I've been absent from the forum scene for quite some time now, but still clinging on to the hobby. Just figured I'd try to get back into the swing of things by making an update. Pretty bummed out about the hobby right now, so hoping by posting and paying attention to the forums will sorta kick start my love for the hobby again.
We finally finished the room were the 265g will be moving to and hopefully spending the rest of its life. Only took 2 years lol. Between work related injuries, other injuries multiple job changes and a wedding, we finally got the room done and are ready to move the tank.
However, I think the aforementioned issues with completing the room, also led to the demise and crash of my tank. We are both completely heart broken but trying to look forward to starting over. January of this year the tank couldn't have looked better. Calcium reactor was living up to all that it was hyped up to be. Growth and coloration was amazing. Probably by mid march, maybe april we started to get some coral bleaching from the base up. Tested and tested and tested and couldn't find any issues. We lost some frags here and there and a colony slowly. Over the last 3 months or so the tank just took a fast downhill slide. We started loosing whole mature colonies, RTN virtually overnight. Start testing like crazy again. Everything is ok, except alk keeps dropping. Keep playing with the reactor. Alk still keeps dropping despite calcium and magnesium remaining constant. Keep dosing alk to try and stay on top of it. Then the algae bloom. Green hair algae took over the tank, and began to grow over corals and choke them out and kill them. High phosphates of course. 0.2ppm. double up on the water changes, replace the phosphate remover more frequently. Cut back feeding. Still cant get the algae under control. Then the fish death. Our very large gold spotted rabbit fish, clowns and gobies, all died. So now we sit with a complete algae forest of a fish tank and clinging on to the remaining fish.
So now we are trying to save what bits of corals we can, fragging of the living pieces, moving the remaining pieces. We set up and established a frag tank. Moved everything into their. Acros and Montis just keep melting like crazy. Even ones that looked great in the big tank, just melt in the frag tank. But the LPS is still kicking. I think this is why we are looking at starting over. Just getting a fresh start, clean and new. We have lost so many amazing looking corals, big colonies and high end and rare pieces that I'm not sure we can find again. I guess that's part of the hobby tho.
So looking forward. I have decided to change up the 265g a bit. I've decided I want to remove the corner over flows and run a ghost over flow style, and switch over to running a bean animal plumbing set up. This of course leads me to make changes to the stand. I will either need to make massive modifications to the current wooden stand, or start over. At this point I am leaning heavily towards building an aluminum stand, and skinning it later on. I think this will also make moving the tank easier since we will just move from one stand on to the next. Rather then trying to move the tank, then the stand and then put the tank back on the stand. That monster is freaking heavy. Also looking at moving away from the calcium reactor and on to a balling method of some sort, like triton or aquaforest. Its hard cause the calcium reactor is such a proven workhorse. Unless you are draining alk and cant keep up lol
So, here we are. We have a plan. Now we just need to keep fingers crossed and positive thoughts to rebooting this tank and hope we can hang on to what's still clinging to life. So, I might start hitting a lot of you up for some local frags to help get me going again.
We finally finished the room were the 265g will be moving to and hopefully spending the rest of its life. Only took 2 years lol. Between work related injuries, other injuries multiple job changes and a wedding, we finally got the room done and are ready to move the tank.
However, I think the aforementioned issues with completing the room, also led to the demise and crash of my tank. We are both completely heart broken but trying to look forward to starting over. January of this year the tank couldn't have looked better. Calcium reactor was living up to all that it was hyped up to be. Growth and coloration was amazing. Probably by mid march, maybe april we started to get some coral bleaching from the base up. Tested and tested and tested and couldn't find any issues. We lost some frags here and there and a colony slowly. Over the last 3 months or so the tank just took a fast downhill slide. We started loosing whole mature colonies, RTN virtually overnight. Start testing like crazy again. Everything is ok, except alk keeps dropping. Keep playing with the reactor. Alk still keeps dropping despite calcium and magnesium remaining constant. Keep dosing alk to try and stay on top of it. Then the algae bloom. Green hair algae took over the tank, and began to grow over corals and choke them out and kill them. High phosphates of course. 0.2ppm. double up on the water changes, replace the phosphate remover more frequently. Cut back feeding. Still cant get the algae under control. Then the fish death. Our very large gold spotted rabbit fish, clowns and gobies, all died. So now we sit with a complete algae forest of a fish tank and clinging on to the remaining fish.
So now we are trying to save what bits of corals we can, fragging of the living pieces, moving the remaining pieces. We set up and established a frag tank. Moved everything into their. Acros and Montis just keep melting like crazy. Even ones that looked great in the big tank, just melt in the frag tank. But the LPS is still kicking. I think this is why we are looking at starting over. Just getting a fresh start, clean and new. We have lost so many amazing looking corals, big colonies and high end and rare pieces that I'm not sure we can find again. I guess that's part of the hobby tho.
So looking forward. I have decided to change up the 265g a bit. I've decided I want to remove the corner over flows and run a ghost over flow style, and switch over to running a bean animal plumbing set up. This of course leads me to make changes to the stand. I will either need to make massive modifications to the current wooden stand, or start over. At this point I am leaning heavily towards building an aluminum stand, and skinning it later on. I think this will also make moving the tank easier since we will just move from one stand on to the next. Rather then trying to move the tank, then the stand and then put the tank back on the stand. That monster is freaking heavy. Also looking at moving away from the calcium reactor and on to a balling method of some sort, like triton or aquaforest. Its hard cause the calcium reactor is such a proven workhorse. Unless you are draining alk and cant keep up lol
So, here we are. We have a plan. Now we just need to keep fingers crossed and positive thoughts to rebooting this tank and hope we can hang on to what's still clinging to life. So, I might start hitting a lot of you up for some local frags to help get me going again.
I do not have an ORP readings. I havent had an ORP hooked up on this controller. I was runing a PH probe for the reactor and was/am calibrating every month with a PH calibration solution. For a long time I was calibrating 7 and 10. Then decided to switch to 4 and 7 since the reactor PH runs lower usually. Probe is also only 6 months old give or take. Yeah unfortunately the damage is done. 
