Fish-fry
New Member
- Joined
- Nov 2, 2026
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- What state or country do you live in
- North Carolina
What an adventure this has been.. I've been keeping reef tanks since 2008 and thought that I had enough real life experience to overcome any issues right as they started, to get a new tank up and running.
I ran this little 36 bow front with HOB equipment from 2013 until 2025 and between the live rocks, sand and light bioload, the tank basically ran itself.
Last year I bought a house with my fiancé and she encouraged me to get a bigger tank for the house, so I settled on a 76g Fiji Cube with the sump and stand.
Setup:
I hard rinsed my old sand for a few days with salt water until it ran fairly clear, and just put the rocks in, with as much salt water as I could from my old tank. I brought my old AI Hydra 52 (1st edition with the little ipod controller) over, not sure if it would get decent enough coverage. The coverage was fine in the middle of the tank as you can see, but the sides were dark and about 3-4 weeks later, my whites went out and I started noticing all my corals start taking a turn for the worst.
Testing came back with near perfect water parameters, no stray voltage, and when I started moving corals around, I found that some would be happy for about two weeks and then start turning. It turned out that my other LED bulbs in my fixture were starting to go out, which lead me to begin shopping for new lights. Since my AI Hydra did so well, I choose to go with two AI Hydra 32's since the 52 did so well.
Once my lights were dialed in, I noticed some newer live rock that I got from someone local had some green feathery macro algae growing, so I put it into my sump and it took off. Things were starting to stabilize in the tank again, corals were bouncing back when one day before work, my display tank was super cloudy. I knew something had died and this was clearly an ammonia spike, but the only two fish that I had were swimming. I just ignored it until after work and realized that all of my "green macro algae" had melted into the water column and learned that I picked up some Caulerpa Taxiflora! After reading up on it, I learned how to live with it and what to expect and I only had one other time when it died and spiked my ammonia.
I'm 13 months in and finally getting my tank where I'm proud of it again.
