This could get long. I started with corals about 14 months ago. My tank has been set up since 1995ish, I had the standard old T-12s,
CC,
nitrates at about 40, 0
ammonia, 0
nitrites, low calcium. All my corals thrived.
I started reading all the forums and just HAD to have all the new "stuff", but of course I didn't have thebudget, so I didn't buy thebest.
I now have T-5's, over a 90 gal tank, 15 gal
wet/dry, basically
sump with a aqua
skimmer (probably the best thing I have bought), I use to feed once a week, flake or frozen. Now I feed all the fancy this that and the other thing, about 2 times a week, with the selcon and sometimes fresh garlic. I have cut that back from about 3-4 times a week.
I bought the T-5's in Sept., my 14 year old pump quit in Oct. , now I am running a quiet one 6000, which I do not think is pumping nearlly what the old one did, but it was so old I had no idea what it was so I couldn't replace it with the same thing. I have 3 power heads running for more water movement, I have cheato in the
sump, no filter material, I have tried running
phosphate remover and carbon, both kent, for the last several months, but things look even worse when I do, so I have removed them last week. ( Yes I did replace them often), and I was using some filter material for about a month, to see if that would clean things up, removingand replacing it after every cleaning, which for the last 2 months have been about 20% wc weekly, no improvements.
I house one blue devil damsel, one maroon clown, one cleaner shrimp, I had 3 peppermints that have disappeared slowly over the last 4 months.
For corals, I have 3 hairy mushrooms (one is a large rock with 9 mushrooms) all of these look terrible, and the green striped mushrooms I had, were spreading but have all died in the last week. A sebae anemone that was purchased with the clown in Sept. was
bleached and tiny, now is the size of a basketball and a nice tan, brown. A success for now anyway.
All my zoas have been closed for months now, after more then tripling in size. I have green star polyps that are still spreading, but can hardly open with all the hair algae. My yellow poylps have spread then close up and die back. My colt coral is spreading like wild fire and is now about 20 from the mother I bought back in Dec. of 06. The xenias I traded at Christmas of 07 have more than tripled and are starting to cover my tower/overflow. My frogspawn I bought in Nov, opened beautiful for about 3 months and over the last 3 weeeks is just about done for, it doe not expand anymore, I have moved it to a
qt, no improvement.
I don't have a ton of hermits or snails, I never had a ton, but I think maybe they are dwindling too.
I think about 3 months ago I started to slowly switch out the
cc for a sand bed, but not deep, the
cc wasn't either though, I have
bb under my rocks and just had the
cc, now sand up front about 1-2" deep just for looks.
My tests are temp 75-76, 0
ammonia, 0
nitrates, 13
nitrates,(which were 0 for the last year when I had the
cc), 400 calcium, mag, not sure my test kit is really hard to read, but according to the tests it is way high 1400-1600 and has been for months, which should actually help my algae,
ph seems low 7.8-8,0,
alk and kd are in the range they should be have been consistant for the last 3 months or more.
phosphates test 0, on tab water, tank water,
RO water.
I have even switched my salt to the expensive tropic marine pro, (after seeing very, very successful tanks that run only this salt), I thought at this point anything was worth trying.
I have now used a whole bucket of salt and the tank still looks BAD.
Now that I have wrote a book, what to you think? This is hair algae, it is slimy and on everything, it gets icky air bubbles all over it within minutes of blowing them off. Sure do appreciate any advice or help.
I replaced my R/O unit about 6 months ago(the expensive filter) and all the other filters in Jan.
I have just now replaced carbon and micron filter last weekend and added a
DI unit.
