Re: The Official Asylum Reef Tank Thread
It is not hard to maintain if you commit to setting it up right and staying with your commitment.
To keep both fish and coral there are some rules. 1 is you have to have a sump, a good overflow TO that sump
and a good skimmer. 2 is Not a high population of fish, although depending on your sump and commitment
that is not such a tight rule. All fish do is eat, poop and swim. All three add stressors to your tank. So you
need a good system for dealing with that. You also need to set up a RO/DI water unit in your home, can be
done for 150 at Lowe's.
I recently found out I was not commited properly, and went from a 40 with a great sump to a 40 with no sump.
I was agitated at the power consumption. Enter Aiptasia infestation which spiralled out of control. So I took
all the uninfested rock and coral and kept only my two Green Chromis and went down further to a 20 gallon.
Now instead of a sump or skimmer, I have a kooky surface overflow made out of a plastic bottle and there
is a hose leading from that bottle's neck directly into a plain old waterfall aquarium filter with floss, carbon and
other media. It is working well, but i have to keep the floss changed twice a week. No Aiptasia problem, and
I killed the two hangers'on with Kalkwasser paste. Talk about not a lot of space to work with. But it looks good
again. I should never have cranked up another tank back a few years ago when I re-started. I no longer
felt like spending the money, it was like a zombie walking into the store and getting all the stuff and ordering
even more online. I was not listening to my true inner self. It was crazy. I would not have even moved down
to the 20 were it not for my beautiful purple mushrooms I have, they are freaking gorgeous, and I did not want
to give them away. I figured I would keep a tank just for them, and the rest of the corals are there by the
grace of the purples.
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