Krash's first reef

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krash7172

krash7172

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Knowing that I had no plan to put enough energy into a sps dominant tank, I'm happy with what I have and get complacent. I don't think I lost a single coral. One eve my wife says the fish are acting sluggish. The tank looks a bit off. I checked salinity and alk (all I test at this point still) and make small adjustments. I did a WC and checked all equipment. Everything is normal. I suddenly realized that I wasn't maintaining my RODI again! I got a TDS meter and it was 80 ppm. Feeling stupid, I decided to take some time and do a full checkup. It turns out my heater probe failed. It was reading the temp I had it set at but the tank was actually 5 deg lower (73F). I verified with several thermometers. I ran out of outlets when messing around with the fuge and algae scrubber so I pulled the 2nd heater out. Luckily these are easily remedied. Now I feel really stupid and it gives me motivation to up my game again. This was about 2 months ago.
 
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In addition to a TDS meter, I bought a full set of Hanna checkers and their Salinity pen. I've been logging params for 2 months. I removed everything I didn't need including the Apex that I never used. I'm keeping it simple and focusing on the basics. I had a window screen as a tank lid to prevent jumpers. It was supposed to be temporary and finally replaced it with egg crate. I don't have a par meter but I tried increasing the light a bit and it really helped. Here's the lid I made with a hinged door for feeding. Wire ties for hinges :)

tank lid.jpg
 
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Feeling good, I decided to go to the LFS a month ago and saw a rhodactis mushroom I wanted. It was on a rock with a big monti and they made me a deal for the whole rock. Thats the first SPS I've had for a long time. It looks as good as it did in the fish store. I've since added a couple cyphastrea frags and a frogspawn. And they look great as well. They may start to impact calcium so I'm checking that now. Pic taken tonight.

tank8.jpg
 
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Ok. One last post to get current. Whew. Thanks again to R2R and everyone who gave me advice. I probably would have given up a long time ago and went back to freshwater without you. I'll keep posting but no news is good news right?

These are my latest params. If it isn't listed, I'm not checking it.

78F
8.2 ph
1.025 sg
9.6 dkh
436 cal
1 ppm TDS RODI
Edit: forgot 0.07 po4
I forgot to mention I'm dosing calcium now but I've only done it once.
 
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I'm going to lower my alk by 0.5. I'm current keeping it 9.0 - 9.5 dkh with 2x doses per week.

Unrelated but I had a purple yellow eye tang die. Haven't had a fish or coral die in a long time. It acted odd for months. Like seizures. It would swim backward. Spaz for a minute and then fine. It displayed dark stripes and hid yesterday and then died this AM. Looked fine 2 days ago. Rest of tank looks perfect.
 
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Mixed update. Mostly good so start with that. Tank looks good. I finally bought new heaters so that is behind me. I plan to install a Clarisea roller in the next few days. Excited about not washing socks and my wife is extremely excited about not washing socks. I started using the Aquarium Note app to log params and notes. It's pretty cool and you can have it remind you to test, WC, maintenance, etc.

I'm still not 100% satisfied with my RODI though. I'm only 6 weeks since I replaced everything and TDS is up to 27ppm. I went through a DI stage in about 30 days. Replaced and I'm back to 0 ppm. This is really my only struggle right now. I suspect I am evaporating much more water than I thought and the RODI is working hard in the dry winter months. I have 25 sqft of surface area with the DT, sump and mix tank. Nothing is covered.
 
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With a great deal of luck, I was able to install the Clarisea roller without ANY mods. I mean absolutely none. I could put my filter socks back in minutes. Mechanically, this thing works perfectly as advertised. Interested to see long term results.

clarisea.jpg
 
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Still happy with the roller. Tank looks good. I NEED to get a nitrate test kit. lol. To see actual performance. Latest tank additions are doing well. Visible growth on my few SPS.

Rookie mistake today. I put a tee and valve on my RODI output to have water to rinse and test with. I even made sure it was over my mix tank if the container I was filling overflowed. I didn't plan on forgetting it for 5 hours :( No damage. Just cleaning up water. Hah.
 
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Been a year? I missed my tanks 4th bday! It doesn't look much different which is great and all the fish are good. BUT I had a random cyano bloom just now and a few corals were meh. What the... I'm a problem solver and before spending time testing params, I search for the underlying issue. My tank is very stable. RODI is good, mechanical filtration, skimmer, algae scrubber all working. I don't get in the tank much anymore (like never) but I removed cyano with a turkey baster and did WC's. It came back strong. Turns out that 1 of the lights in my algae scrubber quit. I don't clean it very often and half of the algea died. PSA, just because your algae scrubber has some purple lights doesn't mean its working right!
 

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I'm all-in at this point and know almost nothing about reefing, It actually went well (this is a success story). They put in live rock, sand and a few chromis to cycle. All good but now I'm alone moving forward as I had not found R2R yet. I didn't know water params, how to program my hydra lights or what my Apex system even did. I see a bunch of probes in the bottom of my sump. I did what I knew from freshwater. Clean the tank, filters and do water changes. We got fish and corals too early and many died unfortunately. I'll name some of the pests that I know that I have had and there are probably more that I didn't know: gha, rha, cyano, green bubble, red bubble (bubble algae is kinda cool imo) aiptasia, little cute white starfish. My wife and I weren't terribly happy but I wasn't going to give up. We both scuba dive and believe in diversity of life in the tank to more closely match a real reef.
Its passion. If u read my tank build u wil find amazing story like this as well
 

A worm with high fashion and practical utility: Have you ever kept feather dusters in your reef aquarium?

  • I currently have feather dusters in my tank.

    Votes: 64 36.8%
  • Not currently, but I have had feather dusters in my tank in the past.

    Votes: 59 33.9%
  • I have not had feather dusters, but I hope to in the future.

    Votes: 25 14.4%
  • I have no plans to have feather dusters in my tank.

    Votes: 26 14.9%
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