Rilelen
New member
So, between grad school, life, etc., my tank has been feeling pretty neglected for the past 9 months. It has pretty much run on autopilot, with me just checking the auto-feeder and ATO every couple weeks. I don't even remember the last time I did a water change. But! New years, new resolutions. I'm starting this thread to help document my progress and keep me on track.
Quick stats: it's a 72 gallon bowfront with soft corals - mostly toadstools and Kenya tree (yeah, yeah, I know, but I love them). The toadstools have been unhappy but the Kenya trees have blossomed - I'm pretty sure those things could survive a nuclear apocalypse. Standard CUC. The tank was set up in summer 2013, so about 2.5 years old.
My real love is fish - I have a percula pair, a yellow clown goby pair, a foxface, and a kole tang in the tank currently. Rehomed the anthias a while back when I realized the tank was heading towards Neglectville.
In the past week, I've made a ton of RO/DI water, fully refilled the ATO bucket, and made the first 5-gallon water change in god knows how long. More water changes to come, it took me a while to even locate all of my salt and mixing equipment. My salinity is low, so I've added salt to the ATO to gradually raise the salinity by replacing evaporated freshwater with saltwater. I'm monitoring that situation. I replaced a couple rocks that had fallen and secured them in place, and relocated a few corals that had fallen into places they weren't supposed to be. I've done a preliminary scraping of the worst of the algae on the glass and used a turkey baster to blow out the left side of the tank. I also stirred just the surface of the sand on the left side. I don't want to accidentally stir up too much muck all at once, so I'll tackle the center and right sides at a later date.
Equipment wise, I've cleaned the powerheads, and overflow, and lightly cleaned the protein skimmer. To help with the lighting, I repositioned the Kessil 360WE to provide a spotlight effect on the left half of the tank (there's T5s running the length) and washed and scrubbed the glass aquarium covers to permit more light. I also resumed feeding frozen w/Selcon and putting out nori 3x/week.
Today, I tackled the sump. I replaced the filter floss in the return, and removed a bag of carbon that has been in there for I don't even want to know how long. I also cleaned the carbon and GFO reactors, and replace the media in those.
What remains to be done: a complete cleaning of the protein skimmer, lots of water changes, replacement of a broken powerhead, vacuuming the substrate, more blowing out of live rock, and a number of other things. I do have testing kits, but I haven't even bothered to test at this point - I don't need a test to tell me that nitrates are sky high. Once the basics are dealt with, I'll test everything and formulate a battle strategy from there.
Also on the agenda: I have long had plans for a way to largely automate water changes - I will proceed with those plans to help prevent the tank from getting this bad in the future. I've also had the supplies to set up an external 29gallon refugium for sometime, which is only waiting only a few PVC fittings to get up and running. That will also be on my To Do list.
And of course, the obligatory FTS, of how the tank stood this afternoon.
Quick stats: it's a 72 gallon bowfront with soft corals - mostly toadstools and Kenya tree (yeah, yeah, I know, but I love them). The toadstools have been unhappy but the Kenya trees have blossomed - I'm pretty sure those things could survive a nuclear apocalypse. Standard CUC. The tank was set up in summer 2013, so about 2.5 years old.
My real love is fish - I have a percula pair, a yellow clown goby pair, a foxface, and a kole tang in the tank currently. Rehomed the anthias a while back when I realized the tank was heading towards Neglectville.
In the past week, I've made a ton of RO/DI water, fully refilled the ATO bucket, and made the first 5-gallon water change in god knows how long. More water changes to come, it took me a while to even locate all of my salt and mixing equipment. My salinity is low, so I've added salt to the ATO to gradually raise the salinity by replacing evaporated freshwater with saltwater. I'm monitoring that situation. I replaced a couple rocks that had fallen and secured them in place, and relocated a few corals that had fallen into places they weren't supposed to be. I've done a preliminary scraping of the worst of the algae on the glass and used a turkey baster to blow out the left side of the tank. I also stirred just the surface of the sand on the left side. I don't want to accidentally stir up too much muck all at once, so I'll tackle the center and right sides at a later date.
Equipment wise, I've cleaned the powerheads, and overflow, and lightly cleaned the protein skimmer. To help with the lighting, I repositioned the Kessil 360WE to provide a spotlight effect on the left half of the tank (there's T5s running the length) and washed and scrubbed the glass aquarium covers to permit more light. I also resumed feeding frozen w/Selcon and putting out nori 3x/week.
Today, I tackled the sump. I replaced the filter floss in the return, and removed a bag of carbon that has been in there for I don't even want to know how long. I also cleaned the carbon and GFO reactors, and replace the media in those.
What remains to be done: a complete cleaning of the protein skimmer, lots of water changes, replacement of a broken powerhead, vacuuming the substrate, more blowing out of live rock, and a number of other things. I do have testing kits, but I haven't even bothered to test at this point - I don't need a test to tell me that nitrates are sky high. Once the basics are dealt with, I'll test everything and formulate a battle strategy from there.
Also on the agenda: I have long had plans for a way to largely automate water changes - I will proceed with those plans to help prevent the tank from getting this bad in the future. I've also had the supplies to set up an external 29gallon refugium for sometime, which is only waiting only a few PVC fittings to get up and running. That will also be on my To Do list.
And of course, the obligatory FTS, of how the tank stood this afternoon.
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