lespaul339
Reefer
So last October I upgraded from a 3 year old 55 gallon reef to a 150 gallon tank (200 gallon system with sump). Did a dry rock cycle this time around. Had been dealing with severe GHA outbreak since tank cycled. Rocks leached phosphates and were 80% covered in GHA. GFO wouldn't touch it. I tried Algae Fix and lost over half of my corals. All my acans and hammer corals died off. It's supposed to be reef safe but in my experience it was not. Parameters were fine the whole time. Kept my CAL, ALK, and MAG parameters in check with BRS two part dosing and Salifert test kits to test with. Nitrates ran a little high at 20 ppm and phosphates at .25 ppm. So high but not enough to kill off corals. But high enough to worry about. Only thing I can pinpoint is Algae Fix. My opinion from experience is even though something might be labeled reef safe, I would still approach it with a level of caution.
Then in early June I introduced an invert clean up crew and got ich from them. My previous tank had been ich free since I set it up almost 3 years ago. I follow a strict QT regimen with fish, but never QT'd inverts before. I know the chances are very minimal getting it from a clean up crew, but I'm here to tell you it can happen. I will never make the mistake of just adding inverts to my tank again without QT'ing them.
So, I moved all fish into a QT tank to let display be fallow and ran hypo for 2 months in QT. Lost half my fish including my beloved yellow tang that I've had since the beginning. Hypo just wasn't work for me (yes I used a refractometer and had water at 1.008), so I decided to do bring salinity back up and do copper treatment instead. Copper treatment is working great. I am a little over 2 weeks in and already see a huge improvement in my fish. Plan on running copper for 6 total weeks before I introduce fish back into my DT. If all goes well, I will have fish back in my tank around the second week of October. I haven't had fish in my display since July 1st. So I am really looking forward to seeing fish again soon!
So since my DT tank was sitting fallow I decided to use the time to get my GHA problem nipped in the but. Not hard since there is nothing putting nitrates into the water anymore. Did water changes, manually removed GHA and scrubbed rocks with a toothbrush. I've ran GFO in my tank the whole time since January and it never made a dent in the stuff. I'm proud to say that I've finally succeeded. Got my nitrates and phosphates down to nothing. Algae is dying off. Tank water is testing great. Corals that are in there are looking great! Things are finally starting to turn around for me.
I'm just sharing my story because it seemed like I got hit with everything all at once. It definitely broke my heart to see my tank go to crap and suffer losses considering all the time and money I spent trying to do everything right, and I still got hit with problem after problem. And I am not an inexperienced reefer, so that made it even more frustrating. I was determined not to give up even though sometimes I felt like I was fighting a losing battle. This hobby has tested my patience like no other. Sometimes you're going to feel like giving up. But if you take your time, do things right, and just try to have a little patience you can get through it. And when your tank turns around and things start bouncing back it's a great feeling of accomplishment. You're going to suffer some losses, things aren't going to go as planned, and you're going to be forced to deal with problems that arise. But if you have patience and determination and take your time it's nothing you can't get through.
Then in early June I introduced an invert clean up crew and got ich from them. My previous tank had been ich free since I set it up almost 3 years ago. I follow a strict QT regimen with fish, but never QT'd inverts before. I know the chances are very minimal getting it from a clean up crew, but I'm here to tell you it can happen. I will never make the mistake of just adding inverts to my tank again without QT'ing them.
So, I moved all fish into a QT tank to let display be fallow and ran hypo for 2 months in QT. Lost half my fish including my beloved yellow tang that I've had since the beginning. Hypo just wasn't work for me (yes I used a refractometer and had water at 1.008), so I decided to do bring salinity back up and do copper treatment instead. Copper treatment is working great. I am a little over 2 weeks in and already see a huge improvement in my fish. Plan on running copper for 6 total weeks before I introduce fish back into my DT. If all goes well, I will have fish back in my tank around the second week of October. I haven't had fish in my display since July 1st. So I am really looking forward to seeing fish again soon!
So since my DT tank was sitting fallow I decided to use the time to get my GHA problem nipped in the but. Not hard since there is nothing putting nitrates into the water anymore. Did water changes, manually removed GHA and scrubbed rocks with a toothbrush. I've ran GFO in my tank the whole time since January and it never made a dent in the stuff. I'm proud to say that I've finally succeeded. Got my nitrates and phosphates down to nothing. Algae is dying off. Tank water is testing great. Corals that are in there are looking great! Things are finally starting to turn around for me.
I'm just sharing my story because it seemed like I got hit with everything all at once. It definitely broke my heart to see my tank go to crap and suffer losses considering all the time and money I spent trying to do everything right, and I still got hit with problem after problem. And I am not an inexperienced reefer, so that made it even more frustrating. I was determined not to give up even though sometimes I felt like I was fighting a losing battle. This hobby has tested my patience like no other. Sometimes you're going to feel like giving up. But if you take your time, do things right, and just try to have a little patience you can get through it. And when your tank turns around and things start bouncing back it's a great feeling of accomplishment. You're going to suffer some losses, things aren't going to go as planned, and you're going to be forced to deal with problems that arise. But if you have patience and determination and take your time it's nothing you can't get through.
