I am ready to throw in the towel.

[Elwood Dowd]

One year in and I am ready to break down my tank. What a wretched waste of life, money, and time.

I am at the point where I don't know what is up and what is down. There is a wealth of information out there and the only bit I trust comes from Randy Holmes Farley, mcarrol and a few of the other posters I see here. Everything contradicts all other info. All over the place I see no P04 is the answer. Yet I see people dosing specifically for it. Years ago we strived for no nitrates. Now people add them. We have better lights now. But when I used t5's and MH combos my tank grew and looked incredible. Now I am on led's and nothing grows. Get a par meter they say. But outside of buying one that I will use a total of 3 times per tank unless I am playing with it, there isnt one to rent in my area. Now that that bit of useless crying is out of the way I will get on with the point.

40 breeder, 20 long sump, 2000 gph flow (including return), two broken Chinese black boxes reconfigured with cree royal blues Philips lime and bridgelux 4500k 6500k red/orange and cyan for color with meanwell ELN 60 48D dimmable drivers on 2 channels per box.

As of right now:
0 phos
20 nitrate
0 ammo
0 trite
440 cal
1300 magnesium
1.024 sg

Stock list:
5 Mexican turbos
A handful of various sand sifting snails and 4 red leg hermits
Skunk cleaner shrimp
Fire shrimp
2 serpentine stars
2 Carmel clowns
Red stripe Eibli angel
Red spotted hawk
6 line wrasse
Green birds nest (bleaching again)
8 inch wall hammer
4 head lime and pink colored frogspawn
4 head torch
Duncan
Kenya tree
Various zoanthids
Orange/peach colored monti cap
Superman monti
Idaho grape monti
2 Candy canes
Nearly dead Jedi mind trick monti
A brown and green favia that started hitting the bricks the last two days.

My LPS are kicking butt, that is the only bit of hope I have. Maybe I am getting something right. I suspect my fatal error may habe been trying to do a mixed reef in a 22 inch deep tank. The Kenya tree grows (dang it). Zoas have slowed sustantially since I swapped out lights.

I am doing 2x 10 gallon WC's monthly using DD Aquarium Solutions H2Ocean pro formula. The only suplement I dose is Acropower.

3 months in, I battled bryopsis. Thank you R2R and Prsnlty (I think I got that right) and MCarrol(we talked about leds, I did my first rig on my FO. Its great and I can at least keep softies in there) for the advice and time you spent with my questions. I beat back bryopsis with fluconazol. It killed off all of the algea in my tank (macros were fine).

Then came dinos. 3 days of darkness and peroxide dosing won.

Then came Huricane Irma. Tanks were on a generator for 2 days, it fried. 5 days with no electricity. I lost my Jedi mind trick, RBTA, plum crazy acro, tri color bali, coral beauty and valentini puffer(from my FO) 1 week later I tarted getting Dinos again. They are on a candy can frag, Idaho grape monti, and of course by the end of the day my substrate is absolutely covered with it and it looks like I am a very successful bubble farmer.

Name some books for me please! Direct me towards something or someone in Jacksonville Florida who can help get me moving in the correct direction. Burning hundred dollar bills every week sucks but it isn't the worst. The worst is that I took this hobby on and all of the living things that I am buying are dying, because of my lack of knowledge. I repair software/plc's and the 6 million dollar or more robots that the software runs. That is easy. Recreating a slice of nature inside of a 36 x 18 x 22 glass box is not easy. It is the most difficult thing I have ever attempted.

 

[Elwood Dowd]

And as I type all of this I look over and see my hawkfish perched up in the cleaner shrimps drive-thru mouth agape letting the shrimp work him over. Stupid fish don't you know that's food. Stupid shrimp, don't you know he is a stone cold killer. Regardless, that is an example of the little things I love that keep it going.

 

[Donovan Joannes]

I tried almost anything available on the shelves, nearly broke my bank, trying to fight nitrate and phosphate. The end result?. Same as yours.

I told myself, maybe I am overdoing it. Lets try a simple method, do it the way our nature does. I am now running a fully bacteria driven system, a dead simple sump, no skimmer, no water changes and a recently added a dragon breath through with a success. I don't test for nitrate/phosphate too much, maybe once or twice every three months. Here are my tank, my old (10g) sump and my resurrected 2' sump I currently running. Super cheap to run, cost almost nothing to keep nutrients at proper level for my tank. Sorry, that picture is on all white, it might seems like I am running a CFL

 

[Donovan Joannes]

Another picture under midday light setting..

 

[Elwood Dowd]

Your tank looks great! I cannot get any growth from anything except lps. I am going to bookmark your post so I can revisit it and look into your setup.

 

[Donovan Joannes]

My point is, maybe it is a good time to try something simple. Let nature deal with what it does best.

 

[Donovan Joannes]

Your tank looks great! I cannot get any growth from anything except lps. I am going to bookmark your post so I can revisit it and look into your setup.

Thanks for the compliment. Just have faith with nature, do it right and you won't regret it. My dragon breath through in action. Have been running for few months now.

 

[Elwood Dowd]

My point is, maybe it is a good time to try something simple. Let nature deal with what it does best.

I like that idea. I am going to weigh it considerably. I have been looking at different macros for the sump. Maybe its time to upgrade the lights inside of the stand and start growing more macros than just cheato. That dragons breath trough is really interesting.

 

[Donovan Joannes]

I like that idea. I am going to weigh it considerably. I have been looking at different macros for the sump. Maybe its time to upgrade the lights inside of the stand and start growing more macros than just cheato. That dragons breath trough is really interesting.

Yup. I got this idea from Paul B, why waste the lights inside the canopy, it will grow macros easily. The only drawback it looks ugly, but it won't be visible to the public anyway

 

[tdileo]

I know you said you don’t trust info from too many people but I would like to share my experience in the past few months I have been in the hobby and hope you will believe me. I started my tank up in April where I asked for all my 14th birthday gifts to be equipment and gift cards to my LFS. 7 or so months later I am running my 46G that has all sorts of corals from simple zoanthids to monti and Acropora. I have never lost a single coral, and the whole time I have strived for simplicity. After I got an understanding of what my tank used up on a daily basis, I have been just dosing them by hand. I rely on a protein skimmer and refugium for my nitrate/phosphate removal. I have done 2 water changes in the time my system has been running and I am seeing more growth and encrusting on my acro frags what seems like each day, and I only have a single $80 black box LED. I really think a lot of people over complicate everything. To me it seems like people are so busy chasing parameters recommended online to actually see what works best for the animals within their tanks.
I’m sorry about all your losses with Irma and hope that you are able to get everything back on track and thriving as soon as you can. Wishing you the best of luck with everything!

 

[Elwood Dowd]

I know you said you don’t trust info from too many people but I would like to share my experience in the past few months I have been in the hobby and hope you will believe me. I started my tank up in April where I asked for all my 14th birthday gifts to be equipment and gift cards to my LFS. 7 or so months later I am running my 46G that has all sorts of corals from simple zoanthids to monti and Acropora. I have never lost a single coral, and the whole time I have strived for simplicity. After I got an understanding of what my tank used up on a daily basis, I have been just dosing them by hand. I rely on a protein skimmer and refugium for my nitrate/phosphate removal. I have done 2 water changes in the time my system has been running and I am seeing more growth and encrusting on my acro frags what seems like each day, and I only have a single $80 black box LED. I really think a lot of people over complicate everything. To me it seems like people are so busy chasing parameters recommended online to actually see what works best for the animals within their tanks.
I’m sorry about all your losses with Irma and hope that you are able to get everything back on track and thriving as soon as you can. Wishing you the best of luck with everything!

Its not that i don't trust so much as the fact that everything had undergone massive changes since i dropped out of this hobby years ago. As will anything as we learn more about it. I think that the internet is the single greatest and worst thing for this hobby. There is great information and advice out there.. But for every piece of correct good info, there are 15 more that are severely deficient. The last tank I ran sounds to be your setup. A 46 bowfront with sump, skimmer, hand dosing on a schedule, manual top offs and mh with t5 supplemental lighting. Never had problems with it. This rig though I just can't get it to balance out. When one disaster strikes, I recover. Then another hits.

 

[Adam G]

I can totally relate to what you are going through. Ever since I moved to my new home two and a half years ago I have done nothing but struggle with my 110 gallon reef. It has been set up about a year and a half now and it has been a real struggle. My most recent battle has been with pH now that the house is closed up again with the cooler weather. I had 2 corals RTN on me overnight when my pH dropped to 7.6.

So I did what you describe and went on line and read a lot. I then opened my wallet and dropped several hundred dollars on a good refugium light and a CO2 reactor from BRS. My pH is now running stable from 8 to 8.1 even at night in the basement with the house closed up and the furnace on.

Before that it was my lights. After doing tons of reading and going out and getting a par meter for my apex I discovered that I was not giving them enough light. The whole time I thought it was too much light and had been turning down my hydra 52's. Again, by dropping several hundred dollars and getting a par meter I was able to pinpoint the problem and get that solved.

Before that it was Ich wiping out my fish. Lost most of them, went fishless for three months, and started over. After spending several hundred dollars restocking slowly and carefully with full quarantine I now have a thriving fish community again.

The funny thing is I have been doing this for 20+ years. In my old home I had a thriving 150 gallon rimless miracles peninsula loaded with 20 some fish that would grow SPS so fast I would cut it out by the bucketful. This time around I do nothing but struggle.

So I just wanted to let you know that I identify with what you're going through and I for one am gonna keep fighting. One day my issues will be solved and I will be able to focus again on being a coral farmer instead of an emergency problem solver. The good news is it takes a lot of my time, effort, and disposable income and keeps me researching and learning and evolving in the hobby. As all this information increases in technology increases it also makes things much more complicated.

I wish you the best of luck and would encourage you to stay the course and remember that if this were easy and required little to no effort we would get bored pretty quick and wouldn't stick with it for 20+ years. The challenge I think is part of what keeps me going in the end. Best of luck. Adam.

 

[Katrina71]

Emphasize the things you love about your tank. I agree with keep it simple. Start dialing back the things that overcomplicate it.

 

[XNavyDiver]

What ive been slowly trying to wrap my mind around is the chaos and 'messyness', for lack of a better word, of these enclosed biological systems.
An analogy or example of what I mean: one individual sets up 2 IDENTICAL tanks in their home. By identical I mean in every way possible. Equipment, filtration, salt, water, rock, methodology, husbandry, stocking.... everything.
Logic tells us that the end product will also be identical. But more than likely this is false. One tank will thrive with just about anything. The other will will struggle with certain aspects, weather that be pests, nuisance algae, nutrient imbalances and the such (there are numerous examples of accounts on this and other reefing websites).
Why is this? It makes zero sense.
The only thing I can take away from such examples is that biological ecosystems are so complex that there is no one recipe, no schematic, no one blueprint, no one mathematical equation that will lead a person 100% of the time to success with their reef tank.
I'm just discovering this (But not without my fair share of kicking and screaming!). I'm trying to let the tank lead me, and not the other way around. I can't believe I just typed out this new agey pap! I just threw up in my mouth a little... But in a sense it's true. There is still a little bit of 'art' in this hobby. My nature would prefer there wasn't. I'm not an artsy kinda guy.
I type this for you because I've been going through your same struggles, minus the hurricane of course.
Hang in there. I will.

 

[Elwood Dowd]

You guys are all so awesome! Maybe one day I will get my tank to the point where I want to show it to people lol.

 

[Alfredo De La Fe]

LED's work great for growth if you get the right ones. Unfortunately a lot of the cheaper LED's just don't cut it.

What are you doing as far as calcium and Magnesium? Both have a big impact on growth, health and algae growth.

 

[splix]

I cant believe I'm saying this but here it goes. Also, take this as an opinion, not fact. Everyone's tank is different and different things work in everyone's tank.
Those china box led's are trash. I ran them for years, supplemented with t5's. I had a 90% SPS tank and they were growing. Yes they will grow coral. I refused to spend so much $ on LED lights because I thought they were all the same. My SPS were very very fragile though. If my alk was off by .2 (held it at 8.5) it showed. Things would brown and/or die. Meanwhile my friends tank running radions, his alk would swing a couple points or just be way off because he never tested and his SPS would never show anything was wrong. I almost left the hobby also. Spending $500+ on a few colonies just for them to do great for 6 months then randomly die was killing me.
I've since moved tanks and simplified. I bought a red sea AIO style tank and it came with AI Hydras. I immediately noticed a huge difference in tank health over those china boxes. Even though I went from a 250g system down to a 70g, my coral and everything looked much better. Things arent dying or slowly melting.
Then BRS puts out a video review on those china box LED's and shows that they have no PAR spread. They're basically laser focusing the PAR. Once I saw that, it made total sense. Some SPS would do ok for a long time, but others would just slowly die, even though my tank was on point and parameters were absolutely perfect.

Before you throw in the towel, try better lights. It's worth it I promise. Even the cheaper "high end" lights like the AI Hydras. You dont have to go with $800/unit radion gen 4 pro stuff. Anything but those chinabox's will be a huge improvement.

 

[Katrina71]

You guys are all so awesome! Maybe one day I will get my tank to the point where I want to show it to people lol.

Show it. Absolutely nothing to be ashamed of! We all have ugly tank stages. I even bought coral to make my cyano and gha "pop". Embrace the ugly. Breathe. Soon the ugly duckling will be a swan.

 

[MamaLovesHerReefTank]

Simple has been what works for my tank. I am also not growing difficult corals because I don't want to chase parameters, calcium, mag etc. I run my 125g with a fluval fx6 canister filter. No sump, no refugium. I have an undersized hob skimmer. I have dealt with ich, velvet and more. I have lost almost all my fish twice in the 3 years I've been doing this. I have never lost a coral. I have 4 torches, 4 hammers, gsp, mushrooms, 3 frogspawn and a ton of zoas. I watch my tank so much that I can tell when something is off. Right now I am battling hair algae and bryopsis due to overfeeding. Tried peroxide, helped a bit but all my hermit crabs seemed to die off. Went yesterday and loaded up with 15 hermits, 4 turbos and a couple halloween crabs. Fluconazole should be here by Monday or Tuesday. Best investment was my lights. I didn't go high end I went with Maxspect Razors. Most of my corals doubled in size. My torches have tripled in size. One started out with 3 heads, now has 7.

 

[Paul B]

There is a wealth of information out there and the only bit I trust comes from Randy Holmes Farley, mcarrol and a few of the other posters I see here.

Then listen to them and ignore all other advice.