silver97
Active Member
It has been a while since my last post (August i think) and I just need a little advice moving forward right now.
My tank has been having some issues as of late, (40g breeder w/10g sump) and its really been stressing me out. Hair algae has taken over, along with bubble algae. Almost all of the coral has been overtaken by it and not much is left. I didn't really have anything impressive, just a few softies.
The tank has overflowed onto my floor twice with power outages (most recently Friday), and it's just due to the fact that I didn't have my return plumbing set up correctly, which it has now been.
I am at the point where I almost want to get rid of my tank, which I consider to be the MOST DIY build in existence. But I still love the fish. I can't think of giving them up to an LFS or someone else even, I told myself I was going to take care of them until their natural death and I will still do that to the best of my abilities. I just don't want to be the one that brings them to their natural death because the tank keeps malfunctioning.
All 4 are still alive and healthy. (2 clowns, 1 bicolor blenny and 1 six line wrasse).
I am thinking of getting a new tank entirely and moving it out of my room. The noise of the current tank keeps me up at night and is really causing sleep issues sometimes.
Instead of bigger like I have expressed interest in in the past, I am thinking of going a little smaller. The Biocube LED 32 looks to be a great candidate. I think the price is right, tons of good reviews about it, it comes with a stand (in some bundles) and I pretty much have all of the equipment I need extra already. I would be getting new live rock just because the ones I have in my current tank are beyond saving. I think I'd need to dump them in a bucket of bleach at this point and manually remove each 'hair' to start getting rid of it. So the cycling will take a while but with my current knowledge should go better than the first time by a long shot.
My main concern is the fish, I want to get them established first and then work on coral after the fish are all safe.
Do you think the tank is honestly too small for the 4 I listed above? I look at it like this: the only open swimmer is the wrasse (and he hides a lot of the day anyway), the blenny hides in his barnacles most of the day and the clowns stay in the same 10 inch area all day and night. So they're not all extremely active swimmers. I've seen a few videos on YouTube ( and I know to take these all with a grain of salt, I'm not SO naive that I think their tanks are the gold standard) and a few other forums of people who own this tank with very impressive coral displays and a lot more fish than me currently. I think one guy had 8 fish in one 32, they were similar/same species as mine and the same size as mine currently.
Any thoughts would be appreciated, I really just wanted to get all this out there so I could get some feedback to make sure my way of thinking didn't sound crazy.
My tank has been having some issues as of late, (40g breeder w/10g sump) and its really been stressing me out. Hair algae has taken over, along with bubble algae. Almost all of the coral has been overtaken by it and not much is left. I didn't really have anything impressive, just a few softies.
The tank has overflowed onto my floor twice with power outages (most recently Friday), and it's just due to the fact that I didn't have my return plumbing set up correctly, which it has now been.
I am at the point where I almost want to get rid of my tank, which I consider to be the MOST DIY build in existence. But I still love the fish. I can't think of giving them up to an LFS or someone else even, I told myself I was going to take care of them until their natural death and I will still do that to the best of my abilities. I just don't want to be the one that brings them to their natural death because the tank keeps malfunctioning.
All 4 are still alive and healthy. (2 clowns, 1 bicolor blenny and 1 six line wrasse).
I am thinking of getting a new tank entirely and moving it out of my room. The noise of the current tank keeps me up at night and is really causing sleep issues sometimes.
Instead of bigger like I have expressed interest in in the past, I am thinking of going a little smaller. The Biocube LED 32 looks to be a great candidate. I think the price is right, tons of good reviews about it, it comes with a stand (in some bundles) and I pretty much have all of the equipment I need extra already. I would be getting new live rock just because the ones I have in my current tank are beyond saving. I think I'd need to dump them in a bucket of bleach at this point and manually remove each 'hair' to start getting rid of it. So the cycling will take a while but with my current knowledge should go better than the first time by a long shot.
My main concern is the fish, I want to get them established first and then work on coral after the fish are all safe.
Do you think the tank is honestly too small for the 4 I listed above? I look at it like this: the only open swimmer is the wrasse (and he hides a lot of the day anyway), the blenny hides in his barnacles most of the day and the clowns stay in the same 10 inch area all day and night. So they're not all extremely active swimmers. I've seen a few videos on YouTube ( and I know to take these all with a grain of salt, I'm not SO naive that I think their tanks are the gold standard) and a few other forums of people who own this tank with very impressive coral displays and a lot more fish than me currently. I think one guy had 8 fish in one 32, they were similar/same species as mine and the same size as mine currently.
Any thoughts would be appreciated, I really just wanted to get all this out there so I could get some feedback to make sure my way of thinking didn't sound crazy.