Hi Everyone,
This is less of a build thread and more of a rehab/rescue thread. I inherited this nano reef when a friend of mine passed away.
I've had FW fish tanks my whole life and got into reef-keeping in my early 30s. I had a beautiful 75gal SPS going which ended taking a turn for the worse after being established for 3-4 years. At that point in my life, we were getting ready to buy our first home so I needed the time (and money) back from this hobby so I liquidated everything. I knew I would be back "some day" but figured it would probably be during my retirement.
Well, the untimely passing of my friend ended up getting me back into the hobby. I prefer to look at that as a Silver lining =)
So, the tank had been pretty neglected for a good 5-8 weeks between my friend's passing and my taking possession of the tank. His next of kin lives out of state so it took a while for them to get things in order. They were actually going to throw the tank out but luckily a family member knew how to reach me and asked if I wanted it. So, of course, I said YES!
This was in early June of 2021. At that point, I had been out of the hobby for 15+ years. The move was rushed and handled terribly wrong! Looking back, I should have moved all the LR and Fish with the majority of the tank water into buckets and drained the tank all the way with just leaving the sand wet. Unfortunately, being out of practice and in a hurry, I emptied the tank half way and muscled it into my car. Boy was that a mistake!
So much crap got stirred up from the sand bed which resulted in an ammonia spike. Within 24 hours the fish were dead and all the corals were closed. Despite heavy water changes, the ammonia continued to stay elevated. Soon, I was finding dead bristle worms all over the place and of course, that was just adding to the ammonia problem.
I ended up adding a second HOB power filter to help with the ammonia issue. I was able to get it back to zero within a couple of weeks.
Here are some photos from around that time period...
This is less of a build thread and more of a rehab/rescue thread. I inherited this nano reef when a friend of mine passed away.
I've had FW fish tanks my whole life and got into reef-keeping in my early 30s. I had a beautiful 75gal SPS going which ended taking a turn for the worse after being established for 3-4 years. At that point in my life, we were getting ready to buy our first home so I needed the time (and money) back from this hobby so I liquidated everything. I knew I would be back "some day" but figured it would probably be during my retirement.
Well, the untimely passing of my friend ended up getting me back into the hobby. I prefer to look at that as a Silver lining =)
So, the tank had been pretty neglected for a good 5-8 weeks between my friend's passing and my taking possession of the tank. His next of kin lives out of state so it took a while for them to get things in order. They were actually going to throw the tank out but luckily a family member knew how to reach me and asked if I wanted it. So, of course, I said YES!
This was in early June of 2021. At that point, I had been out of the hobby for 15+ years. The move was rushed and handled terribly wrong! Looking back, I should have moved all the LR and Fish with the majority of the tank water into buckets and drained the tank all the way with just leaving the sand wet. Unfortunately, being out of practice and in a hurry, I emptied the tank half way and muscled it into my car. Boy was that a mistake!
So much crap got stirred up from the sand bed which resulted in an ammonia spike. Within 24 hours the fish were dead and all the corals were closed. Despite heavy water changes, the ammonia continued to stay elevated. Soon, I was finding dead bristle worms all over the place and of course, that was just adding to the ammonia problem.
I ended up adding a second HOB power filter to help with the ammonia issue. I was able to get it back to zero within a couple of weeks.
Here are some photos from around that time period...
