zachj7
Community Member
Well, I'll play along with the welcome message and post my tank. I have a 10 year old tank, 180 gallon in wall reef tank in my basement, with all the equipment hidden in the utility room. It's "new" because I had my first and only major tank crash in March, and so I'm for the most part starting over with coral frags.
As we have 3 young kids, work, home projects, coaching...life...the tank was in "ultra low maintenance mode" for a while. For the most part that just meant lots of algae, and a coral here and there getting overshadowed by bigger corals that i wasn't trimming back. So when work from home started for me I decided to get back to properly maintaining the tank. Did a water change, and immediately killed large colonies of corals, looked like I shot my giant toadstool coral with a gun the way it just slumped over. Long story short, the salt mix had gone bad somehow (didn't think that could happen, based on just about everything on the internet). But it was def bad, really examined it after, the bucket had a very strong "chemical" smell. Old reef crystals, but had been sealed in its bucket for a long time.... I tried to do a good thing, perform a water change and killed lots of coral, didn't bother my fish at all though, no casualties there. Couldn't fix it with a water change in time...the salt was the issue, got carbon up and running as fast as i could a couple days later, but damage was done. Carbon took care of it eventually, so I had a few survivors (all mushrooms, lordhowensis corals, blasto's, candy canes). The surviving LPS still had major colony deaths, but a few heads survived on each. And just now starting to see a tiny bit of the Toadstool survive and growing back (a quarter size vs the large dinner plate it was).
So that's why the tank is "new." Slowly have brought it back to life and stability with my oldest kid, as he's showing interest. Of course his favorite part is picking new fish and corals. Mostly been trying to make upgrades to the tank setup so that maintenance is easier and better so i'm more likely to keep doing it. So far so good. Made some return pump and plumbing upgrades, I run a carbon reactor all the time now (mixed with a small amount of GFO, Lighting upgrade (troublesome gen2 radions for gen5's and rented a PAR meter to set up right as the old radions caused bleaching), new Hanna checkers to make testing better/easier, started using filter socks as the 10 year buildup of "stuff" in my sump was a lot when i finally cleaned it.
Had a lot of this green macroalgae growth all over the tank, really thick, almost like a hair brush in stiffness and appearance, just green. Couldn't pull it out, would just lift up the whole aquascape. Then as we added some new fish a little mini "new" tank algae outbreak. Mostly hair and bubble algae. Used Vibrant, nearly all gone now after about 10 weeks of use. Some of that green algae left, but it is def dying off, and the tangs eat whats left. Very impressed with Vibrant.
Starting to finally get a quarantine tank up and running like we all should but many seem to not do until something bad happens.
So got lots of old experience, mostly learning things the hard way 10 years ago, trying to bring my tank up to speed on best practices. Amazing how much better the information and resources that are out there now to see. Helps a lot. Big fan of BRS videos. So many things i wish i knew 10 years ago. Don't get me wrong, i did lots of research and stuff, but there's no replacing experience and new info/resources. I did some things absolutely right, but lots of stuff wrong or the hard way.
My tank is a mixed reef, mostly soft/LPS, and just a few SPS, as I only run a Kalk reactor that my topoff drips through. Only had success with SPS in the past long term with montipora cap's. Had a huge colony before the crash. Opted not to reaquascape after the crash...thought about it, but just too huge of an endeavor. Believe me, the aquascape isn't great i know, especially for flow, but it is 10 years old. Good for the fish, lots of caves and a large overhang, but mostly just a wall of rock.
As we have 3 young kids, work, home projects, coaching...life...the tank was in "ultra low maintenance mode" for a while. For the most part that just meant lots of algae, and a coral here and there getting overshadowed by bigger corals that i wasn't trimming back. So when work from home started for me I decided to get back to properly maintaining the tank. Did a water change, and immediately killed large colonies of corals, looked like I shot my giant toadstool coral with a gun the way it just slumped over. Long story short, the salt mix had gone bad somehow (didn't think that could happen, based on just about everything on the internet). But it was def bad, really examined it after, the bucket had a very strong "chemical" smell. Old reef crystals, but had been sealed in its bucket for a long time.... I tried to do a good thing, perform a water change and killed lots of coral, didn't bother my fish at all though, no casualties there. Couldn't fix it with a water change in time...the salt was the issue, got carbon up and running as fast as i could a couple days later, but damage was done. Carbon took care of it eventually, so I had a few survivors (all mushrooms, lordhowensis corals, blasto's, candy canes). The surviving LPS still had major colony deaths, but a few heads survived on each. And just now starting to see a tiny bit of the Toadstool survive and growing back (a quarter size vs the large dinner plate it was).
So that's why the tank is "new." Slowly have brought it back to life and stability with my oldest kid, as he's showing interest. Of course his favorite part is picking new fish and corals. Mostly been trying to make upgrades to the tank setup so that maintenance is easier and better so i'm more likely to keep doing it. So far so good. Made some return pump and plumbing upgrades, I run a carbon reactor all the time now (mixed with a small amount of GFO, Lighting upgrade (troublesome gen2 radions for gen5's and rented a PAR meter to set up right as the old radions caused bleaching), new Hanna checkers to make testing better/easier, started using filter socks as the 10 year buildup of "stuff" in my sump was a lot when i finally cleaned it.
Had a lot of this green macroalgae growth all over the tank, really thick, almost like a hair brush in stiffness and appearance, just green. Couldn't pull it out, would just lift up the whole aquascape. Then as we added some new fish a little mini "new" tank algae outbreak. Mostly hair and bubble algae. Used Vibrant, nearly all gone now after about 10 weeks of use. Some of that green algae left, but it is def dying off, and the tangs eat whats left. Very impressed with Vibrant.
Starting to finally get a quarantine tank up and running like we all should but many seem to not do until something bad happens.
So got lots of old experience, mostly learning things the hard way 10 years ago, trying to bring my tank up to speed on best practices. Amazing how much better the information and resources that are out there now to see. Helps a lot. Big fan of BRS videos. So many things i wish i knew 10 years ago. Don't get me wrong, i did lots of research and stuff, but there's no replacing experience and new info/resources. I did some things absolutely right, but lots of stuff wrong or the hard way.
My tank is a mixed reef, mostly soft/LPS, and just a few SPS, as I only run a Kalk reactor that my topoff drips through. Only had success with SPS in the past long term with montipora cap's. Had a huge colony before the crash. Opted not to reaquascape after the crash...thought about it, but just too huge of an endeavor. Believe me, the aquascape isn't great i know, especially for flow, but it is 10 years old. Good for the fish, lots of caves and a large overhang, but mostly just a wall of rock.
