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#1
01-20-2009, 08:01 PM
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I've been bad
It's been a long time since I posted on this board, so long in fact many of you wont know who I am. I'm Doug and I've been bad, I've neglected my reef tank, I have not done a water change in a year. I kept the water topped off with freshwater but that's all. To make a long story short I got a huge outbreak of hair algae, it covered all my Acro's and Pocilipora as well as an amazing green tipped pink birdsnest that took up almost half the tank (60 gallon cube).
The rebuild is a bit frustrating, I took out everything, kept corals that were still alive and put them into a 20 gallon with new mixed water. The rock all got rinsed off in the old water and shaken then put into another tank with a mix of old water and new water. The 60 was completely drained it was bare bottom, which I might add wasn't so great IMHO. Tank was refilled to 3/4 full and salt was added. I cut a bunch of 1inch PVC pipe into 2inch sections and used those sections as supports for the rock then I added gravel to bring the gravel level with the bottom of the rock. The reason I did this was I want to put star fish, snails etc (reef crew) in the tank and I've had problems before with the rock being knocked down. The reason the rebuild is frustrating is because I've got a lot of rock left over, the tank is great but I am finding it difficult to stack the rock and leave room for water movement all the way around. I've built a section in the center of the back out of egg crate to allow placement of a Seio 820 to point straight down and hopefully move water from the back to the front. I've got 2 Seio 620s one on each side facing forward and a Krodon??? Just a small one that will move water around from side to side. Sump is being rebuild so it's easier to get to filter media, the old sump was 30 inches long and the filter media/screen/floss was at the back so it was hard to reach, therefore being lazy I didnt change it often. Well, I guess I'm on the right track, got to stop by J&L today to get another light, thinking 14,000k 250 watt DE, folks have told me the hamiltons are good bang for the buck, I had an XM 10,000k but it was yellow. FWIW, when I was taking care of the tank, I used the RHF homemade dosing, IE calcium and Alk, for mag I used Kent, my SPS was growing super fast and had amazing colour. I believe if I had been doing my water changes the SPS would have taken over the top of the aquarium within a year. Douglas Oh and yes I've neglected the orchids too, gonna take years to get them back to where they were. 
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#4
01-20-2009, 08:20 PM
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Trouble at work, two heart attacks, family difficulties, 3 kids, soccer, football, ballet, baseball, swimming... typical stuff but of course it was me being lazy. As I said in the post, I built my sump all wrong and it was diffucult to get into the back to clean the floss so I tended to just keep it in until it started to smell. My plan is to keep filter media right at the front so it's easy to get at, and water changes are on the to do list now.
Douglas
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#5
01-20-2009, 08:30 PM
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welcome back..
Do us all a favor and make a tank journal with your rebuild.. we love pics here. P.S. - If you're using a PVC base, why not ditch the base rock and just keep as much of the good porous stuff as you can in your scape, rather than take up real estate with base rock?
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#6
01-20-2009, 08:37 PM
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The base rock has sponge, coraline etc, I just find as I stack rock I tend to end up with a wall rather than the open spaces. I was considering using PVC and building columns. It's a bit hard to explain but think two tall towers of rock in the back, two shorter ones in the front with a pile of rock in the middle. I thought I would just drill small rocks and zap strap them to the PVC and have a bunch of holes drilled in the PVC but the more I thought about it the more I thought it would look tacky... too symetrical maybe.
Douglas
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#8
01-20-2009, 08:41 PM
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I've seen some really solid, open 'scapes by people who drill a hole right into the rock and use PVC as a structure from drilled rock to drilled rock...
If you do it eright, you won't even be able to see the PVC and you can still have some open spaces... I think aquascaping is so trial and error though, you gotta really mess around to find a way of having your rocks just "fit" and still leave you with enough open space for you to enjoy your fish.
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#9
01-20-2009, 08:51 PM
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Hey Doug
Good to have you back! 
__________________
Christy's Reef Blog My 180 Build Every electronic component is shipped with smoke stored deep inside.... only a real genius can find a way to set it free.
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what caused you to stop in the first place if you dont mind me asking?
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