Jato460

I am 14 in michigan and I love this hobby. My first aquarium was a 20 gallon fresh water tank that somebody let me borrow when I was 11.

less than a year after that I got a 75 gallon fresh water tank off craigslist.

about a year and a-half ago somebody offered me a 75 gallon aquarium with stand, light, 200 pounds of dried out rock, and a sump with a return pump and an internal overflow box. Since it had everything for a saltwater tank I decided to try saltwater and I love it. I still have my 75 gallon freshwater but I am trying to sell it. the sump that they gave to me was only a 15 gallon fish tank with a skimmer in it it was packed and I had a huge micro-bubble problem in the display. I put a bubble trap in the 20 gallon tank that was a freshwater tank and got an internal return pump. the pump I got with it was a little giant external pump its flow rate was very high and I had to prime it every time I turned it off because I had it above the sump. Six months after that it started to leak, the bottom of the stand was always wet and I was topping off a lot which led to drop in salinity. To replace that sump I bought a 30 gallon glass aquarium, did some research about building a sump on melevsreef.com and built my sump with 1/4 in. acrylic that my dad cut out on a cnc machine at work. He also cut out a skimmer stand. Here is the design I drew for it on google sketchup.

then I put it together and put it under my tank.

three days after that I lost a sand sifting star fish, (made my sand look very clean and want to get another one.) a royal damsel, and a foxface, also I had a hair algae explosion.

I took a water test into a very knowledgable fish store in lansing called preuss pets and told them my story. They told me that my water test didn’t have any clues on why I was losing fish. They suggested that I didn’t let my silicone dry long enough in my sump which I didn’t, but on the topic of silicone I remembered that I was soposed to use the silicone made by all glass aquarium I told them that I got the silicone from home depot and didn’t pay attention to what kind it was. They gave me some active carbon and a tube of aquarium certified silicone and told me to cut off my sump and redo it and to let it dry for 2 days. Also to run carbon through the tank. My tanks sump was a 5 gallon bucket with only carbon and a heater while I was re-doing the sump with the right silicone. With no skimmer it made my algae problem even worse than it already was then after I got my sump running right I went in and pulled out the hair algae and got a uv sterilizer and got rid of it and the uv sterilizer made my water more clear than I have ever had it. My first coral were a rock with green star polyps and button polyps and another rock with zoanthids and only a couple button polyps. It wasn’t long before the button polyps ran over the zoanthids. for some reason the zoanthids never looked very good but water test showed no clues.

Last weekend I cleaned more algae out her are some Before and after pics. This algae grows on everything except rocks does anyone have any ideas on how to keep it away I was thinking maybe a phosphate reactor. Some thing on my want list are a rose bubble tip anemone but it will have to be big because of my 5 inch clarki’s, another pc4 module for my reefkeeper lite, and a phosphate reactor.