Bernardhny
Active Member
I have been having some problems with my tank and although I am usually frustrated with it I seem to be losing that frustration (which worries me). I recently added a few items only to have everything I added die within 2 days. This includes fish and coral. I ran through the parameters: Temp, PH, Salinity, Phosphate, Nitrates, Calcium, Magnesium, Alkalinity and everything checks out within nominal levels. I checked again...everything looks ok....everything is behaving. I am not seeing any other corals suffer or fish acting oddly. No diseases that are apparent. Just death with anything new.
Did my normal water change, cleaned out all my foam, changed the sock, changed out the GFO and Carbon, cleaned the skimmer. Waited a few days. Added another fish. Dead in a day. Hmmm.
Then I went away for a week leaving my wife to watch the tank (always dangerous) and I came back to a dead hammer coral (A rock fell on it and she didn't take the rock off the hammer coral and it died). That hammer coral was in my tank from day one. Shrug.
I decide to go drastic. I brought out all the home depot bucks, drained all but 15G of the water and decided to do a thorough sand band cleaning and reaquascape. I have always had these really big formations of liverock and have been dreaming of a simply low key arrangement for months. Something where you see a lot of sand but have enough live rock to place coral without it looking overloaded. Usually I try to come up with a formation outside the tank and then just assemble it in the water, this time I just made 40G of new water, let it mix for about an hour and put it in the tank and let the filter run until the water was clear enough for me to start placing rock. Six hours later the tank was pretty clear, the fish and rocks were back in the tank and everything looks good.
But I am not happy with the layout. I think I will have constant Reef Scape Envy (RSE). I see all these tanks, some are overloaded and I say..nice but nah. Some are devoid of any but the most basic amount of liverock and I am like...cool but nah...not me. Most of the time I say how the heck did they get all that in the same tank? I can't do that (or afford it). This time it is very low key. Not particularly fond of it but not willing to stack rock just to fill in space. I have a 24" Cube. Nice to see the fish swimming in open water again but afraid of trying to add anything for fear of wasting my time and whatever patience I have left in me.
I did notice one thing. I had gone through two or three lights this year on my refugium (in sump). I was running LED over them and the quality of the smaller LED lights has been troublesome for me. Instead of dishing out another $70 for a little light that would only last 6-9 months I went to home depot and got a light clamp and a bulb that has the output needed to grow Chaeto. Unfortunately that light does not seem to cutting it. My Chaeto growth is down and I wonder if some of the algae problems I have been having has been because of this. I am not growing algae in the tank that much, just more than usual.
I need to win the lottery. This hobby is killing me. Anyone have any good suggestions on lights for a fuge. My sump is pretty small (eShopps 75)?
Did my normal water change, cleaned out all my foam, changed the sock, changed out the GFO and Carbon, cleaned the skimmer. Waited a few days. Added another fish. Dead in a day. Hmmm.
Then I went away for a week leaving my wife to watch the tank (always dangerous) and I came back to a dead hammer coral (A rock fell on it and she didn't take the rock off the hammer coral and it died). That hammer coral was in my tank from day one. Shrug.
I decide to go drastic. I brought out all the home depot bucks, drained all but 15G of the water and decided to do a thorough sand band cleaning and reaquascape. I have always had these really big formations of liverock and have been dreaming of a simply low key arrangement for months. Something where you see a lot of sand but have enough live rock to place coral without it looking overloaded. Usually I try to come up with a formation outside the tank and then just assemble it in the water, this time I just made 40G of new water, let it mix for about an hour and put it in the tank and let the filter run until the water was clear enough for me to start placing rock. Six hours later the tank was pretty clear, the fish and rocks were back in the tank and everything looks good.
But I am not happy with the layout. I think I will have constant Reef Scape Envy (RSE). I see all these tanks, some are overloaded and I say..nice but nah. Some are devoid of any but the most basic amount of liverock and I am like...cool but nah...not me. Most of the time I say how the heck did they get all that in the same tank? I can't do that (or afford it). This time it is very low key. Not particularly fond of it but not willing to stack rock just to fill in space. I have a 24" Cube. Nice to see the fish swimming in open water again but afraid of trying to add anything for fear of wasting my time and whatever patience I have left in me.
I did notice one thing. I had gone through two or three lights this year on my refugium (in sump). I was running LED over them and the quality of the smaller LED lights has been troublesome for me. Instead of dishing out another $70 for a little light that would only last 6-9 months I went to home depot and got a light clamp and a bulb that has the output needed to grow Chaeto. Unfortunately that light does not seem to cutting it. My Chaeto growth is down and I wonder if some of the algae problems I have been having has been because of this. I am not growing algae in the tank that much, just more than usual.
I need to win the lottery. This hobby is killing me. Anyone have any good suggestions on lights for a fuge. My sump is pretty small (eShopps 75)?
