rygh
Guest
Well, the last few weeks have been rather bad.
One problem after another.
And several days of pulling dead things like this out of the tank.
Problem 1 : Heat
I only have a fan, not a chiller. Worked well in the past, but garage has been super hot lately due
to car issues. Blowing hot air to chill a tank just does not work so well.
So corals were pretty stressed.
Fan moved and increased, so better now.
Problem 2 : Big dead shroom.
This big brown guy in the middle fell down off the rock.
I put it back up. ... A few days later it fell down again.
I waited several days, annoyed, then tried to put it back up, and it basically disintegrated in my hands.
Obviously heavily polluting the water and stressing corals.
Problem 3: Sand bed blowup
As part of my cleaning, I must have banged a powerhead.
The next morning, half of my rather dirty sand bed had been moved by the water.
Releasing all that built up crud.
Results:
Big hard coral loss.
ALL of my plating type corals are dead.
Most encrusting type corals are dead.
A huge old prized war coral is half gone.
A few hard corals are still hanging on, but time will tell.
Most softies on the other hand, look better than ever. Go figure.
In fact, even with losses, my tank does not look all that bad. Lots of softies.
Interesting side effect:
I have an algae scrubber. During this mess, it grew like CRAZY.
So I tend to believe it possibly saved a lot more die off, including fish, by wiping out the nitrates.
But it did not do so well on phosphates. (That answers that old question)
So I now have high phosphates and low nitrates.
Which the Cyano LOVES.
I now need to turn down scrubber, and add lots of GFO.
What now?
Things are recovering.
I know what to do. Keep things stable. Carbon. Lots of GFO. Water changes. The usual.
Long term...
I think I might take this as an opportunity to re-landscape the tank.
I might eliminate most of the sand also. Tired of that hassle.
One problem after another.
And several days of pulling dead things like this out of the tank.
Problem 1 : Heat
I only have a fan, not a chiller. Worked well in the past, but garage has been super hot lately due
to car issues. Blowing hot air to chill a tank just does not work so well.
So corals were pretty stressed.
Fan moved and increased, so better now.
Problem 2 : Big dead shroom.
This big brown guy in the middle fell down off the rock.
I put it back up. ... A few days later it fell down again.
I waited several days, annoyed, then tried to put it back up, and it basically disintegrated in my hands.
Obviously heavily polluting the water and stressing corals.
Problem 3: Sand bed blowup
As part of my cleaning, I must have banged a powerhead.
The next morning, half of my rather dirty sand bed had been moved by the water.
Releasing all that built up crud.
Results:
Big hard coral loss.
ALL of my plating type corals are dead.
Most encrusting type corals are dead.
A huge old prized war coral is half gone.
A few hard corals are still hanging on, but time will tell.
Most softies on the other hand, look better than ever. Go figure.
In fact, even with losses, my tank does not look all that bad. Lots of softies.
Interesting side effect:
I have an algae scrubber. During this mess, it grew like CRAZY.
So I tend to believe it possibly saved a lot more die off, including fish, by wiping out the nitrates.
But it did not do so well on phosphates. (That answers that old question)
So I now have high phosphates and low nitrates.
Which the Cyano LOVES.
I now need to turn down scrubber, and add lots of GFO.
What now?
Things are recovering.
I know what to do. Keep things stable. Carbon. Lots of GFO. Water changes. The usual.
Long term...
I think I might take this as an opportunity to re-landscape the tank.
I might eliminate most of the sand also. Tired of that hassle.
