Reef Bruh's 600 Gallon Upgrade

I stopped using Zeo. It just became to much for me especially with my situation I couldn't trust or find anyone to dose in my absence.

 

Totally understand. There was a Zeo related problem that might have explained some things, but no Zeo, no help I'm afraid.

 

It worked don't get me wrong. Sponge power and coralvitalizer worked great. Even biomate. But stability might very much did me in or just those plugs the mari cultured came on.

 

Not being fully aware of your situation I am not saying this is for you...but wanted to provide a perspective I have on reef keeping - I came to the realization about 2 years ago when I upgraded to my 250 - that I needed to keep it simple. I'm relatively young, have 2 young kids, and have a pretty solid career going. I travel for work a lot, work long hours, and spend a lot of time with my wife and kids when I am home. Life is busy. I also love having a reef tank. I like looking at it, I LOVE working on it, and I LOVE sharing the experience with my daughters - its a great learning lesson for them on responsibility, science, and environmental conservation (if you do it right). While I don't work in the field - I have a degree in Marine Biology. I am majorly intrigued by the thought of keeping exotic SPS, LPS, etc. corals. The complexity of dosing pumps, lighting, etc. and the science behind it are very exciting to me. BUT - this is not the time in my life to do that. SO that being said - I invested money in good lighting, a nice skimmer, an APEX, and a drop cam so I can keep an eye on things from the road, and vortechs for good circulation - and I went with easy corals (easy being a relative term). I have lots of soft corals, some acans, some zoa's, some ORA SPS corals, ricordia, etc. I keep my fish population low - 250 gallon tank (300 with sump) - with about 10 fish in it - half of which are Chromis - the rest are nice sized tangs. I do a water change every week - about 10%. I do a 20% change about every 6 weeks. I scrape algae once a week when I do the water change and I also clean out my skimmers. My daughter and I test water paraments (Alk, Mg, Ca) twice a week and dose manually using bulk reef supply 2 part. Knock on wood - with very minor exceptions - I have had a lot of luck and very few problems with this set up. I think if a hard core reefer would look at my tank - they might not be impressed by they type of corals in there - but I think they would agree the tank is beautiful. I get endless compliments on it, It makes me happy, and it keeps my BP low . Someday - when the kids are grown, and I have more time - I am going to go all out and get that crazy complex reef of my dreams - but for now - I am content with the easier (nothing is easy with reefs) path.

 

The rebuild has now began. This is kinda sorta gonna be a little pic intense.

 

nice pieces bruh! good to see you posting!

 

Thanks ofk