Dragonrep & Amym's 72 G

[dragonrep]

Well, I thought I would post our 72 gallon bowfront. We started as fish only, so our bioload is pretty high since we've started adding corals.
Fish, unless noted, there is only one of each;
Yellow Tang
Flame Angel
Pajama Cardinal
False Percula
Wrasse?
Purple tile fish
1-3 stripe, 1-blue, 2-yellow tail Damsels
Pincushion urchin
2 cleaner shrimp
Pistol Shrimp
Yellow Watchman
Skipper Goby

Corals;
Torch
Frogspawn
2 colors of shrooms
Pulsing Zenia
Kenya Tree
Toadstool leather

and some misc smaller stuff

We do have alot of diatoms, so there is a brown tint to most everything. I'm trying to find out where all the phosphates are coming from, but everythgin else is going fine, so far at least

[marineduud]

"We do have alot of diatoms,"


What are you using as your water source for top off and water changes ? Diatoms feed on Silicates mostly.

[dragonrep]

We had a water softener installed on the city water line recently, and we've been using water from that. I'm going to start using the reverse osmosis water from the grocery store at my next water change and see if that helps. They do keep the snails happy, but cleaning the glass every couple days is a pain.

[Loverotties]

Welcome to TRT!Better to get RO/DI or Distiled water.

[luvmylo]

is that crushed coral on the bottom. That could be your phosphate factory. If that is crushed coral, I would consider changing to sand bed. You also didn't tell us which skimmer you were using. RO/DI water from grocery store works fine. We have a Glacier water machine at our groc. store so we just take our 5 gallon buckets there. works fine.

[lemonheadmech]

Sweet tank. Yeah the non tap water makes reef life a little bit easier. One of my better in debt investments.

[dragonrep]

"is that crushed coral on the bottom"

The bottom is arragonite, at the moment we don't have a skimmer, so lots of water changes . I'm doing research to find a decent skimmer at the moment. Hopefully we'll have one shortly, that should meke life a bit easier on us and the corals.

[Discdogge]

We are a big fan of the octopus skimmers, and the prices are great.

[dragonrep]

We finally got a skimmer!! After running it for a week the water seems to be a little clearer and the corals seem to be a little brighter. We had clear water before, but the skimmer did make a difference. Now to eliminate diatoms...

[LadyReefNeck]

Good news!

Looking forward to more pictures and updates.