Hi Y’all
I’m going to start from the beginning.
I was a freshwater guy until my friend invited me to his house, where I saw his reef tank. After that, he convinced me to start my own reef tank. I transformed my 55-gallon freshwater tank into a reef tank, using dry rock that I got secondhand. I didn’t really know what I was doing, so I made my first aquascape and set up the tank without a sump. I used a Fluval canister filter, which wasn’t a bad starting point, and relied on the small amount of knowledge I had gathered from online research and YouTube videos.
After that, my tank got hit with ich and marine velvet. Luckily, I took it as a learning experience and figured out how to quarantine (QT) fish. I treated all my fish, losing only two in the process—which wasn’t bad for my first time quarantining fish.
I definitely didn’t let that stop me from continuing what I started, so I went and got a 90-gallon acrylic tank I just wanted to go bigger because I know later on that’s what I would want.
Here’s the corrected version:
For this tank, I resealed the seams so I wouldn’t have to worry about any leaks. I also sanded and polished all three sides to remove scratches and painted the back black.
This time, I decided to use a sump. I bought an overflow box, drilled a hole, and added a return nozzle.
This is a long one, but after all that, I ended up with copper in my tank. After months of dealing with it without realizing the cause, I sent out an ICP test and got the results—22.0 ppm of copper in my tank.
I decided to throw away the sand and rocks and start fresh. I cleaned everything, created a new aquascape with fresh dry rock and sand, and now the tank is looking really good.
Sorry for the long introduction to this tank—I just wanted to share my experience up to this point.
I’m going to start from the beginning.
I was a freshwater guy until my friend invited me to his house, where I saw his reef tank. After that, he convinced me to start my own reef tank. I transformed my 55-gallon freshwater tank into a reef tank, using dry rock that I got secondhand. I didn’t really know what I was doing, so I made my first aquascape and set up the tank without a sump. I used a Fluval canister filter, which wasn’t a bad starting point, and relied on the small amount of knowledge I had gathered from online research and YouTube videos.
After that, my tank got hit with ich and marine velvet. Luckily, I took it as a learning experience and figured out how to quarantine (QT) fish. I treated all my fish, losing only two in the process—which wasn’t bad for my first time quarantining fish.
I definitely didn’t let that stop me from continuing what I started, so I went and got a 90-gallon acrylic tank I just wanted to go bigger because I know later on that’s what I would want.
Here’s the corrected version:
For this tank, I resealed the seams so I wouldn’t have to worry about any leaks. I also sanded and polished all three sides to remove scratches and painted the back black.
This time, I decided to use a sump. I bought an overflow box, drilled a hole, and added a return nozzle.
I decided to throw away the sand and rocks and start fresh. I cleaned everything, created a new aquascape with fresh dry rock and sand, and now the tank is looking really good.
