Piper
Guest
So I’ve been around here off and on for roughly 10 years or so. I lurk a lot and post occasionally. I actually took a long time off from this particular tank mostly out of frustration with nuisance algae and a catastrophic mistake on my part.
We moved into a new house back in September of 2014 and at that time I set up this 150 gallon tank and shut down my 65 Gallon Tank. I transferred everything over during the move. Being in a new house I didn’t have a lot of time for the tank and let it go a little bit. I ended up with some really bad hair algae and lost a lot of my corals. During the process of trying to get rid of the hair algae I tried bleaching some of the rocks. I ended up putting one batch of rocks back into the tank and they must have still had bleach on/in them. That pretty much wiped out the whole tank. That was somewhere around September of 2017. After that, I completely wiped the tank clean and reset it. Unfortunately I do not have any pics of the tank prior to the reset.
After the reset I still struggled with nuisance algae and struggled with keeping anything other than fish alive for the most part. Got frustrated again and a basically just did water charges to keep the fish alive and that was about it. I focused more on my other hobbies during this time. Here are pics of the tank after the reset and the hair algae I was fighting:
Around December of 2019 I decided to get serious about the tanks again. I started dosing Vibrant and eventually it cleared up my hair algae problems. I still couldn’t keep LPS or softies alive for any length of time and I wasn’t about to try SPS. What I could keep alive did not grow well at all. Here’s a pic of the tank around May 2020:
Between then and now I had a few more minor problems with nuisance algae here and there with the most recent being Cyano. I’m pretty sure my most recent problems, and quite possibly all along, have been related to extremely low nutrients. I think that was my problem with keeping corals as well. I always shot for zero phosphate and kept Nitrate as low as possible too. After I started keeping phosphate between 0.05 and 0.1 and keeping nitrate >4 I’ve been having much more success keeping and growing corals again. I have been playing whack-a-mole with nitrate and phosphate sine around November of 2020. I’ve been dosing sodium nitrate and trisodium phosphate as needed testing at least once a week.
Here are a few pics of the tank today:
Still not a lot of corals yet. I’ve been slowly adding frags since November of 2020 and trying to get the parameters stable. It feels good to be back in the saddle again. Looking back at pics from my old 65 gallon tank and looking at all of your tanks here in the Tank Journal forum really inspired me to try again. The tank is finally starting to take off and the family is starting to enjoy it again!
Here are the details on the tank:
~Charlie
We moved into a new house back in September of 2014 and at that time I set up this 150 gallon tank and shut down my 65 Gallon Tank. I transferred everything over during the move. Being in a new house I didn’t have a lot of time for the tank and let it go a little bit. I ended up with some really bad hair algae and lost a lot of my corals. During the process of trying to get rid of the hair algae I tried bleaching some of the rocks. I ended up putting one batch of rocks back into the tank and they must have still had bleach on/in them. That pretty much wiped out the whole tank. That was somewhere around September of 2017. After that, I completely wiped the tank clean and reset it. Unfortunately I do not have any pics of the tank prior to the reset.
After the reset I still struggled with nuisance algae and struggled with keeping anything other than fish alive for the most part. Got frustrated again and a basically just did water charges to keep the fish alive and that was about it. I focused more on my other hobbies during this time. Here are pics of the tank after the reset and the hair algae I was fighting:
Around December of 2019 I decided to get serious about the tanks again. I started dosing Vibrant and eventually it cleared up my hair algae problems. I still couldn’t keep LPS or softies alive for any length of time and I wasn’t about to try SPS. What I could keep alive did not grow well at all. Here’s a pic of the tank around May 2020:
Between then and now I had a few more minor problems with nuisance algae here and there with the most recent being Cyano. I’m pretty sure my most recent problems, and quite possibly all along, have been related to extremely low nutrients. I think that was my problem with keeping corals as well. I always shot for zero phosphate and kept Nitrate as low as possible too. After I started keeping phosphate between 0.05 and 0.1 and keeping nitrate >4 I’ve been having much more success keeping and growing corals again. I have been playing whack-a-mole with nitrate and phosphate sine around November of 2020. I’ve been dosing sodium nitrate and trisodium phosphate as needed testing at least once a week.
Here are a few pics of the tank today:
Still not a lot of corals yet. I’ve been slowly adding frags since November of 2020 and trying to get the parameters stable. It feels good to be back in the saddle again. Looking back at pics from my old 65 gallon tank and looking at all of your tanks here in the Tank Journal forum really inspired me to try again. The tank is finally starting to take off and the family is starting to enjoy it again!
Here are the details on the tank:
- Equipment:
- 150 gallon tank volume
- 48” wide by 24” deep by 30” tall
- DIY stand and canopy
- Old Eshopps fuge sump
- Reef Angel controller
- 2 x Kessil A350
- 2 x Kessil A360x
- 2 x 48” T5 retrofit - 1 blue plus and 1 true actinic
- Jebao return pump
- 2 x Octo Pulse 4 power heads
- Aquamaxx internal skimmer
- BRS Dual Reactor – 1 Carbon and 1 Bio pellets (now off-line)
- Livestock:
- Fish
- Yellow Tang – 12/29/2017
- Yellow Tail Damsel – 12/29/2017
- Snowflake Percula Clown – 10/27/2018
- Naked Percula Clown – 10/27/2018
- Melanurus Wrasse – 6/2019*
- Coral Beauty – 8/2019*
- Neon Dottyback – 8/2019*
- Yellow Watchman Goby & Pistol Shrimp Pair – 3/2020*
- Lyretail Anthias – 1/6/2021
- Yellow Tail Damsel (2) - 1/15/21
- Bristletooth Tang - (In QT) - 2/11/2021
- Fish Wish List
- Algae Blenny or Starry Blenny
- Copperband Butterfly
- Lyretail Anthias (3)
- Spotcinctus Clown Pair - If I can manage it with the existing Percula pair
- Zebra Barred Dartfish (3-5)
- Pink-Streaked Wrasse
- Yellow Wrasse
- Orange Spotted Blenny
- Chalk Bass (2)
- Some sort of Hawkfish
- McCosker's or Carpenter's Wrasse
- Chinstrap or Black Cap Jawfish
- Carcharodon carcharias
- Inverts
- Extra-long tentacle non-bubble green bubble tip anemone - Late 2017/Early 2018*
- Sand Sifting Star (2) – 3/2018*
- Turd Cucumber – 9/3/2018
- Brittle Star – 9/3/2018
- Tuxedo Urchin – 6/2019*
- Corals (work in progress)
- Red and Green Favia? (Med) - 2/5/2021
- Red and Green Favia? (Frag) - 12//2020*
- Green Favia? - 1/6/2021
- Space Invader Chalice - 2/5/2021
- Unknown Acro Stick - 1/29/2021
- Goniopora - 1/22/2021
- Duncan - 1/22/2021
- Green Frogspawn - 1/6/2021
- Hammer - 11/2020*
- Fish
~Charlie
Last edited:
