What issue would you/have you torn down a tank over?

[Schraufabagel]

Can’t kick out cyano completely. Been troubleshooting my RODI system in cause it’s the cause. I’m moving in March and plan to use this opportunity to replace the sand, deep clean the tank, and do a 100% water change

 

[clownnut]

well, during the last 2 years of my school, i kinda let the tank on autopilot without much water change. the tank get dino and green slime algae, i tried almost everything, no light, uv, vibrant, microbac 7 with no light, kill the refugium, feed a **** load try to bring up the nutrient to kill the dino, but the green slime came and took over.
last Sep, empty the tank, bleach the whole system with rock in it. reboot the system, now it looks better than any day of the last 4 years.

 

[Karen00]

My tank is only 6 months old so "no, thankfully I haven't". I aggressively dip and scrub all corals before they go into my tank although I think one or two corals didn't take the dips so well. I do two different dips plus a 5 minute freshwater dip. I also started with dry rock and live sand. So no creepiest came from the rock and so far no uglies other than some cyano that came and went in two weeks. If this were a multiple choice poll I would've also selected that most of us will at some point due to pests. For me, even one bristleworm would be a plague on my tank. I know they are harmless but I think they're best left in the ocean. Haha. Dipping caught two of these plaguesters. I can't even imagine a tank full of aiptasia or creepy flatworms (that one pic that was posted in another thread of a tank overrun with these still haunts me).

 

[FiddlersReef]

Yep, aiptasia. I had the brilliant idea to rescape the tank after many years and ordered a ton of shelf rock from Fiji. Turned out to be infested with aiptasia. Exploded exponentially seemingly overnight. I got so frustrated and disappointed I sold all the contents and it became a freshwater planted tank.

But now I'm back and so far so good. Though I do go into hyper kill mode the moment I see even one aiptasia. Not taking any chances with those evil things.

 

[shakacuz]

almost tore my tank down due to bryopsis. started in only 1 rock in my DT. added a sea hare (died due to nutrient spike), lettuce nudibranch (added 4, they all started to die one by one to the nero 3's), 2 pitho crabs, 2 emerald crabs. the pitho and emerald crabs remain, and they put in work to eradicate it in my DT. but overtime, without noticing, the bryopsis overtook my chaeto and marinepure rocks in my fuge. i have 1 emerald crab(this is the 3rd emerald crab) in the fuge now, and plan on getting 1 pitho crab so they can chow down.

 

[elysics]

FW. For some reason its hard. Unless you have co2, high flow, and dose its almost impossible for me to not fo get algae. Thats why I now keep reefs

If you go low light, low flow, no fertilizers, no co2, cleaning crew, and easy fastgrowing plants that like those conditions, then you don't have those issues. The issues come when you go for high intensity light and/or high tech/slow growing plants but then don't go for everything else as well.

A sentiment of algae being natural and small tufts here and there being realistic helps as well

 

[JNalley]

The issue I faced wasn't related to the tank so much as the location I was needing to move into. There simply wasn't enough space in the new place for the tank, and the trip was cross country (was going to take 3 days) in the middle of winter. So, not sure that really qualifies...

 

[clownnut]

Yep, aiptasia. I had the brilliant idea to rescape the tank after many years and ordered a ton of shelf rock from Fiji. Turned out to be infested with aiptasia. Exploded exponentially seemingly overnight. I got so frustrated and disappointed I sold all the contents and it became a freshwater planted tank.

But now I'm back and so far so good. Though I do go into hyper kill mode the moment I see even one aiptasia. Not taking any chances with those evil things.

it's hard to avoid one will slip into your tank. just put a copperbanded butterfly into every display/frag tank, i have zero aiptasia in my display/frag, however i cant say the same about my sump. lol

 

[mfinn]

I tore a tank down and re-started it with new rock because of majono's. Totally infested.
I went to work on the east coast for about 6-7 months.
When I came home all of the LPS corals were dead and the majority of the leather corals were still ok, but it was like a majono farm.
Wife really didn't think much was wrong. She did several water changes and kept the ato filled and fed the fish. So she considered her efforts a success.

 

[Dcloser12]

Bought some zoas from a pet store. Caused a massive cyano outbreak which I should have got a handle on but I didn't tend to my tank enough. So many treatments I wound up with dynos as well. Coral dying, I sold them off, tore down the tank and bleached everything and started over

 

[Chrisv.]

I had a bad time with hydroids. They weren't the only reason the tank came down, but they are one of the big reasons.

 

[FiddlersReef]

it's hard to avoid one will slip into your tank. just put a copperbanded butterfly into every display/frag tank, i have zero aiptasia in my display/frag, however i cant say the same about my sump. lol

Yeah, I know that "now". But at the time (about 10-15 years ago), nobody mentioned those fish, and honestly, it was a forest of aiptasia. I probably would have needed a ton of them to even try to keep up!

 

[A Young Reefer]

almost gonna break my tank down because of red turf algae. I am thankful that it’s not as bad as some of the photos I saw, however it’s really visually polluting. If nothing works I guess I will have to learn how to live with it.

 

[TheDragonsReef]

Ive only ever tore down a tank due to not having the time to care for all the tanks i had at the time. At one point i had 2 265 gallon tanks a 180 gallon and a 20g tank all at once. Then i started my business and didnt have much free time so i took down everything but 1 265. Now im back up to 5 tanks lol

But my philosophy on tank tear downs due to problems is usually that if youre just going to set it right back up after that youll end up with the same problems. Even if the tank looks ugly and youve lost corals or fish, find a way to fix the problem and move on instead of a restart. It may take awhile but youll come out of it a better reefer. It took me something like 4-5 months to beat ostreopsis dinoflagelletes, losing most of my sps in that tank in the process. Ive dealt with so many problems amd pests over the years in the hobby and learning how to deal with each issue instead of giving up and restarting is how ive gained the experience and knowledge to handle these problems early on and keep them from plagueing the tank in the future.

 

[A Young Reefer]

almost tore my tank down due to bryopsis. started in only 1 rock in my DT. added a sea hare (died due to nutrient spike), lettuce nudibranch (added 4, they all started to die one by one to the nero 3's), 2 pitho crabs, 2 emerald crabs. the pitho and emerald crabs remain, and they put in work to eradicate it in my DT. but overtime, without noticing, the bryopsis overtook my chaeto and marinepure rocks in my fuge. i have 1 emerald crab(this is the 3rd emerald crab) in the fuge now, and plan on getting 1 pitho crab so they can chow down.

Did you try flucanzole? Worked for me like a charm.

 

[131696]

Hurricanes no power for months still no power over 1 year Later.Need to move away from here or next tank all solar power so after storm take out panels and get tank going again till I can transfer them to a safer place.

 

[blisterm]

I had to tear down my first saltwater tank after all the fish died in 24 hour span a few months ago. All my parameters tested fine. Was not able to determine the exact root cause. In the process of cleaning everything to start again.

 

[GHOSTLY]

If you go low light, low flow, no fertilizers, no co2, cleaning crew, and easy fastgrowing plants that like those conditions, then you don't have those issues. The issues come when you go for high intensity light and/or high tech/slow growing plants but then don't go for everything else as well.

A sentiment of algae being natural and small tufts here and there being realistic helps as well

I kept co2 but right after I stopped it blew up. I was growing baby tears but right after I sold my co2 it went to *pg 14 word*

 

[deplinger]

I had a beautiful acrylic 150 Tall Peninsula tank that I tore down because it was too tall for my arms. This made it extremely difficult to maintain and also gave me really bad kink in my neck whenever I had to work on it. This lead to the tank having hygiene issues. If coral got knocked over, I would leave it there and it would get covered in sand. It was a really bad downward spiral.

So…I donated the entire system to a really tall middle school teacher. He had just gone through a fire in his classroom that killed everything in his tank. Then after he cleaned out the his tank, he was moving it on a dolly and it slide off and broke. He was really really grateful to take my tank and all the fish and stuff in it!

After that I bought a used rimless starfire 100 gallon peninsula tank that was on 20” tall. It was a dream to work on and was truly beautiful. Until one morning a couple of years later, I noticed little water pockets developing in the silicone seams. That was terrifying. So I bought a long bar clamp to hold the tank together until I could figure out what to do.

I took the tank down and put all the live stock in a 125 gallon rubbermaid horse trough and bought a new 150 gallon peninsula tank.

Here is a picture of my new tank.

 

[WRB]

Tank seam failing.