My little Reef

[Patrice]

Hi,
This tank is now 2 years old but I will first show you some of my old pictures.

It all started when a guy gave me some live rock. I had got some experiences with saltwater tank but I never had one. I did not know I was soon gonna give up on my 7 freshwater planted tank to only keep this new tank

The live rock I got was from a tank infested with cyano. So I decided to wait for a few month before to add any live stock to it. So my freshwater shrimp tank became the home of a few pound of live rock.

Tank size: 15 gallons
Maintenance: a water change every few weeks
Equipment :
15W T8 light (glad I got rid of that)
Aquaclear filter with algae in it
2 small power head from Hagen
Heater
I decided to go without sand to keep it simple.

Here it is after setup:


At 4 months, I got my first fish: A yellow watchman goby! I still have that fish.

At 6 months, I decided to upgrade a little an got a nice 150W MH. That quite strong for that small tanks but the idea was to get a bigger tank one day. I also bought my first corals! That was an awesome day

Here is the tank a few days after I got my first corals:




At 8 months, I decided it was time for a better filter. I would have live without but I did not know that so I bought a filtration system from Haitt Distributor. The system is unknown but after I had spoke with a few people who use it, I decided to give it a try.

And here it is at 8 months:



at about 10 months, I got my first problems with corals.

I am not sure what went wrong and I had no knowledge to figure it out. I asked on forums but got nothing so I have lost those botton polyps. They guy who sold me the filter told me the filter was the cause. According to him, the filter was a little too strong and because of that, they was nothing to eat for the botton polyps. Was that right? I am still not sure but since I reduced the filtration, things are doing better with botton polyps.

Ho! I was gonna forget! here is my mascot! A yellow cucumber. I started with one and ended up with two. I have spend a full day watching him split. That was quite cool!



More pictures soon!

[Patrice]

At 12 months, we had to move so I thought this was the time to get a bigger tank.

So the only freshwater tank I had left went from this:


To this:

(the light on this picture is actually not my 150W MH)

While I am at talking about my new setup, let me show you my filter. As I said above, it's quite weird. I had some good results with it for the first year so why not keeping it.

So first of all, I need a canister filter. There is some special canister made for that but I am too cheap to get them so I use a Fluval filter. Its not as good but it do the job.
In the filter, I use whats call Tri Base pelletized Carbon and pH rocks. See pictures bellow:

The carbon


The rocks


All that in a bag in the canister


It's a little long to explain how this work. Maybe we could talk about that later but for now, here is the only non-commercial link I found about this filter: U.S. Patent Number 6,025,152

Because the Carbon "eat" all trace element in my water, I am using some Sea Lab Trace Element block. They automatically add trace element to the water. Here they are:



It's now time for me to drive my wife to work. I'll finish this a little later tonight.

[Patrice]

I am back!

Here is a picture of the tank just after setup in it's new 25 gallons (the tank is now 1 year old):



A guy in town had a lamp problem so I had lend him my 150W MH. The lamp on that picture is a coralife 120W

I did my best to do everything right but I have lost a clam and my 2 yellow cucumber during that move.

[LeeR]

thats a wicked lookin tank man!

[karazy]

i like it. it looks kinda tidepooley

[Patrice]

Thanks!
The tank is now a year older! I don't have much pictures from that last year but I will take some to show you where I am now.
The problem is that I have a huge hair algae problem right now so you won't see it at it's best. I got stuck with some fish and I think it's why I can't control that algae now. I really need to get rid of some fish.

I'll try to get the pics tomorrow.

[Patrice]

As said above, I have an algae problem. The tank looks close to what it is on the last picture above but it's more green.

I know where that problem came from, all I have to do is to fix it. My filter was a little too strong so I remove some of the media in it. Right after, I got 3 new fish. It also took too much time before I changed the bulb. It was over 15 months old when I changed it the last month.

So I finally got a new bulb and I will donate 2 fish to a school. I found some macro algae last month but I am not sure what it is exactly. I hope this will help.
I keep doing 25% water changes once a week and I am using some Metal Gone in my filter. That product is a non-chemical algae remover I am trying. I started using it a week ago and it should take a month before it remove all the algae (according to the instruction). They say all I have is to syphon the algae when I do a water change. For now, noticed that the algae is easier to remove from the rock. They look weaker than usual and I can remove big patches of green algae with no effort. So I removed as much as I could while doing the water change.
There is still lots of algae left in the tank. I'll keep doing this for the next 3 weeks to see how good (or not) this product is. Anyway, even if it does not remove all the algae, I am glad I found a non-chemical product to assist me with that fight.

While doing the water change, I got burned by the frogspawn coral. I know I should use gloves but I always forget.

[fencer]

A biologically active cycling tank will run through its algae cycle
Did you account for the amount of phosphates in the tank as well as nitrates
Filters too strong...never heard of that. the more flow the better
Water quality is everything carbon and phosphate removers help along with water changes
When your tank is stable consider adding snails and crabs

[Patrice]

Originally Posted by fencer

A biologically active cycling tank will run through its algae cycle
Did you account for the amount of phosphates in the tank as well as nitrates
Filters too strong...never heard of that. the more flow the better
Water quality is everything carbon and phosphate removers help along with water changes
When your tank is stable consider adding snails and crabs

I have not check nitrate and phophate for a few weeks. I'll run some test later today.
About the too strong filtration thing, I am reffering to what I have been told by the guy who sold me the filter. That filter kept my No3 and Po4 to zero for a long time but as I have been told, it also remove all filter feeders need. So I adjusted it and some corals are happier since then.

I will add some more snails (probably not crabs) next time I get new live stock.