Will not do this again!

[Leicobra]

My name is Lee. I started reef keeping 15 years ago in a small apartment in CA. After being married for 10+ years and having kids. my passion for reefing only grew more wild. About 3 month ago I started changing things a bit in the tank. I started experimenting on coral color. I have always wanted a clean brighter look on the corals. in the past, I have tried zeovit system and lowering my No3. results are good but I wanted more growth. I have notice at least in my tank when i was using a zeovit reactor. Colors are great, but the growth of my coral are much slower. Being in the hobby for so long, we all know that changing anything too quickly is not a good thing. first, I've decided to take down the zeovit reactor and let my corals color up a bit. In about 3 weeks my corals started to showing deep coloration,but no growth. At this point, the tank is less then 3 month old. I thought okay, may be its just too young. later I have realized that because my tank was setup as a low nutrient system. All my rocks were dead rocks and then seeded with bacteria in a bottle. This will set me back a lot despite the fact that my corals are coloring up. About 4 month into it, I stared dosing No3 to the system. Bacteria consumes No3 to grow in population. In theory that would work right? However, I run into a number of issues about 2 weeks of doing No3. first I started to see a chaetomorpha explosion in my sump. so I slowly removed most of the algae and reduced the amount dosed to the system. 5 month since the tank was setup only a little to no growth. frags will sit on the rock work for about a mouth then suddenly died for no reason. Given that I even sent water samples to ICP lab. All my parameter all normal. In short, I was defeated. until I found Mike Paletta's video on his Elos tank online. Since then, I have followed some of his suggestions and

see nothing but growth and growth. Now I can enjoy this tank more and grow in my respect for this ecosystem more then ever. Here is pics when the tank was 4 month old.

 

[Leicobra]

Here is the pic now.

 

[motortrendz]

What did you change to make the growth take off?

 

[Leicobra]

What did you change to make the growth take off?

Hi motorendz, I did numbers of things : Water changes from weekly down to biweekly. removed my filter soaks from sump to got more particles in the water for corals to feed on. Biggest thing I believed that made the coral happy was live rock. I got a few pieces of live rock from my office tank which had been in there for about 5+ years. I discontinued carbon use slowly in this tank as well. Wet skimming instead of dry. feeding more often.

 

[AngryMike2016]

I started doing the same recently, and am already having much better luck with acropora.

 

[Leicobra]

I started doing the same recently, and am already having much better luck with acropora.

Hi AngryMike2016, I am very encouraged to hear that your tank is doing well. Nature always wins!

 

[AngryMike2016]

Your tank looks great, and I hope mine will look that good some day.

 

[Leicobra]

Thank you. Keep on reefing!

 

[A-dawg]

Any other things you changed other then those few. I’m having the same issues. I have been thinking about ditching filter socks in order to get my nutrients up. Any other tips I would appreciate.

Anyone know where to buy quality live rock

 

[AngryMike2016]

How often are you feeding? Things started to really turn around for me when I went from one feeding per day to two.

 

[Leicobra]

Any other things you changed other then those few. I’m having the same issues. I have been thinking about ditching filter socks in order to get my nutrients up. Any other tips I would appreciate.

Anyone know where to buy quality live rock

Hi A-dawg, besides adding live rock, I used sponge power which i had on hand. I not sure if this helps with my sponge growth. Sure see a lot of sponges though. When you make change,Make sure you do it slowly, or you will run into problems. Your tank is different then mine. Love to help along the way. Can you tell me how are you running the system?
Live rocks are hard to find these days . May be a local Reefer who is will to give you some, IMO that is the best way to get quality live rock.

 

[Leicobra]

How often are you feeding? Things started to really turn around for me when I went from one feeding per day to two.

3 times a day. Dry food mixed with reef roids. Cast feed phytoplankton 2 time a week. Mysis shrimp soaked in polyp lab 2 times a week. Mostly for my lps

 

[TangoTang]

Do you mind maybe linking the mike Paletta video where you got some of this information from? I celebrate and congratulate your growth and I’d like to see the tips that he offered in the video.

 

[Leicobra]

Do you mind maybe linking the mike Paletta video where you got some of this information from? I celebrate and congratulate your growth and I’d like to see the tips that he offered in the video.

Here you go.

 

[TangoTang]

Here you go.

Thank you, found that one on YouTube and just wanted to make sure. Thanks again

 

[SeaDweller]

Hi motorendz, I did numbers of things : Water changes from weekly down to biweekly. removed my filter soaks from sump to got more particles in the water for corals to feed on. Biggest thing I believed that made the coral happy was live rock. I got a few pieces of live rock from my office tank which had been in there for about 5+ years. I discontinued carbon use slowly in this tank as well. Wet skimming instead of dry. feeding more often.

Why did you decide to skim wet instead of dry? Is it because you’re importing/feeding more?

 

[Bob Weigant]

Its awesome to see tanks thrive. I may remove my filter sock in my sps tank

 

[A-dawg]

So it’s funny because I set up my tank right after watching that same video so I was trying to find live rock but it’s just not practical. It’s a 100 gallon SPS only, still only three or four months old so I knew I had to try to create an ecosystem that wasn’t there yet so I seeded itwith pods, I add Phyto, I feed reef roofs, and I also dosed po4 and no3 from the start. I actually had really good growth right out of the gate. I ended up having flukes and against my better judgement I used prazipro. It’s supposed to be one of the safest medications. I think what happened is that it shocked my acros and they stopped growing. Also I’m using a CaRx. So my all went from solid 9 up to 11 for a day or two and it burned my tips etc and ever since then it basically is acting like the dreaded new SPS tank. I’ve been trying to turn it around but I think it’s gonna take time and I’m gonna loose most of the sps that was there. Sad because I have 20 very high end frags like home wrecker, orange passion, Walt Disney etc so I’m pretty ticked lol.

Hi A-dawg, besides adding live rock, I used sponge power which i had on hand. I not sure if this helps with my sponge growth. Sure see a lot of sponges though. When you make change,Make sure you do it slowly, or you will run into problems. Your tank is different then mine. Love to help along the way. Can you tell me how are you running the system?
Live rocks are hard to find these days . May be a local Reefer who is will to give you some, IMO that is the best way to get quality live rock.

 

[Leicobra]

Why did you decide to skim wet instead of dry? Is it because you’re importing/feeding more?

Yes, I wanted to export more organics since I am feeding the tank more. I was dry skimming for a little bit, but always end up with algae problems. Because my import / export was balanced. The wet skimming also helped with my alk stabilization. I run a geo kalk reactor. The only thing for me to watch out for is my salinity since the skimmer pull out a lot of water.

 

[Leicobra]

So it’s funny because I set up my tank right after watching that same video so I was trying to find live rock but it’s just not practical. It’s a 100 gallon SPS only, still only three or four months old so I knew I had to try to create an ecosystem that wasn’t there yet so I seeded itwith pods, I add Phyto, I feed reef roofs, and I also dosed po4 and no3 from the start. I actually had really good growth right out of the gate. I ended up having flukes and against my better judgement I used prazipro. It’s supposed to be one of the safest medications. I think what happened is that it shocked my acros and they stopped growing. Also I’m using a CaRx. So my all went from solid 9 up to 11 for a day or two and it burned my tips etc and ever since then it basically is acting like the dreaded new SPS tank. I’ve been trying to turn it around but I think it’s gonna take time and I’m gonna loose most of the sps that was there. Sad because I have 20 very high end frags like home wrecker, orange passion, Walt Disney etc so I’m pretty ****** lol.

I am sorry to hear that. I had a 40 gallon that I started with dry rock once. It took me close to 2 years to see noticeable growth on my acros.
Also, the dry rocks were seating in a container with saltwater for 7 months in my garage before the start up. With patience it will turn around. Calcium reactors are hard to dial in at least for me. Especially the single chambered. The other thing I did was I had 6 marine pure blocks in the sump. I dosed so much bacteria.

This pic was the first sign of good health after 2 years a patience.

The tank setup for 6 month.