Parker's 265 Build - Thread Retired

[Parker]

Originally Posted by lastlight

Ok Robb talk to us man.

Originally Posted by Skimmer King

ya Rob have some BALLs man , give us the updates

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.

[Parker]

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.

[lastlight]

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.

[Parker]

Originally Posted by lastlight

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.

[Myka]

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.

[Parker]

Originally Posted by Myka

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. 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.

[Myka]

Originally Posted by Parker

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.

[Parker]

*Place Holder for Pictures for Brett*

[Skimmerking]

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

[lastlight]