I have always wanted to get into saltwater tanks had a bunch of freshwater from imported flowerhorns to a big Rubbermaid with motoro stingray and catfish but never took the dive but October 2023 I took the dive after being out of keeping fish for 4 ish years after tub crashed from dead fish. But anyway I decided to make the dive into reefing and it’s definitely had its challenges for me. I started with 10 gallon cheap tank with hob filter with intank basket inside an jabeo slw20 and ai prime 10 pounds of dry rock live sand and dr Tim’s to cycle .
it ran for an about 5 months total . I lost sps corals trying to jump to far ahead had cyano battle endlessly having trouble keeping Po4 from bottoming out .
started to “leveled out” to where I could enjoy it after chemo clean. 4 ish months in. Then fast forward a month I began to notice water around bottom of tank and my ato going fast and salinity slowly dropping over a coulple weeks and it turned out to be the seal dripping really slow under the tank so got my hands on an innovative marine 40 and began building stand getting everything ready to transfer .
Got everything transferred beginning of March and found some rock from a buddy I put in a bucket with saltwater heater and wave make and some media I had from my 10 gallon let it cycle for a month or so using dr Tim’s ammonia to keep it going and all that. Added rock to everything end of may 2024.
kept getting more and more coral got a actual ato instead of the gravity bottle it wasn’t enough to keep up and also bought doser because I was tired of measuring out all for reef everyday and didn’t want any fluctuations so got ato hooked up and got hygger dosing pump set up tank was on autopilot and was seeing some actual growth from some coral to my excitement. Had bit of a cyano outburst but that only lasted a few weeks and went away with turkey baster and water changes lost a few coral that were new the sps
went back to autopilot until July I had a alk dip that damaged the sps flesh just a little bit but I got that fixed and started testing more frequently.
I think this is where I went wrong around end of august I made the mistake of “I can get these damaged gha covered coral and save them“ when I didn’t know what I was doing yet I still don’t. Here are pics from other persons tank.
But hey the corals free tangs eat algae and cuc it’ll be fine right? Kinda seemed to be getting better
tank started to look nice and full I was enjoying it algae from the free gha coral was looking better but then I hurt my back not too long after and algae exploded and started taking over coral
I’m still in the battle lost almost all my coral had to “let it go” for a month but in that month is when I lost a lot here are some before and after the “crash “ this is August 24th after I got ai blade to help with light spread
this is November 24th some very sad Zoas and mushrooms and a rbta that shut and moved survived
I got algae somewhat under control other than my Zoas on frag rack still won’t open and the zoa colony that was posted above so I tried adding more “tester corals ” mainly sps but all died except the gsp showing lots of coraline growth on back wall and bottom
December 1st
January 6th
so still working on getting rid of algae not going to add anything until I get algae 100% gone and get the frags I have back to full health and open. My plan is to get everything under control and make a order up from wwc or maybe tsa for mainly sps that’s my main goal is sps dominate tank but gotta take baby steps think I went to far too fast bit off more than I can chew. Any advice from fellow reefers or tips to get headed in the right direction would be much appreciated. Like I said before above my main goal it to get algae gone and get a spa/ acro dominated tank but have lots to learn and do before I get there.

December 1st
January 6th


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