Adri's Reef Journey

[A3LXK]

Hi everybody, this is my tank sofar and it's up now for about 4,5 years.
I maintain this tank without waterchanges and keep the most needed macro- and trace elements leveled with DSR (Dutch Synthetic Reefing) products. 5 years ago i was on a scubadiving trip on Bonaire. Bonaire is one of the ABC islands in the Caribean. While i posted some of my underwater pictures i took that day on Facebook a friend of mine posted the latin names and i was flabberguested that he knew all those names. He told me he had a saltwater aquarium. My curiosity was triggered and i started to visit forums and other websites that could give me al the so needed information about maintaining a salwater reef tank.

I started from scratch and build everything myself.

 

[KJ]

Beautiful tank and Welcome to R2R

 

[dennis tb]

Very nice tank Adri. I have seen it in real life and it is even better.

 

[A3LXK]

Beautiful tank and Welcome to R2R

Thanks, KJ!

Very nice tank Adri. I have seen it in real life and it is even better.

Thanks, mate!!!

Just like your tank

 

[Wayneb332]

That is amazing

 

[A3LXK]

Some photo's I amde during a scubadive vacation on Bonaire in 2016.








More pics I made during my scubadive vacations you can find on my website www.a3l.nl

 

[najer]

That frog fish is lovely, nice tank.

 

[GoVols]

Adri,
Your reef is amazing

Thanks for sharing and hope you fell at home

Freddie

 

[A3LXK]

Just a few shot of my corals.

 

[A3LXK]

And a full tank shot

 

[NY_Caveman]

Some photo's I amde during a scubadive vacation on Bonaire in 2016.








More pics I made during my scubadive vacations you can find on my website www.a3l.nl

Some amazing photography skills at work on this thread! Welcome!

 

[cancun]

Beautiful tank! I got my start in saltwater aquariums after years of scuba diving. So I totally get it. I wanted to have a reef in my living room to look at 24/7! [emoji3]

 

[A3LXK]

It's been awhile since my last post. Had a couple of changes in the tank. Some corals died cause of a Alkalinity drop during scubadive vacation to Manado, Indonesia. Why.....a dosing pump malfunction. Some other corals were exhanged for others.

 

[A3LXK]

Some shot i made during my scubadive trip in Manado, Indonesia.

All the pictures you can find on my website. https://www.a3l.nl/manado-2019/

 

[najer]

Great pics.

 

[juanrmattos]

Beautiful reef @A3LXK , beautiful photos and a journey that most can only dream about...

Congrats and welcome to R2R

 

[A3LXK]

Great pics.

Beautiful reef @A3LXK , beautiful photos and a journey that most can only dream about...

Congrats and welcome to R2R

Thanx guys!

 

[A3LXK]

Hi fellow reefers,

It's been awhile ago and a lot has happend to this world. Covid-19 is still around but i am not complaining. I had the opportunity to go on a divetrip to Bonaire in december of 2020, there were only 2 people infected with the virus at that time. Of course I made a bunch of pictures while diving.

U can find them at https://www.a3l.nl/albums/bonaire-2020

My tank went through a lot. The left side of my reef collapsed 2 years ago and I could not find the need to rescape this piece till the problems started. I suffered from high nutrients and could not get them under control anymore. I had to do something. I hasitated to stop completly but I am greatfull that I found the strength to made a new rescape on the left side of my tank. Thankfully I had a big help from Glenn Fong, a friend of mine, cause the tank looked like a sewer while removing the collapsed reef.

But all went well and the corals and fish all survived this abuse. The nutrients came back to normal levels. So far so good. The tank looked healthy again.

But that changed. When i came home from my dive trip the tank suffered really bad from dinoflaggelates. I started with microbubbling the tank, put the lights of for 5 days, 24/7 UV with low flow and a lot of active carbon. After 5 days the dino's were not visable anymore and i started to put the light back on. I went from 5% to 70% in three weeks. After 5 weeks the lighting was back at 100%. The tank is never been healthy before and the dino's did.not came back. Unfortunatly, I lost my big Clamp cause of the Dino's.

This is how my tank looks now.

The tank during sun down.

Greetings,
Aad

 

[glennf]

Great great story aad,
How you crawl back from the abyss and find the strenght to hang on to this hobby.
Most have given up long ago.

Sometime you just need that push from a reefingbuddy.