One year old

Today my tank completes one year of age!

Unfortunately I got home after the "sun" set (after the lights went off) so I couldn't take a full tank shot similar to the one in my inaugural post (http://rcsnorkeler.blogspot.com/2009/08/this-is-my-tank.html) to show what it looks like now.  Will try to do that in the following days.

Overall I would score this first year as partially successful as some of my objectives were not reached and we had some dead inhabitants.

Of highest significance to me was the water quality, which clearly hasn't reached a stable quality level.  We have a lot of valonias in the tank, and a lot of green hair algae in it, and that is testimony that the tank doesn't yet have the right balance between waste generation and waste processing/removal.

The tank has a nice skimmer, and it seems to work well, it has the right amount of live rock and substrate to process waste into Ammonia, then into Nitrite then into Nitrate, I dose Vodka to help eliminate Nitrate and my Nitrate readings are zero ppm while my Phosphate readings are around 0.2ppm.  But, the presence of algae tells me this is a "false reading", that there is more Nitrate and Phosphate in the water than the tests indicate, because the algae are eating them up in their growth process.

The refugium I expect to add in September with the new sump, plus the daily automated water change should resolve that problem once and for all.  Feeding less food (something I'm doing for a month now) should help also.  In fact, excess feeding is probably my key issue or the root cause that lead to an accumulation of excess organic matter.

In terms of reef keeping I had several losses.... my three trumpet heads and my Acan (introduced in http://rcsnorkeler.blogspot.com/2010/01/new-fish-new-corals.html) died.  My beautiful orange Zoanthus (introduced in http://rcsnorkeler.blogspot.com/2009/10/new-inhabitants-added-on-saturday.html) is almost dying too.  It isn't dead, but it barely opens and polyps are shrunk.  Only my Hammer and my Green Zoas are doing OK.  The Green Zoas in fact are growing, expanding, a branch of the colony finally grew beyond the original rock and onto the live rock the original rock it was glued to.

Water parameters have been OK in term of salinity, pH, NH3/4, NO2 and NO3, but not Alkalinity (which I was never able to bring above 7,28 dKH) and Mg concentration (which I was only able to bring to the optimal 1200 ppm once, and it fell afterwards).  In fact it is still a mystery to me why Mg is consumed so much by my tank, given that I only have one small stony coral and nothing else that could be a strong magnesium consumer.  Gotta check with the ReefKeeping water chemistry gurus what they think....

So, not a completely successful first year but definitely a year of learning.  I was patient in everything, not doing anything in haste, as recommended by all the online gurus and book gurus.

I hope with the addition of the fluidized reactor with PhosBan plus the larger sump with a refugium growing macroalgae plus the automated daily low volume water changes we'll finally be able to have stable good water quality and get rid of the green hair algae, valonias then successfully introduce and keep some new Trumpets and Acans in there.

I took up this hobby for the visual delight and the intellectual challenge, so I can't complain :-) .  It has been fun to learn so much about the delicate marine environment in a captive reef, sometimes it makes me stand in awe of God's marine creation so balanced it is out there in the wild where there are so many more variables than in my little glass box....

flpaoli, aka snorkeler