2020 just keeps beatin up on me. My Gem and Purples were starting to get a lil too big and bossy. Two weekends ago I got the trap and caught the 3 purples and Gem from the 400g.
Then we added 2 sml Purples and 3 Small Gems. And later that night while watching my new fish I noticed the seam of the front panel of my tank starting to come apart.
Rushed to locate a tank big enough to hold everything and with the help of local reefers got a used 560g tank moved 600 miles and into my house in 4 days. Xmas Eve some very kind local reefers helped move the stand and tank out of the truck and into the house.
That was Thursday. Xmas Day was spent fixing a potential seam issue on the new tank, and then filling it up with salt water - Luckily my new RO/DI System filled the 560g tank in just 6 .5 hours!!! Dumped in buckets of Reef Crystals and a Vectra pump and started mixing. One of the down sides to creating almost 100 gallons of RO DI per hour is that the water is cold cold cold. With 2000w of heaters the tank wasn't able to start warming up till after we stopped pumping in sub 60 degree water. Friday I also put together the plumbing to connect the new tank to the old tanks plumbing.
Saturday morning temp and salinity were good. Connected the plumbing between the two tanks - opened the valve and started mixing 560g of new saltwater into my now 1800g SPS system. Saturday night with the help of my wife we pulled the big colonies out of the 400g and a few small pieces of rock. Some of the rocks were so embedded with corals that 2 or 3 large pieces of liverock had grown into 1 giant piece of liverock with corals. It was going to take 2 people to lift and move these now giant pieces. My poor wife was handed tray after tray of coral colonies and then had to go outside in the cold night air and try to remember which frag tank I told her to put them in.
Sunday with the help of Tim Kelly we moved the corals and live rock off the fiber grate structures to be able to move them to the 560g.
We rebuilt the main rock structure to adjust for the height of new tank. Then loaded the liverock onto the new structures. On Sunday I managed to catch about 6 feet from the rockless 400g.
Monday at 3am I came down in the dark and caught about 6 more fish. Then another dark fish nabbing at 4.45am got me 20 more fish.
The fish seem to be liking the more open space of the 560g. There are still another 60+ fish to try to get out of the 400g before draining it and getting it out of the house.
I've put up a ton of videos on youtube over the past weekend showing the different steps.
The amount of muck under the aquascaping after 16+ years is pretty amazing. Once the 400g and a couple hundred pounds of some non-Miracle mud are gone from the system I will get a Triton test from Unique Corals and see what happens to my perpetually high phosphates (over 1.6 for the past 6 years).
This afternoon I moved the Webcam to the opposite side of the room so you can get a view of the new tank.
New tank is 560g Acrylic - 120x30x36 -- I HATE 36" tall tanks.
Hopefully, with no more crisis we can move forward on building our 800g starfire tank and I can get rid this temporary 36" nightmare
Video from tonight with most of the corals and some of the fish --
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Video of the 16 year old Phosphate Factory
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Final Farewell Video of the 400g Tank
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