Tank shutdown, New tank, Failure & Tank Reboot
Lets start from the beginning
A couple things have changed since my last (now archived) tank journal... I recently bought a house (Now i can put holes where i want FINALY)
So we shut down my custom 100cm tank and started planning a new build, I was limited with space with where i wanted to put the new tank so i had to settle on 2-3 foot and 45cm depth.
This was one of the last pics before i started to shut it down below
I ended up deciding on a Red sea reefer 170 with the limited edition run stand (i love this style stand personally)
Once i got the tank in the right position i decided to get out the hammer and put a hole through the wall (the wall the tanks on backed into the garage) I then ran dual chiller lines and ran dosing pump lines into the sump.
Being able to have the chiller and dosing pump away from the tank has probably been one of the best things ive done so far as it keeps the heat and noise away from the tank and just makes refilling the containers so much easier, In the garage i also have the vortech battery backup and ato unit (i had to extend the pump wire on the ATO unit so that it would reach through the wall a couple meters obviously)
Originally i was using my old ati power module (such an amazing light) but i wanted to cut down on bulb cost and power costs so i went back to my trusty illumagic units (im sure many of you remember my past tanks lit with there blaze series)
Tank was running for a while and was doing ok never great tho, My ro unit broke and this is where i made mistakes. (yes even someone with over 10 years keeping reef tanks still make mistakes) I was using rain water for a while for instead of RO and it was going ok but the tank took a down turn and over the next 3 months it just got worse and worse slowly killing and draining colours out of the little amount of coral i had (i hadn't started stocking it yet)
To top it off I was getting an amazing amount of algae. After talking to a few different reefers about possible issues (I didn't think of the rain water at first as it was showing such low TDS) I was told that I was an idiot for using the rain water as it obviously was getting contaminated by some metal on the roof.
I found an amazing company (reef pure ro) and they were great at assisting me via facebook organising what i needed to make a new RODI unit, I went through my options with them and managed to work out i could re use some of my old gear making a very decent RO unit for a fairly decent price
Fast forward a month and we are now here.
Tanks now looking amazing and has fully recovered in the last 4 weeks, Although i did take some rather drastic steps of stripping tank, Cleaning it, Cleaning sump, Cleaning skimmer out, 100pct water change, Removing substrate, and cleaning the live rock.
First two weeks had a little algae still present but now it is almost algae free and the corals are absolutely pumping.
Little comparisonof 2 months ago then 4 weeks ago and then today
As you can see it has bounced back amazing in such a short time, I have started adding more SPS frags now and i am prepping for the grow out, Monitoring my levels closer and have gone back to weekly/fortnightly water changes of 20-40L
From here id like to add a another flow pump so i can further increase the flow and maybe sell off the hammer and go primarily SPS (without the hammer i can up the flow further also)
Moral of the story is that even tho all your levels test perfect (my phos was even 0.00 during all this) there can be something simple causing your issues, I will never use any water other then 0TDS rodi going forward.
A couple things have changed since my last (now archived) tank journal... I recently bought a house (Now i can put holes where i want FINALY)
So we shut down my custom 100cm tank and started planning a new build, I was limited with space with where i wanted to put the new tank so i had to settle on 2-3 foot and 45cm depth.
This was one of the last pics before i started to shut it down below
I ended up deciding on a Red sea reefer 170 with the limited edition run stand (i love this style stand personally)
Once i got the tank in the right position i decided to get out the hammer and put a hole through the wall (the wall the tanks on backed into the garage) I then ran dual chiller lines and ran dosing pump lines into the sump.
Being able to have the chiller and dosing pump away from the tank has probably been one of the best things ive done so far as it keeps the heat and noise away from the tank and just makes refilling the containers so much easier, In the garage i also have the vortech battery backup and ato unit (i had to extend the pump wire on the ATO unit so that it would reach through the wall a couple meters obviously)
Originally i was using my old ati power module (such an amazing light) but i wanted to cut down on bulb cost and power costs so i went back to my trusty illumagic units (im sure many of you remember my past tanks lit with there blaze series)
Tank was running for a while and was doing ok never great tho, My ro unit broke and this is where i made mistakes. (yes even someone with over 10 years keeping reef tanks still make mistakes) I was using rain water for a while for instead of RO and it was going ok but the tank took a down turn and over the next 3 months it just got worse and worse slowly killing and draining colours out of the little amount of coral i had (i hadn't started stocking it yet)
To top it off I was getting an amazing amount of algae. After talking to a few different reefers about possible issues (I didn't think of the rain water at first as it was showing such low TDS) I was told that I was an idiot for using the rain water as it obviously was getting contaminated by some metal on the roof.
I found an amazing company (reef pure ro) and they were great at assisting me via facebook organising what i needed to make a new RODI unit, I went through my options with them and managed to work out i could re use some of my old gear making a very decent RO unit for a fairly decent price
Fast forward a month and we are now here.
Tanks now looking amazing and has fully recovered in the last 4 weeks, Although i did take some rather drastic steps of stripping tank, Cleaning it, Cleaning sump, Cleaning skimmer out, 100pct water change, Removing substrate, and cleaning the live rock.
First two weeks had a little algae still present but now it is almost algae free and the corals are absolutely pumping.
Little comparisonof 2 months ago then 4 weeks ago and then today
As you can see it has bounced back amazing in such a short time, I have started adding more SPS frags now and i am prepping for the grow out, Monitoring my levels closer and have gone back to weekly/fortnightly water changes of 20-40L
From here id like to add a another flow pump so i can further increase the flow and maybe sell off the hammer and go primarily SPS (without the hammer i can up the flow further also)
Moral of the story is that even tho all your levels test perfect (my phos was even 0.00 during all this) there can be something simple causing your issues, I will never use any water other then 0TDS rodi going forward.
