Year in Review: The Journey So Far
As promised, here’s the catch-up post. One full year of chaos, growth, gear failures, and turning this system into a true SPS-dominated display. Whether you’re a local friend who's been following from the start or just hopped in this thread, this’ll bring you up to speed!
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Startup & Stocking Phase
(Months 0–2)
Kicked things off the cautious way—low fish stocking (moved over from previous reef), fresh water aka zeroed nutrients out the gate, so I started dosing NeoPhos and NeoNitro daily just to keep anything detectable on the charts. After two months of heavy feeding and constant testing, I brought in the cavalry:
Enter 26 chromis and 9 anthias from a month-long QT (started with 30/10)
QT was a must—uronema is a given with chromis, and I wasn’t about to risk it after this much setup
Watching that first school cruise the tank was the moment it finally felt like a reef, not just rock and water.
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Reefapalooza SPS Takeover
(Month 4)
Hit Reefapalooza NY on the last day of the show with one goal: snag some serious heat to build out the collection. By the end of the show, I struck a killer deal with the crew at Riptide Aquaculture to clean out their SPS tank.
Since I walked away with multiples, I banked doubles with a local stickhead buddy (dude looked like it was Christmas morning), and glued some of the extras together to speed up that mini colony life.
Spoiler alert: a few frags that looked the same were not... and when the encrustment touched, it was duel to the death time.
This haul gave me the perfect excuse to evict the zoa garden rock that had turned into a Pandora-only party. Tossed the 12x14 boulder down into the sump until I found it a new home, and built a fresh branch rock centerpiece for all the new frags.
If there was any doubt—this tank was now SPS dominant. No going back.
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Dosing Drama & Equipment Fail (Month 5–6)
Things were cruising… until they weren’t. Discovered three cracked dosing heads on the Hydros X10, which was running my auto alk testing via the iV. That meant:
Alk data was useless
Kalk dosing was jacked
And worst of all… it leaked into the stand while we were out of town
Cue the Hydros alarm—and one very stressful vacation moment.
This kicked off a string of recalibrations and second-guessing every parameter. I spent a solid week dialing everything back in manually while scrubbing kalk crust out of the stand.
Moral of the story: trust, but verify—especially when your gear fails quietly. These dosing heads were silent but deadly.
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Nutrient Rollercoaster (Oct–Jan)
October hit, and nitrates flatlined. Green millies started losing polyp extension, some things were fading, and it was clear the tank was starving. I started feeding like crazy but also had to run GFO to keep phosphate under 0.2, but nitrates still wouldn’t register.
At the same time, I realized the Myagi tort I had up high was getting cooked under the high PAR and the colors were garbage. So I fragged the colony and moved a Humilis into that spot.
Flow was also starting to lag behind coral growth, so I cranked up both the gyres and MP40s to make sure I wasn’t creating any dead zones.
Meanwhile, my sand-sifting goby vanished, and cyano started creeping in. That was the last straw.
Siphoned everything out
Started dosing Ammonium Bicarbonate
Added a new goby
Still kept GFO running to try and balance out the chaos. The tank was eating like a champ, but the readings weren’t budging.
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Spathulata Crash & Recovery Pivot (Jan–Feb)
Just when things started to look stable, my Spathulata RTN’d out of nowhere. Nutrients were still low, but I was finally getting some nitrate readings— it may have been too little too late. On top of that, I caught an alk swing caused by a miscalibrated tester probe. Thank you weekly manual checks.
I corrected it over a few days, but sometimes it’s the combo of events that delivers the final punch. Classic reef tank move. So here is the last photo I have of it in all it's glory. RIP
Then came the dino bloom, right on schedule after the cyano fade. I dropped in a 36-watt Coralife Turbo-Twist UV, and thankfully it knocked them out fast.
By mid-March, nitrates were up to 10 and I turned off ammonium dosing completely, and for the first time in months… everything looked clean and stable.
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Rock Shuffle & Light Upgrade
(Mar–Apr)
With things finally stabilizing, I turned my attention to layout and growth. The blue digi (bottom left) was taking over everything in its path, so I hacked it back and did another rock rearrangement to free up space and improve flow paths.
But something still felt off…
Growth in the center zone was lagging, and a quick check with the PAR meter confirmed the issue: a 100 PAR drop right under the center crossbar. Shadow zone.
And of course, the only logical solution was… more light. *Evil laugh*
I added a 4th G4 Radion, rotated them all sideways, and immediately saw a huge difference. The spread across the width of the tank is way more even now, the old dead zone is gone, and I'm punching solid par from front to back.
This change was intended to fix the center—but it’s probably one of the best tweaks I’ve made to the tank overall.
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For the Reef Nerds Who Made It This Far...
If you’ve read this whole saga, you’re my kind of reef keeper. After dodging a few bullets and patiently waiting for that long-awaited growth spurt, the tank’s finally starting to reward the grind. Color’s coming alive, flow is dialed, and the fish are vibing.
Finally time for a few shots in both blues and natural daylight to show where things stand today.
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What’s Next:
Now that the timeline’s caught up, next post kicks off the growth logs. I’ll be doing side-by-sides of each coral with time-stamped progress shots—no “trust me it’s growing” energy here. Let’s see what’s thriving… and what’s free loading.
