Let's try this again. Most of you don't know me as I was never super active on the site. I did put up a tale of the tank thread in 2011 when I first upgraded to my 90 gallon (from a 29g), and was keeping up pretty good, but that is when the site crashed and I lost all of my thread. After that I was too busy to catch up. Hoping to be a little more active now.
I was also too busy to really do more than the bare minimum on my tank. Especially the last 2 years, I really let it go with a broken skimmer (so no skimming), no RO/DI unit so all top offs were with 400 ppm tap water. I did zero water changes. I am not proud of this at ALL!!!! With 3 kids, work, and a major home renovation (lasting over a year), I just was very busy, and I let my tank suffer.
Overall the condition of the tank did not deteriorate as much as one would think after all that. I did have a TON of hair algae basically covering the entire tank and rocks. I did lose a few corals. About 6 months ago, I even suggested to my wife that I should just take it down as it was an eye sore in our living room. And even though she is not really into it at all, she knew how much I loved it and said to keep it.
A couple months later, I finally decided that if I was going to keep it, that I had to do it right. So after 6 weeks of hard work, I am proud to say that I am very happy with the tank again.
The work included, nightly hour long sessions of pulling out hair algae piece by piece. Getting an RO/DI unit and doing weekly 5% water changes. Running Carbon and GFO. Running filter socks again and changing them almost daily as I would blow off the rocks and stir up more detritus than you could ever imagine. I added another powerhead and really amped up and tweaked my flow.
Anyway, so I am embarrassed how I let the tank get, but I am extremely proud of the fact that i "brought it back to life". It now looks pretty good again. I added a couple of fish and a few frags. Everything seems to be flourishing again.
So I figured I would redo a tale of the tank. As I have time I will try and fill in the history of the build.
But for now here are 3 current pictures. (Hoping this is how to post pics)
Front Left (The front and left side are viewable on this tank)
IMG_7735
Front Right
IMG_7737
Front
IMG_7738
I was also too busy to really do more than the bare minimum on my tank. Especially the last 2 years, I really let it go with a broken skimmer (so no skimming), no RO/DI unit so all top offs were with 400 ppm tap water. I did zero water changes. I am not proud of this at ALL!!!! With 3 kids, work, and a major home renovation (lasting over a year), I just was very busy, and I let my tank suffer.
Overall the condition of the tank did not deteriorate as much as one would think after all that. I did have a TON of hair algae basically covering the entire tank and rocks. I did lose a few corals. About 6 months ago, I even suggested to my wife that I should just take it down as it was an eye sore in our living room. And even though she is not really into it at all, she knew how much I loved it and said to keep it.
A couple months later, I finally decided that if I was going to keep it, that I had to do it right. So after 6 weeks of hard work, I am proud to say that I am very happy with the tank again.
The work included, nightly hour long sessions of pulling out hair algae piece by piece. Getting an RO/DI unit and doing weekly 5% water changes. Running Carbon and GFO. Running filter socks again and changing them almost daily as I would blow off the rocks and stir up more detritus than you could ever imagine. I added another powerhead and really amped up and tweaked my flow.
Anyway, so I am embarrassed how I let the tank get, but I am extremely proud of the fact that i "brought it back to life". It now looks pretty good again. I added a couple of fish and a few frags. Everything seems to be flourishing again.
So I figured I would redo a tale of the tank. As I have time I will try and fill in the history of the build.
But for now here are 3 current pictures. (Hoping this is how to post pics)
Front Left (The front and left side are viewable on this tank)
IMG_7735
Front Right
IMG_7737
Front
IMG_7738
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