75g Build “Ballin on a Budget”

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My tank is a 5 months old upgrade from a 40 gallon established tank that I struggled to keep stable. I figured more water would help me so I built a 75g with 30g sump that holds about 25g water. Super low budget build here. I got my tank from petco when they have their dollar per gallon aquarium sale, and built my stand with old lumber laying around my house. It’s got an eshopps hob overflow with miscellaneous brand pumps and power heads.

 

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Livestock!!!

 

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My refugium. I recently stopped skimming and dosing NoPox as my nitrates bottomed out and phosphates were low. I’m gonna test like crazy to see if anything changes. If I have a drastic rebound in nutrients I’ll end up going back to plan A and tweak my dosage. I was curious to see if my chaeto can be my sole export besides water changes.

 

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Livestock plus new coral

 

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I love taking pictures of this tank even though it’s still young.

 

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Update: I had been dosing Red Sea ABC+ as I've been having difficulty getting my parameters stable. I attributed this difficulty to my tank still being young. I upgraded my skimmer from a corallife 65 to a Reef Octopus classic 150 int. This upgrade required me to take my chaeto out due to space concerns so I don't really have a refugium anymore. I have stopped dosing at this time to see if an oversized skimmer would be sufficient along with weekly 10 gallon water changes. Some corals (mushrooms, palys, gsp) seem to be thriving since the changes. I hope that this upgrade in filtration helps with the stability of my tank. Livestock at this time is a Melanurus Wrasse, Foxface, Sailfin Tang, 2 Green Chromis, 2 Randalls Prawn Gobies paired with their own pistol shrimps. My cleanup crew consists of a cleaner shrimp, coral banded shrimp, peppermint shrimp, a few emerald crabs, various snails, red tip hermit crabs, and 6 large hermit crabs.

 

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I've had to take some of my large hermits and my long spine urchin out as they gained a taste for my kenya trees and zoas. This is worsened by the aquilonastra stars that are no longer peaceful CUC; they've started devouring my zoas as well. Hopefully removing the bulldozers will help my corals, but I'm at a loss with what to do with the stars.

 

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It's been a year of pain and suffering. It's been a nightmare trying to find the right balance of import/export. I had a massive algae outbreak that took over everything and covered my corals. I tried to get it under control with skimming and NoPox, but it just turned everything into snot algae. I was constantly having to manually remove it as it clogged my overflow and baffles in the sump. I removed the skimmer and went back to a refugium then added a canister filter. My algae problem is gone, but all of my LPS are shrinking or dead. DKH is through the roof and calcium is high which is weird because I'm only doing water changes not dosing. But my magnesium is really low. This is a new problem for me, but I have been dosing and testing mag only the last two weeks so we'll see what happens. I'm finally getting coral growth, but at this time I have only enough stability to support softies. It is a start. The tank doesn't look as blue in person, I'm not sure why my camera exaggerated that color.