Weeble's Euro-180

[Defective_Weeble]

Day 153

Chemi-Clean treatment went well. I kept it in a day longer than I had intended because I didn't have enough salt on hand. Ran up to the LFS, bought a huge bag of Red Sea and changed 40 gallons. Did 20, let it sit with no skimmer for a few hours and then let the skimmer chuck out 20 more over the course of a few hours to get rid of the remnants of the Chemi-Clean. It saved the usual week of waiting for the skimmer to start behaving normally again.

Got the parameters back in line after the big water change. Alkalinity is now at 8.12, and I'm going to aim for a steady 8.0 with the dosing. Calcium was 380 so I'm dosing it up to the 416 range to get it balanced. Unfortunately that's a LOT of calcium to dose, but so be it.

Overall, really happy with where the tank is sitting today. Corals are VERY happy with better PE than I've seen in quite some time. Fish are all doing well. I'll be adding my 4 anthias to quarantine next week. Our local frag swap is tomorrow, so I'm pretty excited to pick up a couple of nice pieces now that things are back in line.

 

[Defective_Weeble]

Let's talk about moving a tank. Because I might have to very soon.

My thought is this -

Move all rock to a Brute can. I only have one encrusted coral, and it's a monti cap so I'm not overly concerned if it breaks. I'll call it a frag and give it to someone.
Move all fish to a second Brute can, keep it heated.
Move all corals (still small, on frag plugs) to a 5 gallon bucket with an egg crate rack.
Pump the tank into 2x 100 gallon Rubbermaid troughs, sitting in a truck.
Move the tank and stand with the rock to a waiting moving van, place them into the new house.
Second truck with the troughs will follow the tank.
Pump water back to the tank, wait for it to reach temperature.
Replace corals, replace fish.

What am I missing? What have I not thought of? The move is only 5 miles, so hopefully that will keep heat loss and the rest of the risks at bay.

 

[Rob.D]

I would try to use as much new saltwater as possible.

 

[Defective_Weeble]

Really? Why is that? I did that when I went to my 120 and ended up losing a bunch of pieces because I went too clean too fast. My water's pretty clean as it is.

 

[bknapp]

I would try to use as much new saltwater as possible.

And I disagree. In my opinion that's why some people have had problems with transfers/moves. I used a good amount of my old water when I moved to the 180, I left the last few inches behind after letting it settle over the sand bed I think too much new clean water adds to the stress of the move, they're already used to the water they've got, especially in this case where the tank is still rather new.

 

[Defective_Weeble]

This hobby is such a cruel mistress sometimes. My tank has still never recovered from the alkalinity drop and then spike. I'm still getting massive amounts of diatom-looking algae on all of the rocks and sand bed. I'm now down to 4 pieces of coral because it's killed off just about everything else. All parameters test where they should, and I'm not seeing any stray voltage in the system. The fish are doing great, but I can't keep a coral to save my life.

The one thing that I have found is that my ATO reservoir is seemingly leeching stuff into my RODI. I tested TDS at the filter, it read 0. From the holding container it reads 2. In the ATO reservoir (a 10 gallon Petco tank, with a cover), it reads in the 150s. I've ordered a new, plastic container that is identical to another one that I'm using where the TDS reads less than 20. I don't know that it will fix the problem, but it certainly shouldn't hurt things.