180g Tank Build - 11 mos. and counting.

Sorry - some of these are quite blurry at full res You get the idea though. Most things are humming along - good coral growth. I have had trouble with bleaching on a couple of pieces though. Haven't been able to track down the source of the problem. Ni, Na, Am, pH, alk all look spot on. salinity has been as low as 1.022, and I usually keep it up at 1.024-1.025 - but that kind of range hasn't been an issue for me in the past as long as changes are gradual.

I've also been in a constant battle with cyano since installing the bio-media reactor a few months ago. I use chemi-clean and it's ok for a month and then cyano comes back. Didn't ever have a problem before the reactor. Any I haven't noticed a slow down in algae growth either. Questioning whether it's a gimmick or what. May have to try another kind of bio-pellet.

Let me know if you have any tips/comments!

Oh - the other thing I neglected to mention is that I had water to my Ca reactor stop flowing for an undetermined amount of time (probably less than 2 days). Instead of flushing it out as I should have, I absent mindedly got it going and dumped the water back in my system (~300 gallon system). That could likely be contributing to some of my tank's recent problems.

yeah that was a very bad thing as far as dumping that old water back in as I am sure that introduced some (though not enough to kill anything I assume) Hydrogen Sulfide into your system which could certainly contribute to all your stated problems. It in turn may have killed some of your bacteria and other unseen fragile creatures which in turn could provide unwanted nutrients for cyano and algae to munch on.

I love the tank though. Looks great and those pictures were all very appreciated/needed eye candy

Your algae looks like bryopsis to me, in fact thats what mine looked like (if you are going to pull it out don't let a single hair of it land anywhere else in the tank or it will grow where it lands. Look that up online and make sure that isn't what your fighting. If it is several of us have fought that fight and will be more than happy to help out based on experiences.

Thanks for the input cyano. That frag was just transplanted from the frag tank. I should have cleaned it a bit better. I suspect my foxface will have that polished of in a week or so. He's kind of a glutton. Maybe I'll do some surgery tomorrow just to make sure I don't end up with a problem...

I have an old post if you want to see how bad my bryopsis problem got. All of my problems came with a patch about that size so very careful you could squash it quickly here or it could drag out for months and cause tons of heartaches so whatever you do be very careful with your approach.

Look at all these pretty pictures. Thanks for sharing. How many RBTAs are in this tank? There's irony here that you have a guy name cyano helping you with your cyano problems.

you know everyone gets to deal with a little cyano eventually :P

Awesome photos and critters.

great pics! looking good! if you should check out mr. saltwater tanks no-nonsence guide to algae its a pretty nice and well written guide to battling nuisance algae

Thanks for all of the nice comments and advice.

@melev - I'm at 5 RBTAs right now, which is about one over max capacity. I've been selling them as they split and wander. It's a good supplement to the electricity bill.