True to my word, I've been making some changes to the tank this last week or two. There were a few things I wanted to address. First, possibility of ich in the main display. I'm not convinced, but there were a few spots on a few fish over the last month or two, and I wanted to be proactive. And that meant pulling all the fish from the tank and leaving it fallow for a few months. Two, I wanted to catch a few fish. There were a handful that were problematic (sailfin tang, lamarck angel in particular), and I may choose to trim down the number of larger fish in the tank (on the fence: hippo tang, chevron tang, foxface). And also, of course, I wanted to add an achilles, and to do that with the powder blue tang, well that may be an issue. I wanted to shuffle the tank up before doing so, and I'll probably give them some along time in the stock tank together before deciding whether or not to try both in the display. Lastly, and this is more of a taste/preference thing, I wanted more hiding places in the tank. I've done pillar style rock for the last ten years, and I wanted more of a wall. I know aesthetically, for me at least, it's less appealing, but for the fish I feel it gives them more comfort (being able to hide out), and I like when fish can disappear for a while and then come out when you dont expect it. Last week I did the work, and here is a before picture.
Ripped out most of the rock and corals, and this was the midway point after catching all the fish.
And then when I was done putting rock back in. I added probably 80 or so pounds to the tank, which I had gotten from another tank I tore down for a friend in May (it was good rock, most of the white stuff you see here, and I'd been curing it for about 3 months). I've got another 80 pounds or so available, but I don't know if I'll use it. I'm sure I'm not finished, but this is what I've got right now (the left side is pretty open, which I like, but the rock is stacked more in a wall with a big portion of the back relatively open so they can swim behind it).
The pillars work well when you have a lot of coral in my experience, but my display has turned much more into a fish tank over the last few years, and I wanted to highlight that more. I think with fish in it this will work a lot better, but I'm sure I'll tinker with the rock placement until I return the fish.
Most of the larger fish are back in the 120 gallon stock/quarantine tank (it's a bit crowded, but at 48x30x18 it's got a decent footprint), and the smaller fish I stuck in a 30 long that I had in the attic (just to keep the fish population down in any one tank... there are 15 damsels and a handful of other fish in the 30 gallon tank). I also separated out the tangs for now in that system, splitting them into two groups to help with aggression, and I'll start a cupramine treatment this week. I know a lot of folks prefer the tank transfer method for ich and other parasites, but with the number of fish I have cupramine is a lot more practical. Included in that treatment will be the new fish that I received last week, including the sought after achilles tang, whom I'm delighted to see eating vigorously from the algae clip already (though keeping clear from me, hence the angle from this shot).
I'll probably run 3 or 4 weeks with the cupramine and then wait another handful of weeks before sticking them back in the display, targeting the first of October unless something changes. That's all the news for now.
Still need to router the bottom for a clean edge and then flame polish the edges to round them a bit.
