So I have a 16G Biocube that was giving me problems with dino, hair algae and cyano for the past 2 years. I have slowly been removing the sand bed, 2" deep, over the past 6 months as I was going to try a bare bottom solution to this problem. In the back middle section, I grow caulerpa prolifera and that resolved the hair algae problem I had but the others persisted. I had the sand down to <1/4" except where it was under the rocks. I pulled the rocks put a little peroxide on them, 1-2oz on each and then put them in 4 gallons of water, one rock in each bucket and three rocks total. Did not leave peroxide on for long, 30 seconds maybe. Peroxide? -thought it may help with the cyano, probably not but it's too late now. In the process of removing the sand my six line wrasse decided to bury himself in there which I didn't realize and killed him when scooping out the sand. I didn't have water in that bucket and didn't realize he was in there. When I put it all back together I did a 2 gallon water change first, the next day 5 gallon with natural sea water- the ones in the big jugs hoping to add bacteria, and a 1 gallon wc the day after that- didn't realize I was out of salt. Tank water was hazy as all get out. I've killed my mushrooms, Blue ridge Coral I believe- still has some color but not much and a encrusting orange colored SPS of some sort along with now most of my snails and my clownfish- doa this morning was doing well until last night. My leather is slumped over but still has some color to it, torch has some life showing and my hermit crabs have made it but it's been 4 days now. I replaced my Purit when I removed the sand but too much/late. I tested the water during all of this, didn't have any nitrite or nitrate spikes but think hydrogen sulfide got me- it smelled, I'm disgusted with it.
Tank is clear today and saw a crab snacking on one of my dead snails, will leave it for him for now. Caulerpa is still good. Hopefully nothing else kicks the bucket as I will leave it running for a bit. Tank was almost 4 yrs old now and has been my smallest reef tank I have had. I've done this before on a 125g I had years ago and didn't have any problems but I'm guessing the small tank size didn't help much and wasn't forgiving. Anyways thanks for reading and hopefully someone with a similar tank can learn from my mistake.
Tank is clear today and saw a crab snacking on one of my dead snails, will leave it for him for now. Caulerpa is still good. Hopefully nothing else kicks the bucket as I will leave it running for a bit. Tank was almost 4 yrs old now and has been my smallest reef tank I have had. I've done this before on a 125g I had years ago and didn't have any problems but I'm guessing the small tank size didn't help much and wasn't forgiving. Anyways thanks for reading and hopefully someone with a similar tank can learn from my mistake.
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