Has anyone ever just let a tank completely go on purpose to see the results?

[JoeyH08]

My first tank was a 30 gallon biocube and I realized quite quickly I wanted something larger. I got a 90 gallon system and thats what I have now. I recently moved over the last two fish I had in my cube and now it just has live rock and some button polyps I have deemed too ugly to go into my 90 gallon.

So I decided to just let it go. I give it water and drop some pellets in there occasionally to feed the worms and promote algae and of course top off with water.

Its been about three weeks now with no tank cleaning and the hair algae is amazing looking. Ive never seen algae get like this. I have baby snails everywhere and I assume they are turbos so that will be awesome once they grow out.

Anyway, what can I expect if I just let it go? I plan on just scraping the front viewing area so the sides can go crazy with algae. I guess my main concern is, is this dangerous? Am I overlooking something so obvious (like when people boil liverock) that someone needs to slap some sense into me?

 

[homer1475]

Sounds like you have a nice display refugium. :lolspin:

Seriously though, that's all a refugium is. A place to promote, and out compete algae in the display. I can't think of a thing that would be harmful.

The algae may strangle out the button polyps eventually.

 

[ddanis60]

What home said! Find a way to plumb that inline and let it go. Congrats on the new tank btw.


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[outssider]

I would at least check the alkalinity once an a while. It will slowly deplete (along with cal/mag, all be it at a much slower rate)

 

[JoeyH08]

Oh yeah, I wanted to ask if there was anyway to trap pods as the population has exploded. They literally just hang on the side of the tank in the hair algae. Would love to feed them to my main tank.

 

[moatdaddy]

I lost a battle of ich in my 220 and lost my prized fish. Shortly thereafter I gave up on the tank but let it run. Disconnected sump and everything. Just powerheads, lights, and fresh no rodi water from the tub to refill evaporation. I ending up adding small fish I caught on the beach and a black sea bass. That sea bass was awesome, the green hair algae grew so thick i took out bucket fulls of it. Went on vacation with no feeding or anyone stopping by. Two weeks later everyone was happy to see me. I tried to let it go and not care and ended up with a decent tank. Different and completely coated in green hair algae but still interesting to watch. When i moved and tore it down it was a super sad day... mainly because i finally had to address the 40 plus pounds of GHA.

 

[SuperSaltwater]

I let go of my frag tank and sps grew nicely, I posted a thread about it few days ago. No one replied. Lol

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[jmm]

I have several tanks. One, a 40 gallon fusion, was started with live sand, live rock from the invertebrate tanks of a local fish store, and wild caught zoanthid colonies. I added an anemone and a clownfish. The clownfish jumped out.

A beautiful, treelike algae started growing on the rock. I thought it was pretty until I found out it was Bryopsis. High levels of added Magnesium damaged it but it spread everywhere. It finally began to go away and fern caulerpa began to replace it. By now I didn't care. My other tanks were doing well so I pretty much ignored it. It had snails, hermits and shrimp so I fed it pellets. Soon it was solid caulerpa. I pulled it out, most of it anyway. Some of the zoa colonies sprouted new algae. I couldn't identify it but it spread and then vanished. I put some frags of two kinds of SPS coral that had broken off in my main tank.

Next came bubble algae, thousands of them, covering everything, even the snail shells. I took the shrimp and hermits out and stopped feeding. Grape caulerpa took over, solidly. When it got to where it covered everything I pulled it out. The bubble algae was still there, but it started going away on its own. Some kind of hair algae grew on the bubbles and dislodged them and they floated to the top in clumps that were easily netted out.

As of today, the tank hasn't been fed or supplemented with calcium or alkalinity and there hasn't been a water change in two years. The anemone has doubled, the zoas have spread, and the SPS has grown thicker and longer and has put on many new sprouts. It gets water topped off daily and glass cleaned weekly. There is almost no macro algae and the film algae is greyish, not green. The bubble algae is gone.

To say the least it is low maintenance and very interesting. My other tanks get all the attention.

 

[Mishri]

my 40 gallon breeder is pretty much like that.. I have some sort of encrusting Florida coral and a Gorgonian that looks to be doing fine even with 0 water changes and probably low alk/calc... just feed a pinch of food every other day, i surprisingly have no hair algae. lots of pods though and starfish.