Tank been up almost a year. Longest SW tank I've had so far. Its on autopilot. I change 5 gal of water once every 6-8 weeks and that is pretty much it. Starting a tank with real live rock makes a huge difference. I also noticed that once I added a small amount of sand bed (just enough to cover the glass), and switched from canister to HOB skimmer, the tank really stopped having major swings. Last addition of live rock was 6 months ago. And about 4-5 months ago I added a bunch of my own DIY oystercrete rock slowly over a month or two, to make sure nothing would get killed.
I've had some deaths prior to it really becoming stable.. mostly down to adding things before I should have. So I stopped adding things for the last 5 months and waited for it to tell me it was ready.
6-7 months ago added a leather toadstool from a local seller, and some cheap frags from
WWC auction and they all died off except the toadstool, which has doubled in size and is thriving. I also tried that rose bubble tip which died off (extremely disappointing). Not sure if the RBT died due to water conditions (probably cause my phosphates have always been rather high), or if it was due to high flow.
Phosphates I was originally trying to combat with phosban media, but I treated very minimally, with only a little in a media bag in the HOB skimmer for a couple months just to try to help give the tank some fight. At the same time about 6-8 months ago I bought a Santa Monica filtration HOG.5 hang on glass upflow algae scrubber. That took a month or so but is now probably handling most of the Phosphate in the tank. Prior to that really working overtime, the rock itself had some algae. Now the rock is really minimal turf algae only on the DIY oystercrete. I chalk that up to the algae slowly eating away any phosphate remaining in the oystercrete. I'm perfectly content with how it looks and am happy to let it do its thing with the eventual goal for the algae to fully leach any remaining phosphate out of that rock. But overall, the tank doesn't seem to mind any of this. Just tested a fresh batch of salt water mixed from my RO/DI filter which I needed to replace the filters in.. 0.08ppm phosphate. The tank itself tested at 0.66ppm phosphate. Every time I test it seems to be around 0.6ppm. I stopped caring because the algae does not increase, and all the fish and corals look happy.
I also really stopped testing phosphate once I trusted things weren't going to die constantly from whatever levels it was at. Instead I just test salinity every so often to make sure it isn't creeping up from the skimmer or any other evaporation. I've really settled into the belief that I shouldn't chase anything and don't touch anything. Just maintain the status quo with the semi-regular water changes. Everything is stable at whatever levels they are at. And the corraline algae has been spreading like wildfire on the real live rock, and has now started taking over some of the less dense DIY oystercrete which was more porous than some of the thicker pieces I made. The thicker pieces are the ones with minimal turf algae. The porous stuff does not have much algae on it other than the corraline which is starting to spread completely.
current stocking:
- black clownfish that has matured and lost all its immature color and mostly uncaring about anyone else around
- yellow tail blue damsel which is constantly ticked at everyone else encroaching on his space and tries to bully the clown regularly
- tailspot blenny that puts the blue damsel in his place, but gets put in his place by the black clown.
- orange spottedy goby that keeps to himself off at the other end of the tank where none of the others seem to want to be. Occasionally fends off the blue damsel when it comes over and gets ticked off at it for existing.
tons of hitchhicker crabs, snails, turkeywing clam, and a couple peppermint shrimp.
I also just finally decided to add two frags from my LFS to test the stability and confirm it is ready for more coral. Bought a birds nest frag and a montipora. One of the previous corals I tested from
WWC that died was a montipora. So I am using that as a baseline.
All the hitchhiker corals I got from TBS live rock have been thriving; Hidden Cup Coral and Mountainous Star coral.
I will be looking to purchase my own place starting July/August so this tank has about 6 months before I have to break it down and move everything. Which was always the plan.. just a temp tank to mature some DIY oystercrete rock. I couldn't fit half the rock I made, so once I move and set up a long term large tank, then I'll add the additional rock I made.
