Olasana Lagoon: High Energy SPS Nano Build Thread
- Thread starter galleon
- Start date
franklypre
New member
SPS nanos will have there ups and downs regardless of your level of expertise, but throwing wild acros into an uncycled tank is just asking for trouble. I've done it and know others that have and have some success, but all it takes is one little oops and you lose a piece or two. Otherwise looking good, interested to see what kind of colors come in.
karsseboom
New member
Great progress I was wondering about your tank.
Mine has, more than once over the years. If anyone claims to not have ever done anything they regret, they haven't been in the hobby very long or they are deluded. Crap happens, it is the way of things. The sad part is someone had to hang around waiting to say "I told You so" without any knowledge of what happened or why.
MammothReefer
Active member
I'm not going to get into a big fight here that's not the point of RC, but feel free to bash me all you want.
I wasn't lurking around waiting for an I told you so, and I'm not some cyber-reefer. I've been a member of this community for a long time, I've posted my tanks, my success, my failures, and my experiences as have MANY of the other posters in this thread. We as a community came to together and tried to reason with Galleon via the sum of our experiences and were dismissed, and rudely I might ad, mocked by him and his friends, give the brush off as simple trolls.
I didn't have to read the blog post (which I have now) to figure out what happened. I had a tank setup in a very similar fashion, and while the trigger point may have been different the RESULT was the same.
I'm not saying I never made a mistake trust me I've made plenty. Nobody here is saying they never made mistakes. The difference is when I make a post on a community and that community comes together and offers me suggestions on how I can improve. I listen. I show respect and kindness to those who were willing to take the time to try to help. Some peoples posts I look at shake my head and move on, others contemplate, and some I take to heart. Either way I thank them all same.
This was not a "thriving" reef. It was a 2 month old non cycled tank, filled with acropora and new pieces constantly from the wild, without proper means of biological filtration and never given enough time to settle in. He then goes and adds a MASSIVE carbon source to the tank which in turns causes a bacteria bloom, which is then consumed by algae turning the water green. Am I wrong?
He then goes and does a 100% water change which while fixing the problem in the shorty term is simply going to reset everything again for the future.
Simply adding more rock from the start, letter the tank cycle and taking things slow as every body suggested and he could have avoided this whole situation. He would have had a much more stable system which would have made such drastic measures unnecessary.
Allmost, Jack. I understand Chris is your friend but HONESTLY would you setup a tank in a similar manner and expect different results?
I wasn't lurking around waiting for an I told you so, and I'm not some cyber-reefer. I've been a member of this community for a long time, I've posted my tanks, my success, my failures, and my experiences as have MANY of the other posters in this thread. We as a community came to together and tried to reason with Galleon via the sum of our experiences and were dismissed, and rudely I might ad, mocked by him and his friends, give the brush off as simple trolls.
I didn't have to read the blog post (which I have now) to figure out what happened. I had a tank setup in a very similar fashion, and while the trigger point may have been different the RESULT was the same.
I'm not saying I never made a mistake trust me I've made plenty. Nobody here is saying they never made mistakes. The difference is when I make a post on a community and that community comes together and offers me suggestions on how I can improve. I listen. I show respect and kindness to those who were willing to take the time to try to help. Some peoples posts I look at shake my head and move on, others contemplate, and some I take to heart. Either way I thank them all same.
This was not a "thriving" reef. It was a 2 month old non cycled tank, filled with acropora and new pieces constantly from the wild, without proper means of biological filtration and never given enough time to settle in. He then goes and adds a MASSIVE carbon source to the tank which in turns causes a bacteria bloom, which is then consumed by algae turning the water green. Am I wrong?
He then goes and does a 100% water change which while fixing the problem in the shorty term is simply going to reset everything again for the future.
Simply adding more rock from the start, letter the tank cycle and taking things slow as every body suggested and he could have avoided this whole situation. He would have had a much more stable system which would have made such drastic measures unnecessary.
Allmost, Jack. I understand Chris is your friend but HONESTLY would you setup a tank in a similar manner and expect different results?
Yes.
I spiked the pH, dumb mistake number 1. Dumb mistake number 2: bring the pH down the fastest way possible, using available vinegar. This happened on February 28th. Once the pH was stable, I did a 100% water change.
The bacteria bloom has little to actually do with the stability of my system and more to do with the fact that it was a sudden addition of a labile organic carbon source to a system where such labile carbon availability for heterotrophic bacteria was not the norm. Ask Thales what happened when his tank had a pH spike and he used vinegar to bring it down. His "ego" caused him to write a whole article about it!!!
The tank has been up since November, FWIW. That has been mentioned before but largely ignored in favor of slandering it as an uncycled unstable system. No one has actually offered any evidence that my filtration is inadequate.
Despite the water change, bacteria still bloomed, and caused what I suspect was a DO crash, cue RTN, Another 100% and the tank was fine for several days. No more organic carbon sources were added, not even food, no more recession, cleaned skimmer, glass, carbon etc. Things were looking better. THEN, a SEVERAL days later (on March 10th), an almost instant bloom that looked like a phyto bloom occurred.
You accused me in PM of, despite being a marine scientist, having little experience. Scroll up a few posts and you will see that is clearly not the case. Did you ever wonder where all those friends you accused me of having jump in actually came from?
Then let that stand as your prediction and I won't say another peep to you. I will however, keep this thread updated. Cheers.
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This was far from constructive, but maybe you think it was. I don't know, and most of us who have been here for a while are cranky, I am usually one of the crankiest, but this was not helpful or constructive, it was very much the "I told You so". Perhaps it was not your intent, but that is exactly how it reads.
I don't know Chris, never even saw his username until this thread that I can recall. As far as how he set up the tank, everyone has different ways of doing things, none are wrong and none are right but they are different. I probably wouldn't have used a 20 gallon tank, but I don't do nano's. I appreciate what he is doing, just because it is outside of the norm, and if he were doing this as his first tank I would have cautioned against it. Most of us do things on our own tanks that we would never advise anyone else to do. That doesn't mean it will fail, but there is no reason to think it will if the person is experienced.
I will give you the benefit of the doubt and tell myself you were trying to help, but very few people would help the way you have. I am sure the first person to drop vodka in their tank was laughed at and cautioned against it, now the majority of us do it or have done it. The point is, it is his tank, his way of doing it and every tank has it's issues, either from the reefer or the livestock.
Let him do it his way and either be supportive or stay out of it. He isn't a noob.
MammothReefer
Active member
I'm not going to get dragged into a flame war with you Chris. We all make mistakes, and we've all done great things. However the sum of the experience of a community is greater then any individuals experience. There is a huge difference between a large public aquarium, and a small home aquarium. We may not have chosen marine biology as our primary occupation, but that doesn't make us any less capable, or less intelligent.
The members of this community are OBSESSED with their tanks. They spend countless hours researching every little advancement and change in the hobby, understanding every little detail, and have painstakingly experiment time and time in their own little private laboratories, on their own dollar.
I'm not trying to dismiss your accomplishments, (Well accept maybe the seahorse thing as mom was able to do that to with no salt water experience at all
) All I'm saying is maybe some of the people who are privately funding there own tanks, and have had up and running systems constantly for years and years on end. May just be on to something. Take it as you may.
Allmost
New member
I dont know ...
live rock is used as surface area for bacteria to colonize .... how can we say if its enough or not ? how do we tell how pronous the rock is ? the simple 1 lbs per gallon is like the old Watt per gallon rule ... outdated and doesnt stand no more ! I have about 45 lbs of LR in my 200 G system !
cycle ... if live rock with dead patches were placed in, and no ammonia is tested after a couple of days, that mean the tank has cycled .. not sure what franklypre meant, or why he is putting corals in a none cycled tank !
I do not know Galleon personally ... but he is experienced, he knows what he is doing. and in fact I really like this set up, as I have argued about amount of LR needed in the past ALOT .. and this is the first prime example supporting my case [less live rock would mean better flow through it, so we can take advantage of ever mm of it.....
if it was me, I would add a bucket as sump with nothing but water, cause I know I suck at dosing down to the ml ... lol [just to make it easier to dose different things]
at the end, galleon is one of those ppl who I am here to learn from ! I have never had the pleasure of working profesionally in the field ! he has ! now I dont mean this part about you mammoth, you are also experienced and know what you are doing [and have a great and successfull tank] ... but to see SOME OTHER ppl, who are new to hobby [less than 5 years] and still havent been able to get the result they wanted come here and say his set up wont work just doesnt sit right iwth me ... u know what I mean ? but sadly that's part of many new reefers journey ... ppl in my area who I have set up tanks for 3 years ago try to correct me on my local forums lol I obv stopped posting there ...
I hope you know what I mean lets be more supportive of another follow Experienced hobbyist, proving some myths wrong.
live rock is used as surface area for bacteria to colonize .... how can we say if its enough or not ? how do we tell how pronous the rock is ? the simple 1 lbs per gallon is like the old Watt per gallon rule ... outdated and doesnt stand no more ! I have about 45 lbs of LR in my 200 G system !
cycle ... if live rock with dead patches were placed in, and no ammonia is tested after a couple of days, that mean the tank has cycled .. not sure what franklypre meant, or why he is putting corals in a none cycled tank !
I do not know Galleon personally ... but he is experienced, he knows what he is doing. and in fact I really like this set up, as I have argued about amount of LR needed in the past ALOT .. and this is the first prime example supporting my case
[less live rock would mean better flow through it, so we can take advantage of ever mm of it.....if it was me, I would add a bucket as sump with nothing but water, cause I know I suck at dosing down to the ml ... lol [just to make it easier to dose different things]
at the end, galleon is one of those ppl who I am here to learn from ! I have never had the pleasure of working profesionally in the field ! he has ! now I dont mean this part about you mammoth, you are also experienced and know what you are doing [and have a great and successfull tank
] ... but to see SOME OTHER ppl, who are new to hobby [less than 5 years] and still havent been able to get the result they wanted come here and say his set up wont work just doesnt sit right iwth me ... u know what I mean ? but sadly that's part of many new reefers journey ... ppl in my area who I have set up tanks for 3 years ago try to correct me on my local forums lol I obv stopped posting there ... I hope you know what I mean
lets be more supportive of another follow Experienced hobbyist, proving some myths wrong.franklypre
New member
Man do I remeber that color, first time I ever used vinegar to clean liverock and didn't let it dry, didn't even wash it off. Only thing that lived was a small piece of carnation. I wasn't trying to bash, just saying that in this hobby stuff happens. Are you planning on adding to this tank or are you happy with the amount of coral in it. Any plans for LPS, softies? You may have mentioned this earlier but I don't get into the unpleasant discussions.
OK, it's time for some timeline fact checking for the sake of everyone here. This tank was set up in early November 2011 with a large piece of live rock (that just happened to have a Porites on it). It was cycled. I added some more live rock (VERY little, two small branch pieces), got a tiny ammonia blip.
Now, I added wild colonies on FEBRUARY 3rd. I have not added a single wild piece or colony period since then. I added some frags Thales sent me on February 8th. Every single Acropora piece in the system that survived shipping was healthy, establishing itself and growing on February 28th when the pH spike occurred.
Here is the video from FEBRUARY 20th. Everything looked just as good 8 days later immediately prior to when the accident occurred.
Now, please, I encourage ANYONE here to point out which one of these wild colonies that had been in my ****hole of a system for a month did NOT look like it was thriving? Show me one that even looks stressed.
vitz
New member
The length of time someone has been registered on a reef forum says absolutely nothing about knowledge about or experience with keeping reef aquaria.
Some of us here have been reefing loooong before rc (or any other internet aquarium forum) existed.
Anyone who makes any kind of claim about the viability of a particular tank's methodology before at least a few years go by is obviously a noob talking out of their a**hat.
My first nano reef (30gal) had 4" of dolomite over an air driven undergravel filter (pre 1980). I'm sure some (probably many) here would have assured disaster was guaranteed. The red tree sponge and ricordea I propagated and sold back to the local lfs for the few years I had the tank would certainly disagree.
Chris's methodolgy/setup is NOT new to the world of aquaria, and has been a good workable method for many.
Failures of others (and mini 'failures' like Chris's) due to user error are just that. User error- *not* a methodology/concept error.
Don't listen to the noobs, Chris, it's not worth the agita to even respond. Heck, I'm sure all the naysayers here don't even know who Emmens was!
Some of us here have been reefing loooong before rc (or any other internet aquarium forum) existed.
Anyone who makes any kind of claim about the viability of a particular tank's methodology before at least a few years go by is obviously a noob talking out of their a**hat.
My first nano reef (30gal) had 4" of dolomite over an air driven undergravel filter (pre 1980). I'm sure some (probably many) here would have assured disaster was guaranteed. The red tree sponge and ricordea I propagated and sold back to the local lfs for the few years I had the tank would certainly disagree.
Chris's methodolgy/setup is NOT new to the world of aquaria, and has been a good workable method for many.
Failures of others (and mini 'failures' like Chris's) due to user error are just that. User error- *not* a methodology/concept error.
Don't listen to the noobs, Chris, it's not worth the agita to even respond. Heck, I'm sure all the naysayers here don't even know who Emmens was!
MammothReefer
Active member
First I agree time on a forum doesn't count. The only experience that is relevant to keeping long term successful reef tanks is keeping long term successful reef tanks.
But, Yes I'm an asshat, and a noob now. This is how we go about having civil discussions and productive conversations. Throw out insults, personal attacks and use perceived "experience" as to infer that all others opinions and experience are mute.
Clearly we don't agree on fundamental things like the word "thriving". To me, a thriving reef has to be PROVEN a long term success, not a month not a couple months. If you're tank is crashing after a couple months. It's not thriving. End of story. I don't have to wait a few years to tell you that something doesn't work when it's crashing in the first couple months and I've done the same thing, and had the EXACT same results (all be it different trigger points).
1 Rock, some sand, small skimmer. Regular water changes high watt halide, sps = My tank of death. To much, to fast. 2004. Bacteria bloom, algae bloom.. all dead.
I could sit here and bash everybody back, point out flaws, inaccuracies, and things that have been said that have no bearing on the subject at hand. But what would be the point of that? What would that solve? Also there are just way to many responses for me to keep up with at this point in time, so I will just say this.
You want to listen to us, you don't want to listen to us. There are all these claims being thrown around how everybody knows more then everybody else and we should all just sit back and listen to somebody because they are a perceived expert in the field, but to me the proof is in the pudding. I'm not claiming to be an expert myself by any means I've probably crashed more tanks then most of you over the years. With that said however when I post online, ask for help and people are willing to give me there time I appreciate it and I respect them for it. I don't care who you are, what degrees you have, if you were the first person to do something. If it's not directly related to what you are trying to do now it doesn't matter. Personally I'd take the advice and suggestions from a guy like SunnyX, Copps, NVTE, Greg Carrol, or many of the people whom have tanks that I admire and respect over that of an "expert", "long timer". What these guys have achieved are only theorized by the likes of the experts in the field.
Having knowledge does not equate to the direct ability to apply said knowledge.
Either way in the end, I'm here for one only one reason. My Enjoyment. I enjoy the hobby, I enjoy the community, I enjoy the conversation, and I enjoy the wealth of knowledge and experience that others are willing to share with me here. I mean no ill will towards any member, and I wish you and your tank long term success.
-B
But, Yes I'm an asshat, and a noob now. This is how we go about having civil discussions and productive conversations. Throw out insults, personal attacks and use perceived "experience" as to infer that all others opinions and experience are mute.
Clearly we don't agree on fundamental things like the word "thriving". To me, a thriving reef has to be PROVEN a long term success, not a month not a couple months. If you're tank is crashing after a couple months. It's not thriving. End of story. I don't have to wait a few years to tell you that something doesn't work when it's crashing in the first couple months and I've done the same thing, and had the EXACT same results (all be it different trigger points).
1 Rock, some sand, small skimmer. Regular water changes high watt halide, sps = My tank of death. To much, to fast. 2004. Bacteria bloom, algae bloom.. all dead.
I could sit here and bash everybody back, point out flaws, inaccuracies, and things that have been said that have no bearing on the subject at hand. But what would be the point of that? What would that solve? Also there are just way to many responses for me to keep up with at this point in time, so I will just say this.
You want to listen to us, you don't want to listen to us. There are all these claims being thrown around how everybody knows more then everybody else and we should all just sit back and listen to somebody because they are a perceived expert in the field, but to me the proof is in the pudding. I'm not claiming to be an expert myself by any means I've probably crashed more tanks then most of you over the years. With that said however when I post online, ask for help and people are willing to give me there time I appreciate it and I respect them for it. I don't care who you are, what degrees you have, if you were the first person to do something. If it's not directly related to what you are trying to do now it doesn't matter. Personally I'd take the advice and suggestions from a guy like SunnyX, Copps, NVTE, Greg Carrol, or many of the people whom have tanks that I admire and respect over that of an "expert", "long timer". What these guys have achieved are only theorized by the likes of the experts in the field.
Having knowledge does not equate to the direct ability to apply said knowledge.
Either way in the end, I'm here for one only one reason. My Enjoyment. I enjoy the hobby, I enjoy the community, I enjoy the conversation, and I enjoy the wealth of knowledge and experience that others are willing to share with me here. I mean no ill will towards any member, and I wish you and your tank long term success.
-B
