias and i would always be on top of them killing them. I used hot water, aptasia X, shrimps, and even lasers. The problem was that i couldn't reach the aptasia at the back of the rock/tank and they would keep reproducing.
Another big peace of advice i can give, is don't change to many things at one time. If/When the tank crashes you will not know what affected the tank.
Some other little thing I do is : I keep all the glass clean, so the light reflects every where. Also cleaning the reflector of the lights periodically. I clean the inside of the penguin filter every other week and the korallea power head get cleaned up. Everything gets cleaned or replaced XD
You'll know when your water is perfect when:
1. No green film algae grows on the glass
2. Snails/invert will not die off.
3. Coralline algae growth and barnacles will start to grow on glass.
4. After water change; alkiline, calcium, magnesium, should not change so much.
This forum helped me out a lot in tuff times.. It's time i pay it back..
My current setup has 4 years. The first two years were awesome and the last two have been hell. My heater wouldn't turn off.. Causing my tank to have an algae bloom and eventually killing off everything, except my duncan coral and two blastos. It took me over two years to get it back to the way it was. I had to throw my live rock away anyways due to aptasias.
After fighting with my aquarium for two years, I left my bulbs alone and never changed them (running two 21' 65 watt power compacts and two T5 on a 55 gallon deep). I didn"t want to change my lights because i wanted to see how long the could grow coral with old bulbs (I would usually change them once a year. Now i have had the same bulbs for 2 1/2 years and corals look great.) I had very good success with corals. Everything I put in the tank would survive. I did not have any acroporas at the time.
I don't want to blame the heater itself, even tho it was a big issue. After the crash i took out the heater, and currently not running one. Thanks to the A/c unit of my house, temp. stays at 79 degrees, but i'll have to keep a close eye when winter comes along. Around the time of the crash I added two T5. For some dumb reason i also changed my dosing chemicals (Alkine & calcium and stopped running magnesium.) This was the biggest mistake i've done. Currenlty using ESV B-ionic alkalinity and calcium, Kent Marine magnesium (Dr. G's magnisium is really good also) and Carib sea Purple up. If any one is having trouble with coralline algae, Try this setup. This stuff is like the fountain of youth for aquariums. After two week i'm getting back my coralline algae and those small white dotted barnacles.. You have no idea how happy i am XDDD
My water filter setup is very simple. I don't get to complicated because it's more cleaning time and I'm scared of leaks.. I have a single Marineland Penguin BIO-Wheel Power Filter 350 and a 600 Hydor Koralia. That's it!!
Now, there's one draw back to an easy setup like this. You will not be able to put in a lot of fish. I recommend two or three medium sized fish. I also had a couple of nano fishes .. My total fish count was about eleven, which is a NO NO!, but they were so small it only looked like i had four fish.. I added them one by one towards the end, making sure they will not create a large amount of detritus. I had a six line wrasse, clown fish, a harptail blenny, two chromis, a cardinal, two neon gobbies, a hector goby, orange spotted sand cleaning goby and a green mandarin... If the aquarium does not have regular cleaning , dont put in as many fish as i did. There is a rule for fish, which is around 5 gallons per fish. Some fish needed huge tanks or feed on corals. Since I knew my tank was doing bad i gave them back to my local fish store. Lucky my tank had no rocks and i was able to save the blenny, spotted gobby, two chromsis.. It also helped the tank get back to normal because i reduce the biological load. Plus they didn't suffer which was my concern. I stayed with the six line wrasse and clown fish. These two are best friends, weird because wrasses are mean. I think it's because i bought them both togehter and the came in the same bag. The others didn't make it..RIp. At one point my wrasse was unhappy due to not having any rocks for him to hide in. The clown fish would tread water right next to wrasse, like if he was pushing water threw his gills..
I do water changes once a week by hand. Maybe 5-10 gallons per water change. That's about 95% water change at the end of the month. Some people will advice against it, scared that the corals will get shocked. Not true. After researching automatic water change drip systems, I've noticed a lot of other hobyist are also averaging about 100% water changes a mouth. The trick if to do it very slow. Alkine, calcium , and magnessium will not change drastically if done slowly and over a period of a month. A day after water changes i will check alk, calc, and magn. and add if necessary.
I've reduced my sand bed. I have about 1/2" of sand in some place and other areas have less. I might change it to a very fine sand, so the detritus wont sink to the bottom of the sand bed. Today I saw some black tube like fish in my sand bed. I'm 100% sure it's not a worm. It's most definitely a fish. I didn't think any kind fish would survive in my thin sand bed..lol.. I also like to stir up my sand bed at least twice a week and vacuum once a week when i do water changes. Stirring up the sand is great. I stir it heavy. It brings up all the detritus from under the sand into the water column, so that my filter can pick it up. Recently I haven't been stirring it up so hard because nothing lifts up out of the sand.. XD. It also feeds the corals when I stir the sand... Also blow out the detritus from the rock.
Live Rocks or fake rock?.. Again everyone will have there opinions, but what works best for me is fake rocks. I don't think live rock filters the water as much as people say they do. Also i don't like live rock because they come with a lot hitch hikers. Some very good and other not so good. I had an out burst of Aptasias and i would always be on top of them killing them. I used hot water, aptasia X, shrimps, and even lasers. The problem was that i couldn't reach the aptasia at the back of the rock/tank and they would keep reproducing.
Another big peace of advice i can give, is don't change to many things at one time. If/When the tank crashes you will not know what affected the tank.
Some other little thing I do is : I keep all the glass clean, so the light reflects every where. Also cleaning the reflector of the lights periodically. I clean the inside of the penguin filter every other week and the korallea power head get cleaned up. Everything gets cleaned or replaced XD
You'll know when your water is perfect when:
1. No green film algae grows on the glass
2. Snails/invert will not die off.
3. Coralline algae growth and barnacles will start to grow on glass.
4. After water change; alkiline, calcium, magnesium, should not change so much.
This forum helped me out a lot in tuff times.. It's time i pay it back..
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