1000 Gallon Build- Here we go- Lots of Pictures

[Socaltoaz]

Originally Posted by BillNye

Can we get a tank update?!

Yes- sorry. Life has been busy. Tank is doing great. The QT is working like a charm. No new equipment or anything like that. Had to essentially start over and found that there was ich in the tank. Now everything that goes in the tank goes through 2-4 weeks of QT depending on the fish and the condition its in. Have not lost anything in the tank in 6-8 months. I have lost a few fish in QT but I guess that's what QT is for.

Enjoying the tank very much. Looking to add a few large angels and a nice school of anthias for color. Then Im done - nothing else to add other than some leathers, GSP, XENIA - essentially some easy to take care of soft corals to add color to the tank.

Zero interest in SPS or anything hard to take care of. Im fine with the "weed" type corals as I like those anyways. My angels would destroy the SPS anyways so don't even want to bother.

Hope you guys have been well. Ill try to post more - some photos, maybe a few videos.

[pfan151]

Good to hear things are going well. If you do add anthias be very careful and thorough in quarantine. Urenoma is a big issue with anthias and is way worse to deal with than ich. It can be frustrating to get a good sized group through QT. At least in my experience. They should look great in your tank for sure though.

[noy]

Wow, just skimmed through this thread - great read.

Very helpful lessons learned especially the first point - think we all get sucked into SPS dominant setups at some point.

[pfan151]

Once you start looking for some low maintenance corals check out the green Nepthea. Pretty impossible to kill, grows fast, and looks great.

[Dmorty217]

Originally Posted by Socaltoaz

After sitting on my *** the last few weeks recovering from a torn achilles tendon and healing from the surgery, I thought I would do a summary of where we are with the tank. I also wanted to reflect on things that have worked and things that have not in my tank journey in the last 20 or so months since the tank has been up and running.

Since my last bit of fish loss, Ive tested all the water from numerous sources and have thoroughly cleaned every last bit of the tank. Ive done weekly water changes and adjusted the fan in my fish room and have managed to get the temp stable between 80-80.5 in the summer. In the winter time I expect the tank temp to drop more.

We have not added any fish recently- and the good news is that we have not lost any more fish. Everyone that is in the tank is healthy, swimming and eating like a champ. So it seems that whatever issues we were having, seem to have settled down. Im planning on not having any more problems - Well, at least that is the plan.

So in looking back over the last year and a half, here are my lessons, the things I think we did well- and things that didnt go so well.


1- Do the type of tank that puts a smile on your face, not on the face of others. When I first started planning my tank, I had planned on doing a FOWLR. In posting my thread online, the community is very much into SPS. I got sucked in and tried to do an SPS tank with lots of corals. I had limited to no success. I tried dosing pumps, dosing calcium, Alk etc. I was just not able to keep my chemistry proper and therefore my corals didnt thrive like they should have. Likely it was a lack of experience and a lack of knowledge and in hindsight I put a lot of equipment in such as dosing pumps and reactors and such which just made the problem worse. I should have stuck to my plan of FOLWR and slowly over the years, added more coral. The good news is that I simplified my equipment- I sold my dosing pump, I sold my storage vats of calcium and frankly with just more frequent water changes, Im finding the water chemistry more stable than its ever been. Right now we are running a FOWLR but that may change if things remain stable.

2- Less is more. I have the best equipment money can buy. And when first starting out with the tank, I thought I had everything I would need. But then I started reading about dosing pumps and algae scrubbers and all sorts of other little gadgets. I added them to the tank. I started to get wires all over my clean and beautiful fish room. I poked holes in the walls as I mounted one piece of equipment after another. What I found was most of this while fine and dandy, isn't critical. I got rid of it all. all I have now is filter socks, massive protein skimmer and carbon and GFO reactors. This and frequent water changes seems to have settled down the tank significantly and water is more clear than its ever been.

3- Quarantine- nothing more needs to be said. I ignored the warnings. I thought I was buying from a trusted source. Until at one point where I had my tank full of some GSP and hammer corals and a few others and then one of my tangs got ich. I panicked. If I ran medication, the coral would die. If I didnt the fish would die. I screwed up and lost both fish and coral. Never again.

4- Go slow- It became a weekly adventure to visit the local fish stores and just buy whatever I felt I needed to buy to add to the tank. There is no fast way to grow a tank. go slow. Take your time. These are your fish that become a part of you and will be with you hopefully for a very long time. dont rush it. Take your time.

5- Learn from others. There have been some great people on this thread that have provided countless bits of wisdom and advice. You are all too kind and too numerous for me to mention one by one but just know that I am eternally grateful to you for helping me with my tank

6- Acrylic scratches. Man oh man, I tried so hard to avoid it. But after about 2 years, I need to get someone in and polish the tank on the inside. Just little scratches everywhere driving me crazy. Luckily I have thick enough acrylic that it wont be an issue but good lord acrylic scratches easily.

7- Planning is key- as much as I screwed up on the tank as we got it to mature, I have to say that all of the planning on the front end (once I figured out not to keep adding random crap to the tank)paid off. We have had no leaks, no issues with plumbing or any of the equipment. Buy the right equipment- most of it from Royal Exclusive- and you dont have to worry about coming home to a broken pump or cracked sump. the equipment has performed flawlessly.

8- Set up a good water change system - I was first using the Renew from Reef Genesis and while there was nothing wrong with it, i dumped it. Im still using the Storm auto top off which is fantastic but I just wanted to clean up some of the pipes and tubes in the fish room and getting rid of the Renew helped to do that. Now water changes take about 5 minutes. Im doing about 150-200 gallons a month. Super easy - flip a few valves. Let the water drain into the sump from the tank. Drain the sump and then fill the sump back up with water from my salt water mixing container.

9- APEX is your friend. I tried to avoid it for the longest time. Why, i have no idea- just to be stubborn and I didnt want to learn how to program it. Part of the reason is that my fish room is remote and I couldn't get my head around setting up the APEX but not being able to control my powerheads and lights. I finally just set it up in the fish room and left the lights off it. It was a bit of a learning curve but now I use it to monitor my ph, tank temp, turn my pumps on and off. Its great. some day Ill figure out how to do float values and shut off my skimmer and return pumps if the water level drops- really not super critical right now but I am enjoying the capabilities of the APEX. Highly recommended and as some of you know, you can go crazy with this equipment.

10- No one takes care of the tank as well as you do. Ive had a few folks come in and help maintain the tank. Even though I set it up to be fairly self sufficient, the gravel needs to be vacuumed, the acrylic needs to be cleaned. So to solve this, we lowered the gravel level significantly. Now i can easily clean the glass, do my water changes and clean out skimmer and filter socks. I do have a service that comes in once a month now just to verify water chemistry and make sure Im not doing anything wrong but most of the maintainance I do myself. Its rewarding and its fun.


Thanks for allowing me to share. Its been quite a journey. I think (hope) that all the bad things are behind me now and really to make the tank thrive I just needed to slow down. Just needed to not try to do everything at once and let the water changes maintain the chemistry of the tank. If they didnt make it so difficult to post pictures and videos, Id post more here but honestly its a serious pain in the ***.

This should be made into a sticky. I too have learned 100% of this the hard way and it could of easily been avoided. I have been in the hobby for 20 years and still learn something new virtually everyday about this hobby. I personally believe the forums are a tool and a detriment to people. Nothing beats a book IMO. I think disease in tanks is the single biggest contributing factor in people leaving the hobby.

[Socaltoaz]

Originally Posted by Dmorty217

This should be made into a sticky. I too have learned 100% of this the hard way and it could of easily been avoided. I have been in the hobby for 20 years and still learn something new virtually everyday about this hobby. I personally believe the forums are a tool and a detriment to people. Nothing beats a book IMO. I think disease in tanks is the single biggest contributing factor in people leaving the hobby.

Disease is seriously depression and made me almost shut things down. Glad I stuck through it. We have turned the corner and things are doing great. (knock on wood)

[Socaltoaz]

Got a few large tangs in the tank from a local reefer that had outgrown his system. Knock on wood things are well.

[pfan151]

Originally Posted by Socaltoaz

Got a few large tangs in the tank from a local reefer that had outgrown his system. Knock on wood things are well.

Which type of tangs? You need an achillies. It would look amazing in a tank your size. I recently got a really nice one from PacificIslandaqua.com

[McPuff]

Originally Posted by Socaltoaz

Got a few large tangs in the tank from a local reefer that had outgrown his system. Knock on wood things are well.

I'm also curious to know which tangs... and hoping for some big ones. :0) Haven't seen pictures of this system in a while. Sounds like it's doing well after some setbacks a while ago. Would love to see how it looks now if you've got a chance.

[Socaltoaz]

Originally Posted by pfan151

Which type of tangs? You need an achillies. It would look amazing in a tank your size. I recently got a really nice one from PacificIslandaqua.com

Desjardini Sailfin Tang- about 7 inches. And a Palani/Dussumieri Tang - about 9 inches. Plan is to get one blue face angel and an emperor and im done adding fish. Will try to get some hardy corals to add color to the tank.

Originally Posted by McPuff

I'm also curious to know which tangs... and hoping for some big ones. :0) Haven't seen pictures of this system in a while. Sounds like it's doing well after some setbacks a while ago. Would love to see how it looks now if you've got a chance.

I will grab some photos soon. Ive been traveling a ton and my camera phone hasn't been working well. And I dont know if its gotten easier to add pics to this website but it used to be a complete pain in the ***. But knock on wood, all is doing ok so far.

[pfan151]

Originally Posted by Socaltoaz

I will grab some photos soon. Ive been traveling a ton and my camera phone hasn't been working well. And I dont know if its gotten easier to add pics to this website but it used to be a complete pain in the ***. But knock on wood, all is doing ok so far.

It’s still a pain to post pictures unless you are using tapatalk

[pfan151]

Those are cool tangs. Nice that they made it to a tank that’s big enough for them.

[Socaltoaz]

Originally Posted by pfan151

Those are cool tangs. Nice that they made it to a tank that’s big enough for them.

Thanks - fish are doing well knock on wood. Have a few more to add- the. I try some corals again. Easy to keep. No sps. Wish me
Luck.

[Socaltoaz]

Update- tank doing great. seems like everything is stable. Fish are growing and eating nicely.

One question- I don't know what happened but all of a sudden my apex is singing. Every 20 seconds or so it does a little tune - some sort of alarm but i can't figure out how to turn it off.

its in the apex system in my garage so I'm not too bothered by it and all parameters and everything in the tank are doing fine- however the darn alarm won't turn off.

any clues here?

[c_gunther]

Go to the apex fusion website and login.
Select the explanation mark in the triangle. This shows a list of alarms that have been triggered. It should tell you what is not working / out of spec. You can also page backwards to see historical alarms.

The apex has error and warning alarms (also email). These are "outlets" you can manually turn on and off. They are normally programmed to automatically switch on when the temperature or pH is too high or low etc.

Sent from my Pixel 2 XL using Tapatalk

[Socaltoaz]

Originally Posted by c_gunther

Go to the apex fusion website and login.
Select the explanation mark in the triangle. This shows a list of alarms that have been triggered. It should tell you what is not working / out of spec. You can also page backwards to see historical alarms.

The apex has error and warning alarms (also email). These are "outlets" you can manually turn on and off. They are normally programmed to automatically switch on when the temperature or pH is too high or low etc.

Sent from my Pixel 2 XL using Tapatalk

Ty. I actually tried this but it didn’t work. But I didn’t check to see if it’s an outlet... thx

[Achilles Torben]

We need pictures

Greetings Torben

[Socaltoaz]

Originally Posted by Achilles Torben

We need pictures

Greetings Torben

I’ll try to take some this weekend. I can never get good photos with my iPhone. Need a better setup to capture pics.

[Achilles Torben]

I made bad pictures too! Videos are much better. Don't know why

Greetings Torben

[McPuff]

Originally Posted by Socaltoaz

I’ll try to take some this weekend. I can never get good photos with my iPhone. Need a better setup to capture pics.

Just get a set of clip-on filters for your phone and you'll be surprised at how much of a difference it makes. No need for fancy camera if you just want to show your system versus actual photography (that's how I am anyway).

P.S. you still have the F-car or have you changed it up?

[Socaltoaz]

Originally Posted by McPuff

Just get a set of clip-on filters for your phone and you'll be surprised at how much of a difference it makes. No need for fancy camera if you just want to show your system versus actual photography (that's how I am anyway).

P.S. you still have the F-car or have you changed it up?

Still have the Ferrari- about to sell it as I’m having a Pista come later this summer. Added a Mclaren 720 to the garage last year. Unreal car!!

[McPuff]

Originally Posted by Socaltoaz

Still have the Ferrari- about to sell it as I’m having a Pista come later this summer. Added a Mclaren 720 to the garage last year. Unreal car!!

Excellent! The 720s are just unreal. Amazing performance. The pista seem to be pretty intense themselves. Interested to hear your comparison between the 488 and pista.

[Socaltoaz]

Originally Posted by McPuff

Excellent! The 720s are just unreal. Amazing performance. The pista seem to be pretty intense themselves. Interested to hear your comparison between the 488 and pista.

Pista arrives end of the year. But between the 488 and 720, it’s no contest. 720 destroys it in every aspect.

[Nrdau]

What a beautiful home

[Socaltoaz]

Originally Posted by Nrdau

What a beautiful home

Ty