1K Reef.... Miracles custom 1000 gallon aquarium 120”x60”x30”

[907_Reefer]

Caught up, loving this tank, following along. Awesome setup my friend

Reefing was much easier for me with real premium live rock from Fiji with all the pest and die off. T’5 and Metal halides, my cycle was less than 60 days. Ahhh the good old days..

You aren't kidding.. I had a setup with real Fiji live rock under T5s only, back in 2012-ish. Good old rocks of past. ~14 months old here, with a noobie at the helm:

Pardon the photo bomb. Loving the chromis / anthia schools, small fish in big tanks are underrated

Carry on..

 

[748S911]

I added about 100lbs of established LR to my sump and truthfully i think my tank was acro ready in 6 months. I say that because my SPS did well for the first few months and then everything starting going south. I discovered that I overdid the garlic in my food to deal with ich, and whatever was not digested was falling to the bottom and rockwork (white specks on waste), It took me a month to find out what was going on but the 10 garlic cloves mixed me maybe 6lbs home made frozen causing major issues. After that I decided having an achilles and powder blue, feeding them 8 times per day (heavy and fresh seafood) is the only way to deal with fish parasites. Once they are stressed and their immune system is compromised its a rap, so i told myself saving the fish was first and I should be able to deal with nutrients later with water changes - however, this wont work in larger systems! It will work for dealing with Phosphates, which is easily stripped, but NO3 takes a long time when its get out of hand like mine.

Since you started with the fake rock you will for sure have a better experience dealing with lower nutrients but you will have challenges with lack of bio-diversity. You will need to source at least a little bit of clean LR thats filled with sponges. People say it can take 1-2 years without adding seed LR but thats only if your adding big chucks of LPS base. Someone like me who is re-fragging only living tissues could never get bio-diversity by adding small frags alone.

The crappy part is I have been trying to cut back on my feeding and in almost 18 months my achilles has not had any spots until today, so I am kind of in a battle where I can not reduce feeding by much. I am considering getting rid of my Orange shoulder tang, which grew to 9" in 1 year. I have 2 large urchins and they are great, they poop a lot, the 10 turbos I got when they where 1.5"-2" and now some of them are close to 4". these inverts waste unlike the fishes does not end up in the overflow, it is dense and ends up in the patches at the bottom or the rockwork so that is probably leading to the nutrient issues. I want to get rid of some but worried I will not be able to replace them if I expand my systems or a few perish so trying my best to deal with Nitrates before having to get rid of these animals, which to me are irreplaceable. I may set up a separate tank for the snails but don't think they will survive long and I am not trying to feed them a sheet of nori per day.

Sounds like a good plan to add some seeded LR to my system, I looking to add 40lbs or so, hopefully I can get some LR from a local shop in the future and I need about an 80 lbs of sand to cover bottom evenly.

Tuff spot your in, getting rid of the larger tang will help and then maybe aggression and ich issues go away. Then you can feed maybe 3x daily to drop N03. (If you do get rid of the orange shoulder I have room for it.)

Don’t know much about snails, but they sound like they are huge.

How do you like the air exchange system? we have similar weather, and I’ve heard mixed reviews about it because of our hot and humid summers.

I dose/topoff with kalkwasser to reach 8.3 ph daily 8.2-8.3 avg.

 

[Ashish Patel]

Sounds like a good plan to add some seeded LR to my system, I looking to add 40lbs or so, hopefully I can get some LR from a local shop in the future and I need about an 80 lbs of sand to cover bottom evenly.

Tuff spot your in, getting rid of the larger tang will help and then maybe aggression and ich issues go away. Then you can feed maybe 3x daily to drop N03. (If you do get rid of the orange shoulder I have room for it.)

Don’t know much about snails, but they sound like they are huge.

How do you like the air exchange system? we have similar weather, and I’ve heard mixed reviews about it because of our hot and humid summers.

I dose/topoff with kalkwasser to reach 8.3 ph daily 8.2-8.3 avg.

The air exchanger keeps the basement air quality very good, almost feels like your breathing outside clean air. However, I messed up on installing it too close to the dryer exhaust (6feet away) so can only run it during the night time for 8 hours. I also messed up by installing it right below where my wife sits in the living room so she is constantly telling me to turn it off. I think women are really annoying about sounds and smells bc I can barely hear it. It boosts my PH by .10 points daily. When I ran it 24/7 the boost was double. I am thinking about eventually just installing my air exchanger to the first floor house forced air system. I think having fresh air inside the house will boost PH in my system but also be better for our air quality. I also felt my humidity was easier to maintain vs the previous year so highly recommend. Right now my PH does not drop below 8.0 but highest i get is 8.19. I know it will rise as I dose more Kalk but right now dosing 10000ml of Kalk/day.

 

[748S911]

I just pre ordered 2 Meridians from Reefbreeders gonna give them a try. The main selling point is that I can daisy chain them together and use only one power source. Right now im using 30 outlets to run my lights. Plus im saving money going this route.