1000 Gallon Build- Here we go- Lots of Pictures

[Mebeknob]

Originally Posted by Socaltoaz

Doubt it. The search for the culprit continues. Very possible my supplier just had shitty stock. Who knows. I'm determined to get back to normal!

Since your water has checked out and your other fish are good... might just have to toss it up to "Mother Nature".

Maybe this is a sign you need to get coral


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[whyamisofly]

Originally Posted by Socaltoaz

Chlorine and chloramine both zero in my water test. Test kit arrived today- I tested and water is perfect. Time to keep searching for th cause of the issues. No new fish are going on till I figure his out. All other fish doing great. Eating like pigs. Will keep you guy up to date.

What kit(s) did you end up testing with?

[Arringar]

Maybe you just had some fish that had been cyanide caught. That can kill fish many months after the fact.

[Socaltoaz]

Originally Posted by whyamisofly

What kit(s) did you end up testing with?

I'll have to check.

Originally Posted by Arringar

Maybe you just had some fish that had been cyanide caught. That can kill fish many months after the fact.

This makes sense and might well be the cause. Since the last fish death- zero issues. Everyone else is healthy, eating like a pig. Knock on wood, things seem to have stabilized. I'm going to be very cautious replenishing the stock.

[karimwassef]

I thought these fish had been in the tank for years?

[Socaltoaz]

Tank is only 1.5 years old. 2 years in October. I had a bunch wiped out by ich late last year.

[Socaltoaz]

Update- have been doing weekly water changes. With the use of fans and my Apex water temp now hovers between 80 and 80.5 in the summer. Ive turned down the AC in my fish room so the room is a cool 62 degrees. Ive been running carbon in the media reactors, changing filter socks regularly.

Starting tomorrow, we are going to take out some of the gravel at the bottom. I want to minimize the build up in the gravel. When we first did the rock scape, the guy I hired to build my rock structure put too much gravel on the bottom in hindsight. So we will minimize to about an inch of gravel (if not less)

I will take weekly photos and update them here. There have been some down times in the household as the fish loss in the past has taken its toll but Im determined to make this tank live up to its full potential.

The rehab begins tomorrow! Photos coming soon.

[bk.]

I've been following this build since its inception. Glad you're sticking it out and going to provide new updates! Definitely looking forward for what's to come.

[Socaltoaz]

Here is the new baseline. Doing some rockscaping and gravel removal tomorrow. Then slowly add fish and *gasp* maybe some corals:



Ignore the lighting color. I had to turn down the blues in my iPhone. Impossible to capture true color in the tank.

And because the tank is so big, you don't see some of the details as I have to stand so far away. Some of the fish are on the other side.

[whyamisofly]

Still a stunning and beautiful tank! Glad to see you on the other side of adversity.

[Socaltoaz]

Thanks- that picture looks horrible. I'll have to pull out the good camera at some point

[brett559]

You drive a Ferrari. You're better than a big pile of rocks!

Corals! Corals! CORALS!!!

[Socaltoaz]

Water test today

Alk 9.3
Calcium 420

Things stable once more in the tank.

More pictures to come. Maybe even some pictures of things in the tank that are not fish!

[whyamisofly]

Originally Posted by Socaltoaz

Chlorine and chloramine both zero in my water test.

Originally Posted by whyamisofly

What kit(s) did you end up testing with?

Originally Posted by Socaltoaz

I'll have to check.

Just checking in to see which tests you used - thanks!

[Socaltoaz]

Sorry man. Recovering from surgery to repair a torn Achilles' tendon. Out of commission for a few days. Will check back in later.

[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 ***.

[RonMidtownStomp]

Float switches are a couple of dollars each on eBay and they plug into the $30 breakout box. I just made a little structure out of egg crate and zip ties for mine. The first step is getting them set up and seeing them turn on and off in Fusion. Then alarms or if statements are really straightforward. The complicated part for you would probably be getting the float switches held in place by something that looks nice?

[Ricardo18]

Nice recap!!!

[Socaltoaz]

Originally Posted by RonMidtownStomp

Float switches are a couple of dollars each on eBay and they plug into the $30 breakout box. I just made a little structure out of egg crate and zip ties for mine. The first step is getting them set up and seeing them turn on and off in Fusion. Then alarms or if statements are really straightforward. The complicated part for you would probably be getting the float switches held in place by something that looks nice?

None of it is difficult. It's just getting the wherewithal to set it up properly. Float switches will come at some point. Just need to make sure everything else is stable first.

[Rtankster]

Originally Posted by Socaltoaz

Sorry man. Recovering from surgery to repair a torn Achilles' tendon. Out of commission for a few days. Will check back in later.

get well soon!

[whyamisofly]

Originally Posted by Socaltoaz

Sorry man. Recovering from surgery to repair a torn Achilles' tendon. Out of commission for a few days. Will check back in later.

Ouch - take it easy!

Wishing you a speedy recovery!

[Socaltoaz]

Many water changes later, reboot going well. Everything stable. New rock work added to hide the center overflow. Emperor Angel added to tank.


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[Socaltoaz]

Photo didn't load. Trying again:


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[slief]

Originally Posted by Socaltoaz

Photo didn't load. Trying again:


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Looking great!! Good to see things back on track!

[Socaltoaz]

Couldn't do it without all of my great royal exclusive equipment.