Hello everyone.
So a quick background, I had a very large system around 700 gallons that was running for around 7 months. Everything collapsed when my wife and I went on a vacation in Europe for a month, I was really thinking of getting out of the hobby but people here and in my personal life convinced me to not give up and to rebuild. I am very happy I did, the growth in the last 2 months and everything has been amazing.
Here is a thread of the lost I had and I will link my old sale thread so you can see all my old SPS that I lost :(
https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/devastating-post.1127691/#post-13852368
Here is the thread of all the corals I had before and my mother colony pictures
https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/sps-cut-to-order-lost-everything-9-5-2025.822161/
Now onto the happy items and my new build. I destroyed my growout that I had before that was connected to my display, it was around 600 gallons alone and I replaced it with a standard 240 gallon 8x2x2 to use as my growout that is connected to the same display I had before which is 180g 6x2x2. The display layout is completely different.
Since I lost every single coral, I got rid of a lot of the old rock and rebuilt the display layout to give a lot more open space. I did not lose a single fish when the tank collapsed nor did I lose my awesome blue carpet anemone, but I lost everything else.
Overview of my system:
180 gallon display connected to a 240 gallon growout. The display lights is a 8 bulb sunpower, the growout is a combination of T5s and LEDs. I always just had T5s before but I always had people asking me to take pictures with blue light so I added a lot of LED to the growout so I can do that.
I let the tank run with just the fish for 2 weeks before I added sps, but I have had SPS since mid September. I started with mariculture acros because I trust my ability in this hobby and going from a completely empty tank to nothing was very depressing. The mariculture have done amazing and I have since added a lot of very high end SPS.
The system right now is having 10% water changes weekly along with a calcium reactor and kalk, I want to keep PH up. I also have been slowly starting with reef moonshiners to try to get some better growth and some of the other trace elements to see if I can add some additional colors, right now I am only dosing 4 trace elements.
Overall I have been very happy with the first 2 months of the system and I look forward to building and growing out going forward
Here is the display, you can see it is very open allowing the fish more space and of course the acros as they grow out :) I never had torches before, I was only SPS but I decided to add some holy grails in this build, I have been enjoying them so far.
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Update on 4/4- Page 2 has a lot more pictures of acros I am growing out.
-------------------------------------------
Here is a quick photo of the growout with all the mariculture and higher end SPS. I plan to add a lot more over the next couple of months, I also plan to start selling again soon hopefully :)
Here are some closeups of my mariculture colonies.
So a quick background, I had a very large system around 700 gallons that was running for around 7 months. Everything collapsed when my wife and I went on a vacation in Europe for a month, I was really thinking of getting out of the hobby but people here and in my personal life convinced me to not give up and to rebuild. I am very happy I did, the growth in the last 2 months and everything has been amazing.
Here is a thread of the lost I had and I will link my old sale thread so you can see all my old SPS that I lost :(
https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/devastating-post.1127691/#post-13852368
Here is the thread of all the corals I had before and my mother colony pictures
https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/sps-cut-to-order-lost-everything-9-5-2025.822161/
Now onto the happy items and my new build. I destroyed my growout that I had before that was connected to my display, it was around 600 gallons alone and I replaced it with a standard 240 gallon 8x2x2 to use as my growout that is connected to the same display I had before which is 180g 6x2x2. The display layout is completely different.
Since I lost every single coral, I got rid of a lot of the old rock and rebuilt the display layout to give a lot more open space. I did not lose a single fish when the tank collapsed nor did I lose my awesome blue carpet anemone, but I lost everything else.
Overview of my system:
180 gallon display connected to a 240 gallon growout. The display lights is a 8 bulb sunpower, the growout is a combination of T5s and LEDs. I always just had T5s before but I always had people asking me to take pictures with blue light so I added a lot of LED to the growout so I can do that.
I let the tank run with just the fish for 2 weeks before I added sps, but I have had SPS since mid September. I started with mariculture acros because I trust my ability in this hobby and going from a completely empty tank to nothing was very depressing. The mariculture have done amazing and I have since added a lot of very high end SPS.
The system right now is having 10% water changes weekly along with a calcium reactor and kalk, I want to keep PH up. I also have been slowly starting with reef moonshiners to try to get some better growth and some of the other trace elements to see if I can add some additional colors, right now I am only dosing 4 trace elements.
Overall I have been very happy with the first 2 months of the system and I look forward to building and growing out going forward
Here is the display, you can see it is very open allowing the fish more space and of course the acros as they grow out :) I never had torches before, I was only SPS but I decided to add some holy grails in this build, I have been enjoying them so far.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Update on 4/4- Page 2 has a lot more pictures of acros I am growing out.
-------------------------------------------
Here is a quick photo of the growout with all the mariculture and higher end SPS. I plan to add a lot more over the next couple of months, I also plan to start selling again soon hopefully :)
Here are some closeups of my mariculture colonies.
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