Well, these are the final 2 pages on this build unfortunately. The following images show how well the tank progressed over the two years it was running until October 2009 when a 3 month stint of water quality issues resulted in the loss of a high number of corals and a mounting pollution problem. It was finally tracked down to a faulty TDS meter and damaged RO membrane which meant the system was having a daily top up of around 5 gallons of water which was very high in TDS.

The reason it took so long to resolve the issue was simply that the TDS meter was reading zero on the output. It wasn't until nearly 3 months later that the lack of need to change the DI resin started ringing alarm bells. And this was only after extensive testing of the system to see where else the problem could be arising. Despite all of this, the system maintained 0.01ppm N03 and 0.008ppm Po4 throughout, so if it hadn't been for the filtration system taking out this side of things, It would have probably crashed out completely. ( A good argument there if ever there was one for how well a multi stage natural filtration system can support a system that's being abused (even unknowingly))....

Sadly though. Things had gone too far for my liking. And there was serious doubt in my mind with regards to the long term affects of the various pollutants that had made their way through the top up system into the tank. Its easy to assume its only a bit of Nitrate and phosphate but in truth, there are far more insidious contaminants including various metals that can and do come through untreated tap water, so based on the fact the degree of contamination nor their long term affects could be gauged, it was decided that a full strip and rebuild would take place over Dec-Jan 2009-2010.

It has to be remembered that for all our efforts, things can and do go wrong from time to time, and no matter how experienced you are, there will always be 'something' that catches you out. It may be small, it may be major...Being philosophical about it helps. If you accept the fact that at some point, despite your best efforts you will have a tank fail on you for some reason. When it does go wrong, its easier to deal with. In this case It's given me the opportunity to try something new 'and I hope' revolutionary, so watch this space over the next few months.

So to end this build on an up beat rather than a depressing one. (after all, the fish etc were and still are fine, albeit on holiday at a close friends, and I'm down to just a few prized colonies that I managed to save) I'm still happy with what the tank achieved within the relatively short period it had been running. As you'll see from the images below. The tank was indeed thriving up to this point and would have continued to do so had the failure not happened, so I feel that in some small way it did prove that you can 'grow your own reef' using the fake Live rock method. so it's down to you guys and girls now to take up the challenge and see what you can do with this method, whilst I move on to something equally if not more challenging.

Images taken over  January to July 2009.

Pseudochromis

Some of the wrasses.

Tangs

My Juvenile Emperor Angel which sadly had to be removed after some time because he started feeding on the LPS corals as he matured.

LHS (under 1" long)                              RHS (5" stroppy teenager)

And finally. My beautiful and well trained Pterois radiata.

Continue to the last page for coral and tank images