Aquarium Update 2023
So it has been 5 years since I set up my salt water reef aquarium. How are things going now? Well, the aquarium is still alive, and I still run it which in this economy is amazing. It isn't cheap to run, so that is something I have kept up on.
However I haven't taken care of it at all otherwise for over a year now. I still had my original Royal Gramma, and a few other critters in there from the original build, but otherwise the aquarium was mostly a coral reef. The coral was still growing however some algae took over the tank and began growing over the green star coral. I didn't mind that so much as the green star coral was overtaking the tank.
In any case, I took readings this past weekend. Despite not doing any maintenance on the tank for the past year, I still had good salt readings, and my nitrate and calcium readings were on par.
My SPS coral is still doing well, which is a testimate to how stable the tank has been. My system that I designed from scratch using relays and sensors, has been pretty reliable for the 5 years I have had the tank running. I have only had to tweak the operation of the system a few times since I installed it. And that was mostly the result of faulty rusting wiring connections near the tank.
My partner is interested in the aquarium and as such we have invested a little bit in it lately. It is fun to take care of the fish again. We shall see how it goes. The price of fish has increased lately tho, so we shall see how fancy we get.