does the tank look healthy? genuine question because this is my first saltwater tank, even the lights are chihiros freshwater that i set to blue spectrum (changed to normal for this video). tank size is shallow 100x45x25cm (112liters).

majorities of softies with 3 LPS (duncan, blastomussa and goniopora). all the corals look good in my eyes but as this is my first rodeo, i don't know better. also i feel the diatom and algae a bit much? then the wavemaker, what i have right now is the jebao scp-70 and even i already set the power to only one and slowest wave interval setting there are no low flow in the tank i think, as you can see on the goniopora, duncan and some zoas and mushrooms. did i buy the wrong model for my type of tank?

i don't have any water parameter test kit yet, what i know is salinity 1.025 and temp 25.5celcius. both stable.

need insight from everyone here, thank you before!

EDIT: thank you guys for all the insights, i will try to source the nitrate and phospate test kit first to know the parameter then i will get back here again after having the data

I barely do anything to this tank other than some very light feeding and cleaning the glass. There’s a skimmer on the tank but I don’t really turn it on, it’s not really skimming anything out with the low fish load and high coral density

These are all current photos.

History (if you want it)

Before diving into this, I spent nearly 6 months in my free time reading stories on here, searching reef forums, researching on blogs, watching the odd YT vid... I was never naive enough to think I knew anything about anything but I was naive enough to think I was ready to try haha.

Nearly all the equipment you see came with the tank. Not including consumables we changed the heater, the wavemakers, and built a refugium (at least I think I did?). Livestock wise there was 1 very sad looking stalk of a kenya tree and about half the fish you see here, the rest was added. Except the Kenya tree which exploded into what it is now which we cleaved in two.

The day after the tank was moved, we hired a well known reef tank cleaner to help us finish the setup, check out the tank, help answer our questions. And two interesting pieces of information came out of that meeting:

- She recognized the tank right away, asked us if it used to belong to X which it did. She was a professional so she didn't talk too much smack, but she did mention that X liked to look at his reef tank, not maintain it. When it started to look ugly he called someone to fix it and the frequency of those visits depended on how much attention he paid to the tank, how much money he had on hand...etc...

- Everything my wife and I learned and read we either forgot or it was not quite correct, or it didn't apply in our situation. So for all intents and purposes we knew nothing. This was baptism by fire.

But good news was we were fast learners, we were hard workers and we didn't kill anything.

Questions

8 months later, how are we doing? I know they're just soft corals but anything look off?

When we started Nitrates and Phosphates were astronomical. Astronomical as in darker than the darkest part of the test kit. I'm surprised that anything was alive in the tank.

To solve it, my strategy is always change 1 variable, be patient. Measure outcomes, over time, if desired outcome isn't achieved, make another change.

So we started with large (30+%) water changes every few weeks and that would have a small effect but it would almost immediately climb back up. Then I thought refugium, so I removed the sump, cleaned it completely, and created what you now see in the pics. The rate of increase of NO/PO may have slowed at this point between water changes, but if they did it was nearly imperceptible (over 3 months with 3 or 4 30% water changes). Then we started Nopox with a dosing pump. At the max recommended Nopox dose for my tank. After 3 months Nitrates began to stabilize around 50-25. Phosphates around 1ppm, sometimes higher. Then we did a sand change. We did it over 2 months or so 33% at a time, dosing bacteria in between. I had this idea - I don't know if it was a good one - but I would prepare an extra 50L "bath" of fresh saltwater to store rocks while I removed sand and then I discarded that water after replacing the rocks.

So today, my problem is I have 1+ppm PO4. I'm still dialing in the nopox to the right dose but right now I'm at 1/2 the original dose and if I'm not careful I'll wipe out all my nitrates, in fact I accidentally almost stripped it to 0 and panicked the shut it down and overfed a little to bring them back up. GFO seems to have 0 effect but I dont have a reactor and I suspect it's basically doing nothing the way I use it now just sitting in the sump on the pump.

Should I get a reactor for my GFO? if yes, any recommendations?

Can I graduate to any big boy corals or am I just gonna kill them instantly?

Can I add more fish? I love corals but I also really love fish.

If you made it this far, thank you so much.

I have read numerous threads and talked to multiple people in the industry about this but is this tank size okay for a yellow tang, and I know obviously the longer the better.

These things are straight up pigs

It got knocked into my micromussa by my conch and ate 2-3 heads of it in a few hours. The favia wasnt even fazed

Got this five months ago, no experience with any type of aquariums whatsoever. Red sea nano 20g. Watched some videos, read here what I could find, little AI help for research. Some corals I ordered were little bigger already like the red one in the middle. Had goby shrimp pair but shrimp died and goby went with it 2 days later. I miss those dudes. Not sure if he was old or something bad at my part. Going to get another pair probably. No more fish for sure until I scale up.

The goals was to have something next to my desk, but to be honest now I wish I went bigger although this makes it easier to manage with water changes. Any suggestions from too of your head when you see it?

I used to have a large reef tank about 10 years ago, I want to get back into it again so what’s new. My old tank had the usual stuff, protein skimmer, live sump with vegetation, uv steriliser etc, I had shrimp, tangs, clownfish, angel fish and nice corals. So what’s changed with modern tech that’s worth knowing about before I dive straight in?

Ok so I noticed 2 days ago small digi frag next to this cap had totally rtn’d .. than days later I ended up with this happening to my Monti cap . I have check all parameters , salinity etc alk at my usual 8.2 , mag 1400 , cal about 430 . Temp all good . I monitor with apex aswell . All other coral doing good . I thought Monti caps would be the last to go . Appreciate any insight cheers

No questions here - just enjoying the ride.

I know eventually most clownfish will pick a host. And I know it’s exactly rare they pick zoas…. But these two just crack me up. Sleeping on their bed of “flowers”.

Since they decided my zoa garden was their home they never venture far from it now.

This is a tank I setup for a client during Covid. They have an autistic daughter who loves the tank. I have serviced it for close to 5 years. It (was) a beautiful, thriving reef full of fish and coral. Now it is empty and their living room flooded.

On Saturday night I got a frantic call from them. Literally screaming in despair as their tank was emptying out onto the floor. The right front seal had come loose. Thankfully, they managed to wrap the edge in duct tape and maintain some water in the tank long enough for help to get there. Also good news is that all of the fish and coral survived and are in my holding tanks. But if they weren’t home? Can you imagine how bad this would have been?

At this point, after dealing with a couple of Red Sea failures myself and seeing the stories from every corner of the internet (including this sub) as well as local stores near me, I will never recommend a Red Sea tank again. To anyone. Buy this brand at your own peril.

This tank was less than 5 years old with almost no signs that this would happen. I checked the seams regularly because I was worried due to the stories, and they never showed much sign of wear (just a tiny bit of necrosis on the tip of the seam, but I’d consider that normal for any aging tank). I feel like I have let my clients down by even recommending this brand of tank to them. I just wanted to share this story so that we have a record of all these tanks failing in case someone wants to start a class action suit against Red Sea. Enough is enough.

The babies have started appearing everywhere. I dont even bother about the ones in my filter chamber but i know they survive in there

The Pandoras are unkillable. They only splinter and will move across the rock in 3-4 days if they need to

No I don’t have parameters on hand and haven’t tested my water in over a year. I went to Paris for a weekend trip and got back yesterday but this seemed to pop up just today. There also seems to be a dark vein of some sort

Is a pico fishbowl doable if it only have macro algae and some zoas? Or are pico tanks just hard to maintain in general. Even if basically just a plant only tank?

May 2025 to Today. Dosing AFR and running a kalk stirrer. Tank will be 2 in December. The hammers have grown well for me so far 🤞

Helo everyone!

I set up a 3 gal pico about 4 weeks ago.. tank is cycled. I’ve made some changes from the stock marineland contour set up. Switched out the return pump. Got the i tank media basket. And a nano ATO. My only issue right now is the heater. I got the Sicce jolly preset. It’s supposed to keep at 77. It’s running because i see the light turn on. It’s fully submerged. I got a thermometer to make sure the temp is steady, but I’ve been watching it through the cycle and it just won’t go above 75.3… sometimes it ventures to 75.5 but that’s it.

Is the heater bad? Is there just absolutely no flow in the tiny back chamber? I’m gonna buy another heater with its own thermostat to see if that makes a difference. But just hoping to get some advice on here

Including a picture of the tank because other than the heater I’m extra proud of it. Been lurking here for YEARS and I’m finally setting up my own tank!

Hi. Using an API test kit to cycle a 80L nano tank. First picture is tap water to confirm colour against the chart. Second picture is using tank water. Third picture is tank water three days after the second picture. Forth picture is two days since the last picture showing 0 ammonia and Nitrite and I think 5.0 of Nitrate.

Does anyone agree it’s cycled or should I dose some Dr Tim’s ammonia which came in the post today to ensure it’s cycled?

GSPs are finally encrusting their way onto the back wall :D I have a royal gramma, yellow watchmen goby, bicolor blenny, blue neon goby, and 2 paired super storm clownfish. (Amongst my skunk shrimp, turbo snail, few nassarius snails, little hermis, and bumblebee snails) coralline blooming everywhere and almost fully encrusting all my rock now, super healthy. 🪸

gha aka my nemesis i may have won this battle but i have not yet won the war…

Hi folks,

Anyone experienced this issue with a D-D thermostat?

It’s beeping almost constantly and the temperature seems be be oscillating by .5 of a degree up and down. Thermostat does still seems to get a reading cause if I hold it in my hand it goes up body temperature.

My target temp is 25.6 with a 2 degree chiller tolerance (no chiller fitted), and 0.3 heater tolerance and a 1.5 alarm tolerance.