Fish Think Pink
5000 Club Member
Welcome!Greetings all, just wanted to jump in on the intros, and introduce my tank. Grabbed a Fluval Evo 13.5, and have replaced everything but the glass over the past 7 months. Started in February, going *well* enough considering this is my first saltwater/coral tank.
2 clowns, 1 royal gramma, 1 red hermit, 1 conch and a few other random snails, as well as the pipe organ, polys, zoas, red caps(both new and dying, more on that later), digis and medusa, and the usual list of critters that you don't see unless you look closely. Gathered quite a few items since it's been set up including the D-Flow random flow generator, ato, temp controller, diy co2 scrubber, fluval skimmer, sicce 1.0 pump and power head, and of course the AI Prime 16HD. The fan is for the summer months, and after watching "Chasing Coral" on Netflix I'm about freaked out about the temperature raising to high.
Back at the end of June/beginning of July I attempted to start dosing alkalinity due to the much talked about **8.5** levels that grow coral the **best** (they were showing signs of growth before this except for one red cap that seemed to be dull and losing tissue). Over the course of 2 weeks I checked alk and attempted to raise the alk slightly above what the corals were using, and on July 10th, also dosed 2.4ml of calcium... Next day, red caps and medusas lost all color. I have since come to the conclusion that I did that all wrong, and probably didn't need to mess with it in the first place. Pipes, polys and red digi didn't seem to mind, but the caps and medusas were toast, the christmas tree(middle) has plenty of polyps and I've been trying to get the algae off so it can start growing tissue again. The current caps and medusa were replacements, since I enjoyed watching them grow. The corals were all given to me by a family friend, what I thought would be a gift of a few zoas, turned into handfuls of sps, and after somewhat of success growing them, I figured I'll continue to expand with them.
All In all I've enjoyed this hobby and have wanted to have coral and white sand and 77 degree water in my living room for the past 10 or so years, and know I do! Its been a learning experience, and I have come to this forum alot, so I figured I'd take care of the "introduce yourself!" popup and get this over with, so here's my little science experiment that makes our living room glow blue!
Nice looking setup! Glad you joined. Sorry you had some losses, but this hobby tests our BBA - Bounce Back Ability but seems both you and your tank have lots of BBA
