45G Mixed Reef - 1 Year Anniversary

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terraincognita

terraincognita

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Been awhile. Been super busy with life and work.

just cleaned it up a little, doing a WC later.

blenny and smallest clown went MIA and I’m sure CUC got em.

wish I knew what happened, hopefully I don’t have some unknown predator.

I don’t think my pistol shrimp would’ve gotten them but idk.

gotta get another blenny now.

moved my lone clown from my 10G to bond with my now lone in the 45.


they linked up quick and both are being hosted by the nem at night.

now I gotta clean my 10g .... yikes

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Oh my freaking gosh.


Life sucks.

On January 12th

I sprained my ankle really really bad, my doctor said I was about 20lbs of pressure away from a break.

I thought I could skateboard as well as I could when I was 15....

Note to self if you're 30 years old stay out of the skate park.

Slipped on a quarter pipe, and came crashing down on my left ankle.... just remember the sound of the pop and warm nausea feeling makes me tremble....

I was basically bed-ridden with it propped up for 5 weeks.

-------------------

My wife also 7 months pregnant, unfortunately wasn't about to lift around any 40Lb water jugs. Nor did I want her to.

My doser went on the fritz and stopped working....

And my tank went to all hell.

After the 3rd week I could finally walk with crutches.... but everything just started going to hell, STN started setting in on my LPS and SPS. I was having my wife feed frozen every 3 days so I wouldn't over load the system with nutrients, but that ended up being just as bad.

No water changes, just ATO going, I lost my BTA, Carpet Nem, Hammer, all my SPS, bar my birds nest and Stylo, my Mystery wrasse jumped ship again.... and I didn't catch him this time.

And then I just got the Reef Blues..... I kind of let things slide even more and just got sadder and sadder.....

6 weeks later I had to MOVE the tank! OMG. This is really when I almost just threw the towel in, but my Wife actually said she would be super sad if I did.

Had to move it to make room for my baby coming in 5 weeks :D
----
So , ankle still hurting, I emptied it bar 10G, took all the rock out, put it in some buckets with salt, and shoved the tank on stand 2 feet at a time out the room and across a hallway.

Couldn't handle a re-scape so just threw the rocks back in any old way.

Had to let my sandbed bomb take it's course, I wasn't willing or really able to take the hours/days to rinse it take it out and rinse it all. Lost a Favia and Acans due to the nutrient spikes.

Found my blenny in the back chamber and added him back to the DT, He'd been living there for a couple months I guess. Unfortunately 2 days later he was dead in the powerhead.... not sure if he died first or commited suicide.... but that was more insult to injury.

Did about 30G of water changes over 4 days, and let things start to stabilize out again.

Really wasn't sure what to do, but last weekend bit the bullet and just got on with it.

-----

Last weekend - 2 months since sprain- I re-scaped it and did 20G of water changes. Finally got all my params back in check, and went to make my first purchase in what felt like forever. Nice little Urchin :D.

That got me re pumped and enthused and away we went.

Ankles almost completely better now, lifting anything over 80Lbs, or going into weird positions, still gives pain, but I'm basically good to go again.

So here's where we stand now:

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Picked up 8 new frags and away we go back to getting things running.
 
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Also I took the doser down until I can get it replaced. Doing 5G W/C's every 2-3 days now with some manual alk dosing. Also need to use up most the rest of my 5G Bucket of Red Sea Coral Pro! Spent a pretty penny on it.

Keeps me more in touch and in-tune with it than just "hoping my dosers working" lollll.

Still hoping to go no WC's with it though in the next few months, sure my hands will be full with Baby.
 

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Also I took the doser down until I can get it replaced. Doing 5G W/C's every 2-3 days now with some manual alk dosing. Also need to use up most the rest of my 5G Bucket of Red Sea Coral Pro! Spent a pretty penny on it.

Keeps me more in touch and in-tune with it than just "hoping my dosers working" lollll.

Still hoping to go no WC's with it though in the next few months, sure my hands will be full with Baby.
The baby will definitely take up your time.

Over the past few months we went to every 3 days doing a small WC and things have taken off.

I hope it helps and gets you back to where you want to be :)
 
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The baby will definitely take up your time.

Over the past few months we went to every 3 days doing a small WC and things have taken off.

I hope it helps and gets you back to where you want to be :)
Yes! thank god my wife was a nanny for 8 Years! :D

Congratulations on your beautiful Grandchild!

I was thinking of keeping up WC even with Dosing, just to keep it easier and not so stressful about constantly checking parameters.

But I need to do a lot more studies on the redundancy and effects of WC's vs just dosing etc.
 
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Params finally back in the "perfect range"


Salt - 1.025
Cal - 440-460
Mag - 1380-1400
Alk - 9.2
Nitrates - 15
Phos - 0.09

Gonna spend the next week examining Alk Consumption :).

Happy Monday! Happy Reefing!
 
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3/28 Sunday Alk - 4:00PM - 9.3

3/29 Monday Alk - 10:00AM - 9.2

3/30 Tuesday Alk - 10:00AM 9.1

3/31 Weds Alk - 10:00AM 8.9

4/1 Thursday Alk - 10:00AM 8.6

4/2 Friday Alk - 10:00AM 8.2

4/3 Saturday Alk 10:00AM ?

4/4 Sunday Alk - 10:00 AM ?


So far super low consumption :-(

Been feeding double my normal and carbon dosing.

Wonder why so low, guess things are just stabilizing before grow phase. Only time will tell.


Edit: 4/1 Funny that it's steadily increasing.

Edit: 4/2 Wow, it's literally increasing by .1 every day lol funny.

depending on how much it goes down tomorrow I may forgo sunday and just start dosing .5 a day and see where it gets me.

We'll see.
 
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Long story short I had my first born.

Life went to hell, and unfortunately so did my tank, this AIO has required so much TLC to be stable it's frustrating. I was trying to transfer and switch over everything over to a 75G but the seam busted after I got it up and filled 2 weeks later .... :(:(:(

So I decided to just put energy back into this guy to make it lower maintenance.

I finally got my dosing system back up and running, changed over to a 15G ATO reservoir instead of 5G and I think now we're back in action.

MY Baby boy loves my tank as well, He's 3 months and teething early. Is a big boy! was born 9lbs 1oz, and now he's 17.5! :O

So it's hard to hold him in front of the tank for more than twenty minutes or so, but we both love it! It's one of only 3-4 things that make him stop crying from teething instantly :).

Here's some updates, tanks a little dirty just cleaned the glass.

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