The colors will come back. Lesson learned. You can get over a problem like this. You won't get over leaving the hobby.I was browsing through threads the other day and I came across a post "..one tank crash can make someone leave the hobby for good..", I skimmed by it and thought, my tank crashed before and I got through it! Over the last 7-8 months I've developed a pretty successful SPS dominated nano tank, I had beautiful coralline algae encrusting and several of my sticks were really starting to color up and encrust the rock, I was so proud and started to finally regain confidence in my reef keeping abilities. I had several frags in racks stuck to the glass and really needed a new rock to stick them too, I had a section in my tank that would look great for a home for a good chunk of live rock and my frags. So I set off in search of the perfect piece of LR, I know my system was crazy sensitive due to its size and contents so I wanted to be very picky about the place I would purchase this rock from. I traveled an hour away to a very reputable fish and coral store that we all know and love! They steered me towards a piece of Man Made rock, it was perfect! I stared at it for awhile and decided I'd take it home, longer story short I glued all my frags to it and it looked great!
If I dare say, I was finally happy with the way my tank looked and could start to sit back and enjoy watching it grow after almost a year of hard work!
After about 3 days I could tell something was wrong, my red setosa which is normally a deep red was starting to look almost translucent and pink! I tested my water and ALK SPIKE from 8.5 to 11-12 was the only thing different than my normal parameters. The next day, my red monti was doing the same, the next day greens and vivid blues were all muted paled versions of themselves. So I did a water change and now it would seem everything is back to normal as far as water parameters go. However I've suffered great loss in colors in 85% of my sps but the whole tank has taken a hard hit .
Months and months of hard work gone down the drain, I feel like giving up and smashing my tank. It's crazy how depressed this has made me, everything I worked for is gone, money spent, time spent GONE!
Please I need someone to make me feel like I still have a fighting chance.
Go get 'em tiger!!
