Starting over
by
, 01-19-2013 at 11:45 PM (1744 Views)
After 6 + years of keeping an SPS dominated tank I have been forced to start over due to a slow and painful tank crash. I'm not quite sure what to attribute the crash to whether it was old tank syndrome (if that is even a real thing), two hurricanes and prolonged power outages with no generator, sheer size of my SPS colonies and my not being able to keep up with my ca2 or dkh demand are all viable possibilities etc etc.
Anyway, after deducing that at least one problem was likely that the micro fauna in my sand bed had probably perished in the last power outage causing a release of pollution in the tank resulting in an unbeatable case of HA I gave away the salvageable colonies, ripped apart the rock work that had completely fused together over the years, and removing the top 4 inches of what used to be sand, now solid stone, I added new sand and bought all new pukani rock, threw caution to the wind and started over.
This time around I am going to more open space for swimming, less rock and motion. To that end I am sticking with about 25 lbs of rock and LPS and softies only. Once I was out of my cycle I started to add my coral and so far I am so happy with the new layout. I love that everything moves where before with SPS you had to really get close up to see polyps. I have yet to add fish to the tank but there is so much sway with the coral and my new wireless MP10s that fish aren't missed yet. I'll try to keep this blog up to date as the tank progresses. Thanks for reading!