One thing you did that NOTICEABLY IMPROVED your reef tank?

[ReefRondo]

Planning every last detail before even starting.

 

[atomos]

pods, phyto, macroalgae

 

[Sleeping Giant]

Got new lights from @noopsyche best thing I've done in the last 6 months.

 

[ArtisticReef]

All the above & much more.

 

[Mmar2385]

We all want a better reef tank! We want it to look better, be healthier and grow faster. As reef keepers we sometimes make mistakes that deter us from that goal but other times we make a good move that improves our reef tank. Some of the things we do has also worked for others, while other things might not work as well. What was it for you? Let's talk about it today!

What was one thing you did that NOTICEABLY IMPROVED your reef tank?

TELL US ABOUT IT!

Image via our Reef Of The Month @Bacon505

I did three things, upgraded from a 40 to 125, after I notice I couldn't keep a soft coral not even a xenia alive, I decided to do a 90% water change and swap out my old sand for live sand, now, all of my corals are thriving a month later! My soft corals grew back entirely, I have sps, LPS, and leather corals. My waving hand went from almost been completely melted to growing out of control! I'm super happy I made those three big changes.

 

[Reef craze]

Yes joined here. Learning a lot for you guys.

 

[Stevel]

Lights were the biggest help with keeping coral. Fish were relatively easy but coral was another thing. Since getting some AI el SOLS my coral starting growing like crazy.

 

[FEED ME ZOAS]

I second this. One of the best things I ever did. Took a 7' frag tank to do it, but the 180s look better than ever now that they get left alone, for the most part.

I think it's going to take something like that for me too. I'm certainly trying lol. Someday

 

[Ocean’s Piece]

I stopped caring so much. Realizing that things need to be left alone and let nature take its course was something that made the tank much better. And I also realized that being perfect on everything you do for the tank and intervening on everything is worse than letting nature do its thing. Also, having the best is good, but not required

 

[FEED ME ZOAS]

I ended up neglecting my tank for about a year. I got it going, got some fishpond, got some zoas, overfed reef roids a single time, had a bunch of zoas get choked out by algae, and then it kind of just was there. Kept the fish fed and they've grown, but just recently have gotten back on. Keeping the glass clean has been the biggest visual thing. My ceriths have bred a few times so in my 18 gallon aio I've got orders of magnitude too many. When there's not algae on the glass I can see into the tank without having to look past copious amounts of ceriths lol.

 

[210 Reef Tank]

I started to do Triton ICP water testing every 2 months and coarse correcting based on their recommendation. I have seen considerable improvement since then. I also started trace dosing because each water test showed several trace elements were always low when I got my water tests back. They were Iodine, Vanadium, Zinc and Manganese.
I do a 50 gallon water change every month but that in itself was not enough to replenish my needed nutrients.

 

[Jorge Sanchez]

Adding chaeto algae to my refugium really improved water quality and micro-fauna ecosystem. Keeping nitrates and phospates under control

 

[choss]

I started my tank with both dry and live rock, as well as a fully functional refugium. I have never had any nuisance algae in the main tank and corals doing well. The other item I swear by is my KH Director which has allowed me to keep ALK rock solid. I never had success with SPS before this addition.

 

[youcallmenny1]

Removed my media reactors (phosguard/ROX carbon) completely and let the roller/skimmer/fuge handle export. Tank did a really quick 180 after that choice.

 

[rioreef]

Bubble algae got out of hand on my 90. Love it or hate it I dosed Vibrant. Removed my chaeto and started dosing Vibrant in Feb and continued well past all bubble algae was gone. I stopped the dosing at the end of Aug and this week I will move the chaeto back and bring the fuge online.

When I started dosing the Vibrant I did not expect a quick fix or miracles. Stuck with it and it saved my reef. No loss of corals neither.

 

[cocoReefer]

Most recently, its been chaetogro( from little yellow chaeto to tons of dark green) and then aminos( brighter darker colors on pale acros).
In the last couple years, gfo ( no more phos. issues) and an auto topoff (improved sps vigor)
Noticed great improvement with each. All changes made 3-4 months apart at least

 

[Yazannreef]

Hold Alk study at 8.5DKH via Dosing and small biweekly water changes.
Dosing aminos and feeding a variety of foods
Just overall understanding what to look for and watch your corals, they will tell you the whole story!!!

 

[Nicholas Dushynsky]

Keeping my hands out of the tank

Totally agree on this.

 

[shakacuz]

Added an Algae Turf scrubber and removed the skimmer, and added both PNS Probio and YellowSNO. things started improving drastically that my tank is almost on autopilot (minus me manually removing the hair algae from the scrubber)

how did you go about to adding the probio/yellowsno. just daily dosing? what were the noticeable improvements?

 

[Risk1994]

Keeping nitrates/phosphates above zero.