So its less than a month old on the current setup? How did you get all that in there without the normal cycling times...I may be misreading. did you ever make a build thread with pics or vid of the new setup
After reading this thread yesterday.. and then reading your two replies to my posts.. ??
Let me expound..
I had a very beautiful tank for years. Almost daily visible growth on my corals. Happy fish. In Jan. '09 we had an ice storm that took our power out, and more importantly, the power to every gas station for counties around me. My genny kept the tank up and safe for 4 days, about 10x longer than any power outage we had ever dealt with. Unfortunately, the power was out for 4 days after that. And I was out of gas.
I lost everything, some inverts and fish had been in the tank 15 years or more. It hurt, a lot. Every other tank I had fragged to, all the people locally.. even tanks 100+ miles away.. same fate. At least 3/4's of the reefers in our area just quit, will never restart. I agonized for 3 1/2 years. Finally decided it was time to cut the plumbing or add water. So my tank is cycling now. Will start adding live stock in mid Oct. I think.
The point of my first post in this thread was that the amount of info and science available now is outstanding, compared to the LAST time I started a tank from scratch. ('87)
BTW, my nitrates were in no way out of control when I removed my wet/dry chamber. I just did it because I hadn't tried anything new with the tank in a long time I guess. My results were that what nitrates I did see.. I didn't see after.
I ran my 200 with a wet/dry from 1999 to 2010 and when I sold it to move everything into a 300 my nitrates where at less than 5ppm. All I did was change the filter pad every 2 to 3 weeks and water changes. I was amazed at what was growing in the bottom of the bio balls. I have seen a friends tank who had liverock in his sump and after two years could not get his nitates below 30 to save his life, he did not have any type of prefilter before the rock and junk just built up in there. Maintenance is the key to any aquarium, too many times we blame issues on something mechanical. One thing I have learned with having several tanks, nothing is ever the same. What works for this tank, may not always work for another. I guess that is why this post has lasted 7 pages?
Yep, every tank is different every level of husbandry different, etc. We have a lot of friends in the art world.. many of them have funny.. "brains".. Several wanted to do tanks after being exposed to our tank, but most couldn't deal with it because, no lie, there wasn't "one answer". Such things as DSB vs Shallow, skim.. don't skim.. etc Most could not deal with the idea that there wasn't just a buy this this this and this, feed this like this, and all will be well. Don't even get me started with trying to deal with them after they had walked into one of the (then) half dozen LFS, and get told conflicting info from every one of them..
I work with wood stoves now, and we have a saying.. every install is different. And it's so true it's scary. Last year we put in two stoves exact same model, exact same chimney, houses are in a subdivision, same floor plan, etc. Couple blocks apart. A picture of one is a picture of the other. One runs great. One.. not so much. Some of it is operator error, but honestly, 1 just runs better than the other. I think reef tanks are the same.
