Hello forum,
This post will be a little long, pardon the long explanation but I think it is necessary to cover in details my fortunes and misfortunes in this hobby thus far. I first got attracted to marine life a while back but I really got into the hobby when one day I saw my friend dad's 200G FOWLR but I wanted to go beyond since I knew there was alot more that could be done with a fish tank. Soon after, I started researching and reading alot in different forums on how to properly setup an aquarium. needless to say, I told my friend that I was going to build a reef for less than $200 dollar (he laughed at me and said "go ahead and let me know how it goes", lol), soon after I started scouting for a used tank and equipment around town and the misfortunes began. My first tank was 55G with fish and corals, a few months later the tank crashed. I believe it crashed because of a heavy bio-load and not filtration in the system since the skimmer I had was a cheap one. furthermore, I later found a good deal on a 90G tank with stand and went for it. I transferred the fish, lr and corals to that tank; but to my demise ich broke out in the dt due to the introduction of a tang without proper QT. The ich killed most of the fish I had at that moment so my morale was very low because I wanted a reef so back that I was neglecting alot of the signs the tank was giving me. I went from ich to algae to anything a tank can get as far as pests.
Three years later, I have come to understand that I've made plenty of mistakes in this hobby as many of you have, but all of the bumps on the road were nothing but lessons into bettering my skills in the hobby. I went from buying cheap equipment to save money to not QT'ing fish when bought from the lfs; at the end it all was nothing but a wasted of money. The lesson for me was that I initially had to invest in the right equipment even if it meant to spend more on equipment but with a guarantee that it would last me years to come. Another lesson was to be patient, I used to grab any fish from the lfs without doing proper investigation on the fish and ended up taking it out of the tank later or even worst, killing it. In the past three years I have spent thousands of dollars into getting a nice reef (long way from that $200 I thought I was going to spend originally... naive lol) and still working towards achieving that goal. Yes I admit, I have slacked in taking care of the tank and fish here and there due to life circumstances but lately I've been thinking that I must finish what I started three years ago, the perfect reef system.
Long story short, I have learned from my mistakes along the way and now I am ready to right them all. I recently took down my system due to an aiptasia outbreak that got out of control; restarting the system is giving me a second change to get my system to were it needs be. I started buying equipment I didn't have to accomplish a nice a healthy system for the fish and corals. I read and re-read many forums trying to figure out the best way to restart my tank and I came to the conclusion of an acid bath. I took this route because I had tried many different things to rid the aiptasia and nothing worked for me; I tried lime juice, vinegar, bbf, hot water, aiptasia-x and none of these methods worked for me, hence the acid bath. I've already started the acid bath, I bleached and kill 98% of my lr, left some clean of aiptasia for re-seeding the dead rock later. I placed all of the fish and corals in a 40G QT with proper filtration and life rock in it. The fish have been in there for the past two days and they look happy.
Sorry for the long post, but here is what I currently have to rebuild the tank.
Equipment:
Reef Octopus SRO-3000INT skimmer
200W heater
GFO reactor
Carbon reactor (new)
Mag Drive 9.5 return pump
Jebao WP-15 (new)
ATO (new)
2part BRS doser (new)
RODI unit
2 Taotronics LED fixture Dimmable (will be going back to T5's, getting a hanging canopy build)
Aquatec CDP6800 buster pump (new)
4 Koralia evo 1400 powerhead
Fish:
Purple tang
Powder blue tang
Starry blenny
Yellow tang
Swallow tail BF
Cleaner wrasse
Clown fish
Foxface
Corals:
Green hammer
Green frogspawn
questions:
1. I got rid of the crush coral I had as substrate and I am planning on using fine sand. Any advise on what would be better, sand or cc? how many inches deep for the base?
2. What would be a good photo period cycle? I'm planning on having mostly LPS with a few SPS.
3. How many times a day to feed to prevent P04 buildup?
4. How do I figure out how much ALK should I dose?
5. Whats better, 2 part BRS alk or Kalkwasser?
6. I have mostly big fish in the DT, what smaller fish would you recommend for the DT on the small scale?
Thank you in advance for reading this thread. I'll really appreciate any advice, comments or suggestions. Will post pictures of my setup next week when I start putting everything back together.
Thank you.
This post will be a little long, pardon the long explanation but I think it is necessary to cover in details my fortunes and misfortunes in this hobby thus far. I first got attracted to marine life a while back but I really got into the hobby when one day I saw my friend dad's 200G FOWLR but I wanted to go beyond since I knew there was alot more that could be done with a fish tank. Soon after, I started researching and reading alot in different forums on how to properly setup an aquarium. needless to say, I told my friend that I was going to build a reef for less than $200 dollar (he laughed at me and said "go ahead and let me know how it goes", lol), soon after I started scouting for a used tank and equipment around town and the misfortunes began. My first tank was 55G with fish and corals, a few months later the tank crashed. I believe it crashed because of a heavy bio-load and not filtration in the system since the skimmer I had was a cheap one. furthermore, I later found a good deal on a 90G tank with stand and went for it. I transferred the fish, lr and corals to that tank; but to my demise ich broke out in the dt due to the introduction of a tang without proper QT. The ich killed most of the fish I had at that moment so my morale was very low because I wanted a reef so back that I was neglecting alot of the signs the tank was giving me. I went from ich to algae to anything a tank can get as far as pests.
Three years later, I have come to understand that I've made plenty of mistakes in this hobby as many of you have, but all of the bumps on the road were nothing but lessons into bettering my skills in the hobby. I went from buying cheap equipment to save money to not QT'ing fish when bought from the lfs; at the end it all was nothing but a wasted of money. The lesson for me was that I initially had to invest in the right equipment even if it meant to spend more on equipment but with a guarantee that it would last me years to come. Another lesson was to be patient, I used to grab any fish from the lfs without doing proper investigation on the fish and ended up taking it out of the tank later or even worst, killing it. In the past three years I have spent thousands of dollars into getting a nice reef (long way from that $200 I thought I was going to spend originally... naive lol) and still working towards achieving that goal. Yes I admit, I have slacked in taking care of the tank and fish here and there due to life circumstances but lately I've been thinking that I must finish what I started three years ago, the perfect reef system.
Long story short, I have learned from my mistakes along the way and now I am ready to right them all. I recently took down my system due to an aiptasia outbreak that got out of control; restarting the system is giving me a second change to get my system to were it needs be. I started buying equipment I didn't have to accomplish a nice a healthy system for the fish and corals. I read and re-read many forums trying to figure out the best way to restart my tank and I came to the conclusion of an acid bath. I took this route because I had tried many different things to rid the aiptasia and nothing worked for me; I tried lime juice, vinegar, bbf, hot water, aiptasia-x and none of these methods worked for me, hence the acid bath. I've already started the acid bath, I bleached and kill 98% of my lr, left some clean of aiptasia for re-seeding the dead rock later. I placed all of the fish and corals in a 40G QT with proper filtration and life rock in it. The fish have been in there for the past two days and they look happy.
Sorry for the long post, but here is what I currently have to rebuild the tank.
Equipment:
Reef Octopus SRO-3000INT skimmer
200W heater
GFO reactor
Carbon reactor (new)
Mag Drive 9.5 return pump
Jebao WP-15 (new)
ATO (new)
2part BRS doser (new)
RODI unit
2 Taotronics LED fixture Dimmable (will be going back to T5's, getting a hanging canopy build)
Aquatec CDP6800 buster pump (new)
4 Koralia evo 1400 powerhead
Fish:
Purple tang
Powder blue tang
Starry blenny
Yellow tang
Swallow tail BF
Cleaner wrasse
Clown fish
Foxface
Corals:
Green hammer
Green frogspawn
questions:
1. I got rid of the crush coral I had as substrate and I am planning on using fine sand. Any advise on what would be better, sand or cc? how many inches deep for the base?
2. What would be a good photo period cycle? I'm planning on having mostly LPS with a few SPS.
3. How many times a day to feed to prevent P04 buildup?
4. How do I figure out how much ALK should I dose?
5. Whats better, 2 part BRS alk or Kalkwasser?
6. I have mostly big fish in the DT, what smaller fish would you recommend for the DT on the small scale?
Thank you in advance for reading this thread. I'll really appreciate any advice, comments or suggestions. Will post pictures of my setup next week when I start putting everything back together.
Thank you.
