New. Sort of....

Hi guys... I'm Skyler.  I was active on here... oh man... several years ago for a period... then life happened.  I've never been without a tank but I've gone through several...  I'm now sitting on an Oceanic Biocube 29...I've had it at least a year and things went okay for a while... then hair... then cyano...UGH!  Then my beautiful RBTA's started to die...  I'm not gonna lie... I let the tank go.  After fighting for so long and losing... it takes a strong man to not give in... Recently.... I decided to breathe life back in to the tank.  I kicked the PC's...(TERRIBLE IDEA by the makers of ANY biocube for ANY reef tank) 
Anyway... I decided to breathe new life in to the tank.  Gutted the hood... added Current USA orbit Marine LED.  I LOVE this light. 
Instead of describing everything...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hjTJi4xtKiQ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IxpfasgD_0c

13 min worth of vid but it will give you a pretty good idea.  I was happy.  Corals looked good...then... I added about two gallons of my RO water... which I'm pretty sure sucks.  My test kits are old so I don't trust them... but the cyano is still kinda hanging on.... and today, after a 2 gallon top off yesterday.... BACTERIA bloom and pissed off corals... grrr.... I have a culligan 3 blocks away... and I think I'm gonna buy their RO/DI water until I can get a better RO unit.... but man.... frustrating hobby....


Edited by SkylerS - January 14 2014 at 11:04pm

RO/DI is a decent drinking water system... but just RECENTLY found out... good drinking water doesn't mean good reef water....  Anyone have experience with culligan RO/DI from their store?  I've had good and bad experience with the units in Wal-mart.

Well... I just dropped a couple bucks on the recent upgrades.... May not be able to convince the wife on an RO just yet.  But... 3-5 blocks away from the Culligan store.... 50c a gallon for DI... may be worth it...

0.50 ppm phosphates (PO4) is not real good. Should be close to zero. Would love to get my tank back to zero phosphates. Seems easy to get it up high and takes forever to lower it.

For RO water I have used the machines at the grocery stores (Walmart). I tested one batch and it was about 8 PPM TDS, not where I'd like it to be but still better than regular Utah water by a long shot.

So.  I swapped my sandbed out and scrubbed my rocks.  with a tooth brush.  It wasn't bad, as you can see from the video, it looked pretty nice not to long ago.  It was just starting to come back.  I changed 13 gallons of water, DI water from Culligan with <1ppm TDS.  My RO water is actually not too bad.  ~15 ppm TDS  which he said is the same as the machines they put in wal-mart.  Based on our local water my RO is pulling out 95% of DS.  I'm thinking of adding a DI resin which should perfectly polish my water.  But with the new sand bed, I think I'm in the clear.  Will update later.