Huh, I must have missed these two posts, weird!

HHmmmmm what's best way to describe my tank as of late. I know! It looks like a bag of @#$

I'm really frustrated, I'm not sure what's going on. The tank does well, everything starts to color up and then everything goes for crap. Almost all of my corals are brown a few of them are now starting to STN. I've moved them up, moved them down, high flow low flow, left them in one place for a long time to aclimate. Added more fish, skimmed less, skimmed more, ran bio pellets, shut them down. New carbon, no carbon. Heavy feeding light feeding, long lighting, short lighting. Had my water tested at one of the LFS ( Thanks btw, took awhile to test ) Everything was in-line for the most part, Calc was high. Mg was a tad low, I brought it up slowly, no change.

I have one coral that's actually growing, I have corals in the tank that are close to a year old that have had nothing for growth. Corals that were proven fast growers.

Plus the tank is covered in Apitasia or however you spell it. Spent countless hours with a syringe and wet arm pits going after these guys. I'm thinking of trying a CBB next, they seem to be pretty good at clearing it out.

My next step is to change salt, I did notice that the tank takes a downward turn about 4 days after water changes. I usually change about 70 gallons every month.

The tank has no algae at all with the exception of some film algae on the glass. No hair algae to speak of, nothing.

As for updates on the tank itself, my wife gave me the go ahead to get the canopy made so I hope to get that built when I get back from holidays in a couple of weeks.

I decided to go ahead and change salt last night. I picked up a box of Reefer's Best and changed 1/3 of the water in the tank, about 100 gallons. I'll probably do another water change in a few days.

I also did a major clean, the tank, sump, skimmer and all the various other things that get dirty.

Robb sorry to read of your issues I'm hoping a salt change turns things around. I'm having good luck with Reef Crystals. It's cheap too.

I say luck because I think half of the hobby may just be that it's weird.

Thanks dude, we'll see what happens but I fear I'm going to lose most of my SPS before things start to turn around. I built a frag rack last night and moved everything I have left onto it so I can keep a closer eye on them.

Hey Robb, sorry to hear about your troubles. I haven't read this build thread until just now. Imo, most of your troubles are because of the dry rock. It takes a long time for dry rock to populate like live rock, and the less live rock (more dead rock) the longer it takes. If you go 50/50 live and dead it will take about a year for the rock to really be considered live imo. I think you're looking at quite a long time. No algae is a bad sign. If you can't grow coralline, you probably can't grow corals.

If I were you I wouldn't waste any more money on water changes. If there is no significant uptake of calcium, alkalinity, and magnesium, and no nitrate build up I would cut back water changes to no more than 10% per 2 weeks. There is no point in doing them. I would take the money you save doing that, and go buy 100 lbs of good quality live rock off the classifieds on here for $4/lb. Just make sure there are no aiptasia or bubble algae, or other nasty stuff. Stuff that all in the tank for at least 6 months, and then after that you can start removing some pieces to go back to the look you're going for.

JMHO. Hope it helps. :)

Hey Myka,

Thanks for your thoughts,

I should clarify when I say there is no algae, there is no pest algae in the tank. Hair, cyano, dino's, etc. I do have coraline algae in the tank, albeit very slow growing. The white of my plumbing hasen't even been covered yet. By not having pest algea is the tank is at least a good sign that I don't have a major nutrient problem, no? The tank will have been officially up and running a year next week.

I did seed the tank with live rock, about 40lbs went into my sump and few nice pieces went into the display tank. The nicer pieces that went into the display were coraline covered and still are, I've managed to keep that alive. I'm not a big fan of using live rock used from other peoples tanks, I've tried that with past tanks and it ended up being more trouble then it was worth. Inheriting someone else's problems in most cases.

I was up until last night using Seachem salt. It wasn't my choice to buy Seachem it was part of settlement for a store purchase that went bad. As I understand it the older Seachem salt wasn't the best product on the market to start with and I've had it for a couple of years myself.

Hey Robb,

I think many (most?) people underestimate the importance of good quality live rock. It is the main filter in our reefs, the backbone of of reef so to say! So I put a lot of effort into choice, preparation, and maintenance. Sounds kind of important, no? So I guess I just don't understand why people can take a bunch of dead rock, put it in a tank, and expect it to perform like live rock that was seeded (maybe?) thousands of years ago?

When a tank is a year old you should be getting significant coralline growth in a healthy tank. Some ULNS like Zeovit will have inhibited coralline growth, but for the most part coralline can be looked at almost as a coral itself. If the coralline isn't growing, neither will your corals ime. You should have to scrape the coralline off the back glass at least monthly. You should be getting at least dime to quarter sized patches in just a month.

You have to be picky about buying "used" rock, but it is my preferred way to buy. I will usually grab 10% fresh rock from a brand spankin new shipment of rock that comes into the LFS. Gotta get it before their rock holding tank gets overrun by ammonia and kills a bunch of life. I try to get that rock right out of the box when it arrives. I also "cook" all live rock regardless whether it is fresh or used. This way you remove the nutrients without dealing with algae, and with preservation of fauna. Saves a lot of headache.

I honestly don't think salt choice will make a huge difference. Not the type of difference you sound to be looking for anyway. I have used pretty much every salt on the market, and have yet to notice any difference. I'm currently giving D-D H2Ocean a go right now. I started using it about 5 months ago, and haven't seen a difference. It is a natural salt versus synthetic, so I figured if there was a difference to be had that might be it! So far, no change. :lol:

Oh no pictures again hmmmmmmmmmmmmmm its a trend here
sorry about your bad luck dude what made you change Salt?

:pop2:

I was using Seachem and every time I did a water change the tank would take a major step backwards. Coral dying, coralline bleaching etc. I switched over to Reefers Best and now I'm onto another salt, it's in a Grey pail, I don't remember the name of it off the top of my head.

Things have stabilized for the most part other than the lost corals from the Seachem water changes. The 2 SPS that survived are actually growing, color is improving. I haven't bought any coral quite in a while until I was sure I was able to keep these two alive long term, so far so good.

Lost a couple of tangs a week or so ago. Nothing too crazy, they kicked the hell out of each other for some reason ( after being in the tank for more than a year together) Came home and both of them were sliced up really bad and succumbed to their injuries a short time later.


I lost a MH Ballast awhile back as well, I just got around to ordering up a new one today, I've been running on two MH's for a... I guess a couple of months now. My Apex Screen died a LONG time ago, I did get it RMA'd but never got around to sending that back either, so I ordered a new one of those this morning as well.

Huh, that's sounds like quite the sob story after I re-read it..lol

I haven't been reefing long but already I know how you can sorta fall out of routine and put things off. I was doing minimal maintenance for a few months when work got nutty. Kien and I had a chat about getting back on the horse and I've been pro-active and all over any issue I can identify. I saw the results in less than a week.

Glad to hear you have some sps still. Water's been tested time to get some frags!

Ignore my aptasia problem, that's next...

Well I guess I have a bit of algae in my tank, but for reference I have never cleaned the back wall :)

http://i200.photobucket.com/albums/a...ishTank002.jpg

The on coral that's survived it all. The color is starting to come back.. Dez mentioned this one should be whitish with colored tips.. the top of is whit with colored tips even though you can quite tell in the picture..but you can see it has grown..lol

http://i200.photobucket.com/albums/a...d/IMG_2916.jpg

http://i200.photobucket.com/albums/a...ishTank007.jpg

Some decent growth there and it's down pretty low too. Is that mounted to your closed loop intake? If so you better hope it doesn't encrust too much!

It is on my closed loop intake, but is hasn't encrusted to it yet.. almost though! I have to figure out where I want to put it but I'm reluctant to move it because it's really starting to do well..

I'd say move it higher but you have very few options for doing that with the current scape. You have the potential with your scape to have some crazy massive colonies...

Sounds like you bought some of those to save time lol. PICS!

Here's couple I snapped this morning prior to heading in to work. They look much better in person. My camera skills leave much to be desired.


http://i200.photobucket.com/albums/a..._0117Large.jpg

http://i200.photobucket.com/albums/a..._0135Large.jpg

I gotta say, I'm a weeeee bit nervous now having these in my tank!

And just like that you've got more coral by weight than I do. Well done!

My new ballast should be here today as well, so as of this evening I should be back up to three lights instead of two..which will be nice as some of the stuff oun the outside edges is a bit under lit.

The edges are a bit underlit. It took me a while to find that mondo stag on the left. Your tank is huge! Even with that bucket sized colony it looks lost in there. It seems that you're getting really good polyp extension already. That's awesome. If you need anything else, just let me know.

Some pics from today,

All three lights running again..
http://i200.photobucket.com/albums/a...hTank002-1.jpg

Peaches & Cream
http://i200.photobucket.com/albums/a...ishTank008.jpg

I need to find a better place for this one
http://i200.photobucket.com/albums/a...ishTank009.jpg

Bucket sized, doesn't really look like it in the tank though.
http://i200.photobucket.com/albums/a...ishTank014.jpg

http://i200.photobucket.com/albums/a...ishTank020.jpg

http://i200.photobucket.com/albums/a...ishTank021.jpg

Left side
http://i200.photobucket.com/albums/a...ishTank022.jpg

Right side
http://i200.photobucket.com/albums/a...ishTank023.jpg

Looks good. Go easy on the lighting period because remember, many of those corals you got from me were shaded so you gotta ease them into full lighting. Your lights are 400 watts as well, so you don't wanna shock em. :)

Thanks for confriming my thoughts... when I put everything I backed my lighting down to 5 hours per day for the next little while. I haven't noticed any bleaching yet, I've been keeping a good eye out for it.

what Kelvin is your lighting?

Hey Chris,

The two outside bulbs are IceCap 10k and the middle one is Icecap 14k

400w 10k? Wow be careful lol.

How are you mounting those colonies? None came with rock still attached I'm assuming. It's going to be pretty tricky but it looks like you've managed to attach some already... wedged the rest?

Only running 5 hours a day right now. I was actually laying in bed last night trying to come up with a nice way to hang the pendants, make them look decent and have the height adjustable so I could raise them up in these situations.

A couple came with rocks/plugs attached. The rest are wedged into the rockwork for now untl I'm satisfied with where they are.



Not maintaining this thread any longer.

I told myself I wasn't going to update this thread any longer because I was getting tired of typing out all of my frustrations, most of which I still have.

Now it's time to go to extremes, the tank comes down this week. Not to sell off or get out of the hobby but to figure out a different way of doing things.

On the list of things do:
A) Rebuild Sump - it's been off-line for a year.
B) Re-plumb the tank, quite a few leaks have developed for some reason.
C) Take full advantage of my Apex
D) Figure out a better way to run reactors
E) Figure out my lighting situation - fix what's causing the issues with my ballasts or switch to a different form of lighting.
F) Aptasia - I had two file fish that took months to start eating them and once the tank was looking great they up and died, the aptasia is back with vengeance. If I don't get this problem sorted the next step is to just burn my house down, that’ll kill it!
G) RO/DI still doesn’t work correctly along with the auto top off – the solenoid valve no longer holds back water, the secondary float valves works fine but I like having the redundancy of two valves.
H) Aquascaping – I hate what I have.
I) Canopy, time to make this thing look good.

Damn, that’s quite the list – now I’m really depressed.
J) Consume vodka meant for tank…..

sorry to hear man. smart move not to take it down tho. much easier to sort these out with a dry tank. and you can cook the rock in the dark for a few months while you do it. maybe that would kill the pests?

From what I hear / read, aptasia can't be killed by light deprivation. It needs to be controlled by a predator, killed manually or I'll need to nuke my rock and start over with dead rock and re-seed with new clean live rock.

I'm not a big fan of the predator route, they comes back once the predator has been removed, the tank to too big to remove manually. ( at least at this point in my busy life ) so I may chuck the rock in the snow for a month.. lol

i believe that. i bet stagnant water wouldn't even kill them.

i'd dry the rock out and then cook it while you remodel. good luck man.

tony's tank will be the sole survivor of the classic slowBuild contest.

What a shame, I'm so disappointed for you.

I hear you on several of the items. I went with almost all dried rock to begin with, with the sole intent being to avoid any of the usual pest hitch-hikers like aiptasia .. and in the end all I did was give myself an extra long tank cycling period, and lingering phosphate issues. (I had no idea how bad the PO4 would leach from this rock, 2 years in, and I'm still afraid to not have GFO on the tank.) And .. I have aiptasia anyhow. Came in on something, frags or the little bit of wet rock that I let go in. Oh and vermetid snails. God I hate those, maybe even worse than aiptasia. You can zap or inject aiptasias or introduce predators but freaking nothing works against the vermetids.

And I'm not overly fond of my aquascaping either. :lol: Funny how this is a universal theme.

Sometimes a tank reset is needed though .. good luck with the rebuild.

Good idea not to give up. Take your time while you rebuild for a product that you'll be happy with I'm the end.

I debated stealing pictures of your tank and claiming it as mine.... :mrgreen:

Good to hear you're just stepping back and rethinking rather than selling it off.

As for burning down the house, you might get lucky with the aptasia, sort of have my doubts though.

Glad to hear you're hanging in there. It can be real frustrating sometimes. As for burning down the house I bet the insurance people haven't heard that one before: "No, seriously, I was eradicating a pest from my aquarium. What do you mean I'm not covered for that?"

use a laser to kill the aptasia! :) it works

Too late... Tanks half empty already..lol

Btw, I'm assuming you're all coming over to help me take this thing off the stand?

I see, it all goes quiet as soon as some heavy lifting is mentioned! Don't worry, I got it up there myself I can get it down..lol