20H - rebooting soon - lessons learned

[HippieSquirrel]

Been a while!  Finally got my personal crap sorted more or less and things are looking up so I’m back here with more drive then ever to keep on reefing and reach the eye candy tank I always wanted.

 

Update of the rest of last year:

 

The uglies went away after a while and things were looking good, maintenance wasn’t too bad and as long as I kept up with water changes things were growing well.  The red monti got to a diameter of ~3 in which was awesome until the monti eating nudis showed up.  It took me a little while to notice them but manual removal didn’t work long term.  They ended up destroying it after the second wave hit (I’m assuming eggs from first set?).  

 

The major disaster struck when I left a very small piece of grape caulerpa in the tank from one of the zoa frags.  I didn’t know what type of macro algae it was and I didn’t know there were bad kinds.  If I had looked it up I could’ve potentially averted what followed.  It started to grow along the back of the rock where nothing was so I just left it cause it looked cool.  Then there was no stopping it because it had roots in the rockwork.  Still nothing horrible happened till I left for 5 days and had someone feeding my fish.  I’m assuming they were feeding somewhat heavily but either way it just accelerated the inevitable.  In 5 days it went from a strand or two maybe 12-18 inches in length to a mass that covered about 70% of the top of the rockwork.  This killed all of the sps frags including the green ish pocillopora which was a favorite of mine, it was probably about double the size of the last post of it when it died.  

 

So after that i admittedly lost some interest in the tank. I figured out my mistake and there wasn’t much to be done.  So I have been managing the growth and *trying* to prevent more loss.  Sheldon and my two clowns are happy and fat.  Two of the hermits are still around and are fun to watch and have gotten pretty big.  3 of the RFAs are still kicking and that baby has grown a bit it’s maybe the size of a quarter now which is awesome.  I recently found another pea sized one which I was exctatic about 🥳.  I lost most of the lps but I still have 60% of the large acan colony and the blastos.. they’ve actually continued to grow albiet slowly.  I think they’re at 5-6 heads now.  3 heads of the hammer are holding on but I’m not hopeful.  The gorgonians are actually doing really well.. the dirtier water may mean more food.  Couple zoas, mushroom, blue polyps are still around.

 

So it could be worse.  But one simple google search couldve saved it all.   

 

 

Lessons learned in year 1:

1. QUARANTINE.  Saves lives!  I will be setting up an AIO tank for dedicated QT when I start my reboot.  It’s just not worth the risk.  Something I couldn’t fully understand being new to the hobby, also dips are helpful but not a cure all the best removal is physical removal which hard if it’s already in your tank.  

 

2.  Make sure i know what I’m adding to my tank.  No brainer but it can be easy to assume.

 

3.  If I have a sand bed again I will clean it.  They can get really gross and then it got to a point where I didn’t want to clean it and risk more problems.  If I clean in sections or don’t have a large sandbed like the bio filtration shouldn’t be affected enough.

 

4.  I personally don’t like Red Sea coral pro, it may just be in nano systems but I would rather use blue bucket and go through the headache of dosing than deal with the inconsistency in that salt mix.  I think it caused me some issues.

 

5.  My rockwork sucked.  It was too big, didn’t leave enough open swimming room or cleaning room and is probably the reason for a couple dead spots.  I’ll be much more careful about how I plan my rockwork and play with it more until it’s right not just what’s aesthetically pleasing.  I think less is more also, if you look at an established reef for reference like I tried to it looks big because of all the coral not the rock.  

 

A few other things but those are some of my big takeaways.  I’d say it was a good first experience and now I’m ready to give it another go.  I have a Waterbox AIO 15 cube that is gonna serve as temporary housing for fish and coral until I get my next build started and then it will be QT after.  I think I’ve learned enough to hopefully not make a lot of stupid mistakes and I think I’ll be able to set myself up for success this time around.  I’d like to go as big as possible with a sump this time around.. I’m looking at rearranging some furniture to allow for a larger tank.  Been drooling over plans I’ve been concocting for a UNS 90U (~36x22x22) for about 2 months now still needs some approval but I’m confident whether I should be or not 😅.