2500L past, present and …….future?

[Haydn]

Come on man we need the next installment! At least let us know ow frequently you plan to post/update!

My apologies- putting these posts together does take some time, I need to be able to sit in front of the PC quietly to put it together so the 'story' works. Unfortunately real life gets in the way I promise I'll try not to leave it too long.

 

[Haydn]

The disaster wasn't the tank it was me! On the 27th November 2009 my world fell apart, I had a major heart attack, I spent 4 days in a coma, suffice to say if it hadn't had been for the skill of the medics the tank thread would have ended here. After I got out of hospital I was a complete wreak, they prepare you for the physical changes but not the mental ones. I just couldn't be bothered with anything let alone the tank My wife, bless her, did her best but she was more worried about me than my fish. When I got out of hospital I couldn't take care of it so for 2 months it was ignored with my wife feeding the fish daily. The front glass wasn't even cleaned, I lost my pair of emperors and lots of other fish, I lost some of my big SPS colonies, it was covered in cyno, the CO2 had run out, the PO4 media was shot, and my Tunze streams were bunged up, in fact it was a mess. The readings were all over the place.

At the end of January 2010 my wife just said 'What the **** are you going to do about your tank?' (I think it's the first and last time I have ever heard her swear) I said phone the LFS and get them to strip it out. She said 'Oh no you have a responsibility to your fish, get your butt in gear and sort it!'

It was just what I needed. I did 3x 100gall water changes in 2 weeks, cleaned the tank and equipment (all with my wife's help), changed the media and watched the readings almost daily. It about killed me!

Slowly the tank started to look better, and TBH so did I. The SPS started re-growing. My wife (as a reward) took me to the LFS where I bought some new fish-28 Chromis of 3 species.

The tank started to look busy

One coral that didn't suffer this colony is over 2' 6" high

This is still one of my all time favorite pictures

This is a couple of months after I started to rebuild the Chromis make it look like a proper reef

The cloud is made up of 14 green Chromis, 15 BlackTailed Chromis (C.Nigrura), 15 half and half Chromis (C.Iomelas) and 10 yellowtailed Damioselles (Neopomacentrus azysron)


I found this on youtube



From 6 October 2010 not HD but it give you a flavor of the tank.

That will do for now, thanks for sticking with it.

 

[Haydn]

I'm sorry my last post ended rather abruptly but even after 10 years I find it's still hard and emotional to talk about that time in my life.

 

[Smarkow]

The disaster wasn't the tank it was me! On the 27th November 2009 my world fell apart, I had a major heart attack, I spent 4 days in a coma, suffice to say if it hadn't had been for the skill of the medics the tank thread would have ended here. After I got out of hospital I was a complete wreak, they prepare you for the physical changes but not the mental ones. I just couldn't be bothered with anything let alone the tank My wife, bless her, did her best but she was more worried about me than my fish. When I got out of hospital I couldn't take care of it so for 2 months it was ignored with my wife feeding the fish daily. The front glass wasn't even cleaned, I lost my pair of emperors and lots of other fish, I lost some of my big SPS colonies, it was covered in cyno, the CO2 had run out, the PO4 media was shot, and my Tunze streams were bunged up, in fact it was a mess. The readings were all over the place.

At the end of January 2010 my wife just said 'What the **** are you going to do about your tank?' (I think it's the first and last time I have ever heard her swear) I said phone the LFS and get them to strip it out. She said 'Oh no you have a responsibility to your fish, get your butt in gear and sort it!'

It was just what I needed. I did 3x 100gall water changes in 2 weeks, cleaned the tank and equipment (all with my wife's help), changed the media and watched the readings almost daily. It about killed me!

Slowly the tank started to look better, and TBH so did I. The SPS started re-growing. My wife (as a reward) took me to the LFS where I bought some new fish-28 Chromis of 3 species.

The tank started to look busy

One coral that didn't suffer this colony is over 2' 6" high

This is still one of my all time favorite pictures

This is a couple of months after I started to rebuild the Chromis make it look like a proper reef

The cloud is made up of 14 green Chromis, 15 BlackTailed Chromis (C.Nigrura), 15 half and half Chromis (C.Iomelas) and 10 yellowtailed Damioselles (Neopomacentrus azysron)


I found this on youtube



From 6 October 2010 not HD but it give you a flavor of the tank.

That will do for now, thanks for sticking with it.

Glad to hear you recovered so well!

The video really does add a sense of scale and depth. And the movement - so much closer to a real reef than most of what we get to experience. I really like these canyon style tanks for the larger builds.

 

[Mark]

I'm sorry my last post ended rather abruptly but even after 10 years I find it's still hard and emotional to talk about that time in my life.

Thank you for sharing, that was surely a tough and scary time. Looking forward to hearing the rest of the reef journey. Your tank is very close to what I dream of doing one day, with a display refugium and sheer volume.

 

[Haydn]

To carry on the story- here are some photos from November 2010 a year after my 'event'

i think this period was the heyday of the tank I have to admit it looked stunning and for once I was happy with it.
But can you spot the disaster waiting to happen?

Yep the fire coral it started growing like mad- bear in mind the tank is 3' deep and 6' across

It was stripping out the calcium faster than I (my calcium reactor) could produce it to the detriment of my other SPS. Added to that the Fire Coral was waging chemical warfare on the surrounding corals causing them to strip. The picture above is from August 2012.

TBH I was at a loss to know what to do, leave the Fire coral (I couldn't get it out without stripping the tank), strip the tank or just leave the tank to become a monoculture and concentrate on fish.

I added some new stock
A trio of these

12 Bartletts Anthias

They looked stunning swimming with the Chromis

5 Peacock Wrasse one eventually became a male. I have to admit he was a stunner

Then my next mistake in 2014 I added a 4" PBT over the next couple of years it grew into a 7" monster- the family named it Psycho- it hunted down and killed 12 Green Chromis, a 6" Queen Angel. It terrorised the tank! the Fire Coral continued to grow. The tank limped along till January 2016 but I was never happy with it, which meant I just did the minimum maintenance.

There were dark mutterings about the power bills from the wife (again) and I lost my beloved Regal Angel after 12 years so the decision was taken to update.

But that's for the next part

 

[Haydn]

This part will bring me up to date.

The tank I'm ashamed to say was looking dreadful, the fire coral and majano's were taking over. Psycho was stopping me adding any fish to the system, the blinking thing attacked everything including my hands if I put them in the tank. My wife was looking at the power bills and tutting.

Time to update- I thought what I wanted to do with this incarnation, I was TBH jaded with managing Phosphate/nitrate/calcium/KH, worrying about corals stripping and all the other stuff you need to do to manage a reef. So I decided to go back to what I liked- Fish! I would go fish only, but to make it interesting I would make a some rules, only add fish as pairs or groups, and no tangs. I thought about when I dived, the area with the biggest combinations of groups were the current swept reef crests.

Out went 1.6KW of halide, replaced by hydra 52 HDs. The 150W halide sump/pond light replaced with 30W of LED bulbs.

A Vectra L1 sump return pump replaced the power hungry Sequence and being a DC pump it will give me better control of the flow through the sump. A small Jebao DC 1200 was plumbed into the other sump outlet for a bigger phosphate reactor. A 1M high reactor tube full of Siporax was added for extra biological filtration.

4x Jabao 20,000L wavemakers to provide the current over the crest.

Then a strange thing happened I got a phone call from a friend, someone he knew was starting a new big system and wanted to buy all my stock! He came round, made me an offer for the fish (I did explain about Psycho) and for any LR with coral life on it. He also said he would help strip the tank down. On the day we netted the fish and put them into a 100Gall tub - Psycho immediately attacked my 10" rabbit fish who retaliated with its spines, Psycho got spiked and died a couple of days later.

For the first time since I started the tank I was in uncharted territory, I have never started with a totally clean slate, I have always had some stock to move over. Except for a couple of 6" gorgonian frags and a 3" heliopora chunk, I have had these corals for 40 years in various tanks, I had no livestock to transfer.

The remaining LR was sterilised ready for the rebuild. I wanted a lot of swimming space above and round the rock work so I needed a lowish scape but I also needed lots of nooks and crannies for the fish to hide and sleep. With my wife's help i came up with this.

Top down

There is about 200K of rock in there.
And set the RO unit going.

 

[Smarkow]

Wow a lot to unpack there. Sounds fortunate to have found a local guy willing to take on that project and give you a hand. What is with PBTs I will never know.

Looking forward to seeing those rocks get WET!

 

[SMSREEF]

What a fantastic journey. I’m so glad the medics and hospital staff pulled you through. And also glad that you never lost the reef bug.
your wife sounds like an amazing reefing partner too!

 

[Haydn]

What a fantastic journey. I’m so glad the medics and hospital staff pulled you through. And also glad that you never lost the reef bug.
your wife sounds like an amazing reefing partner too!

My wife swears she hates the tank but she is the one who reminds me to feed them, clean the skimmer cup and always notices if something is amiss.

 

[FishTruck]

Your tank circa 2007 reminds me of this Ed Moran painting "The valley of the sea". The browns and yellows that mix in are really quite beautiful - and it wouldn't be the same if was all fancy bright neon zeos!

 

[Haydn]

OOPs I forgot this (put it down to a senior moment) I must get round to getting it up to date. Anyway here's a quick video I took last evening

 

[Smarkow]

OOPs I forgot this (put it down to a senior moment) I must get round to getting it up to date. Anyway here's a quick video I took last evening

Gorgeous. Do I see yellow fusiliers?

 

[Haydn]

Gorgeous. Do I see yellow fusiliers?

No there are some Evensii anthias in there which look similar.

 

[DxMarinefish]

Just finished reading this facinating journey.

Looks like Psycho finally got its due..had it coming.

New tank looks good and hope it continues to go well.

 

[jpnegrete14]

amazing journey indeed. thanks for sharing. hope you are doing well.

 

[Gumbies R Us]

Any updates?