Wow, it really doesn't seem like that long ago you were adding more rock to the display... can't believe it's been down for a year and a half.
I assume that all the fish you removed at the end are still alive and well? If so, mission accomplished. Very odd that those deaths just keep rolling along with no apparent cause.
Looking forward to the Bandit tank. Sounds intriguing.
All fish were saved and are in new homes
Actually they all went to two local reef club members. Both are veterans with large and multiple tanks, so I wasn't worried about the fish after the fact.
Catching all the fish sure was an adventure. Took all day, I think the male Crosshatch ended up being the hardest to catch lol
I have pictures somewhere of the aftermath of the tank, it wasn't pretty.
Being removed from the situation, I feel that maybe a larger fish (Crosshatch, Tang?) was intimidating the smaller fish into death. I found one or two fish that had chewed tails, but I thought it was after the fact. I did see one Crosshatch swimming around with one in it's mouth, but it was already dead.
I witnessed two fish as they died, but they were just kinda floating at the bottom of the tank with their heads down kinda of barely moving up and down then died.
Everything in the tank was either treated with copper (fish) or held fishless for around 3 months (coral / inverts) before going into the tank. So I highly doubt it was any type of disease. Don't even get me started on how much coral I lost doing this... Also having an Achilles and Achilles Hybrid around the same size in the tank, who lived with each other but would chase each other a lot, pretty much ruled out not having ich in the tank
My wife actually thought the tank had been down for like 3 years haha, it's flown.
I'm not going to be nearly as crazy about disease in the next tank. Not keeping multiple tangs (none) should reduce the stress and also not have the "ich magnets" in the tank. Will probably just QT all new fish (shouldn't be many) and do normal dipping for coral and really inspect inverts.
With a smaller tank and much much less fish, if something does pop up, it won't be the end of the world to pull the fish and QT. Now doing this on the 470 with a lot of larger fish would have been a nightmare, just re-enforced by the day we pulled all the fish out of the tank.
I'm also really going to take my time. More than likely run the tank with rock only for a few months before introducing anything. Also try to have all my bases covered in terms of how the tank will mature and not just start throwing random things into the mix like I did trying to band-aid the 470 from time to time. I think I know what works and what doesn't at this point.
Anyway, not sure if anyone saw my post about tank dimensions to happily keep a bandit, but if you have any ideas, please let me know.
Kinda leaning to 72 by 2x by 2x".
