I used to be really good at this reef tank thing...

[Animal-Chin]

but for whatever reason over the last year and a bit I've lost my magic touch. I had a tank full of gorgeous SPS coral thriving and growing. I had my dosing down, light schedule on point, the only issue I've ever had was some green hair algae.

So I started messing with stuff. First disaster was carbon dosing. Lost half my sps during this "event". Lesson leared, took carbon off line and things came back.

Few months ago see my phosphates are getting a bit high, still not a drop of algae in my tank, my sps are doing ok, growing although not rapidly but everything in the tank seems fine so what do I do? I add roaphos in a reactor to the sump.

Read the instructions, added the right small amount for a 125 gallon. What could go wrong?

Well it could kill all my remaining sps! Litterally took out most of my remaining colonies. I'm guessing my phosphates dropped so fast my coral went into shock or something. I now have 1 green birdsnest with some tissue damage, my old 5 year old green slimer looks like it should live but almost everything else SPS died within the first week of hooking up the Roaphos.

SO tired of killing off coral due to stupid decisions and mistakes. If I just leave well enough alone everything does well but as soon as I try to "fix" something ...........coral death.

Ugh, maybe I just stick to zoa's for the rest of my life....lol

[WarDog]

Sorry to hear. This is by far the most depressing hobby I've ever dabbled in. Not sure why we do it. Lol.

[Frogger]

From what I have seen, experienced and read reefers have been successful with a wide range of methods and tank parameters.

I have yet to see someone be successful in keeping corals doing well whose tank parameters keep changing.

I believe stability is the key to successful reefing and any change has to be done so carefully and slowly.

[Animal-Chin]

agree 100%. My carbon dosing was done super super slow though and it ended up with a lot of death. The phosphate removing happened way to fast, I had no idea roaphos could totally eliminate all traces of phosphate in 5ish days.

I honestly think keeping it simple may be my best plan. Filtersock->Skimmer->refugium with algae....done. All natural, no chemicals or additives or anything feric. Just a good skimmer and waterchanges is what I'm gonna do from now on...

[Myka]

I feel your pain. My current tank has been set back after set back. The most recent was a year ago I added a Multibar Angelfish to my SPS reef. Multibars are usually considered fairly reef safe - especially with SPS. What could go wrong? He killed half my SPS and almost killed the half (all of which remained were green...the little prick). It took a good 6-8 months to recover from that. Currently in a good place now so hopefully I can just sit back and observe rather than mess around with it. :lol:

[DKoKoMan]

I have yet to have the multi year reef tank as I have transferred twice now. I’m hoping this one will settle in and become mature. Tired of the new cyano blooms or diatoms etc. Best of luck and always revert back to the KISS method. Lots of stuff going on in the reef world etc. That it’s hard not to try. Always a new method out there that tempts people.

[Animal-Chin]

Well and so that I'm not a total debbie downer I'm happy to report that 2 of my SPS that looked like goners seemed to have stopped receding since I took the roaphos offline and may live on!

I can't believe that I will have to re seed montipora though. I had the plating and branching for years and years and now its all gone. The stuff that was once a weed in my tank and I would actually frag and throw away because no one wanted it is back to being on my must aquire list....lol

I do still love my tanks though, we just don't see eye to eye sometimes...lol

[chizerbunoi]

Isn't that the annoying thing. You grow all these frags into colonies only to go back to your frags, if you did frag to begin with.


I now keep it simple as well. Tank, heater, lights and powerhead. No filters, skimmers or any other equipment. Just a lot of live rock, refugium in tank and easy maintenance schedule. Whatever happens in the tank just happens.


I found constantly tinkering caused me a lot of grief as well. I guess I took the fresh water/pond approach to reef keeping which is working well.