It's not as hard as you think.

[Tanabe750]

Hello every one, I'm new to the forums and very experienced with my own setup. I like to keep things simple and i have done extensive trial and errors. I will be as help full as i can be. My vast knowledge is over reef aquariums up to 70 gallons.

My current setup has 4 years. The first two years were awesome and the last two have been hell. My heater wouldn't turn off.. Causing my tank to have an algae bloom and eventually killing off everything, except my duncan coral and two blastos. It took me over two years to get it back to the way it was. I had to throw my live rock away anyways due to aptasias.

After fighting with my aquarium for two years, I left my bulbs alone and never changed them (running two 21' 65 watt power compacts and two T5 on a 55 gallon deep). I didn"t want to change my lights because i wanted to see how long the could grow coral with old bulbs (I would usually change them once a year. Now i have had the same bulbs for 2 1/2 years and corals look great.) I had very good success with corals. Everything I put in the tank would survive. I did not have any acroporas at the time.

I don't want to blame the heater itself, even tho it was a big issue. After the crash i took out the heater, and currently not running one. Thanks to the A/c unit of my house, temp. stays at 79 degrees, but i'll have to keep a close eye when winter comes along. Around the time of the crash I added two T5. For some dumb reason i also changed my dosing chemicals (Alkine & calcium and stopped running magnesium.) This was the biggest mistake i've done. Currenlty using ESV B-ionic alkalinity and calcium, Kent Marine magnesium (Dr. G's magnisium is really good also) and Carib sea Purple up. If any one is having trouble with coralline algae, Try this setup. This stuff is like the fountain of youth for aquariums. After two week i'm getting back my coralline algae and those small white dotted barnacles.. You have no idea how happy i am XDDD

My water filter setup is very simple. I don't get to complicated because it's more cleaning time and I'm scared of leaks.. I have a single Marineland Penguin BIO-Wheel Power Filter 350 and a 600 Hydor Koralia. That's it!!
Now, there's one draw back to an easy setup like this. You will not be able to put in a lot of fish. I recommend two or three medium sized fish. I also had a couple of nano fishes .. My total fish count was about eleven, which is a NO NO!, but they were so small it only looked like i had four fish.. I added them one by one towards the end, making sure they will not create a large amount of detritus. I had a six line wrasse, clown fish, a harptail blenny, two chromis, a cardinal, two neon gobbies, a hector goby, orange spotted sand cleaning goby and a green mandarin... If the aquarium does not have regular cleaning , dont put in as many fish as i did. There is a rule for fish, which is around 5 gallons per fish. Some fish needed huge tanks or feed on corals. Since I knew my tank was doing bad i gave them back to my local fish store. Lucky my tank had no rocks and i was able to save the blenny, spotted gobby, two chromsis.. It also helped the tank get back to normal because i reduce the biological load. Plus they didn't suffer which was my concern. I stayed with the six line wrasse and clown fish. These two are best friends, weird because wrasses are mean. I think it's because i bought them both togehter and the came in the same bag. The others didn't make it..RIp. At one point my wrasse was unhappy due to not having any rocks for him to hide in. The clown fish would tread water right next to wrasse, like if he was pushing water threw his gills..

I do water changes once a week by hand. Maybe 5-10 gallons per water change. That's about 95% water change at the end of the month. Some people will advice against it, scared that the corals will get shocked. Not true. After researching automatic water change drip systems, I've noticed a lot of other hobyist are also averaging about 100% water changes a mouth. The trick if to do it very slow. Alkine, calcium , and magnessium will not change drastically if done slowly and over a period of a month. A day after water changes i will check alk, calc, and magn. and add if necessary.

I've reduced my sand bed. I have about 1/2" of sand in some place and other areas have less. I might change it to a very fine sand, so the detritus wont sink to the bottom of the sand bed. Today I saw some black tube like fish in my sand bed. I'm 100% sure it's not a worm. It's most definitely a fish. I didn't think any kind fish would survive in my thin sand bed..lol.. I also like to stir up my sand bed at least twice a week and vacuum once a week when i do water changes. Stirring up the sand is great. I stir it heavy. It brings up all the detritus from under the sand into the water column, so that my filter can pick it up. Recently I haven't been stirring it up so hard because nothing lifts up out of the sand.. XD. It also feeds the corals when I stir the sand... Also blow out the detritus from the rock.

Live Rocks or fake rock?.. Again everyone will have there opinions, but what works best for me is fake rocks. I don't think live rock filters the water as much as people say they do. Also i don't like live rock because they come with a lot hitch hikers. Some very good and other not so good. I had an out burst of Aptasias and i would always be on top of them killing them. I used hot water, aptasia X, shrimps, and even lasers. The problem was that i couldn't reach the aptasia at the back of the rock/tank and they would keep reproducing.


Another big peace of advice i can give, is don't change to many things at one time. If/When the tank crashes you will not know what affected the tank.

Some other little thing I do is : I keep all the glass clean, so the light reflects every where. Also cleaning the reflector of the lights periodically. I clean the inside of the penguin filter every other week and the korallea power head get cleaned up. Everything gets cleaned or replaced XD


You'll know when your water is perfect when:

1. No green film algae grows on the glass
2. Snails/invert will not die off.
3. Coralline algae growth and barnacles will start to grow on glass.
4. After water change; alkiline, calcium, magnesium, should not change so much.

This forum helped me out a lot in tuff times.. It's time i pay it back..

[whosurcaddie]

Yeah I would read the stickies before you start giving advice.

[Tanabe750]

What did i do wrong?

I put this thread in the "new to aquariums" to help the new comers.. There's a lot of useless and harmful products on the market. On top of that, the people who think they're experts. Your basically creating and sustaining life. It's like saying: I know how DNA works and i can manipulate how ever i want.. It's not true. Eveyrone else is in the dark, as much as you are.

There are basic rules to this hobby. Check salinity, check temperature, check chemical level, check pumps are working, don't wash your hands with soap before putting your hands in tanks, washing the carbon filter before adding to the aquarium. Stick to them and you'll be just fine. Don't get caught up in the hype. More than likely whats going to cause your aquarium to crash is one of the above or laziness. From past experience it does more harm than good when you start to change things around, when you have a good thing going... and thats what happens to everyone in this hobby. they want better lighting because they think it's going to make the corals grow faster and get more color, but they end up burning the corals. Thats just one example. Like what happened with me and the chemicals. I should have never changed them.

When you start getting to bigger aquariums it starts to gets cumbersome. Bigger filters, bigger proteins, biiger pumps, ect.. yeah it works, only if you clean everything out. How long does it take for you to clean that system?... and how much did it cost to clean and setup? There are simpler ways. The future is in Automatic water changes and drip systems.

I remember starting out in this hobby. ALL you need was a sump with bio balls. Then it was live rocks. Then it was protein skimmers. Then the reactors. Give me a brake.. Save your money. There's nothing better than fresh, clean, new salt water for your aquarium.

[acabgd]

Originally Posted by whosurcaddie

Yeah I would read the stickies before you start giving advice.

+1
The pinnacle of ignorance is when you ignore the fact you don't know what you're talking about, yet you still do talk about it.

[rfgonzo]

WOW,

[Tanabe750]

I'm bad at sentences structure and grammer.

I'm sorry if it sounds like i am yelling at you, but i'm really not.

If you think i'm wrong please explain. I'm only here to help, not troll or patronize anyone, so please don't do it to me.

[toothybugs]

Originally Posted by Tanabe750

I'm only here to help, not troll or patronize anyone, so please don't do it to me.

Fair enough. I think the biggest issue folks are finding with your post are that it comes off as arrogant (the term "vast knowledge" is particularly grating) and it flies in contrast to the experiences of many, many others (not changing your bulbs, for one). Not to mention that your math is incorrect - for example, changing 10 gallons a week for 4 weeks in a system using 40 gallons of water is NOT a 100% water change due to mixing.

You state the forum helped you in past times - great, but please look around. There's a lot here already. Feel free to answer questions but lecturing won't earn you friends.

[Tanabe750]

I'm about 90% water changes with 10 gallons of water per week. Sometime i'll change a little more, some times it get lazzy and change less, hence the 95%.

My bulbs are really 2 1/2 years, they're still on my system. I did this on purpose, to see if i can still grow corals with old bulbs. ATM, it's good for soft corals.. After the aquarium crashed I haven't bought any corals. I have a dunken coral and two blasto. Which are doing great. I'm not to sure if i could grow stoney corals or sps.

When i was changing the bulbs regularly with this simple setup, i was able to stick anything in my tank. I never bought an acro so i dont know about those. I have a video of it. i just need to upload it.


When my tank crashed, I didn't take anything out, only the rocks and a few fishes. I left the sand and dirty water. Reverse engineering was the idea. It's easy to maintain a tank. It's 2x harder to make a crashed tank functional. It took me 2 years to get it back, so i did something right. Don't you agree?

I wasted $1000 in equipment. I bought a sump, protein skimmer, two reactors, and i made a DIY top water skimmer. After a year of no result, and braking my back cleaning all equipment, I threw it all in the trash.

I got more results after I put in the penguin filter, reduced sand bed, and went back to my old chemicals. This is the same exact setup i had before the crash.

[gone fishin]

oooooK

[Tanabe750]

lol. My first video uploaded on you tube. You guys should feel blessed. The things I do for my aquarium. XDD

this is an early video. maybe a year after setup.. and yes, my sand is always that clean XDD..


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kniu...ature=youtu.be

I'm so sad right now. I had a lot of exotic peaces.

[kurt_n]

Originally Posted by Tanabe750

...
My bulbs are really 2 1/2 years, they're still on my system. I did this on purpose, to see if i can still grow corals with old bulbs. ATM, it's good for soft corals.. After the aquarium crashed I haven't bought any corals. I have a dunken coral and two blasto. Which are doing great. I'm not to sure if i could grow stoney corals or sps.

You couldn't.

This is one of the things that made me shake my head. Your original post is written in a way that advises people to never change their bulbs because you don't have any issues in your tank. Now you admit you only have soft corals and two LPS that really don't need much light. How many coral died during your experiment? That's the thing that bothered me. Lighting intensity drop off over time is pretty well documented. Not sure why you'd need to experiment when there's so much valid information out there.

Don't even get me going on the PurpleUp! Talk about useless products...

I will agree with you on this fact: you don't need all the fancy schmancy stuff out there to have a nice tank. If you give your critters what they need (food, light, and flow) and keep your water parameters pristine, you can make a lot of other mistakes and still do OK.

[Tanabe750]

I'm done with this, negative crap..good bye everyone. you wont have to deal with me again.

[TangySushi]

The original post was too long for me to read, hopefully I'm not the only one that doesn't read big blocks of words lol, but I like your aquascape on youtube.

[whosurcaddie]

Originally Posted by Tanabe750

I'm done with this, negative crap..good bye everyone. you wont have to deal with me again.

Nobody including me wants you to leave the forum, but when you claim to know so much and then in your first post has a lot of the simplest things wrong it can rub people the wrong way. Especially when you want to give advice on subjects that you are wrong about. There are reefers on this board that have tanks running for longer than I've been alive and they don't claim to know everything.

Let me give you some advice get a heater get a controller for your heater. You don't want to depend on your air conditioning to control the temperature in your tank.

Changing bulbs is not just about correcting intensity. When bulbs are over a year old the spectrum of light shifts on those bulbs. You lose the necessary spectrum corals require to grow and thrive. Are your corals surviving on 2 year old bulbs? You say so, so I believe you but I'm willing to bet they could be better. Its not just about survival its about thriving.

You say its your opinion that live rock doesn't filter as good as dry rock. Your opinion is dead wrong. Once cycled they both have the same filtering capacity given they have the same porous structure. Also you could have reused the rock that you threw out. To kill the aiptasia you could have just dried the rock out in the sun and and recycled with the same rock. Believe me I feel your pain when it comes to these pests. My very first tank had plague proportions of aiptasia the only way I won was to dry the rock out.

You can remove the bio wheel if you want. The rock has all the filtering capacity you need. Instead I would invest in a good hang on back skimmer I didn't notice if you had a sump or not.

You were right about not changing a lot of things at once that's one of our hobby's biggest mistakes.

So I guess what I'm saying is stick around learn some new things. Ive been in this hobby for 10 years and I learn something new on here almost every day.

Sorry to here about the tank crash and good Luck in the future.

[nvladik]

Looking at the video tanks looks like it's surviving, but not thriving. Maybe you should look at some advice from others and learn how to make it much better.

[Zer0.]

Originally Posted by whosurcaddie

You can remove the bio wheel if you want. The rock has all the filtering capacity you need. Instead I would invest in a good hang on back skimmer I didn't notice if you had a sump or not.

He said he had a sump and skimmer and got rid of them for the HoB filter...

[billdogg]

I vote Troll

Can you do it like he is proposing? Sure. Will ANYTHING thrive? No freaking way. I started in this hobby when putting a (gasp) powerhead on your undergravel lift tube was cutting edge, and extreme lighting was TWO 48" T12 grow bulbs.

Been there, done that. There are way too many ways that work well with minimal effort to even consider his "methods"

JM.02

IBTL

[uncleL]

That was a long read! Don't be mad take advice from others??

Every Day Above Ground Is A Good Day!!

[Heathcoot]

lol i get it now sry all i thought you were being harsh on this subject but i do see now after reading what the problem is !! and im sry tanabe but these guys are right by just simply stating

like live rock not being good well if you buy rock from the ocean yes you may get a bad hitch hiker but normally buying from a shop or an established tank most hitchhikers are ighter eaten die off or just cant survive on what we put in our tanks most have to have a food source and they all don't just eat flake frozen or pellets etc.

or the statement of corals thriving under 2 year old + pc's the fact is the corals you have are proly soft and very hardy and the only reason they even made it was because your tank has been up for years and was stable but only for nitrate loving and phosphate loving critters!

and to your aiptashia problem peppermint will work for the small ones and yea you may have to kill a big one or get an army of them but i have seen the aiptashia eating file eat larger ones takes a few days but they will get em!

sry if i sound mean but try not to confuse the populous of new peeps on here its hard for us to filter through sometimes and others get frustrated. don't leave the forum it wont really prove a point besides you not coming we all can learn from this