The story of my first reef tank. It started as a 10g cube, moved to a different 10g, then a 20g, and then a couple months ago, the biggest I can probably do in this apartment, a 29g.
From the beginning I tried to do this as easy as possible. No skimmer, no sump, low budget lighting.
This is how it started July 2022:
After a month:
And the tank as of today:
(Yes, that's lava rock)
There's been lots of ups and downs so far. Most recently I finally beat a long battle against dinos, after installing a dosing pump to finally stop having to dose AFR and nutrients manually every single day. Before the pump I often forgot to dose, dosed wildly inconsistently, and bottomed out my nutrients incredibly quickly, mainly because of the macroalgae I'm sure. The dinos loved that. Now, with proper nutrient levels other microalgae outcompeted them, I'd guess.
My current lighting is 2x PopBloom Shannon16, and a single Nicrew SlimLED W+B. Probably could have bought a "proper" light for a similar price, but eh. It works for now.
From the beginning I tried to do this as easy as possible. No skimmer, no sump, low budget lighting.
This is how it started July 2022:
After a month:
And the tank as of today:
(Yes, that's lava rock)
There's been lots of ups and downs so far. Most recently I finally beat a long battle against dinos, after installing a dosing pump to finally stop having to dose AFR and nutrients manually every single day. Before the pump I often forgot to dose, dosed wildly inconsistently, and bottomed out my nutrients incredibly quickly, mainly because of the macroalgae I'm sure. The dinos loved that. Now, with proper nutrient levels other microalgae outcompeted them, I'd guess.
My current lighting is 2x PopBloom Shannon16, and a single Nicrew SlimLED W+B. Probably could have bought a "proper" light for a similar price, but eh. It works for now.