AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHA!!!! I FOUND IT. HE SAID HE PULLED THIS THREAD. The fact of the matter is, he beat me to it. Cause I started threatening to start a SIMILAR thread based on his new purchase. Let me go ahead and clarify what this thread was supposed to say. Since he went ahead and identified himself as who I was going to post about anonymously. As you will see, this thread is in no way what it was supposed to be. I'm not going to try and make you look bad, just trying to help steer you in the right direction. At least, what in my opinion is the right direction for a sucessful, coral-friendly, correct way to start a system.
My point to complaining that you buy corals when you shouldn't is that you have no equipment to sustain a system LONG TERM. You shouldn't have said anything about immediate danger. Because a reef tank isn't about immediate, it is something you want long-term. You don't half-a$$ setting up a system because you think you can dance around it crashing until you do get the equipment. And why would you even want to do this? You are endangering corals, fish, nature. Not to mention throwing away money and life. Need I remind you that you have yet to keep a saltwater fish alive besides this goby. Which has been around less than 2 or 3 months. Put it this way, he just bought a $70 hammer coral. Ok, it is sitting on a shot glass in his tank because he doesn't have anywhere to put it. A shot glass people. A shot glass. Not enough LR to put it on. My point to going off on him is that he could have invested that $70 into something he NEEDS that will help sustain a successful system long term. Not to mention the Coral Beauty he just added. That tacks on more money which could have gone to important equipment. So what now, about 100 dollars? Not including the brain coral that is sitting on the substrate on the left side of the tank. On its on miniscule piece of LR, but still. The LR it grew on. With errosion.
First:
You do not have one inch of crushed coral. You have about a quarter of an inch. And it is covered in varying degrees of brown and green diatoms. Something that has progressed significantly since adding the goby. And now that you have a large fish for that tank, the beauty, your water quality is going to be majorly impacted in my opinion, given how much you feed. Coupled by the fact that you are lacking in every aspect of equipment.
Go with aragonite. Not crushed coral. Minor detail, but still.
You don't have 20 lbs of LR. Near it, maybe, but don't exaggerate to save face. And the two tiny corner pieces are pourous, yes. The big one is not at all. It is the most solid, dense piece of LR you could buy. Pretty, yes. Pourous, no. These two factors, the LR, and the substrate, mean that you really don't have any bio-filter. Yet you keep increasing your fish load.
You don't have a protein skimmer. Yet again, you just upped your fish load significantly. That Coral Beauty is a grazer. He is constantly feeding on algea, and picking at the rocks. Which means, while you may not feed everyday, he is still producing waste in that time.
The filter you have on your tank is probably the poorest filter money could buy. A complete and utter waste of money. It is comprable to the little tetra filters you see at K-Mart. Seriously. No joke. No exaggeration. It doesn't have the strength to push water through itself almost. Much less contribute to any mechanical filtration Which leads me to my next point.
You have no water movement at all. You have no powerhead anywhere in the tank. None. You are inviting waste to settle and get all in your minor sandbed. As the waste builds up and increases this is going to throw things off balance.
br />Your lighting system just pulled some weird stunt. It doesn't seem to be functioning correctly. At lease one bulb anyways. This isn't your fault though. But something that will probably need addressing soon.
You do not regularly test you water. In fact, I would say you rarely test it. I glanced at the kit yesterday, and it hasn't been touched in ages. Given the fact that it was in the same spot as last week, and had a layer of dust on it. When you do check your water quality, you have the LFS test it. They don't test for everything necessary for a reef. And they often use subpar test kits that don't offer reliable readings. Furthermore, you run a risk of getting mixed readings from dirty test tubes. Whatever, yet another minor detail.
My point here is that long term, you are setting yourself up for disaster. Previously to this, you have had very easy corals that dont require much care. You haven't had a fishload either. That goby didn't really account for anything. And he hardly ate. But now that you upped your bio-load significantly, you are going to be creating more waste that will need to be removed or neutralized. You don't have the necessary equipment to do so. Or the necessary amount of bio-filter to remedy this problem. So basically, you're going to have all these issues start piling up until it reaches the red zone. When it crosses that line, it will throw the entire system off balance, and create a problem you might have serious issues addressing. In turn, your tank may crash and you will be out all that money. Without much to replace everything with. Corals and fish anyways.
Sure, you can temporarily dance around tragedy like an LFS does. Keep the corals short term if that's what your trying to do. But to have a successful, long-term, established, healthy tank, I think you have a lot of work to do. My point is, you are putting all this money into corals and fish. Yet you don't have the means to sustain them. A shot glass. That's all I'm saying. A shot glass to hold up a $70 dollar coral. Do you think the most successful reefers bought their corals first or their necessities? Play with fire, you're gonna get burned. See, there have been many corals I've been wanting recently. But, Ive been addressing my cyano first because I don't want to make a purchase until my tank is absolutly optimal. As for that cyano, I've narrowed it down to water flow and a needed boost in DSB life, eg critters. It fortunately has been going away though. But I am still going to take care of the root problem. When I do, you can still have some sand.
Oh yeah, my point there is, this hobby is a matter of patience and correct methods. Follow them and you might be successful, half a$$ them like this and you're setting yourself up for major disappointment. Like broomer says though, your tank, your choice.
