Susan Edwards
5000 Club Member
If you read my build thread, you'll see that 2018 was an almost impossible year. I ended my tale of woes at around September. October my mother who lived with us started getting sick. In November, she died pretty suddenly (colon cancer spread to lungs and brain). The blessing is she didn't know. Went into the ER, had a seizure and never recovered. Gone in hours. So the rest of 2018 was dealing with that. In Dec/Jan 2019 we had the master bedroom painted (her room/studio and she was a smoker). The painters used a strong primer for smoke.
What I didn't know: the stuff smelled so bad you couldn't breathe. I shut the door, put a blanket across bottom and shut all doors and windows. The next day, both my tanks, and the coral frag tank were white. I did water changes immediately. It was a few months before I noticed at least half my fish in each tank were missing, and my corals were dead or dying.
I realized the white cloud was a bacteria bloom caused by dead fish caused by the primer! I was heartbroken. Some of those fish I'd had since the beginning. Then before I could start the process of rebooting, my dau decided to get married in Croatia--a destination wedding. That meant no money for new fish or corals and a solid 6 months of wedding stuff. I also started a part time retail job just to be out of the house some as my mother lived with me for 16 years.
I also took down the red sea 66 gal, and the 40 gal frag tank and the qt tank. I didn't want a pet sitter dealing with topping off so many tanks! I added more rock to the 125 and to the Refug
So Sept. we were in Europe, came home, holidays for retail hit and my poor tank has suffered horribly. Algae issues, can't get alkalinity where it needs to be and there are only some mushrooms, zoas ricordias and leathers--1 is an oversized monster!. All super blah. Even the remaining fish are pretty blah. So 2020 is time to reboot.
Right now I'm not all that excited over the tank but that's because it's in an awful state. I'm going to do a water change either Sunday or Tue, use that water for the new qt tank (40 gal frag tank). Pull what algae I can, clean sand etc. Test and dose. And I'll get some clean up crew ordered. All the power heads need cleaning and my light timer isn't working, so I need to do a major go thru everything.
Then I'm thinking I'll get some tangs -- Prob. 3-5 yellow tangs to see if that helps with the algae and another sand sifter. I'll upload some pics after I get a water change done and clean the glass. Ashamed to put a pic up now!
What advice can you give someone who had 2 great tanks and now has an ugly tank! What I'd love is to find a service to help get it back on track!! or just get it going and rediscover my love and yes, I realize the last few years have been emotional rollercoasters so takes time.
Stock aside from soft corals is 3 clowns, 1 barber shop goby w/pistol shrimp, lawn mower blenny, 1 or 2 mandarins. Haven't seen 1 for a while, 1 blue-green chromis, 6 stag-something chromis (supposed to be lemon but got sent those. Blah pale blue-green), yellow tail damsel, red hawkfish (love this guy.) There is a huge leather in the center which is impressive but to me isn't exciting. Too big.
I'll post some pics after I get some stuff done like cleaning the class....
What I didn't know: the stuff smelled so bad you couldn't breathe. I shut the door, put a blanket across bottom and shut all doors and windows. The next day, both my tanks, and the coral frag tank were white. I did water changes immediately. It was a few months before I noticed at least half my fish in each tank were missing, and my corals were dead or dying.
I realized the white cloud was a bacteria bloom caused by dead fish caused by the primer! I was heartbroken. Some of those fish I'd had since the beginning. Then before I could start the process of rebooting, my dau decided to get married in Croatia--a destination wedding. That meant no money for new fish or corals and a solid 6 months of wedding stuff. I also started a part time retail job just to be out of the house some as my mother lived with me for 16 years.
I also took down the red sea 66 gal, and the 40 gal frag tank and the qt tank. I didn't want a pet sitter dealing with topping off so many tanks! I added more rock to the 125 and to the Refug
So Sept. we were in Europe, came home, holidays for retail hit and my poor tank has suffered horribly. Algae issues, can't get alkalinity where it needs to be and there are only some mushrooms, zoas ricordias and leathers--1 is an oversized monster!. All super blah. Even the remaining fish are pretty blah. So 2020 is time to reboot.
Right now I'm not all that excited over the tank but that's because it's in an awful state. I'm going to do a water change either Sunday or Tue, use that water for the new qt tank (40 gal frag tank). Pull what algae I can, clean sand etc. Test and dose. And I'll get some clean up crew ordered. All the power heads need cleaning and my light timer isn't working, so I need to do a major go thru everything.
Then I'm thinking I'll get some tangs -- Prob. 3-5 yellow tangs to see if that helps with the algae and another sand sifter. I'll upload some pics after I get a water change done and clean the glass. Ashamed to put a pic up now!
What advice can you give someone who had 2 great tanks and now has an ugly tank! What I'd love is to find a service to help get it back on track!! or just get it going and rediscover my love and yes, I realize the last few years have been emotional rollercoasters so takes time.
Stock aside from soft corals is 3 clowns, 1 barber shop goby w/pistol shrimp, lawn mower blenny, 1 or 2 mandarins. Haven't seen 1 for a while, 1 blue-green chromis, 6 stag-something chromis (supposed to be lemon but got sent those. Blah pale blue-green), yellow tail damsel, red hawkfish (love this guy.) There is a huge leather in the center which is impressive but to me isn't exciting. Too big.
I'll post some pics after I get some stuff done like cleaning the class....
Then I just start working through each task. Just knock them out one at a time. Each is a small win and it’s also progress. 
