It's update time again. It's funny because with all the quarantine I do with all my critters, I still mess up just like everybody else. Unfortunately this is one of those times. I messed up big time. I cross contaminated. I ended up with velvet in the display.
Two weeks ago, a short time after adding the new achilles tang and copperband butterfly to the display, I came home after work to find the achilles and butterfly covered in velvet. They both ate readily which was good, but I noticed most of the fish swimming into the flow of both powerheads and the returns. There was also flashing and scratching in evidence. Boy, that was a really sickening feeling. Luckily, I had the means and ability to take care of it then and there. My husband helped me with every step. We brought in the 75 gallon from the garage after cleaning it. Filled it, mixed the saltwater and started removing everything from the display. I didn't take pictures of the process because I was not really feeling in a sharing mood at the time. It was a sad few days for sure.
All the rocks and corals came out along with about half the water. We removed the fish into a 10 gallon tank with Ruby Reef Rally for a 1 hour dip before going into the QT. We stayed up until 1 am getting all the fish out and I still couldn't find the Blue Star leopard. I raked through all the sand as best I could to find her without success. I decided to wait until morning for when the lights come on to get him when he comes out. The corals went back into the tank and most of the rock. Everything else waited until morning (powerheads were running the whole night so the water wasn't stagnant).
I did catch the leopard the next morning and was only 10 minutes late to work after putting the rest of the rock and water back into the tank and getting it running again. The boss understood so I was good there. I couldn't get the rocks back to they way they were before, so I picked up another 60lbs of rock at work and went to work on the new aquascape when I got home. This is what I ended up with.
I'm fairly happy with it, though it's nothing like what I originally wanted. It will provide more filtration, hiding places and spots for corals so that's good.
After all that happened, I've now got cyano going on. That will be worked on tomorrow with a bit of chemi clean. Hopefully my unhappy corals will become more happy after that.
I've also been working on getting my levels correct. Some of my corals were looking pretty pathedic before all this happened so I tested my Alk, Ca and MG. All of them were low, but the big surprise was that my alk was at 6.8 dkh (or something close to it anyway). I was shocked!! Out comes all the test kits permantly and the dosing supplies. I've gotten my ca and mg up to 470 and 1480 respectively. My alk keeps dropping though. Yesterday it was 10.9 and today it's 9.8. Pretty darn frustrating! Ah the joys of reef keeping.... I guess I can contribute a lot of this to the tank coming up on the 1 year mark.... maybe.... hopefully. lol
I'm still trucking with this stuff and will try not to change things too quickly and make things worse. I do have an Eshopps doser and containers coming in this week.
How are your fish doing?
I wish I had you knowledge and confidence!
