So I felt like this thread could finally use an update... and man have there been some changes.
Long story short, due to "life" I was away from my tank and unable to manage it on a daily basis. The tank did fairly well for a while this way thanks to automation... but unfortunately I wasn't there to watch my condi anemone crawl into a power head and nuke the tank... killing all the fish in one swoop. This happened nearly a year ago, and I am still upset I let it happen.
From there on, obviously, things went downhill. I also went through a process of moving the tank to a new house... which I won't go into detail on (it sucked!). At this point the tank was basically on life support until I knew I could fix it.
So here's the aftermath just before I started to bring the tank back to life. This is basically after all the fish died, and then being unable to take care of it for about 4 months. The horror!!
And yes, that's a Gigas clam loving it in there, lol.
So the process of bringing the tank back to life involved only one complete water change, followed by vibrant and fluconazole. Since I had lost most of the coral by this point, I figured aggressive measures wouldn't be a bad idea.
The end result was a fast and amazing turn around. The coral that did survive before, actually did amazing during the vibrant and fluconazole treatments. All of this was done without a refugium online, just skimming.
So that image was in October, and here is the tank now.
Once the uglies melted, I introduced the rabbit fish and some clowns, and brought the refugium online. Since then I basically slowly added more livestock. Including the Gigas, about 11 corals also made it through. I'm also digging the bare bottom at the moment.
I'm now growing out lots of new Acros, with some more or on the way. I seem to have hit on good coloration and health with heavy export via my full size triton sump, 24/7 skimming, 3 times daily feeding, and dosing ammonia via Triton NH Alpha daily.
So never give up... no matter how bad it gets.
