So, I was looking at my tank last night, mostly in disgust. After I did some cleaning of it.
I put hours of maintenance into it every week and am losing motivation. Last weekend I did my standard 2 week water change. Cleaned the algae Scrubber and removed the standard softball size ball of hair algae from it. Cleaned the screen etc. I pulled a few rocks that were covered in algae and scrubbed them down in waste salt water. Put the rocks back in. I only did around 1/3rd or 1/4th of the rock.
Many of them have corals that are doing well, and I'd prefer not to disturb the corals. But, at the same time, I'm more angry at the system than I am happy with it.
I think it's the culmination of everything I've been through in the last 6 months of it's operation. I reused a lot of equipment that I had from a 220 I sold a couple years ago.. That was my first mistake. A lot of it broke down in the setup phase. My external $400 return pump died when I tried restarting things. I have 1 of the two MP40s on the fritz.
I had 1 heater (out of two) that electrocuted 14 out of 19 fish. I've had several floods just from not keeping up with all the things going wrong. My top off controller fried and was a $200 replacement.(could have been worse, the vendor was great to work with).
I had several skimmer dial in issues, where it was too sensitive or not sensitive enough that caused a few floods, soaked carpet a few times with anywhere from 10 to 20 gallons of water. A float switch that failed when making new top off water, and pretty much anything that could go wrong in the last 6 months has.
Now, I need to take the other half of my rock and try to scrub all the hair algae off. I reused dry rock that I had in a previous system. I never thought of bleaching it, and just threw it in and let it cycle for two months. I didn't think about stored up nutrients. Now all the rocks are covered in massive amounts of hair algae. I'm pulling what I can reach but it's a lot....
And I only have 4 fish and feeding minimally. Plus the scrubber is getting full every week... So, wouldn't the nutrients be starved eventually with 20% water changes a month, skimmer, and algae scrubber. I thought the nutrients would eventually run low...
I'm losing hope that this is eventually going to clean up enough to the point I can stop responding to fires perse...
I know it'll get better, maybe in a year or two, but spending $50 - 80 a month in electricity for a pile of rocks and a bunch of hair algae is getting old. Plus, I need some type of way to remove debris from the water column. It's constantly cloudy. Filter socks become foamy and gross in 2 days. A roller mat is $300 and I don't know if that would be enough for a 350gallon system.
Is there something else I should be doing over the next 6 months to get rid of the hair algae or just wait for algae to release itself off of 100lbs of rock?
The rock I scrubbed turned the waste water black. So, Not sure what that's a sign of??? Am I to a point I just need to start over, pull the rock, bleach it, wash it muriatic acid and completely start over? I don't really have the energy to do that. I've done it before on previous systems, but, that's a lot of effort and time that I don't really have.
I put hours of maintenance into it every week and am losing motivation. Last weekend I did my standard 2 week water change. Cleaned the algae Scrubber and removed the standard softball size ball of hair algae from it. Cleaned the screen etc. I pulled a few rocks that were covered in algae and scrubbed them down in waste salt water. Put the rocks back in. I only did around 1/3rd or 1/4th of the rock.
Many of them have corals that are doing well, and I'd prefer not to disturb the corals. But, at the same time, I'm more angry at the system than I am happy with it.
I think it's the culmination of everything I've been through in the last 6 months of it's operation. I reused a lot of equipment that I had from a 220 I sold a couple years ago.. That was my first mistake. A lot of it broke down in the setup phase. My external $400 return pump died when I tried restarting things. I have 1 of the two MP40s on the fritz.
I had 1 heater (out of two) that electrocuted 14 out of 19 fish. I've had several floods just from not keeping up with all the things going wrong. My top off controller fried and was a $200 replacement.(could have been worse, the vendor was great to work with).
I had several skimmer dial in issues, where it was too sensitive or not sensitive enough that caused a few floods, soaked carpet a few times with anywhere from 10 to 20 gallons of water. A float switch that failed when making new top off water, and pretty much anything that could go wrong in the last 6 months has.
Now, I need to take the other half of my rock and try to scrub all the hair algae off. I reused dry rock that I had in a previous system. I never thought of bleaching it, and just threw it in and let it cycle for two months. I didn't think about stored up nutrients. Now all the rocks are covered in massive amounts of hair algae. I'm pulling what I can reach but it's a lot....
And I only have 4 fish and feeding minimally. Plus the scrubber is getting full every week... So, wouldn't the nutrients be starved eventually with 20% water changes a month, skimmer, and algae scrubber. I thought the nutrients would eventually run low...
I'm losing hope that this is eventually going to clean up enough to the point I can stop responding to fires perse...
I know it'll get better, maybe in a year or two, but spending $50 - 80 a month in electricity for a pile of rocks and a bunch of hair algae is getting old. Plus, I need some type of way to remove debris from the water column. It's constantly cloudy. Filter socks become foamy and gross in 2 days. A roller mat is $300 and I don't know if that would be enough for a 350gallon system.
Is there something else I should be doing over the next 6 months to get rid of the hair algae or just wait for algae to release itself off of 100lbs of rock?
The rock I scrubbed turned the waste water black. So, Not sure what that's a sign of??? Am I to a point I just need to start over, pull the rock, bleach it, wash it muriatic acid and completely start over? I don't really have the energy to do that. I've done it before on previous systems, but, that's a lot of effort and time that I don't really have.
