Vankirk's 57 gal rimless reef saga

Usually it's the "All of the above" move that finally rids you of the nuisance algae. I fought cyano so hard, it was layered on every inch of my sand. I admire you for your stick-to-it-iveness, I bet the weight lifted off your chest feels So Great now!! Well done.

 

Thanks guys.
The first one here is somewhere not long after the cycle completed.
2nd one is after transferring what survived my 29 gallon.
3rd is when the green haired monster began to arrive. It got A LOT worse.
4th is AFTER removing handfuls of red cotton candy algae.

 

Haha I had no problems on the first 2 holes. I got a little to confident on the last and all most forgot to put the towel underneath to catch the plug when it fell! haha

 

Thanks Jake.
I'm feeling pretty confident lately (knocks on wood) that I finally turned the corner. Here's a closer pic of the light fixture mount. All I did was stain a 1x4 and mount 2 of those outdoor wrought iron plant hangers. I used Aquaticlife's hanger kit to connect the 2.

 

I removed my refuge(used for over a year) and biopellets( about 8 months). As you probably already know these things are commonly used by a lot of people in the hobby with great success. So I can only assume I was not using them properly.
I also kept tinkering with my skimmer to get a wetter skimmate without overflowing haha. And I added polyfilter between the baffles in the sump to catch larger particles.
I believe somewhere in those moves is what fixed it. At this point I'm just happy it's fixed and I'm not changing anything haha.

 

I may have to steal that idea for my upcoming build!

 

Wow! Really nice. These rimless tanks look amazing.

 

Tank looks great!!

 

I was doing some regular maintenance this morning. R&R GFO, carbon, and polyfilter. Thought I would post a pic of my sump.

Also wanted to show how I keep track of my maintenance and test results. I can't seem to remember anything anymore haha so I glued a small dry erase board to the inside door of the cabinet to keep track.

 

Looks amazing