I have a three year old fluval sea m60. It has a vortech pump (whatever their smallest one is called), a radion light turned down quite low, and no skimmer (the one that came with it never seemed to work for me?? so I stopped using it). It has about 15-20 pounds of LR in it and a 2in or so deep sugar sand bed.
The livestock is:
A clown I've had from the start
A orchid dottyback that I've had from the start
LOTS of xenia - I think the are my nutrient export
Some sort of torch coral with about 15 heads on it
Mushroom corals here and there around the tank
a few tiny zoas around the tank
Lots of brittle stars that came in on the rocks
Lots of little tiny starfish that came in on the rocks
My original clean-up crew has slowly died off to include just three snails so I added a bunch more snails and hermits yesterday
A little conch that I've had for about two years or more
Maybe the odd thing I'm forgetting but that's about it
This is probably just an excuse but other than the first three or four months of the tank setup I've had kids - my son was born followed two years later by my daughter. So the tank has been kind of neglected for most of it's life. I think the main reason it never crashed was due to the xenia/algae uptaking all the nutrients and maybe there is more rocks/sand in there than there needs to be? I have literally taken pails of Xenia out over the life of the tank.
I want to refocus on the tank and give it the care it deserves. That started last evening with the addition of more CUC critters, and the first water change it's had in about a year and a half or more. My plan is to do a waterchange/xenia prune every week for three weeks and then move to monthly changes again. I think one of the things that missing is all the minerals possibly getting depleted from lack of water changes?
Currently, the tank has a lot of hair algae in it but no cyano or other nuissance algae. It has a lot of detritus hanging out on the sand and in crevices.
So what should I do to spruce the tank up? Will the clean up crew get some of that detritus or do I need to siphon the sand every time I do a WC?
Thanks!
The livestock is:
A clown I've had from the start
A orchid dottyback that I've had from the start
LOTS of xenia - I think the are my nutrient export
Some sort of torch coral with about 15 heads on it
Mushroom corals here and there around the tank
a few tiny zoas around the tank
Lots of brittle stars that came in on the rocks
Lots of little tiny starfish that came in on the rocks
My original clean-up crew has slowly died off to include just three snails so I added a bunch more snails and hermits yesterday
A little conch that I've had for about two years or more
Maybe the odd thing I'm forgetting but that's about it
This is probably just an excuse but other than the first three or four months of the tank setup I've had kids - my son was born followed two years later by my daughter. So the tank has been kind of neglected for most of it's life. I think the main reason it never crashed was due to the xenia/algae uptaking all the nutrients and maybe there is more rocks/sand in there than there needs to be? I have literally taken pails of Xenia out over the life of the tank.
I want to refocus on the tank and give it the care it deserves. That started last evening with the addition of more CUC critters, and the first water change it's had in about a year and a half or more. My plan is to do a waterchange/xenia prune every week for three weeks and then move to monthly changes again. I think one of the things that missing is all the minerals possibly getting depleted from lack of water changes?
Currently, the tank has a lot of hair algae in it but no cyano or other nuissance algae. It has a lot of detritus hanging out on the sand and in crevices.
So what should I do to spruce the tank up? Will the clean up crew get some of that detritus or do I need to siphon the sand every time I do a WC?
Thanks!
