Checking in from Punta Gorda FL... Charlotte County. Just got power back night before last. I can only get internet for brief windows at weird hours otherwise it's just enough to read a headline or email title but not open it. Cell service is still hit and miss. We can text.
Recover is slow, Walmart has no frozen and scant fresh food. Publix is charging $6.50 for a box of eggs. The house across the street was just condemned.
At this point, I'm having a version of survivors guilt I was scrambling to keep bubblers going on D batteries and my neighbor was getting ripped off by a carpet bagger. It's surreal.
I haven't even begun to assess the tank health fully..The wifi is down and my power strips are all off line, so any programming or controls are shot to heck. One of four Kessil ,360x is operating.
My only obvious casualty after a weeksl ong battle to prevent a crash looks to be my favorite, very old bubble coral. I do not think it will survive. One toadstool is damages.
Everything else is hanging on... Clinging to the 1/3 of the tank with a light.
As we finish removing the downed trees, picking up shingles and what's left of the neighborhood... I'll do a deeper dive to find the new normal for the tanks. Until then, the paja cardinals will continue lurking alone on the dark side of the tank. (Sitting in judgement, I'm sure of how many meals we ate from a can in the last week... They must have had friends that were Tuna.)
UNtil my next window of internet...
everyone be well.
Ugggh, that sucks.
Have you considered checking in with any of the LFS in our area (Sarasota)? The power is back online for all us finally and I bet someone would be willing to warehouse what you have until things get sorted.
Coral Connection and Frag Freak both have nice shop owners. I'm fairly certain Frag Freak has some QT systems they could probably store you're stuff for a while. Its worth asking anyway. The owner is Nate and the Manager is Josh.
I'm finally starting to see a ray of hope for my tank and I think (knock on wood), it's taking a turn for the better. It started to look a little better yesterday with some small signs of growth and color. Alk demand even when up a bit over the past couple of days. Towards the end of last week, I was just excited when things stopped dying and established colonies that were RTN'ing from the base, stopped and stabilized where they're at. Still looks like hell with bleached sections, but better than losing the whole thing.
After 7 days of daily 10% water changes, I developed a small bacterial bloom which made the water a bit cloudy. I'm sure I knocked things out of balance a bit. So I've stopped doing water changes and will resume my weekly 10% this Friday. It's getting a little clearer day by day, but the fish and corals don't seem to care either way.
Since I wasn't seeing any ammonia, I also added some fish back in this weekend to get my bio load back up. I lost three very large fish and a number of small ones. Prior to this, I had a very precise feeding schedule and with my refugium running an opposite schedule and the skimmer specifically set, I could replicate .05 PO4 and 10 Nitrates with relative ease and consistency. I'm trying to get that balance back as I prefer to maintain nutrients through fish load/feeding vs dosing them. Besides, who doesn't enjoy a busy reef with fish and inverts running all over the place doing reef stuff?
Hopefully those of us that got smacked with losses can start trading a bit to restock the corals when things get back to normal. I've got a green slimer that seems bulletproof I can frag some pieces off. I swear that thing has been growing through this entire event. We should start planting those around the world where reefs are struggling as they seem to be incredibly resilient and fast growers.
