Out of the flood,resurrection of my 650 gallon system

[IvanW]

That is really amazing. Mark and I go back a long way.
If you live in the SoCal area join us for club meetings every third Friday of the month at IHOP in Santa Ana. Also at Reef a palooza in October. Hope to meet you one of these days.

 

[Tim Olson]

Great thread! I'll be following ...

 

[RyanCSGO]

That is really amazing. Mark and I go back a long way.
If you live in the SoCal area join us for club meetings every third Friday of the month at IHOP in Santa Ana. Also at Reef a palooza in October. Hope to meet you one of these days.

Awesome. Just paid my dues to join SCMAS, not sure if ill make this months meeting, but I will definitely make it to the next one.

 

[Ashish Patel]

I remember seeing your post last year and it made me very happy seeing your new setup. Glad to see you are continuing your passion.. I started my tank with 100% dry rock and after reading about dino's ending up adding 40LR of cure LR to the sump, Refugium with Chaeto 24-7 lighting, and large pond UV filter. My thinking is even if the dino's are gone might be good practice to add something that will absorb those minor trace elements that would otherwise be used by the dinos exclusively. If they come back (which they are good at), they obviously have an ideal situation to reproduce. I feel the blackout is a good treatment but it is not practical to do it long term but adding a refugium along with this is a good way to choke them out of existence Best of luck and keep up the good work.

 

[IvanW]

Here are a few updated pics (skills still lacking). Tank is doing really well.

 

[ca1ore]

Impressive. It's actually your original thread on RC that ultimately sent me to an acrylic tank for my new build. It may scratch, but it won't blow out. Same 96x36x30"dimensions. Plus a lot lighter.

 

[alanbetiger]

I figured out you PM on the other site!

 

[Ultra Aquatics]

Great job on the rebuild, following along.

 

[IvanW]

I decided to move things around a bit. I had a frag tank hooked up in the system, it was being fed off of the main display and draining into its own sump then pumped from there into the refugium on the main sump. I was having great difficulty getting and keeping it balanced so I decided to take it off line and in the next few weeks will set it up as its own system, probably in the garage. So in the space that the frag tank vacated I moved my calcium reactor and set it up with a Masterflex pump. I can now understand why my fellow geeks who are using this system rave about it. I have had it running like this for less than a day and already I can see the difference,a bit on the expensive side (but what isn't in this hobby) I think it will be money well spent.
On the Dinoflagellate issue that I am going through, I have upped my ph,phosphates and nitrates, I also have not done a water change in quite a few weeks. The tank is not getting worse and I personally think that I might have turned a corner hopefully on the road to recovery, I guess time will tell.

 

[IvanW]

Tank is doing really well, Dinoflagellates look like they are disappearing all be it slowly. Coral growth is good and polyp extension is great. Here are a few new pics

 

[Ashish Patel]

looking good and excellent growth!!!

 

[gcarroll]

Looks great Ivan! Marc really took good care of the tank while you were traveling! Welcome back Btw!

 

[IvanW]

 

[IvanW]

Just one more. I need to do something about getting some cabinetry in place, getting tired of looking at that ghetto canopy.

 

[IvanW]

I can’t believe that I have not posted any update for almost a year. Tank is doing really great. I still don’t have any cabinets....shame on me.

 

[IvanW]

The growth has been really amazing compared to the pics from a year ago.

 

[Tim Olson]

Looks great! Keep up the good work.

 

[Fudsey]

Tank is looking spectacular ! ! !

 

[Kayvon]

Any updates? Been nearly 2 years

 

[IvanW]

Oh well time to resurrect this thread again. I can’t believe that it is 10 years ago that I suffered the disaster shown in the first picture.
I have been battling a really bad turf algae problem for the longest time now and the tank was looking really bad partially due to my neglect as it was a loosing battle. I decided that the only option other than shut it down completely was to rebuild. For the past few days I have been busy emptying the complete display,not a fun job. The only good thing is to try rectify some of the mistakes made in the original build. My intention is to get the new rock scape into the tank this weekend.
I am still undecided whether to go bare bottom or add sand. I like the look of the sand but it is a real pain to keep clean and it has a tendency to blow into the back corners and leaves a big empty space right up front, any thoughts would be appreciated.