Hello everyone and welcome. This tank was established in January of 2016 and is just shy of two years old now. It was an upgrade from my 29 gallon which I had started in June of 2014 and that was becoming overrun with hair algae. I decided to start fresh with a new tank and some experience under my belt to create a proper saltwater aquarium. The tank is a standard 75 gallon rimmed aquarium and for a sump I went with the 3rd generation Eshopps R-100.
Day 1:
The first year of the tank was not a failure but I was not seeing the growth I was expecting to see and a hair algae bloom caused problems for a lot of my corals. I was also having trouble keeping SPS; they would survive for about 4-6 weeks looking great and then one day they would RTN. I always wanted to keep things on this tank as natural and simple as possible, which is why I have a deep sand bed, so at the beginning of this year I removed all chemical filtration (GFO/chemipure) and my filter floss as well. My Deblius' lobster had failed to molt after keeping him for over 2 years and I had been dealing with the hair algae bloom so I thought I would change up my filtration methods in an attempt to have better success with my corals.
Post cycle algae bloom:
2nd Algae bloom just after one year old:
The algae issues solved themselves over time with a little manual removal during water changes and focusing on proper parameters. In March, after removing all chemical filtration, I wanted to focus on promoting denitrification and allowing bacteria and other detrivores to remove organics from the water. I started dosing NO3-PO4X daily, added a sulfur doped "brick" for better denitrification, and raised the water temperature to 81F. I still run my protein skimmer but sometimes it is off for a day or two (snails block the intake ) and these changes seems to really have turned things around. All of my corals have been visibly growing over the past 6 months, including my SPS. I'm hoping to continue this success as I would like to get a pair of panda gobies sometime in the future but they require a larger pocillipora coral to call home.
Filtration
~90lbs Haitian Live Rock
4” Deep Sand Bed created with Nature's Ocean Marine White #0 (120lbs) and Live Aragonite Reef Substrate (32lbs)
Eshopps R-100 Refugium Sump
Aquamaxx CO-1 Protein Skimmer
Sulfur Doped Aragonite Brick (rated @1000g)
Chaeto Clump
Lighting (Sunrise/Sunset based on local time, 5.5 hours at peak intensity)
Aquatic Life 6x54W T5 (2xBlue+ 1xCoral+ 1xAquablue Special)
Custom 100W DIY LED ([email protected] Royal Blue, 5@2W Hyper Violet, 5@2W Violet)
120W Black Box LED for refugium (16 hours at night, whites only @100%)
Flow
Jebao RW-8 (W1 mode at 100%) and RW-4 (H mode at 100%)
Sicce Multi Quiet 4000 return pump
Fish Livestock
Tomini Tang
Breeding False Percula and Snowflake Clown Pair
I plan to post updates and future progression of the tank for anyone following along. My current plan is to find some new fish for my tank. Only 3 fish is definitely not enough for a reef! I would also like to get a Battlebox in the coming months since I have been having much better success with my SPS than I have before with this tank. Thanks for taking to the time to check out my thread.
FTS as of 11/11/2017
Alk: 8.0 Calc: 430 Mag: 1500 NO3: 15 PO4: 0.00
Day 1:
The first year of the tank was not a failure but I was not seeing the growth I was expecting to see and a hair algae bloom caused problems for a lot of my corals. I was also having trouble keeping SPS; they would survive for about 4-6 weeks looking great and then one day they would RTN. I always wanted to keep things on this tank as natural and simple as possible, which is why I have a deep sand bed, so at the beginning of this year I removed all chemical filtration (GFO/chemipure) and my filter floss as well. My Deblius' lobster had failed to molt after keeping him for over 2 years and I had been dealing with the hair algae bloom so I thought I would change up my filtration methods in an attempt to have better success with my corals.
Post cycle algae bloom:
2nd Algae bloom just after one year old:
The algae issues solved themselves over time with a little manual removal during water changes and focusing on proper parameters. In March, after removing all chemical filtration, I wanted to focus on promoting denitrification and allowing bacteria and other detrivores to remove organics from the water. I started dosing NO3-PO4X daily, added a sulfur doped "brick" for better denitrification, and raised the water temperature to 81F. I still run my protein skimmer but sometimes it is off for a day or two (snails block the intake ) and these changes seems to really have turned things around. All of my corals have been visibly growing over the past 6 months, including my SPS. I'm hoping to continue this success as I would like to get a pair of panda gobies sometime in the future but they require a larger pocillipora coral to call home.
Filtration
~90lbs Haitian Live Rock
4” Deep Sand Bed created with Nature's Ocean Marine White #0 (120lbs) and Live Aragonite Reef Substrate (32lbs)
Eshopps R-100 Refugium Sump
Aquamaxx CO-1 Protein Skimmer
Sulfur Doped Aragonite Brick (rated @1000g)
Chaeto Clump
Lighting (Sunrise/Sunset based on local time, 5.5 hours at peak intensity)
Aquatic Life 6x54W T5 (2xBlue+ 1xCoral+ 1xAquablue Special)
Custom 100W DIY LED ([email protected] Royal Blue, 5@2W Hyper Violet, 5@2W Violet)
120W Black Box LED for refugium (16 hours at night, whites only @100%)
Flow
Jebao RW-8 (W1 mode at 100%) and RW-4 (H mode at 100%)
Sicce Multi Quiet 4000 return pump
Fish Livestock
Tomini Tang
Breeding False Percula and Snowflake Clown Pair
I plan to post updates and future progression of the tank for anyone following along. My current plan is to find some new fish for my tank. Only 3 fish is definitely not enough for a reef! I would also like to get a Battlebox in the coming months since I have been having much better success with my SPS than I have before with this tank. Thanks for taking to the time to check out my thread.
FTS as of 11/11/2017
Alk: 8.0 Calc: 430 Mag: 1500 NO3: 15 PO4: 0.00
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