The new tank has been up now for a few months and while it does get regular attention, it has not been making any meaningful progress and was going through waves of ugly phases.
Ugly phases due to bad rock - Kalkwasser victim + inadequate trace element dosing
I claim that that the reasons for the never ending ugly phases were the amount of bad stuff in the rock I used - which I had since the inception of my reefing days, which started as recent as in September 2022 - and the amount of stuff which has been leaching out from it into the new tank, bringing the water chemistry continously out of balance.
Phosphates rise up to 0.5 mg/l in a couple of weeks if I do not treat the tank with lanthanum chloride continously - with only one mini 6 line wrasse and one cleaner shrimp in it which I feed a tiny amount once daily.
The continous rise in phosphates comes from the continous Kalkwasser dripping into the tank over 1.5 years, IMO, and is a vivid reminder for me to never do this again, even though it seemed to be a very inexpensive and easy way to get Alk and CA into the tank - but frankly, there are other ways to do this with less brute force.
The other traces which the rock took on came most likely from heavy hitting stuff like Captiv8 MT, which is a good product to use under very specific circumstances and by NOT following the instructions - I wish Chris Wood made this clear in one of his earlier videos, he only started saying this later when he mentioned to only use 1/4 of the recommended dose in the beginning. It is also made for refugium use. In summary, a simple product which is too easy to overdose so not something I would recommend the average reefer to use (even though it is also inexpensive)
Equipment changes
While I am not happy with this tank, I continued to invest in setting it up for future success, with the Reefi now back over it, changing the Nyos 120 protein skimmer, which was too powerful (not phosphates), with the Icecap K1 50 I bought from
@dangalang, adding an Innovative Marine UV light 10 watts, and a carbon media reactor which I was gifted by
@JustinBolton.
This tank has now the following setup:
Since installing the UV light, the water cleared up significantly (!) with far less algae.
Next steps
The purpose of this new tank was always to be a frag and general quarantine tank, not to be a nice to look at display tank.
- Remove the rock from the tank and replace with up to 10 lbs of live rock - purchased just now from KP Aquatics which coincidentally had them in stock (they never have normally). I will be giving my currrent rock - infested with vermited snails + some corals on it - away (PIF). But please use at your own risk. See pictures
- Due to the lack of available live ocean sand at the moment, will move sand from my display tank into the nano tank. This s a bit of a risky move as I will not only move the good but also the bad to this tank, but I would like to have more sand in this tank and do not want to rely on artifical live sand.
- Adding aquacultured reef rubble I purchased from Aquabiomics this week.
- Adding a staggered frag rack structure filling out the entire tank, starting at 5 inch height - from clearchoice at ETSY.
- Place the rock below the frag rack structure.
- Adjust the light settings to potentially very high light to see what I can do with growing some of the acros frags I have.
Several picutures below to look at the current state - and for those who are interested in the rock.
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