Alex's 330 Gallon CustomAquariums.com Tank

[AlexStinson]

Sorry for the lack of updates everyone. I think I have a nutrient issue. I feed heavily between 1 and 4 times a day with homemade frozen, commercial frozen, and a bunch of flakes.

I can't make this crap up I have 0 Nitrate (salifert) and 0.00 Phosphate (Hanna).
My softies are closed up and my lps have mostly melted, but SPS look decent. Just lost a clam I had for about 4 months .
I plan to take my gfo/carbon reactor offline and let it creep up.

Current stocklist:
1 Zoster butterfly
3 yellow tangs
1 blue hippo tang
1 tomini tang
1 scopas tang
6 lyretail anthias
1 threadfin flasher wrasse
2 cardinals
2 skunk clowns
2 wyoming white clowns
1 link's goby
2 ruby red dragonets
3 chromis
3 azure damsels

I guess I need more fish to raise my nutrients lol! I don't even have a fuge.

 

[fullmonti]

Hey Alex, been a long time. I just saw you have a new big tank and looking good. PM me, we'll have to get together.

 

[Braves Fan]

I was having the same problems with my new tank ,, I started direct feeding the Chalices & Favias ,, Reef Roids ,, used the Coke bottle trick ,, numbers started going up ,, made a liquid paste that had enough liquid in it ,, that it would pass thru a syringe ,, that 30" might be a problem though You don't seem to have many of those corals ,, but that can be fixed

 

[AlexStinson]

Wow. I had no idea this thread had been dormant this long. I was like 'Man February was a long time ago' then I realized that was February 19. Yikes.

Tank continued going downhill after my last post, and frankly I lost interest in it. Not long after we started building out some property to put a camper on and that took most of my time, letting the tank suffer more. After the corals started suffering I ended up with a terribly case of green cyano that pretty much put the brakes on the tank.

Then coronavirus hit.

I fully expected to be laid off but luckily made out with just a pay cut. However the tight budget, and frankly the depression and anxiety of not knowing what our little family was going to go through really stopped everything.

Then a wonderful guy decided to restart the reef club and I went to a meeting. IT was so great connecting with other hobbyists in person that the itch slowly came back, until one day I woke up and something hit me over the head that said it was time to get back into gear.

The tank before I started the turnaround:

 

[AlexStinson]

That picture was back in June. What steps did I take???

A bit before the previous picture I did 2 things.
Added a 30g refugium. This didn't really help things, at least as I could tell.

Ran vibrant at double dose for 2 months I might as well have just dumped money down the drain, the vibrant did nothing for this issue. I know it works for others, but not me.

So I got grumpy and moped around on it a bit until the next step. I did a bunch of things all at once... so what fixed it, I don't know.

Double Dose of Chemi-Clean: It's not red... but it is cyano, best I could tell. I didn't think this worked as after a week it still looked as bad as always

Bought a 300g Tub for mixing saltwater: This was plenty of room to mix a bucket of salt at a time and really drill down on water changes. Previously I had tried to do water changes using a Brute trash can weekly. This wasn't enough. The week after chemiclean I did 2 150ish gallon water changes with a 3/4 inch hose vacuuming the top inch or so of sand off in the process. All this sand got thoroughly cleaned and slowly returned to the tank.

Dropped my photoperiod: I was running it almost 14 hrs a day, for no reason other than our own enjoyment. I now have it about 7-8 hours.

Started dosing iodine: I ran an ICP test through ATI and it came back extremely deficient in Iodine. Bought some lugal's and now I add a few drops every now and then. I test occasionally just to make sure the pendulum hasn't swung too far in the other direction.

All the sudden, to my amazement I woke up one day, and not only had no cyano sprung back overnight from my cleaning efforts. It was all gone from the rocks. MY TANK WAS CLEAN. It had been so bad that my rocks had lost a bunch of coraline. I then added a yellow head and 2 diamond sleeper goby's to help keep the subtrate stirred.

This was the tank back in August:

With Orange 'filter' (My filter is just an old pair of cheap computer glasses)


Tonight:
Front:

Back:

Back with Orange Filter:

 

[outerbank]

Love your thread! Congrats on the young reefer! How do you like the CA overflows? I am considering a tank purchase from them.

 

[AlexStinson]

Love your thread! Congrats on the young reefer! How do you like the CA overflows? I am considering a tank purchase from them.

I love pretty much everything about the tank except the overflows. The openings between the teeth are too small (they may have changed them in the 2+ years) and force my water level to fluctuate in the sump as they become clogged. The advantage is that they are super easy to clean. If I did it again, I would either have them modify the overflows to have larger openings between the teeth, or have them predrill the tank to attach a another commercially available overflow.
I probably pull them out and rinse them in the sink every 2 weeks or so... not a huge deal.

 

[AlexStinson]

This weekend's project:

 

[AlexStinson]

Working on getting the trident set up ran quite a few tests since yesterday that were all over the place, so I have moved it to a further spot in the sump hoping to make sure the issue isn't microbubbles.

 

[AlexStinson]

Looks like my tests have stabilized. I will run it against my hanna/salifert later today and then try to calibrate. appears my Alk is low at 6.5 and ca/mg are high at 515/1545 respectively. With my large reef crystals water changes I would have expected a higher Alk.

 

[mattgsa]

The tank is looking great.

 

[AlexStinson]

The tank is looking great.

Thanks!

 

[AlexStinson]

The wife took this tonight while we were counting the fish.

 

[AlexStinson]

Picked up a new phone today, so what better than an FTS to try out the camera. I obviously have some practicing to do.