stevenearlmcdonald
New Member
Hey everybody!
I have been in this hobby since 1999. I walked away a couple of times but always maintained a small tank to house my clown fish whom passed last year at the age of 23! I started with a 60 gallon tank than went to a 90 gallon tank. I was very ambitious then and I still can't believe some of the things I tried to cure fish because of advice from a forum. Between the learning struggle and equipment battles and sparking outlets undersized for the work load I just walked away with the exception of a Biocube 12 gallon tank for my clownfish. Mid 2010's I got the urge to expand after seeing how far things had come in the hobby and all the new information outlets. So, I bought a new tank:
Innovative Marine Nuvo 30
Radion xr15
Apex Jr
echotech mp10
I would say I've never really been successful with this tank. Success being providing a consistent habitat that could mature a tank past the ugly phases. The ugly keeps winning. As of today I have an old tank with new tank problems that I am trying to work through. Don't have a lot of corals and the ones I do have are not happy. A couple of Duncan heads, a leather, couple of mushrooms, and some cloves. So what's the environment:
salinity 1.025
temp 78
Alk 9.0
calcium 1440
Magnesium 1300's
Ph 8.2
Phoshpate runs .06 - .10 or so
Nitrate is consistently 5 ppm
flow - maxspect jump gyre pump and echotech mp10
protein skimmer
and I have had refugium but at the moment it's not hooked up.
kessil lights: A80 tuna blue and A150w tuna blue ( on hours a day)
I've tested for stray/excessive voltage in the tank but found none. Run carbon for any toxins. So I am just trying to deal with pest algae and trying to figure out why the corals are unhappy. I've used reef flux to wipe out some bryopsis which it did along with my chaeto. It apparently invited a friend to the party, an ugly red hair algae friend that I have been battling for weeks. Manual removal, black out, Vibrant, Sea Hair and beefed up the CUC. I have stopped the Vibrant as it didn't seem to be doing much. I added copepods. I set up a bucket with a return pump so I just try and "vaccum" clean out manually as much of the algae as I can. I also pull out the aquascape and scrup with peroxide.
So this is where my journey has taken me so far.
I have been in this hobby since 1999. I walked away a couple of times but always maintained a small tank to house my clown fish whom passed last year at the age of 23! I started with a 60 gallon tank than went to a 90 gallon tank. I was very ambitious then and I still can't believe some of the things I tried to cure fish because of advice from a forum. Between the learning struggle and equipment battles and sparking outlets undersized for the work load I just walked away with the exception of a Biocube 12 gallon tank for my clownfish. Mid 2010's I got the urge to expand after seeing how far things had come in the hobby and all the new information outlets. So, I bought a new tank:
Innovative Marine Nuvo 30
Radion xr15
Apex Jr
echotech mp10
I would say I've never really been successful with this tank. Success being providing a consistent habitat that could mature a tank past the ugly phases. The ugly keeps winning. As of today I have an old tank with new tank problems that I am trying to work through. Don't have a lot of corals and the ones I do have are not happy. A couple of Duncan heads, a leather, couple of mushrooms, and some cloves. So what's the environment:
salinity 1.025
temp 78
Alk 9.0
calcium 1440
Magnesium 1300's
Ph 8.2
Phoshpate runs .06 - .10 or so
Nitrate is consistently 5 ppm
flow - maxspect jump gyre pump and echotech mp10
protein skimmer
and I have had refugium but at the moment it's not hooked up.
kessil lights: A80 tuna blue and A150w tuna blue ( on hours a day)
I've tested for stray/excessive voltage in the tank but found none. Run carbon for any toxins. So I am just trying to deal with pest algae and trying to figure out why the corals are unhappy. I've used reef flux to wipe out some bryopsis which it did along with my chaeto. It apparently invited a friend to the party, an ugly red hair algae friend that I have been battling for weeks. Manual removal, black out, Vibrant, Sea Hair and beefed up the CUC. I have stopped the Vibrant as it didn't seem to be doing much. I added copepods. I set up a bucket with a return pump so I just try and "vaccum" clean out manually as much of the algae as I can. I also pull out the aquascape and scrup with peroxide.
So this is where my journey has taken me so far.
