vendredi 24 octobre 2014

Hi! New here....

Hello from western NC! I have such a love/hate relationship with this hobby, and in less than a year of entering into the sw world, I have reached a few conclusions: I will never be satisfied, I will always be broke, and I will drive myself nuts with the constant battle between throwing my tank out the window or keeping it.



I have a 20g long that's been up and running for about 9 months. It's a simple set up, no skimmer, AC70 with chemipure elite, phosguard, and polyfil floss. Lighting fixture was one I had lying around the house, dual T5HO fishneedit, nothing special.. I put an ATI aqua blue special and blue plus bulb in it. I have 2 koralia circ pumps and other than a heater that's it. I use Red Sea coral pro salt and I recently bought an rodi unit. Previously I used grocery store distilled water and then lfs ro only water (yeah, didn't know that until I just happened to test it with my TDS meter one day). I learned the hard way that overfeeding can destroy a tank. Man do I have stories.



Current inhabitants are leftover zoas and a ricordia that I've yet to remove, live rock that is shimmering with green bubble algae, a nice large herd of flatworms, and of course the flourishing green hair algae gardens. Oh, and the bryopsis is just thriving!



My equally frustrated lfs owner loaned out an urchin, which must thinks it's been transformed to heaven. He is munching the hair algae like crazy. I threw in a handful of emerald crabs that are making a dent in the GBA. Meanwhile, most of my zoas, frogspawn, duncan, hammer and various mushrooms have been removed and are in a 10g atm, probably being tormented by the new 14k full spectrum par 38 bulb I just spent too much money on. The brown algae seems to love it though.



So basically I'm in the process of letting the 20L balance out... hopefully. I'm doing more wc's, only feeding the remaining fish (gramma) every other day and no where near as much. The b/w oc clown is with the corals in the 10g, the firefish mysteriously died, and the orange oc clown's 5th attempt at flying finally did him in. Found him one day after work in the dust on the floor behind the tank. :( My plan is to starve the algae. I still may have to remove the rock and soak it in something to kill all the uglies. I'm pretty much starting over, but I'm hangin in there.



Sorry for the long post, but sometimes it's necessary to spill your guts to anyone that will listen. :help1:



Any advice/comments would be most appreciated.




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