25 gallons of disaster

Every tank has it's own personality.

What works for one my be a disaster in another system.

This hobby is not black and white, yes generalization can be made but there are often many ways to reach the same goal.

 

I agree with you 100% Cheryl. It's amazing to see very beautiful, very different aquariums running, and in very different ways. I offered my last advice just to kinda help the op sort out all of the information given. Sometimes, though, when someone is having issues specific things need to be addressed. I guess we always need to remember that the people who are responding are just sharing their viewpoints/knowledge/experience.

On a light note, I knew a man who ran a 500g. system. He never did water changes and his tank was amazing!

 

woah, that's alot of replies, i'll try to read everything, ok, crash as in, the water started getting cloudy, corals closed up, in the past i used to have fishes that died from it as well, the skimmer started over skimming, water smelled funky, a mothball smell? was told it was ammonia.

but usually in a few days it clears up as if nothing happened, so i'm ruling out chemical contamination, and think it was a ammonia spike/bacterial bloom.

 

I agree with you 100% Cheryl. It's amazing to see very beautiful, very different aquariums running, and in very different ways. I offered my last advice just to kinda help the op sort out all of the information given. Sometimes, though, when someone is having issues specific things need to be addressed. I guess we always need to remember that the people who are responding are just sharing their viewpoints/knowledge/experience.

On a light note, I knew a man who ran a 500g. system. He never did water changes and his tank was amazing!


So true LadyJ

If I tried no water changes my tank would look worse than it currently does.

We had a member a while back that had a stunning reef tank with huge Acropora colonies and no skimmer.

It's the same with fish and inverts, one person's Dottyback or Wrasse can be the most evil fish that ever lived, another hobbyist keeps them peacefully.

And yup, all we can offer up is our personal experience regardless of how different it may be from the general consensus.

 

sometimes its hard to take criticism, but if it will help me i am willing to learn. and truth be told, i too sometimes feel dumb after doing something as if i wasn't thinking at the time, lol.

 

i definitely agree with stopping the phosphate remover and the bio fuel with pellets. Makes sense to me actually, come to think of it maybe the big reason i'm dosing it is because i didn't want it to go to waste.

 

What are you feeding, how often and how much.

You need enough decay that the biological filter can not process it fast enough thus causing detectable ammonia and nitrites.

Usually this source of decay is too much food or a dead fish or larger invert.

 

Thanks, though i do try my best, but a lot of the time i make many beginner errors.

yeah the flow's actually pretty good, but i'm going to upgrade the powerhead in my display tank to a wavemaker soon.

i don't have chaeto, think i'll try to find some.

once again thanks.

 

Samuel, it's almost 10 pm where I live. If you have another, oh, I don't know, 3-4 hours I'll tell you about all of the mistakes I've made. Well, hopefully I could fit them all in at that amount of time, not sure though.

Don't feel stupid. Please don't. You received a lot of responses because people genuinely want to help, especially to someone who seems so dedicated as you.

So, if you can find for me just one person who hasn't made mistakes and knows it all, well, simply put, I'll fall off my couch laughing 'cuz it just ain't the truth, no matter what s/he may tell you.

 

i would love to hear about all the mistakes you've made before, it'd be interesting to hear what other aquarists go through.