I’m in full recovery mode with my little Solana 34 gallon mixed reef right now. After 7 years, I had a nearly full crash while on vacation in February (ATO died, salinity went through the roof, and to add insult to injury my thankfully-undersized heater thermostat went belly up and stayed on; came home to an 85 degree tank.) Two fish (oscelaris and yellow watchman goby,) a pistol shrimp, a fighting conch, a handful of mini-maxi anemones, and a couple polyps of blasto survived, and after a long time of staying shriveled up, a big finger leather I’ve had since the very beginning rallied too. The two fish are the first two I ever introduced, and they’ve survived one prior but smaller crash in the past, too. Everything else died...basically ALL the coral, a few other fish and inverts, pods & microfauna, etc. It was nothing but a sick soup of cyano when I got home. Roomie didn’t notice anything was wrong until the tank return pump was spewing bubbles. :-(
Now, uncounted hours and I’d rather not count the dollars later, it is pristine again, the things that survived are thriving, and I’ve been restocking it crazy fast. Amazingly, my nitrate has stayed under 5 since the first series of water changes and is working its way lower; that well-cured and well-sized live rock is denitrifying like nobody’s business. It’s amazing, really, as I’ve been overfeeding incredibly to entice new fish to eat and to grow out some hungry corals. It’s actually almost too much of a good thing, as the clean-up crew I added to deal with the mess are out of food and I’ve been giving them away and trading them in; there is almost no algae (or cyano.)
I’ve invested in an Apex controller, and dosing pumps. I held out all this time because the cost seemed extreme for a boarderline nano tank, but what I’ve learned is that stability is even more important when you have so little water. So now it’s monitored, and dosed, and automated, and alarmed as it probably always should have been.
It may sound crazy, but I’m actually slightly grateful it happened, as it renewed my interest in the hobby, and it seems to have actually eradicated the horrible blue palys (which have made me sick, nearly taken over the tank at one point, and caused the first crash when I tried to get rid of them in the past.) Down to bare rock, so I get to place new things knowing 7years more of reefkeeping and how my little tank functions did. You run out of space fast in a nano. Right now I have a pretty clear vision of where it’s going. And unlike in the beginning, the tank is actually really stable, and I have more disposable income, so I’ve been able to accomplish a lot in 7 weeks. I’m slightly wishing I’d taken the opportunity to move up to 60 or 75 gallons, though.
Here’s where we were a week ago (6 weeks into rehab,)
on our way to recovery. Can’t wait for things to grow out!
