Well as I mentioned at the start of this update period I had a phosphate spike due to vinegar running out and I am not sure how long it was gone. The main tank did not have any major effects, but the frag tank area in the sump was over run with algae. This was not helped by the fact that the small yellow tang that I had in this area died during this time as well.
I debated whether or not to document this, but decided that since some of the most informative posts I have read on forums I have come across from reefers (from beginners to some of the best reefers on the planet) going through issues and documenting how they dealt with them. So without further ado...
My algae overrun frag tank:
Since I have gotten the phosphates back into my normal range, algae growth in this area has slowed, so my hope is to clean up this area and be able to manage any regrowth before it gets out of hand.
So here is where we started:
First step was to make new frag racks as I wasn't going to take a chance that the existing ones would be cleaned sufficiently:
New eggcrate cut:
New PVC legs and frag racks assembled:
Next was to remove the corals that were going to be saved and put them in some buckets of tank water:
And the saddest part of the whole process...remove frags that were killed or overrun by the algae. Now you get to see how full the frag tank was before this happened...
The carnage:
Most of these were frags that had been cut from the display back in the middle of August. I was trying to get everything ready to be on cruise control for a little bit this fall, but that obviously didn't work out to well.
There were mini colonies of Sunset milli and blue tip tenuis in this mess, as well as some frags that were purchased over the summer from Cherry corals and a couple of other vendors. Pretty sad really, and definitely not my proudest moment as a reefer, but I hope that others can learn from this that they need to stay on top of things, even when life gets busy.
More to come....
