The Official Asylum Reef Tank Thread

[OLS]

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.