Social Feed

Greetings everyone!

Rather than going into my background in this thread, I'll take you through my build history from acquiring the tank, building the stand, all the way through today, with all of the ups, downs, and sideways issues. I posted an introduction of who I am in the introduce yourself area.

Initially when I moved last year, I decided I wasn't going to set up the reef tank that I had going for almost a decade. It was actually the only tank that remained out of 3 reef tanks I had going at one time. I experimented with a planted nano (30C) and it went well so I decided to tackle the one type of aquarium I've always wanted - a big planted tank.

I began searching and knew what I wanted....a 5 foot long tank, 24" wide and 18-24" high. Initially I wanted a 125 gallon until seeing one in person at the local Petsmart. The extra foot would have still fit in the spot I had picked out, but the lack of width was something I couldn't get over. It would present a big challenge as far as aquascaping, so I crossed that off my list. I started looking at SC Aquariums and they had a tank that met exactly what I was looking for in a 5 foot tank. The only issue is that it had an overflow. The reason this was an issue for me is that one day I'd wind up with too much time on my hands and turn it into another reef tank. I really didn't want that to be a potential issue down the road so I continued searching.

I stopped by my LFS and began telling him what I was looking for and he checked his distributer's inventory online and said that they had one UNS 120U in stock and that it would probably sell pretty quickly. I handed him my CC and that moment is how I've ended up here lol.

The tank arrived and thankfully someone mentioned buying glass moving suction cups for actually moving the tank because without them, it wouldn't have been possible to get the tank into my basement.

I was going to post pics of the stand build and other stuff but it seems that the forum won't allow images larger than 3mb so rather than resizing a bunch, I'll just stick to resizing full tank shots and include dates.

I did the typical overbuilding the stand thing since that was pretty much what everyone did in the reef world. The top was butcher block from HD that was sized perfectly for the tank.

My initial plan was to acquire everything slowly over time so that I wasn't dropping too much cash at once, and for the most part I followed this, but probably purchased everything I needed about twice as fast as I imagined.

Now would probably be a great time to list my equipment:

Tank: UNS 120U
Stand: DIY
Lighting: Twinstar 1200 SP on UNS light brackets
Filtration: Green Leaf Aquariums 15L stainless steel canister and an Oase 850 BM Thermo with two sets of lily pipes, one with a surface skimmer attached to the Oase in order to leverage the pre filter. Both filters are packed with 3/8" pumice
Heating: Oase heater included with 850, connected to an Inkbird controller
CO2: GLA Dual Stage Regulator with two 10lbs CO2 tanks (one running and one on standby) driven through a NilocG Griggs reactor 24". The reactor is fed from the outflow of the GLA canister filter. The solenoid is controlled by a Milwaukee controller.
Substrate: Pool filter sand
Hardscape: about 80 or so pounds of dragonstone and two very large spider wood pieces.
Ferts: DIY using NilocG ferts: KNO3, KH2PO4, K2SO4, and CSM+B
Water changes: roughly 80% weekly using tap. Will be switching to 50/50 tap and RODI soon.

When Memorial Day weekend hit, I decided to set the tank up since the stand was finished. Well, that wasn't the exact plan, but after getting a hand from a cousin moving the stand in place, shimming it, and then setting the tank onto the stand, I started getting the uncontrollable urge to set it up.

Here was about a week's worth of playing around with the scape until I was happy with it:



This pic is from May 30th and I literally filled it with water and managed to get all the equipment hooked up.

My plan at this point was to cycle the tank without fish or plants in it.

After the first day, the tank became cloudy. Then each day following that first cloudy water day, the tank became more and more cloudy. It was actually a little concerning.

I continued dosing ammonia to feed the Fritz Zyme Turbo Start that was recommended to me by my LFS.

A few weeks in and the tank still wasn't cycling as quickly as it should have been so it was at that point that I was convinced to go ahead and order plants and get the tank planted.

The tank finally cycled so I added two dozen Harlequin Rasbora and ten Otocinclus. A couple weeks later I added another 10 Otocinclus. A few weeks after that I added 4 reticulated siamese algae eaters. I didn't add any other creatures to the tank until about 2-3 weeks ago when I added 3 mystery snails and 3 zebra nerites.

The tank was running as expected for a new setup, going through the ugly stage, the GSA stage, and everything in-between. The only thing I didn't have was BBA which was somewhat surprising.

When the GSA problem popped up, I upped my dosing of PO4. It took a couple weeks but eventually the GSA stopped. You can still see it on some of my bucephelandra and other slower growers, but it's not spreading any longer.

After that the tank was just sort of cruising along. I was dosing, doing my weekly WC's and was pleased with the tank.

Roughly around the beginning of September I came down with Covid so I couldn't do my weekly water change. What I noticed was that during that second week, all the plants started looking angry. Rotala were showing signs of stunting. The Pogostemon Helferi Downoi that was growing extremely healthily began looking terrible where the leaves were basically turning into thin needles. The only plants that didn't seem to care were the Bucephalandra.

I did my water change, almost 90% and nothing seemed to help. The helferi weren't recovering.

So I went down a few different rabbit holes trying to figure out what the issue was.

I also had an issue with very long filamentous algae growing almost exclusively in my moss. I still have this problem and will be removing the moss completely from the tank.

But before taking you down the rabbit holes, let me post a pic of the tank upon first planting:

7/6/22



Now the last FTS prior to getting Covid and the issues beginning to appear.

9/7/22:



You can see how great the helferi looked at this point.

And here is what it looked like after it went downhill.

10/24/22



Here is the most recent FTS from last night: