Well, the tank's been up for just over a year now, MAN, the things I learned. WHAT A CRAZY HOBBY! Frustrating and fascinating, and definitely challenging. Most of ya'll (especially Sal at SWC and Greg at Optimum) know of my struggles with nitrates. I THINK I may FINALLY be out of the woods now though. I have a 46-gallon bowfront, with a refugium and protein skimmer/sump, and my tank occupants included a yellow tang, blue hippo, spotted blenny, and 2 clownfish. My sandbed consisted of about 1-3/4" home depot sand. But my nitrates were still 60-80 ppm.
SO I took the Yellow Tang and Blue Hippo to Sal for credit to reduce the 'bio-load', added about 2" Carib Sea fiji pink live sand to make my sand bed deeper, and finally made two big water changes and got the levels down to around 10-12 ppm nitrate, which is a HUGE accomplishment. If that don't do it, and nitrate levels keep rising, I'm giving up! BUT now I'm getting some good growth on my button polyps and some other 'vegetation' in my tank, so it's a good sign I guess.
Just wanted to say THANKS to Sal and Greg, and to all of y'all who offered help and support over the past year. I want to start adding corals in a few months as long as my nitrates keep decreasing and my water quality is right.
One more note: When I started, I was excited and anxious to get corals and inverts and all the COOL things I could get, anemones, clams, bubble corals, etc to get my tank looking REALLY good. I jumped in WAY too fast, even though ya'll told me NOT to, I didn't listen and sure enough, lost about $600.00 of coral because I didn't know that you HAVE to take your time and be patient, and reef tanks DEMAND patience, research and hard work. SO if you're new to saltwater, don't make the mistakes I did, listen to these folks here on this board and save yourself some misery. I wish now that I would have.
SO I took the Yellow Tang and Blue Hippo to Sal for credit to reduce the 'bio-load', added about 2" Carib Sea fiji pink live sand to make my sand bed deeper, and finally made two big water changes and got the levels down to around 10-12 ppm nitrate, which is a HUGE accomplishment. If that don't do it, and nitrate levels keep rising, I'm giving up! BUT now I'm getting some good growth on my button polyps and some other 'vegetation' in my tank, so it's a good sign I guess.
Just wanted to say THANKS to Sal and Greg, and to all of y'all who offered help and support over the past year. I want to start adding corals in a few months as long as my nitrates keep decreasing and my water quality is right.
One more note: When I started, I was excited and anxious to get corals and inverts and all the COOL things I could get, anemones, clams, bubble corals, etc to get my tank looking REALLY good. I jumped in WAY too fast, even though ya'll told me NOT to, I didn't listen and sure enough, lost about $600.00 of coral because I didn't know that you HAVE to take your time and be patient, and reef tanks DEMAND patience, research and hard work. SO if you're new to saltwater, don't make the mistakes I did, listen to these folks here on this board and save yourself some misery. I wish now that I would have.
