I am I the process of breaking down my 29gal mixed reef tank, doing a complete scrub and starting somewhat anew. I'll link my tank thread for background, but in a nut shell, I started about 5 years ago on a whim with a 29gal petco tank, some live rock and a pair of clowns. The tank did pretty well with the exception of a few coral loses, adding more tank mates, a HOB sump and a nice mix of corals (soft, lps and sps). But I got greedy and decided to see if I could keep a mandarin, adding DIY below tank sump to push the pod colonies and deal with the extra nutrients from the additional feeding. About this time I experienced a pump short circuit which nukes two anemones which triggered a tank crash wiping out two deliveries of new corals. Uggh.
The tank was rebounding nicely, but post crash, the battle with GHA and red turf algae (and occasional cyano) was creating repeat minor set backs way too much disturbance from the radical rock scrubbing.
And then the dinos took over and without the time to do a @brandon429 complete scrub, the dinos won eventually overtaking and killing my sps and lps corals and several zoa colonies. The tank was dying and ugly death.
Part of my problem is that I originally put too much rock in the DT, of which 2 pieces were way to big, resulting in a number of problems, Firstly, the surface area was way too much to cover with corals (at least with my budget) and so it left lots of open space for algae to call home. Additionally, it impaired water flow and thus become detritus traps. This was compounded by my initial decision to use very fine sand. At first the snow white sand bed was beautiful , but quickly became a problem, trapping organics and working its way into the rocks as it was easily stirred up.
So, in a radical move, I pulled out all the rocks with the remaining corals (some mushrooms and zoas). I didn't have a way to save the corals so they became casualties.
I still have my culpera/cheato packed HOB running and the sump has a basket of rubble rock proving filtration.
I have removed about 80% of the sand bed.
The tank was rebounding nicely, but post crash, the battle with GHA and red turf algae (and occasional cyano) was creating repeat minor set backs way too much disturbance from the radical rock scrubbing.
And then the dinos took over and without the time to do a @brandon429 complete scrub, the dinos won eventually overtaking and killing my sps and lps corals and several zoa colonies. The tank was dying and ugly death.
Part of my problem is that I originally put too much rock in the DT, of which 2 pieces were way to big, resulting in a number of problems, Firstly, the surface area was way too much to cover with corals (at least with my budget) and so it left lots of open space for algae to call home. Additionally, it impaired water flow and thus become detritus traps. This was compounded by my initial decision to use very fine sand. At first the snow white sand bed was beautiful , but quickly became a problem, trapping organics and working its way into the rocks as it was easily stirred up.
So, in a radical move, I pulled out all the rocks with the remaining corals (some mushrooms and zoas). I didn't have a way to save the corals so they became casualties.
I still have my culpera/cheato packed HOB running and the sump has a basket of rubble rock proving filtration.
I have removed about 80% of the sand bed.