coralfarmer84
In Memoriam
I'm sure by now everyone who knows me also knows that i moved to florida. In the process I tore down my 240 reef and took the livestock for my new 310 reef. Here is my story.
Well on the 10th of august I'll begin. We started oxygen packing all the corals around 1230 in the afternoon because i was out all morning getting my car fixed. everything went smoothly taking about 3 hours in total to tear down the tank and pack everything. Then i cleaned up the tank a little and packed everything into my parents van (my mustang was obviously not big enough). We hit the road around 5pm for a drive that runs around 20 hours. 6 hours into the drive the van begins to give me problems. My diagonis is the tranny is going. We break down around midnight in Princeton west virginia which is about 9 miles from the virginia line. Knowing that my time is limited i try and find an open garage. Nothing is open! Then i try and see about getting AAA, my parents don't have AAA! Then I try and rent a truck to haul my stuff and nothing is open! An hour and a half later we finally give up and decide its a no go. We rent a hotel (we got the last available room in 4 hotels in the city) and decide to wait till morning and rent a uhaul and car dolly and tow the van the rest of the way. I'm thinking everything is going to be dead at this point. Morning comes and we go to uhaul around 8 they are not open and no sign on door when their hours are! I'm freaking out! at this time the corals and fish have been in the bags about 16 hours and we are still 16 hours from home. They finally show up at 830 and I get the last uhaul they don't have reserved and it cost me 650 bucks. Yeah i love my fish.
We then arrive at the house right around midnight which means the fish have now been baged for around 36 hours. I'm expecting the worst. We rush to get everything inside and to my amazement everything looks fine. It took me 5 and a half hours to aclimate everthing (keep in mind i was dead tired from 2 days of driving and no sleep). The worst part was the fact that for some reason my old tanks specific gravity was only ready 1.020 and the current tank 1.025. I finally passed out around 6 am after a lot of work on my part to clean the tunzes and get them in and bag float everything to aclimation.
THE VERDICT- at this point everything is looking O.K. no polyp extention on any sps and they have all lost some color. The LPS is still closed completely. Clams are looking good but not opening fully yet. All fish look wonderful except one anthia appears to look as if i dropped a rock on him when tearing the tank down, his side has some soars and his fin is ripped. Hopefully it will heal. I have 2 halides running for about 4 hours today so i don't have a bleaching incident. I will slowly bump it up as i see fit.
THE LOSES- So far I have lost both my green fuzzy millepora and my raspberry millepora colony. The were dead in the bag on arrival (I don't know why that species is the only SPS to perish at this point) It also looks like my small trumpet coral frag is going to go next. Everything else looks good at this point and I'm just waiting for the shock to pass so they begin to open up.
I will keep everyone updated as things progress.
Well on the 10th of august I'll begin. We started oxygen packing all the corals around 1230 in the afternoon because i was out all morning getting my car fixed. everything went smoothly taking about 3 hours in total to tear down the tank and pack everything. Then i cleaned up the tank a little and packed everything into my parents van (my mustang was obviously not big enough). We hit the road around 5pm for a drive that runs around 20 hours. 6 hours into the drive the van begins to give me problems. My diagonis is the tranny is going. We break down around midnight in Princeton west virginia which is about 9 miles from the virginia line. Knowing that my time is limited i try and find an open garage. Nothing is open! Then i try and see about getting AAA, my parents don't have AAA! Then I try and rent a truck to haul my stuff and nothing is open! An hour and a half later we finally give up and decide its a no go. We rent a hotel (we got the last available room in 4 hotels in the city) and decide to wait till morning and rent a uhaul and car dolly and tow the van the rest of the way. I'm thinking everything is going to be dead at this point. Morning comes and we go to uhaul around 8 they are not open and no sign on door when their hours are! I'm freaking out! at this time the corals and fish have been in the bags about 16 hours and we are still 16 hours from home. They finally show up at 830 and I get the last uhaul they don't have reserved and it cost me 650 bucks. Yeah i love my fish.
We then arrive at the house right around midnight which means the fish have now been baged for around 36 hours. I'm expecting the worst. We rush to get everything inside and to my amazement everything looks fine. It took me 5 and a half hours to aclimate everthing (keep in mind i was dead tired from 2 days of driving and no sleep). The worst part was the fact that for some reason my old tanks specific gravity was only ready 1.020 and the current tank 1.025. I finally passed out around 6 am after a lot of work on my part to clean the tunzes and get them in and bag float everything to aclimation.
THE VERDICT- at this point everything is looking O.K. no polyp extention on any sps and they have all lost some color. The LPS is still closed completely. Clams are looking good but not opening fully yet. All fish look wonderful except one anthia appears to look as if i dropped a rock on him when tearing the tank down, his side has some soars and his fin is ripped. Hopefully it will heal. I have 2 halides running for about 4 hours today so i don't have a bleaching incident. I will slowly bump it up as i see fit.
THE LOSES- So far I have lost both my green fuzzy millepora and my raspberry millepora colony. The were dead in the bag on arrival (I don't know why that species is the only SPS to perish at this point) It also looks like my small trumpet coral frag is going to go next. Everything else looks good at this point and I'm just waiting for the shock to pass so they begin to open up.
I will keep everyone updated as things progress.
