Ziggy953

Thank you to all who have decided to follow this journey! I haven't posted in a while due to year end close out at work and the holidays. Unfortunately the tank has taken a turn for the worse. I have a bad outbreak of GHA. I'm not sure exactly how I want to deal with this. Since the system is still in the early stages I may just remove all the rock and sand, cook the crap out of the rock and replace the sand. I have gone through most of the normal steps to reduce nutrients in the system but not much has helped. My corals are starting to suffer from the excess nutrients in the system. I'm going to have to make a decision soon as I don't want to lose the corals. Next weekend I intend to pick up some more salt and start the process of PWCs to reduce the nutrients further. I replaced all the filters in my RODI and cleaned as much of the sump as I could. I think the fact that I reused the sand contributed to this mess. I'm open to suggestions!

Thank you Tricia! This rebuild has been challenging to say the least. It is still a work in progress.

Thanks! Unfortunately the reboot has stalled. I'm battling GHA again. I'm going to have to remove all the rock yet again and do a major scrub down. This will delay any further additions to the system.

Thanks Ryan! I am really proud of the stand build!

Thank you!

Thanks! My plan with the tank this time around is to pick up the higher end SPS corals. I went nuts last time with corals that look great and grow fast but the problem with that is they grew WAY too fast. Time will tell if the tank will grow in as fast as it did last time.

Welcome dude! Nice to see someone local on here (local to me that is North of Baltimore). I would be glad to help you out with your build if you want.

I live in New Town. Thank you!!

The last shot above is the most recent pic of the tank. It was taken yesterday.

And here are the most recent pics of the tank including a few corals I got over the Thanksgiving holiday:

FYI The Shrimp and Blasto were in the tank to begin with. They were from the original setup.

I went through a little battle with GHA but got that under control pretty quickly. I reduced the flow through my sump and increased the amount of macro in the fuge. I also turned the LEDs way down and starved the tank of nutrients. I replaced the filters in my RODI to eliminate that as a source. All in all it took a couple of weeks to get things back under control. I attribute the algae to the fact that I reused the sand from the original setup and the rock probably had some spores on it still. Here are a couple shots of the ORA corals I picked up when I visited That Fish Place in PA a couple weeks ago:

So here is where I am now, well as of a few weeks ago:

So that is my journey from March of 2012 through July of 2013. I didn't document a lot of pics after July of last year. The tank actually was up until June of this year but I didn't photograph it as much. My apartment was completely remodeled and as a result I had to take the tank down. I sold off almost all of the livestock and corals. I managed to keep the Clowns, PJ Cardinals, Fire Shrimp, Yellow Tail Damsel and a couple corals. The Frogspawn, Blasto and a couple other corals stuck around and lived in my 28g nano with poor lighting and horrible filtration. About 2 months ago I started setting the tank up again. I had the rock on my balcony for a few months curing again and I spent some time cleaning up the wiring and plumbing in the stand.

The final shots of the system in June-July before I had to take it all apart.