Thinking about throwing in the towel

[hawk82]

If you are local to me, I would be happy to swing by and help you out! When I first started, I lost some expensive fish. My second reef looked like a brown shag carpet over every surface. 3 years into it and now I have 7 happy reefs. I think a lot of my issues were thinking my nitrates and phosphates had to be zero. Lots of fish, lots of food for those fish, and a lot of skimming.
Cheers! Mark

yeah too bad i dont have someone that can come over and take a look. I feel like im flying blind here lol.

 

[hawk82]

From my skimmer cup. I vacummed out the sand with the brown stuff, but was only able to get about 3 gallons for now. Out of salt. Going to get more tomorrow. How much should I change at once? Tank is 40 breeder, that skimmer cup is about 4 days worth. Only 1 fish in the system the melanurus. I checked my clean up crew, still have 8 astraea snails, and 3 of 5 hermits left, the wrasse ate the other 2 lol. Edit: i dumped the water from the skimmer cup before the pic, it was about half full, and brownish green

 

[dankaqua]

What are you using for fresh water top off? If it's not water made by a good RO/DI unit, then your tap water could be adding a LOT to your misery.

Everyone here knows what an ugly tank looks like, and we all go thru it. Just need to accept the "ugly phase" so you can get to the beauty down the road a bit....

Last point, although it may seem like a waste, doing an ICP test can really shed some light on your water chemistry. It may be too early to worry about that now, but something to consider. Amazon has all 3 ICP tests and the one from ATI tests your RO water too.



Note: your water goes to Germany, so it takes a while...

Good luck!

 

[hawk82]

Ive got the Aquatic Life RO Buddie for making water.

 

[Bruno_Soares]

I have made some mistake, big ones, my reef is only 6 months now. I had the same thought... giving up. I corrected some things I was doing wrong and I am much happier now. I started without using bacteria, inserted acans and an Euphylia too soon to the point that they all died. My Tubipora Musica and Zoanthus barely survived.

 

[MThorne]

If i were to replace all my rock with real live rock, would that help my tank get though this faze faster? At this point id rather have to deal with some live rock hitch hikers then a ugly tank.

You could try vibrant. I have had good results with it

 

[Dan_P]

I think im about to give up. It seems Ive had problems from the start. I used to keep african cichlids for over 6 years and never has one issue. First thing that happened was my sixline wrasse ended up in my filter, and died. I got another one, and he died within 2 days for no reason. So waited awhile, got a melanurus and a bicolor blenny. Blenny didnt make it, but the melanurus is doing great, and I was enjoying watching him. But now my tank is UGLY, first i had dinos, and I got a uv that seemed to clear those up. Well now its like ive got diatoms all over the sand and rocks, pretty sure the dinos didnt come back because this time its just brown with no bubbles in it. I dont understand why diatoms are coming out now the tank has been running for almost 6 months now. And on top of that the tank seems "dusty" like tons of white dust particles all in the water. I really dont know what to do now, so many problems and ive not even got into coral yet. Thinking of just going back to cichlids.

Hobbies should be fun. And if there is a learning curve, I would want one that is tolerably enjoyable. You might be finding out that owning a saltwater aquarium does not meet these requirements. Besides, African cichlids are gorgeous fish. It is OK to move on. Good luck. Dan

 

[Arricefe]

You can do this but obviously you agree what got you here isn’t working. What type of testing are you doing? I wish testing wasn’t necessary but you need to do it often at least until your tank is stable then you can cut back. There’s a solution to just about every problem you encounter in reef keeping but you have to know what you’re dealing with first.

 

[Paul B]

Looks normal to me. My tank is almost fifty years old and I still get ugly stuff. I just find it interesting. But the good news is that if you don't add chemicals or do anything drastic, that tank will straighten out and have few, if any problems.

You actually want these things to happen to a very new tank as you have because that is all due to the different types of bacteria battling to find their niche.
If this stuff didn't happen, the tank will have a hard time ever running right.

After they settle down, they will start to do what we pay them to do.
But 6 months isn't even half the lifespan of a pod.

Don't let this stuff worry you, remember it is just a fish tank and in the scheme of things, not that important. You can always empty it and throw it out if you want to, but don't get to hasty or you may miss out on a really great hobby.

This hobby has been an important part of my life for over 60 years and what I like best about it is that I can spend time messing with it or leave it for weeks and just feed and clean the glass.

 

[hawk82]

All the stuff I vacuumed out last night, is right back today

 

[brandon429]

post a full picture of your tank, there are ways you can clean a tank into compliance without harming anything, the cycle etc. you can just make it look clean with a complete cleaning, post pics so we can see details. pics of the full tank shot

you have a way to remove all the bad stuff, the stuff that transmits around, all in one pass, without harming anything. we can show you examples once we see your layout and the invader as it sits

 

[Miller535]

Looks normal to me. My tank is almost fifty years old and I still get ugly stuff. I just find it interesting. But the good news is that if you don't add chemicals or do anything drastic, that tank will straighten out and have few, if any problems.

You actually want these things to happen to a very new tank as you have because that is all due to the different types of bacteria battling to find their niche.
If this stuff didn't happen, the tank will have a hard time ever running right.

After they settle down, they will start to do what we pay them to do.
But 6 months isn't even half the lifespan of a pod.

Don't let this stuff worry you, remember it is just a fish tank and in the scheme of things, not that important. You can always empty it and throw it out if you want to, but don't get to hasty or you may miss out on a really great hobby.

This hobby has been an important part of my life for over 60 years and what I like best about it is that I can spend time messing with it or leave it for weeks and just feed and clean the glass.

WOW. Your tank is almost 50 years old?

 

[Miller535]

Hawk,

Could you please give us some info? It will help with giving advice. Tank size, equipment, did you cycle the tank and how, water parameters, what all livestock do you currently have in it.

 

[hawk82]

It looks worse in person.

 

[fishguy242]

agree post full pic,have excellent skimmer clean it ,lets go from there do you have tds checker?

 

[fishguy242]

does not look bad to me ,i am going to go back to begining reread again back to you shortly

 

[brandon429]

excellent.

here is where you stand: you may choose to keep it, these things subside in time, sometimes, and as you can see it takes a while. it is not a requirement to endure the uglies phase, its merely an option.

2020 option:

you can clean it, you do not have to keep it that way if you dont like it. I personally think it looks ok, but I know discerning reefers have standards so if you want it clean, you will not hurt your cycle in the least to rip clean it. here a rip clean, see this thread. every detail that could possibly arise in making a tank look great is in this one work. look at the $ of corals in this tank, doing just fine weeks after and in fact eating better than ever, bright happy corals.

120 gallon rip clean

I’ve decided to perform a rip clean on my 120 with 100% new water. The tank has been running for 5 years and was battling Dino for several months. I used the bacteria method from elegant corals and worked great I haven’t seen Dino in months now. But I tried several other methods including...

www.reef2reef.com

so if you want your tank fixed, see how doing midground stuff isn't working? it leaves the clouding/casting agents in another place in the tank, to be kicked up again.

but a rip clean, inputs back only sand with no cloud, as the whole sandbed is rinsed perfectly clear, using tap water actually. (tap water alert) --- the thread shows whether or not its harmful. I wouldnt recommend anything harmful, Id only recommend something awesome.

 

[hawk82]

Im reading through that post right now

 

[DeniseAndy]

In my 210g DT I just accept the uglies to some extent and help them get through the phase by water changes and blowing off rocks with turkey baster and vacuuming sand. Slow, but I cannot rip out the rocks every time I have an issue.

Now, my 40g, 20g, 6g, I follow brandon429 methods of just going full out and tearing down and cleaning and rebuilding if it gets out of hand. This includes scrubbing rock, full water change, vacuum up sand and replace or leave out altogether. I have been known to fully empty the tank and scrub all sides and bottom before adding it all back in.

Again, this is for smaller tanks. My 6g, I have three identical tanks, so when the real uglies come, I just literally move tanks. This one is used in demonstrations for kids, so need a nice looking tank that is clear.

I battle hair algae in my 40g and I have no idea why. Even with no fish and not feeding it was terrible. Maybe the rock. Again, no idea. I just sometimes decide enough and tear it apart. I also will rotate my rock. I will put the rock in the main system (after cleaned) into the sump (no lights) to rid of algae and put nice clean rocks in tank. Bad thing is no coralline build up.

 

[brandon429]

the post of Jons rip clean is 100% opposite of what every reefer on the planet would recommend in a poll, and 100% of them would say it would die quickly. isnt rule breaking truly the only fun
B

his results can be classed as shocking and zero middle ground effort, 100% cleaning is safer than partial cleaning to continue a backwards way of thinking that works great.