Moving 47 year old reef 60 miles. OMG

[BestMomEver]

Oh No!!! I am Battling hair algae, red algae, cyano, Godzilla Larvae and scrunge. But that stuff refuses to fight back, it just stays there laughing at me. There are dead Beatles and lightning bugs floating in a sea of sludge. I am at my wits end, and my wits are very long. I think I will change the water. Oh wait, that is stupid because it is all new water. Maybe i will add Prizapro, hermit crabs, snails and a Manatee, then cut down the lighting to 15 minutes every other day

I really need to get my skimmer up and running. I first need to get electricity there, luckily, I know an electrician. I sucked out a salad of hair algae. :mad:
OMG. I may have to quit the hobby, sell everything and get a job managing the French Fry machine at Burger King.

In the move I broke my skimmer pump. I have no idea where my ozonizer is and my algae scrubber is being used as a fly filter on my exhaust fan.
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAhhhhhhhhhhhhh, I am such a loser. I don't know what to do. ;Wideyed

No you’re not! You sound like me and I know I’m not a loser. My kids say so... but they do call me a failure.

 

[Paul B]

HaHa. Today I am taking a day off from building to look for my hydrometer to see if there is actually any salt water in my tank and try to retrofit my skimmer to this tank. The top of this tank with the new stand is about a foot higher than my last set up and I can't find a lot of my skimmer parts. I only had a day to take the tank down and move it with the livestock so some of the parts ended up in a black hole. I also broke the outlet fittong off my big skimmer pump so I will also try to fix that.
The tubes are all facing the wrong direction which will have to be remedied. But the good part is that the skimmer is right next to my condensate pump for my central AC so I can dump the skimate right in there where it will get pumped out.

The tank is acting like a new tank due to the new water and me washing most of the gravel in fresh water and bleach so I killed a lot of the bacteria. It will take a little time to settle down and will go through a Scrunge period just like a new tank. But I will live with it. Besides there are no job openings at Burger King.

 

[Paul B]

The corals are fine but some of the tips died from algae. That will pass. I got my old skimmer working but there is so much slime exuding from corals and other things that my venture gets clogged every hour or so. The tank is now crystal clear because out of my 3 diatom filters I took enough parts off to get one working, sort of. It leaks almost as fast as it pumps so I have to run it in a bucket and keep dumping the water back. But it did the job. I also have 30 new gallons of NSW that I am using as I am skimming the surface to get rid of grunge. I don't yet have a surface skimmer connected to fix that issue. WE are getting company all day tomorrow and different people the next day. Two days of boating and no time to work on the house or tank.
I ordered new parts for the skimmer so that will be a big help

 

[fishybizzness]

I love the fact that your tank is your hobby and your family life always comes first!

 

[Paul B]

Always. The fish have to live with me, I don't have to live with them.

 

[Paul B]

OMG!!!!! My Biggest fear happened this morning. Well, maybe not my biggest fear. My biggest fear would be if Christie Brinkley knocked on my door and wanted to help me work on my tank and my wife told her I was unavailable because I was Ex-foliating.

But my second biggest fear is a FLOOD!... And I got one!!!. OMG. Last night I set up my skimmer and I didn't have much time or materials so I used what I had. The thing was designed years ago to run on a DIY valve that I designed for this unit. It was very easy to adjust and almost foolproof. I also had a DIY fail safe on the skimmer effluent bucket under the skimmer that shut the pumps off in the event that the bucket filled. I don't have any of that set up here yet. I had to use what Home Depot had which was ball valves which are useless for adjusting.

I got the thing running and had to clean the venture valve a few times due to the mass of broken tube worm shells inside the skimmer that died when I moved and bleached the unit.

I checked it last night three times and it was running great. It was making a lot of foam that was going into the bucket a tiny bit at a time.

But when I woke up at 5:00am I looked outside and seen water near my garage door which was normal because the sprinklers go on at night.

Was that it? NNNNOOOOOOoooooo. It was Sea Water. I ran into the fish room/Man cave/workshop and to my disbelief, the tank was only filled 2/3ds. AAAAAHHHHHHHhhhhhh. The 7 gallon skimmer bucket and a 5 gallon bucket next to it were overflowing on the floor.
OMG. I started pulling out plugs while standing in a pool of water, and I don't have GFCIs hooked up yet but only Girly Men would worry about such things. I saw my copperband and he was agast. Or maybe he was laughing at me. I can still see that smirk on his face.

I turned on my very Manly exhaust fan which immediately made my nose hairs stand on end. Then I put on a smaller fan and ran to get towels and a shop vac. I sucked up the water and put towels on the rest.
I had about 20 gallons of freshly collected water sitting there that I didn't use yet. It was a lot colder than my tank but I dumped it in and promised the fish I would heat it later.. The tank still needed about 4" of water so I started mixing some fake water. I only had about 5 gallons of fresh water so I used that. It was really cold so I made the sign of the cross and dumped that in. Now the tank is only about 2" short and will have to stay that way until I have time to collect as our company is arriving even as we speak and we have other people coming all day tomorrow.

I will let you know if I still have a tank.

 

[siggy]

I turned on my very Manly exhaust fan which immediately made my nose hairs stand on end.

You sure that wasn't the 5+ gallons of skim-mate that did that? Well at least your ears are clean.

 

[Chasmodes]

Awe man, that stinks. Good luck with the clean up and with the future of the tank! I know that we all need water to live, but basement floods over the years have caused me to hate water. Now, I only drink Diet Pepsi.

 

[beaslbob]

don't listen to Beaslbob.

 

[mcarroll]

I've heard Ichthonazole will fix all that. You can get it online.

Oh No!!! I am Battling hair algae, red algae, cyano, Godzilla Larvae and scrunge. But that stuff refuses to fight back, it just stays there laughing at me. There are dead Beatles and lightning bugs floating in a sea of sludge. I am at my wits end, and my wits are very long. I think I will change the water. Oh wait, that is stupid because it is all new water. Maybe i will add Prizapro, hermit crabs, snails and a Manatee, then cut down the lighting to 15 minutes every other day

It'll never work if you don't get some fluconazole into the tank somehow. Let me find a guide for you....

 

[Paul B]

The tank is still in scurve mode like a Noob tank. There is some hair alge, I think it's Brunette. But there are brittle stars all over the place which is a good sign, like Sagittarius. The fish are fine and think they are on vacation. Some of the tips of the corals I will lose because they are not smart enough to keep their tentacles extended so the algae don't cover them. But you really shouldn't have corals in a tank that is new, or a tank that thinks it is new. When this scurve phase passes and the grunge phase comes and goes, the tank will be better than before.
I found my hydrometer and had to add a lot of salt. I still didn't put the tank on automatic yet (which is why I had a flood) I didn't connect up my DIY ATO yet or my DIY switch that will shut off the pump when the skimmer bucket fills but I will get to it eventually. It's no emergency and just goes to show you how resilient healthy, immune fish can be. The temp goes from something like frozen codfish to the tropics when a volcano is erupting and the salinity goes from goldfish spawning water to the Great Salt Lake where just brine shrimp live. The tank water rises and falls 7" in an hour and the lighting is all over the place.

 

[Victoria M]

scurve mode! LOL

 

[siggy]

Paul, hope the new place survived the Tsunami and Gale force fan without causing more work, What are your plans for the impending Ice-age. BTW my tank got polluted with velvet and ONLY lost half of my fish, Does that mean they are now Immune or just less susceptible to that malady.

 

[Paul B]

and ONLY lost half of my fish,

The front half or the back half?

 

[Fudsey]

Does that mean they are now Immune or just less susceptible to that malady.

Or could they be Typhoid Mary and carry it??

 

[Paul B]

I got my newly designed diatom filter motor yesterday and ran it all night. The thing works beautifully and I will thank the guy who builds them. It is so much better than the original diatom filter.
It is plastic so it doesn't rust. You can run it continousely and it doesn't leak. My tank is so clear that the fish are freeking out because they think they will fall to the bottom.
I am eliminating the algae and it is slowly dying so this filter can suck it out. Thats because i don't think inside that silly box. If I was inside the box I would have changed the water, then came on here all beside myself with that look on my face. You know the look. Thats the look people get when they get algae and they keep changing water and the algae keeps growing longer until they give up and open a produce stand from their tank, then when they run out of water to change, they become the manager of the french fry machine at Burger King.
The algae will leave when it wants to. Unless of course you keep changing the water.
But thats what that box is for. All that excess algae.

Yesterday I bought a baby watchman gobi, an algae bleeny, a big decorator crab and something else, but I forgot what it was. I threw them all in there and they are loving the new place. My long spine urchin, that I got as big as a marble is really liking the algae as he never gets any. He grew about 6" but I have no idea what he was eating.
But anyway, all is well. I hope everything is great with you guys and girls, if anyone is mistakingly reading this

 

[Gareth elliott]

But anyway, all is well. I hope everything is great with you guys and girls, if anyone is mistakingly reading this

Not sure if this the right place, but was told there would be pizza.

 

[norfolkgarden]

And beer!

 

[GBRsouth]

Not sure if this the right place, but was told there would be pizza.

And beer!

You both forgot supermodels!

 

[Paul B]

Not sure if this the right place, but was told there would be pizza.

OMG!!! You didn't get any Pizza. You must have missed it because I know the Supermodels only sniffed it and walked past as they don't eat pizza, or anything else except water. Perrier I think.