As another year comes to an end, What is the One thing you wish you had done differently with your system ?

[amygetsalife]

I moved my old reef here to my new home almost 4 years ago and if I had time, I wanted to make my entire reef structure on a cement/rock frame hung from concealed cables so I could raise the entire reef structure about 6" off the bottom just so I could see what is going on under there and for a little maintenance.

I almost built it like that but my 6' reef structure is rested on 3 foundations which hardly touches the bottom in 3 places.

I just envisioned a game of reef peek a boo! ;Pompus ;Wideyed Bet the inhabitants prefer it the way you have it!

BTW you've got me always thinking about tank diversity! Thanks.

 

[kpoj9]

I wish I had not setup a 4th tank. The maintenance and testing has been very difficult. I’m fighting cyano in one tank and GHA in another.

 

[vetteguy53081]

I wish I had not setup a 4th tank. The maintenance and testing has been very difficult. I’m fighting cyano in one tank and GHA in another.

Post some pics with issues under white lights if you are able to

 

[prhoades2]

I wish I had simply thrown out my 303Aquatics sump BEFORE it decided to split open, causing a chain reaction of stress and disease, killing nearly $3k in fish! But I only lost a couple SPS corals!! I now am back to using an old aquarium for a sump.

 

[vetteguy53081]

I wish I had simply thrown out my 303Aquatics sump BEFORE it decided to split open, causing a chain reaction of stress and disease, killing nearly $3k in fish! But I only lost a couple SPS corals!! I now am back to using an old aquarium for a sump.

Ouch- sorry to hear

 

[prhoades2]

Ouch- sorry to hear

Thank you. I should have listened to people warning me about their quality....lesson learned.

 

[Alize45]

Not tried to prove that I knew better than the years of experience on this forum. I rushed my tank(s) and wasted a lot of money on Corals that I was not ready

I'll never do a 100% dry rock tank again. I've got a ton of dry rock that's ready to be scaped, but I'm going to buy as much live rock as I can to seed it with.

For me would of been me being a little more ummm well not so scared of " proper real live rock " as was just reading pest this,pest that ,use dry rock and not live rock to many times,but on flip side of that,my ugly stage so far at around 9 months hasn't been that ugly ,I say yet as maybe I've got it to come and if my salifert nitrate and po4 tests are correct at 40ppm and 0.1 I thought I'd have more algae issues but hasn't been bad at all but just think I should of had live rock.

And will let you know in next week or so if made mistake not having qt tank for corals as my newly acquired birds nest ( about 5 weeks ago ) has some kind of pod/worms eating the polyps it looks like but doesn't seem to be causing any damage ( will be started thread later and tagging you for your opinion later @vetteguy53081 if dont mind

I just got into the hobby and tons of reading and videos on YouTube and let myself get scared away from live rock as well. I'm a little under 2 months into my first saltwater tank and I went with all dry rock

 

[mehaffydr]

I should have done a better job cleaning the old dry rock I reused and bought some real live rock.

 

[biecacka]

1) wish I would have properly buffed my acrylic tank after I moved it. no reason why I didn’t other than never have done it before and nervous.

corey

 

[ProxyAquarist]

... WHAT IS THE ONE THING I WISH I HAD DONE DIFFERENTLY ?? ...

Alpha, Beta Test The Tank Stand - Once the stand was completed, we should have placed every device, wire, pipe, ... etc on the stand, and checked the placement, clearances, screw holes, insulation, level, ..... etc. BEFORE installing it in the house.

My son designed a wonderful triangular stand for his new 20 Gallon Long to go in a living room corner between 2 couches. Unfortunately, his return to college was approaching and the dry run testing with his gear was skipped to get it in the house and cycling.

The tank cycled well enough. Placing his UV plumbing and Apex from the holidays has been a challenge.

May 2022 will be simple and successful,
Jim

 

[KingLucy1997]

As we go through another year of reefkeeping, making upgrades, adding livestock, it is often overlooked until we realize:

WHAT IS THE ONE THING I WISH I HAD DONE DIFFERENTLY ??

For me, was changing my plumbing configuration on a certain tank and it is somewhat noisy now and adding an ATO to the sump that always fills 3-4" above the optic lens and lowers salinity from 35ppt to 34.3 ppt on average

WHAT IS YOURS ?

I wish that I started with freshwater aquariums instead of saltwater.
In general freshwater seems to require less expensive and complicated equipment, there are way less water parameters to worry over / monitor in freshwater, conditioned tap water rather than RODI water is sufficient, none of hassle of mixing salt water, and I think I’m general freshwater organisms are more hardy and less sensitive to rapid changes in water parameters.
Thinking back to when I was getting into the aquarium hobby, the beauty of corals is what made me choose salt water, but in hindsight my tanks have been more successful (my first 2 and a half saltwater tanks 100% crashed), had better experiences in the aquarium hobby, and most importantly caused much less life to suffer and die. If I started with freshwater I would have had practical experience with aquarium maintenance that I could have applied to my first saltwater tanks to prevent them from crashing. I am also in a poor financial position to be in the reef tank hobby, but I am responsible for the living things in my reef so I have to make do the best I can. I wish I waited until I was relatively well off after saving for years before I started a saltwater tank and stick to freshwater until then.

 

[VLR3]

As we go through another year of reefkeeping, making upgrades, adding livestock, it is often overlooked until we realize:

WHAT IS THE ONE THING I WISH I HAD DONE DIFFERENTLY ??

For me, was changing my plumbing configuration on a certain tank and it is somewhat noisy now and adding an ATO to the sump that always fills 3-4" above the optic lens and lowers salinity from 35ppt to 34.3 ppt on average

WHAT IS YOURS ?

Not getting the

As we go through another year of reefkeeping, making upgrades, adding livestock, it is often overlooked until we realize:

WHAT IS THE ONE THING I WISH I HAD DONE DIFFERENTLY ??

For me, was changing my plumbing configuration on a certain tank and it is somewhat noisy now and adding an ATO to the sump that always fills 3-4" above the optic lens and lowers salinity from 35ppt to 34.3 ppt on average

WHAT IS YOURS ?

Not getting the eel I was told was “peaceful” and treating with amoxicillin from the first signs of bacteria. I lost a lot of beautiful fish this year, including an emperor Angel among others.

 

[A Young Reefer]

Not joining reef2reef earlier.

 

[ReefRondo]

This and location is the one thing that has haunted aquarists for years

I agree hence me making my Reefer a remote sump setup. I love the Redsea tanks but just no space in the sump and cabinet for what I wanted. Check out my build thread if you want to see how I did it.

 

[PeterEde]

As we go through another year of reefkeeping, making upgrades, adding livestock, it is often overlooked until we realize:

WHAT IS THE ONE THING I WISH I HAD DONE DIFFERENTLY ??

For me, was changing my plumbing configuration on a certain tank and it is somewhat noisy now and adding an ATO to the sump that always fills 3-4" above the optic lens and lowers salinity from 35ppt to 34.3 ppt on average

WHAT IS YOURS ?

Bought it 20 years ago.

 

[chipchipbro]

I wish I would have gone bigger and start with live rock.....

 

[dk2nt9]

Buy less corals?

 

[Karliefish]

This one is easy….NEVER EVER would have gone with 250lbs of dry rock in my new 365G reef tank. This has been the most maddening experience I have ever dealt with in my 35 years of reefing. I had always used live rock for all my previous tanks, but decided to be “environmentally responsible” and go the Macrco dry Rock route. I was excited about the prospects of being able to do a true “aquascape” with a critter free tank. Well here it is one year latter after following the exact formulas from BRS and others on how to bring my dry-rock thank to-life and it still looks like a bunch of dry rock and most of my corals are screaming-out at me…..PLEASE GIVE US LIVE ROCK to grow-on!!! So now I’m ripping out some of the dry-rock and awaiting a delivery of live rock from KP Aquatics.

 

[Ksmithphotos]

As we go through another year of reefkeeping, making upgrades, adding livestock, it is often overlooked until we realize:

WHAT IS THE ONE THING I WISH I HAD DONE DIFFERENTLY ??

For me, was changing my plumbing configuration on a certain tank and it is somewhat noisy now and adding an ATO to the sump that always fills 3-4" above the optic lens and lowers salinity from 35ppt to 34.3 ppt on average

WHAT IS YOURS ?

drilled the overflow in 41 gallon tank instead of syphon tube

 

[Snuggs]

i wish I had planned my rock work better