Man the hits keep coming, we lost power for 5 days after storms last week, and despite a back up battery, we lost everything except the clowns, the clam, one of our breeding pair of cardinals, an army of snails and limpets, and a few softies (ricordea and zoa)
We are planning to reset the system a little since now we don't have as much to worry about by changing the rocks out (for rock I've had curing for a year) to try to get ahead of the aiptasia and bubble algae, plus replacing the sand for either live sand from TBS or a thicker grade since what we got was too fine for the flow we wanted.
It's a bummer, but I'm trying to be excited that we have an opportunity to fix some of what we ended up not liking with this set up, and I can potentially transplant my mangroves into the tank finally (though they've certainly been an interesting conversation piece in the plastic kiddy pool on the porch!
Onwards and upwards and better husbandry going forward to prevent the bubbles from returning, and we'll start the restock of the tank slowly once we decide if we want the same fish again or if we want to change up our list a bit. I'll try to make posts with photos as we go, but my hope is to barrel through the change out pretty quick just so I can get some normalcy back.
I do have the silver lining of the blackwater tank not only surviving, but continuing to thrive. I'm shocked at how well the red rotala has done with minimal co2 - it's growing out of the tank along with the water sprite. Peacock moss is also thriving. I need to get in and trim things up this weekend if I end up having energy after swapping the big tank. I have two species of raspboras - pheonix and blue axelrodi, a breeding trio of clown kilis, all three oto cats, and more shrimp than I know what to do with even after culling recently, AND DWARF CRAWFISH BABIES FINALLY
