I debated with myself whether to postthis or not for some time now. I ultimately came to the conclusionthat a little shaming will make me work extra hard to get the tankback to where it was. There were several factors that lead to thedeclining health of my tank. First, the coral beauty was a mistake. I knew the risks and unfortunately there was no reward. She pickedat all my coral except my chalices and euphyllias. So I finally hadenough and tried to catch it, a hour of multiple nets in the tank, Ijust couldn't trick it. I built a homemade fish trap with eggcrateand some food, within hours of adding it to the tank, the coralbeauty was removed.
The second factor was being sworn inthe Reserve Deputy unit of my local Sheriff's department. Betweentraining and actual ride time, there was little time for the tank. Tests were a rare occurrence and water changes were every other weekat 4g. Some of the suffering coral created a nice boost in nutrientsand I had a major green hair algae outbreak with some cyano.
I do believe the cyano was also due tohaving both MP10's on the backwall. There was quite a few dead spotsin the tank. I bit the bullet and decided to get over the aestheticsof no pumps on the front 3 sides and moved them on opposite sides andstaggered. What a difference in flow! It is unbelievable now, thecyano is already starting to clear up.
I started to run GFO now which Ibelieve is helping but hard to tell since my phosphates and nitratesare reading zero, which is obviously wrong. I also received adolabella sea hare to help with the green hair algae and he is a pig!Within a few days, 40% of the algae was removed. When I feel he hasdone the job, he will be passed around the local area of others whoneed him.
Another tweak to my system was to myskimmer. I had it running under 13†of water when 6-7†wererecommend. I threw a stand underneath my skimmer and it is skimmingmuch more consistently and heavier.
I am doing 8g water changes every weekand occasionally more. I am getting into the habit of testing weeklyagain. I just need to FORCE myself to do it. There was a few dropsin Alkalinity in the 3 months of decline which the SPS did not like. But now has be rectified. It is not that I don't care, but when mytank started slipping it was depressing. It was embarrassing to lookat. I lost a few frags but the ones affected are now in recoverymode. Now I can see the light and it has given me a big boost ofconfidence.
On a good side, even with the coralbeauty(before being removed) and a sixline. My clowns thought theywere comfortable enough to lay eggs, they ended up hatching andultimately becoming food. As of right now, they are laying again. Right on schedule.
With everything back on track, I hopeto keep you all updated on the progress. I always read through buildthreads and how flawless everything seems to go, but I figured Ishould show you a different side of things and hope to encourage afew people who are struggling.
I appreciate any comments or questions. Thank you for reading.
