mattshell81
Active Member
I'm currently upgrading to a 65 gallon (thankfully since my rose bubbletip has slowly become 4 and filled my entire nano killing nearly everything) and I've been looking through some photos of my tank in it's prime so I figured I would post here and share some of my experiences through the years and show what photos I do have. I think the think I learned the most about is the importance dipping corals and getting any visible pest off of them.
I started with a 40 gallon in 2012 without a lot of growth in my corals until I upgraded to a 55 gallon tank with a 4 bulb to fixture. That tank was doing really well until it crashed after being moved to a new sand. We tried out best not to stir anything up but in the end I lost all of my fish I had from the beginning.
My tank sat for almost a year as a coral only tank until getting the clownfish I still have today. The tank became overrun with hair algae so bad that no matter how many water changes I did and how much I pulled out I could never get enough of it to stop it from bouncing back.
Flash forward to 2017 and I had just finished college and still only had my 2 clowns so I downgraded to a 14 gallon biocube that I could easily move when I left my moms house. The tank was doing extremely well with me even keeping some of my first sps and growing them successfully. This made me feel like I really had thing under control finally until I had a giant aiptasia outbreak that took out a lot of corals in my tank. I tried joes juice and it seemed to just double or triple the population after killing them. I was only able to finally defeat this problem with some berghia nudibranches and after they starved out I still have a decent population of aiptasia.
2012 tank
2015 1 year after upgrade to 55 and around the time my hair algae issue started
2018 biocube early days
2018 biocube with new corals
End of 2018 with great growth
Today whatever hasnt been taken out by my aiptasia issues has been taken out by that one small bubble tip that has seen insane growth and has now become 4 with one still being giant and 3 small anemones throughout the tank.
I started with a 40 gallon in 2012 without a lot of growth in my corals until I upgraded to a 55 gallon tank with a 4 bulb to fixture. That tank was doing really well until it crashed after being moved to a new sand. We tried out best not to stir anything up but in the end I lost all of my fish I had from the beginning.
My tank sat for almost a year as a coral only tank until getting the clownfish I still have today. The tank became overrun with hair algae so bad that no matter how many water changes I did and how much I pulled out I could never get enough of it to stop it from bouncing back.
Flash forward to 2017 and I had just finished college and still only had my 2 clowns so I downgraded to a 14 gallon biocube that I could easily move when I left my moms house. The tank was doing extremely well with me even keeping some of my first sps and growing them successfully. This made me feel like I really had thing under control finally until I had a giant aiptasia outbreak that took out a lot of corals in my tank. I tried joes juice and it seemed to just double or triple the population after killing them. I was only able to finally defeat this problem with some berghia nudibranches and after they starved out I still have a decent population of aiptasia.
2012 tank
2015 1 year after upgrade to 55 and around the time my hair algae issue started
2018 biocube early days
2018 biocube with new corals
End of 2018 with great growth
Today whatever hasnt been taken out by my aiptasia issues has been taken out by that one small bubble tip that has seen insane growth and has now become 4 with one still being giant and 3 small anemones throughout the tank.
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