Fence13
Over Thinker Extraordinaire
This is my story that I'll (hopefully) keep updated as I go through the process. I've had my fairly basic 75g up and running for about 3+ years now. It's grown into a fairly good sized SPS tank but I got lazy, lax, and careless and so some bad things happened to it, to which I'll get to in a moment. This is going to be the story of me fixing up tank and reconstructing it into another great SPS tank.
The Beginning
The tank started out with very humble beginnings. First SPS frags I ever received were given to me during one of my local clubs holiday parties. The green slimer and ORA Birds of Paradise that you'll see, have been through a lot. I imagine them almost bullet proof to have survived so long in a tank from such a new person.
It's strange to look back on old photos (the above is from 01/01/2014) and see how things used to be. The foxface is so small!
Side view from a similar time. Look at all the free space there is! Also my tang is rather small as well. They're cuter when they were small....like a kitten.
The tank has always had the same basic equipment. I use a non-baffled 29 gallon tank as a sump, with a HOB overflow. 2 Kessils have always lit the tank. Started out as basic 360's and now are the 360we. There's a filter sock, skimmer, algae scrubber, and a carbon reactor that I don't change nearly enough. 1 MP40w is the only flow I have aside from the return pump. Apex controls most things but not a lot of equipment has changed on this tank. I've only had to replace the return pump, 1 light, and pump on my skimmer in the entire 3+ years. For the last year or so I've had an automated doser as I could never keep up with the manual dosing. Currently using the BRS 2 part but will probably be switching over to ESV B-Ionic when that runs out.
For those still with me, here are some shots taken with my phone tonight. This is the current view.
Obligatory full tank shot. Can you see the Green Slimer from here?
Right side facing the tank. The big birds nest is the ORA Birds of Paradise, behind it is the monster colony that my Green Slimer has become. You'll notice a tabling acro to the right of the Green Slimer, it'll become important in a moment.
The left side facing the tank. (queue dirty glass). This is the LPS side of my SPS tank. The clowns live in the duncan colony, and the torch gets to be the size of a mini basketball before I frag it in half every so often. Giant colony of Spongodes is home to the midas blenny.
The Fall
One morning, not too long ago, I woke up, went to make breakfast and noticed that I had some pearly white SPS in my tank. My 6" colony of shortcake and my 3" Red Dragon corals were bleach white. I tested my levels and my Mg was super low. Long story short, I tried dosing Mg for a couple of days, with no luck, then someone asked the simple basic question.
"Have you checked your salinity with a calibrated refractometer?" and I thought "Oh $#!@" you see, I had looked at Salinity briefly, but had not thought about calibrating it, or making sure it was accurate. My salinity had dropped to 1.017 or something close. It was bad. I then started doing 5 gallon water changes daily to bring my salinity back up. I used SW in my top off instead of RO/DI and after about 5 days it was back up to 1.026.
I had recently changed scoops for my salt bucket and must have thought that x amount of cups was close to what I had been doing, and never bothered to check it. So gradually over time, the bottom fell out and my salinity kept plummeting.
Luckily, no livestock died, I even still have a porcelain crab and emerald crab who are doing well.
The Toll
So it's still touch and go but my levels have remained constant for a week now.
Alk = 7.7dKH (my tank has always had lower Alk levels)
Mg = 1350ppm
Ca = 420ppm
PO4 = 34ppb
NO3 = 2ppm
None of the dead coral have been removed yet. In the pictures above if you look closely you can see them pretty much starting to grow some cyano or brown algae. As mentioned, I lost my 6" colony of shortcake, a red dragon frag, a couple frags of monti (jedi mindtrick and sunset monti), my red cap has some white patches, and half of an aussie delicate frag (buried next to the birdsnest and green slimer).
The odd/scary/startling part is my green slimer has some patches of white on it, the bright green polyps are still there but the pigment in the skin is all gone. I'm hoping it will recover, but it hasn't gotten any worse yet.
The Beginning
The tank started out with very humble beginnings. First SPS frags I ever received were given to me during one of my local clubs holiday parties. The green slimer and ORA Birds of Paradise that you'll see, have been through a lot. I imagine them almost bullet proof to have survived so long in a tank from such a new person.
It's strange to look back on old photos (the above is from 01/01/2014) and see how things used to be. The foxface is so small!
Side view from a similar time. Look at all the free space there is! Also my tang is rather small as well. They're cuter when they were small....like a kitten.
The tank has always had the same basic equipment. I use a non-baffled 29 gallon tank as a sump, with a HOB overflow. 2 Kessils have always lit the tank. Started out as basic 360's and now are the 360we. There's a filter sock, skimmer, algae scrubber, and a carbon reactor that I don't change nearly enough. 1 MP40w is the only flow I have aside from the return pump. Apex controls most things but not a lot of equipment has changed on this tank. I've only had to replace the return pump, 1 light, and pump on my skimmer in the entire 3+ years. For the last year or so I've had an automated doser as I could never keep up with the manual dosing. Currently using the BRS 2 part but will probably be switching over to ESV B-Ionic when that runs out.
For those still with me, here are some shots taken with my phone tonight. This is the current view.
Obligatory full tank shot. Can you see the Green Slimer from here?
Right side facing the tank. The big birds nest is the ORA Birds of Paradise, behind it is the monster colony that my Green Slimer has become. You'll notice a tabling acro to the right of the Green Slimer, it'll become important in a moment.
The left side facing the tank. (queue dirty glass). This is the LPS side of my SPS tank. The clowns live in the duncan colony, and the torch gets to be the size of a mini basketball before I frag it in half every so often. Giant colony of Spongodes is home to the midas blenny.
The Fall
One morning, not too long ago, I woke up, went to make breakfast and noticed that I had some pearly white SPS in my tank. My 6" colony of shortcake and my 3" Red Dragon corals were bleach white. I tested my levels and my Mg was super low. Long story short, I tried dosing Mg for a couple of days, with no luck, then someone asked the simple basic question.
"Have you checked your salinity with a calibrated refractometer?" and I thought "Oh $#!@" you see, I had looked at Salinity briefly, but had not thought about calibrating it, or making sure it was accurate. My salinity had dropped to 1.017 or something close. It was bad. I then started doing 5 gallon water changes daily to bring my salinity back up. I used SW in my top off instead of RO/DI and after about 5 days it was back up to 1.026.
I had recently changed scoops for my salt bucket and must have thought that x amount of cups was close to what I had been doing, and never bothered to check it. So gradually over time, the bottom fell out and my salinity kept plummeting.
Luckily, no livestock died, I even still have a porcelain crab and emerald crab who are doing well.
The Toll
So it's still touch and go but my levels have remained constant for a week now.
Alk = 7.7dKH (my tank has always had lower Alk levels)
Mg = 1350ppm
Ca = 420ppm
PO4 = 34ppb
NO3 = 2ppm
None of the dead coral have been removed yet. In the pictures above if you look closely you can see them pretty much starting to grow some cyano or brown algae. As mentioned, I lost my 6" colony of shortcake, a red dragon frag, a couple frags of monti (jedi mindtrick and sunset monti), my red cap has some white patches, and half of an aussie delicate frag (buried next to the birdsnest and green slimer).
The odd/scary/startling part is my green slimer has some patches of white on it, the bright green polyps are still there but the pigment in the skin is all gone. I'm hoping it will recover, but it hasn't gotten any worse yet.
