what does it mean?

Hi guys, maybe some of you guys can shed some light or explain to me what's going on with my tank. Back in June 2011 I took my tank down and reset it back up in Aug 2011 due to replacing carpets with tiles. The tank is now 5 months old. My question is, how come I didn't have any hair algae, diatom, red slime issues? Not that I wanted them but I just want to know how I got lucky this time around. I've had other tanks in the past where I did have the issues but not this time. If anyone can chime in and give me your theory I would really appreciate it.

 

Did u use a different water source?

 

Give us some more details about your setup. What have you added? Sump/fuge, GFO, skimmer, live rock, fish, corals, inverts, etc?

 

Why look a gift seahorse in the mouth?

 

I've been using NSW with all my set ups. This my current set up:
Current set up: 52x28x24 1" acrylic mixed reef, 45g refugium, phosphate reactor, JBJ 1/3hp chiller, 2 returns, 2-250MH, all 20k's, 4 koralia 4's, 1 koralia magnum 7, 2 Coralvue led moonlights

 

Whats in there now as far as livestock and LR? I mean with algae, you sort of have to first introduce it, then have the nutrients for it. The phosphate reactor and fuge are taking out the phosphate and nitrate, which in turn is limiting the algae growth... I'm also guessing you are using RO/DI.

Did your tank cycle? I am guessing you made the common mistakes the first time around, and learned from them. If you did things right the second time, you wouldn't have that nuisance algae. But I would think you would still have diatoms at the end of the cycle (if it cycled). I had only diatoms when my tank cycled. But I was using tap water back then : lol so I was probably introducing silica which is a nutrient for diatoms. Maybe someone with more knowledge about diatoms will chime in...

Give us more info... Come on, you know the drill RO/DI? Did it cycle? A timeline of what you did for the first two months would be helpful. I'm sure a lot of others out there would like to know what you did as well.

Oh and btw, what does NSW mean?

 

Diatoms are usually seen because the sand we use has some silicates in it that are consumed by diatoms. Fortunately they are usually depleted quickly. Did you reuse the sand?
NSW is natural sea water. Just hover your mouse over the acronym and it will tell you.

 

No, no rodi here just NSW I don't even have a top off machine, using old school manual labor;D. I buy my fresh water top off from the water store. Basically, I took all the inhabitants out of the main tank put them in my old 40 breeder, drained all the water left about 1" over the sand. I took all the live rocks and put them in a bin with a powerhead. I left all the sand in the tank with an inch of water over it for 3 days before I started filling it back up with NSW. But before I filled it up with water I reaquascaped in my opinion it's easier to aquascape without water.

After reaquascaping I filled it up with NSW and placed all the corals back and also added all the fish I had before. I thought for sure the tank would go through ammonia spike and cycle because I didn't rinse the sand or anything just left it in water. In my case I think because I didn't disturb the sand bed that everything in it survived:-/? I was already expecting lots of losses and algae bloom to happen but it didn't. I run chaeto if I didn't mention it already.