Need advice. Tank doing very well with one big exception. When I started the tank, 2.5 years ago, I purchased a handful of softies on frags (button polyps, GSP, and zenia). They all grew and established themselves quickly. In retrospect this was a big mistake. I then added LPS and SPS which are all doing well and growing. About a year ago, the softies took off and have taken over my tank. They cover the rock, glass, and substrate. Figure a few square inches of frags grew to several square feet in about a year or two. GSP is cool so I don't so much mind that, but the others are not very aesthetic. I have a 6 foot tank and no longer have any room to add new corals (full house). I have seen polyps and zenia retreat before, including in this tank. Not sure what parameters drove this, but one option is wait it out. Another option is to rebuild the tank without removing the good stuff. My plan would be to remove the live rock with the softies on it, place it in another tank in darkness, for purposes of killing the softies and reclaming the live rock and its beneficial bacteria so that I do not have to do a recycle. This would be about half of more of the existing rock. I would then scrape the softies from the glass and substrate in the display tank and remove them. Once the softies die on the removed and separated rock, I would reintroduce them to the display tank. This method would cost me a lot of SPS since they have grown into the live rock. But I could chisel it off along with the LPS. Does anyone have a similar experience where good advice can be applied here?
All my water parameters are fine, but PH is a bit low. Alk 8 to 9, Calc 450. Running metal halides with T8s.
All my water parameters are fine, but PH is a bit low. Alk 8 to 9, Calc 450. Running metal halides with T8s.
