Hope I don't jinx myself with the title but this tank has been established for almost 1.5 years.
It is a 18 Wx20Dx33H tank
What I'm doing "wrong":
-I use tap water in my tank (I do manual top offs water from the sink goes directly in my tank, No RO/DI, no dechlorinate, no letting it air off, etc.
-I'm running a cannister filter
-I'm using a coralife turbotwist skimmer
-I'm using black sand
-I'm not using any sort of live rock in my tank (unless you count fossilized reef)
-I don't do water testing
-I use a Won Bros heater (on a Ranco Controller thought)
-I have a yellow tail blue damsel

I don't encourage the above, it is just one of the big things that makes the tank unique

Here is some history photos:
















(after a Mr.Coral run)

its amazing the lion doesnt attack any of the other inhabitants.

+1 u hit the jackpot haha

Apparently I'm dirty
I like rics:cool:







I will update with recent pics when i take some



The lion got large enough to eat the male GSM but the female always kept the lion in check. It could never catch the other inhabitants. Just when it got big enough that I wanted to move the lion out of the tank to someone with a bigger more suited tank it stopped eating for two months and finally passed (I had even tried force feeding it)

stupid.

The lion fish will eventually get bigger and you may someday wonder why the mated pair of gold banded maroon clowns disappeared. Those pair are expensive and there is absolutely no reason to risk them in the tank.

almost nothing you are doing is "wrong"... other than the tap water, which apparently your water just doesn't have very much chlorine or you just don't add much...

sooo not surprised really...

and your rocks are live, even if they aren't what some consider "high quality"

Pretty mandarin!
May i make a suggestion, ok thanks
Get your water put it in a jug, get one of those prime things that removes chlorine and let it sit a day and your set:P??

eh?





The lion has unfortunately moved on




I am always open to suggestions

I have a 6 stage RO/DI with new and extra filters sitting around unplumbed, I'm waiting until I see a good deal on a booster pump I just really can't justify the waste ratios of RO/DI units. Even then I want to figure out how to use waste water to perhaps water the lawn, use in my washer etc.

I think your reef will improve from the use of RO water

it has done wonders for mine

The pic in my sig is a "before" pic

hey man
just wanted to chime in because so many dis tap water. my tap water is terrible around 400pm and loaded with all sorts of chemicals. i use tap to do top ups and water changes with NO chemical added to it, just straight out of the tap, i have 2 cleaner shrimp and they have been with me for 4 months. my tank has quite a bit of macro algae. and 5 fish. i have a low coral count only 5. but no cyano, dino or green hair algae.

so i just wanted to say, what people may say is wrong in terms of what should normally be done, except for the fish ( tank size, and such) there is always another way of doing things. just look at stevieT he grew sps under stock lighting in his rsm.

so dont quit because of a few people and what they say.

doing top offs with tap is very bad for the tank not only because of the chlorine but the heavy metal, It willl have a bad effect on the inverts as they are sensitive to heavy metals and will die off.

You know i thought about that but I've had a fire shrimp, skunk shrimp, clam,serpent star,sand sifting star, and rbta in the tank all for each 6 months most more than a year.I also have breeding populations of two different kinds of snails. I drink the water and have had the water tested and it's not all that bad

There are three full reefs (SPS,LPS,Softies, Clams, Inverts, Nems, etc.) with in 5 miles of me that all also run on straight tap.

Can anyone recommend a source for good but cheap booster pumps?

Just b/c you drink the tap water doesn't mean its good enough for a tank...If you drink alcohol that is technically poisonous but your body (which is 100x the size of your fish) is able to filter it out over time.

That being said, if the lion hadn't been removed (through unfortunate circumstance) it would have more than likely eaten everything in that tank (including the cleaner shrimp) over time. A lion fish will eat anything it can get into its mouth. So if you are planning on getting another one don't unless you put it in a separate tank.

As for your tap water I would suggest going over to RO/DI. While your tap may not be that bad (again just b/c you can drink it doesn't mean it's good) it has the possibility of going down hill quickly and you have no way to check for it or to know it is happening until you come home one day and 1/2 your tank is dead. I have read that in some new communities their tap water starts out great b/c they are using new pipes and all new equipment but over time the water quality may go down hill (for fish standards).

As for the filtration, you're not necessarily doing anything wrong but IMHO there are more "natural" and better ways to filter the tank. However, your rock is probably now live rock...lol...If this filtration system is working for you though I wouldn't suggest changing it unless you started having problems with it.

Also, lionfish are poisonous. There appears to be a pic of you trying to touch its back spines...I'd suggest not doing that...

I also go against the flow of traffic, so I want to say Nice tank.... although it is a bit deep for me.

Ok i should probably clarify this now...
The lion fish was never going to stay in the tank, its too small for the fish at any rate.

The mandarin, cleaner shrimps, large RBTA, shark nose goby (cleaner goby), were all added after the lion was gone. (damsel was added as a last ditch effort to get the lion to feed in tank, before it was removed to a QT system.

I have been stung by a lion fish previously (working at pet co tank was being cleaned as was cloudy), I had never been stung by mine I just thought taking a photo like that would be neat and if i got stung it would be my own fault.

As for the tap water issue I don't think its good, but I also don't think it's bad it's published that
Julian Sprung and Dick Parrin just to name a couple also do not use RO/DI water. Not that this automatically make my way of doing things right (at all) just something note worthy.

I do plan on switching over to RO/DI at some point or another just to see if my tank does any better, if it doesn't after a number of months I'll probably go back to tap.

and now... back to more pics



Another pic just to make you all cringe,laugh, or wonder just what the hell is wrong with me.

This was well before the lion stopped eating/died. He would always come right up to the surface when I was in the room and spit water out of the tank to let me he was hungry and would also move slow and keep to the other side of the tank when I was placing corals.

I love tall tanks!

Interesting rock structure also...

Nice tank man loving your rics

its funny because i do it and have inverts and sps and they are doing great. nothing is wrong with them been doing this for 4 months now, i also have lots of macro algae. i brought this up to prove a point that you can do it with tap water and it works so your point though very valid and i also agree doesnt mean it cant work the other way either, just like this tank. not saying this for new people in the hobby. anyways on another note

nice pictures. cant wait to see what this turns into.

I love tall tanks. pretty.

Love those rocks

Thanks for the compliments, I hope to have some up to date pics soon.

Nice rics! what did they cost ya?

I currently use rodi but I have to agree that tap water can be used in this hobby. It really depends on your water source. In sacramento I came to discover that the majority of my lfs uses tap water. I have tested the tapwater using tds and had a reading of 119 compared to 0 using a mighty mite rodi. I would not recommend using tapwater but this can be done and the lfs doing business for decades have done so.

it funny i use tap but i dont recommend it for anyone, but i just wanted to prove a point to people. and my tap is around 400, never tested it but local reefers in my area have.

Rics ran as cheap as $6 (special at local LFS) up to $100+ for some of the rarer yuma's (though I sold off corals for that money) I could never drop that much on corals straight up.

Tank looks good man! So I take it your tank has been running for about 2.5 years? I would love to just add tap water, what kind of test kit did you get to test your tap water?

Pink/yellow/blue YUMA



My wintergreen flordia ricordia



This is a BIG ric



I don't usually see yellow rics

this is the bridge rock seen in earlier photos.





I'm having to get rid of the anem soon or its going to kill all my corals

these are sooo red but my camera just isn't good enough to capture it

One of the prettiest mushrooms I've ever seen (center/rightish) Green,light blue, dark blue, purple, bumpy mushroom

Rics look good.

thanks.


My buddy cuervo slithered off my shoulder while i was placing frags...

silly ball pythons

Thanks! I love your avatar!

Sick rhodactis I picked up recently, I cant get a true color picture due to not having the ability to adjust white balance but it's 50/50 mint green chocolate brown and looks crazy!



Another item i recently picked up, this picture doesn't even come close to showing how cool it looks.
It is to the best of my knowledge a st.thomas rhodactis

This last one I had special ordered by Mr.Coral over on reefbuzz.com

interesting i see a ball python on here today, because while in my vertebrate zoology class today a 5 ft longer was brought in to be dissected because it was caught in the WILD in florida, her eggs were FERTILIZED, this means that there is an invasive breeding population starting out in florida, just thought id share it was intense

I'm not at all surprised unfortunately.

I don't know (didn't notice) if you already answered this. What kind of lighting are you using to get all the way down to the bottom of your tank?

An outer orbit pro fixture by current 250 watt 14k halide (it has 96 watts of actinic t5, but I don't normally flip them on). Also to nano reef~!

I've put together a wish list....

Blue St.Thomas bubble

Turquois St.Thomas bubble

Superman Rhodactis

Neon pink Yuma

Red Yuma

Tonga purple mushroom

orange rhodactis

blue bullseye mushroom

orange spotted yuma

also one of these

I got this last night!
Woo hoo

darn you

I saw that in his tanks and wanted it so bad. So if you ever get a split of it let me know.

I did find a similar colored one that just isn't as intense though and now its sitting purty in my tank.

I got a hold of one of those too, if you're talking about the tanks along the wall. Mine looks yellow in my tank, which I love. Now I just have to get a blue one

I got one of these last month... it walked down the rock it was on and now I've got 3 babies starting.

This is my new favorite tank, haha. Awesome build.

I use tap water too because I can't afford an RODI just yet. Except for massive human error, though, my tank's running great.

Well the tank is doing pretty well, but the corals aren't growing as fast as well as I'd like. Any one have any tips and tricks for shrooms and rics. I have learned a lot and know a lot but won't ever know everything, and I'm definitely open to suggestions.

I do not thinks that ric's grow fast for anyone but I could be wrong. Mushrooms sometimes take a while but once they start they go nut. The best advice I have is keep your hands out of the tank.