The breakdown of my 280-gallon reef tank
by
Published on 07-19-2010 04:45 PM
With all the corals out of the tank, it was time to remove the rest of the rockwork . I needed to put it in something, and had a few options to choose from thanks to my friends. They brought over empty glass aquariums, as well as a brand new ABS form-shaped pond liner. Since it was big and light, I thought it was a good choice, especially being new and unused. I placed it under the kitchen table scaffold to be out of the way, hopped up and started handing down pieces of live rock to Wes or Drew to put in the black container. As it filled up with rock, Drew handed up some 1” tubing and explained that he wanted to siphon out more tank water to cover the rock with. While the water drained, the rock moving process continued. Suddenly and simultaneously, both of them asked “What’s that sound?!” I thought that with the distraction of handing rock down to Drew, that he didn’t notice the vat was too full. He leapt into action, demanding someone hand him a bucket. What had happened was as the vat filled up, the shallow end of that pond liner folded over and began pouring out water like the Niagara Falls. While he supported that end, a bucket was located and wedged beneath the liner to curtail any more water loss. Now the carpet was officially soaked.
With the coral and rocks out of the way, it was pretty easy to catch the fish and transfer them to the holding trough. Wes preferred to capture them in a glass to avoid snagging their fins in a net, but I opted to just get them out of the tank. We caught all but two reclusive Gudgeon Gobies, and took a break to go to dinner while the water cleared up. When we got back, both were quickly netted and added to the rest of the fish in the SPS vat. We called it a night.
The flow through the vats was controlled with a ball valve after the Dart pump, the skimmer was skimming, a filter sock was capturing particulates in the second trough, and the calcium reactor was supplementing alkalinity and calcium to the system. The Aquacontroller III’s probes were moved to the new temporary system to track water parameters.
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