eBay fan arrived today, just in time too my tank was hitting pretty high temp of 83. Way to high for comfort. I don’t run a heater I have not for about 6 years. My pumps do that job more than well. I monitor the temps and my set up always stays about 10 degrees higher than the room.
I don’t test for much other than the basics and do water changes pretty much instead of testing.
I do have a weird brown residue from my ro water or saltmix, that builds up mostly on the overflow, I have seen it in my mixing tub if I leave the hose in there. Iv added a ton of new plastic in the past few weeks for a tank this old. It might be diatoms but pretty dark, almost looks more like a redslime but blackish, dark brown. It wipes off easy enough if you hit daily. My friend who has a amazing clean tank says it’s the salt mix. LFS says it’s my RO source water. It could be both even lol.
I’m going to try to half and half with my salt mix plus Aqua forest, I’m not trying to go ULN but hopefully the aqua forest half mix will produce less of this brown stuff.
Other than the residue I get good results for only having my tank set up for reef for 2? years, it was not easy converting from a FOLWR tank, the sand and rocks were just making things impossible. I had to take all the sand I could out and remove about half the rocks as you can see in the pics. Over the years the idea of not moving rocks and not going into the tank has proven less effective than being hands on. Removing every rock with out coral on it to clean every inch of the tank possible is the best way to truly keep the tank closer to reef quality water than not for me.
I’m also finding less is more when it comes to rocks. Tanks have a certain cool “old school” look when they are filled to the top with rocks , and are pretty stable for a while, but then the algae builds up on/in the glass( becomes one lol) and the huge structure is now an impairment, also dropping a frag into the deep unreachable abyss you created with your rock work sucks. I would some times just say- oh well Davy Jones has my montipora frag now, “to the locker with you” and forget it. Now with less rocks I can drop something and not cry about it. Being able to reach the corners of my 26 inch deep tank is nice. I wish my tank was not acrylic over the starfire star view? Glass, not that the glass isn’t clear, it’s clear but there is some distorting of the view going on if you are looking at the from anywhere but tank straight ahead, also it’s insane heavy.
My old tank before this was a 120 tall that was another as tall as this tank, I really love tall tanks, or tanks with tall stands so I can see the fish and coral with out bending over. They are a pain in the butt though for real lol. Cleaning the glass, flow , and lighting are all kinda a nightmare hehe.
Any way since I installed the fan and wrote this my tank temps have dropped 3 degrees, I’m hoping I can get it down to 77 if not I guess I’ll get a fan for the sump.
I should say I’m loving my prime HD16s for little lights they are impressive, I have three and I’m hard on lights I get water on them and so on, the primes seem to be able to take my abuse. I do feel I’m not getting MH levels of growth at the bottom of my tank but my corals are growing and looking nice, my huge pink rose bubble nem now bubbles up at certain points vs being a giant spaghetti monster all the time. That’s partly flow but ramming him with whites and then the blues separately for sure is key. The side of the tank portioned for my montiporas could use more light than what the kessil and prime hd put out.
I’m debating a XR15 g5, or just letting it be and buy like $300-400 worth more of hammer corals to build a wall for the nems. The little yellow hammer frag is enough to keep them off that rock lol. The forest fire montipora grows like a weed the only reason it’s not 3/4 up the tank is I routinely smash it some how or lawn mower the sps side with a pump when I hit the magnet or some foolish mistake I just can’t not stop doing lol. Oh well I have tons and tons of frags to trade to my LFS.
I’m done with fish, I have my 6 year old purple tang and paired clowns, one goby, and 5 damsels, all hardy easy fish I don’t have to worry about other than buying a mixed variety of food. These fish probably appear “basic” or “noob” to some but to me they are prefect salt water fish. The damsels peck at everything floating in the water, the tang picks at the green if there is any. The clowns tend the nems and push them down them down when the nems try to walk.
