Gabba's Reef Thread

Quit teasing us...

 

here's my tank now:

 

This is what happens when you don't do any maintenance for four months!! No water changes, skimmer not cleaned, glass not scraped/ cleared.... All I have done since late November is feed the fish and adjust FW top-off drip rate.

 

But do not worry, everyone is safe and happy:





I'm in the process of cleaning the glass and performing water changes this weekend... will update with more pics soon!

 

4 month without maintenance? shame on you.

 

I'm not proud of it. But maybe I should be...

Here are my params, just tested:

Calcium: 430
Alk: 9.5
Mag: 1600
Nitrate: ~3ppm

This is after four months of doing nothing to this tank. I have been running Ecobak biopellets and a Calcium reactor. I also have cheato in the fuge.

I partially attribute the low nitrates to there being some algae on the glass, although this was mostly coralline...

Pics of corals to come later. I've seen at least 5x growth on most corals, though about 10x growth on a few! All much more colorful than they were in November.

EDIT: there is a bit of cyano on the back glass... going to try to siphon as much of this out as possible... but there is NO cyano or algae on the substrate or rocks...

 

You're right. That's actually rather impressive

 

And if you're scratching your head wondering how my mag is that high, I had overdosed accidentally and it was up to ~2100 last fall. Nothing seemed stressed, so I had left it this way...

It seems that it used up around 500 mag over the past 4 months, which sounds about right to me.

 

Oh, and I promise there will be a big payoff when I post the pics of the corals...


It's just taking me longer than I thought it would to clean the front glass... I'm trying to do it slowly and vacuum out as much of the algae as possible so I don't release a ton of nutrients into the tank all at once. It's causing me to have to make up water to support the large volumes of water I'm using in vacuuming and I can only make 15 gallons of saltwater at a time... which reminds me, I've been meaning to get a bigger container for saltwater... one of those Brute cans maybe...

anyhoo.

Stay tuned...

 

Ok, sorry for the delay. Got busy for a second there.

Took some pics of the tank and corals just a few days ago.

FTS How do you like my artwork on the wall?

you can see the growth on some corals here; also, one of my newest fish, the pink fairy wrasse makes an appearance:

Here's the pink birdsnest!

And the green Digitata:

Another recent addition, the harlequin shrimp on a green Monti cap: