dodgerblew
Team RC
I've been keeping this quiet until now because I needed some time to see how things were going after the fact and I just couldn't bring myself to tell the painful story. It's not easy. Anyone who's gone through this and see all their sweat equity dead and in a trash bucket know this cruddy feeling.
A week ago I lost pretty much every coral I have. I woke up last Monday morning to cloudy water, skeletons and tissue peeling before my very eyes. A couple months ago I noticed some stn on some encrusted tissue of a a very large red planet colony. I figured it was from coral encrustations growing to close so didn't pay much attention and everything in tank including that colony looked great, beautiful color and polyp extension. When it continued I got a little more investigative and realized my Alk container was empty and test showed Alk in the 5's. I slowly raised Alk manually and also raised my dosing amount. As things looked better I left alone and relaxed. BAD MISTAKE. I forgot I upped the Alk in doser and left it going. I have no idea where the Alk was when my disaster happened but on my salifert test I emptied the entire syringe of reagent and color hadn't even started to change. That 0 number is 15.7 on the table. After taking doser offline, heavy water changes it was still over 12.5 after three days. I took everything out of the tank I thought had any chance of survival and (believe it or not a few frags hadn't shown any signs of recession) put them in buckets and ran them to a friend's where we worked as quickly as possible to cut colonies with living tissue and glued over recession areas, dipped what looked healthy in revive and iodine in case of any pathogens and got them in a healthy environment. Still to soon to tell what will stabilize and make it but I've lost quite a bit that I took over there. These colonies were high end pieces like Orange Passion and many other sought after pieces. It was a gut punch to be sure. My fish, inverts, LPS and softies look ok in my tank but it's definitely not anything it was a week ago. I said to Dave that I feel like quitting but this hobby is all about the risk. When you're rewarded for the risk, it's awesome and we all know how we feel when things are good. But when it crashes we immediately forget about how much success we experienced to get to this point. I'm not quitting. My fish, inverts and the few LPS pieces I have are doing ok in my tank. I had to break up rocks so will need to get new. I plan to finally move the tank onto the beautiful stand ( I'm planning on restraining) and get the great sump going I acquired from Mike/thegrun a couple years ago and start moving forward. When exactly, not sure, but sooner than later. Just not quite ready, still pretty raw. I do have some frags and maybe a colony or so (not much but some is better then none) still hanging on at Dave's. Fingers crossed they stabilize, recover and grow out some.
I really want to thank Dave/o2manyfish for his help, humor, enthusiasm and friendship. He was the first person 17 years ago to listen to my newb questions and offer to direct and teach. I have been successful in this hobby in large part because of Dave and some very good friends of mine (you know who you are). I'm very fortunate to know you Dave and more fortunate to call you friend. Thank you
A week ago I lost pretty much every coral I have. I woke up last Monday morning to cloudy water, skeletons and tissue peeling before my very eyes. A couple months ago I noticed some stn on some encrusted tissue of a a very large red planet colony. I figured it was from coral encrustations growing to close so didn't pay much attention and everything in tank including that colony looked great, beautiful color and polyp extension. When it continued I got a little more investigative and realized my Alk container was empty and test showed Alk in the 5's. I slowly raised Alk manually and also raised my dosing amount. As things looked better I left alone and relaxed. BAD MISTAKE. I forgot I upped the Alk in doser and left it going. I have no idea where the Alk was when my disaster happened but on my salifert test I emptied the entire syringe of reagent and color hadn't even started to change. That 0 number is 15.7 on the table. After taking doser offline, heavy water changes it was still over 12.5 after three days. I took everything out of the tank I thought had any chance of survival and (believe it or not a few frags hadn't shown any signs of recession) put them in buckets and ran them to a friend's where we worked as quickly as possible to cut colonies with living tissue and glued over recession areas, dipped what looked healthy in revive and iodine in case of any pathogens and got them in a healthy environment. Still to soon to tell what will stabilize and make it but I've lost quite a bit that I took over there. These colonies were high end pieces like Orange Passion and many other sought after pieces. It was a gut punch to be sure. My fish, inverts, LPS and softies look ok in my tank but it's definitely not anything it was a week ago. I said to Dave that I feel like quitting but this hobby is all about the risk. When you're rewarded for the risk, it's awesome and we all know how we feel when things are good. But when it crashes we immediately forget about how much success we experienced to get to this point. I'm not quitting. My fish, inverts and the few LPS pieces I have are doing ok in my tank. I had to break up rocks so will need to get new. I plan to finally move the tank onto the beautiful stand ( I'm planning on restraining) and get the great sump going I acquired from Mike/thegrun a couple years ago and start moving forward. When exactly, not sure, but sooner than later. Just not quite ready, still pretty raw. I do have some frags and maybe a colony or so (not much but some is better then none) still hanging on at Dave's. Fingers crossed they stabilize, recover and grow out some.
I really want to thank Dave/o2manyfish for his help, humor, enthusiasm and friendship. He was the first person 17 years ago to listen to my newb questions and offer to direct and teach. I have been successful in this hobby in large part because of Dave and some very good friends of mine (you know who you are). I'm very fortunate to know you Dave and more fortunate to call you friend. Thank you
I know exactly how you feel hang in there
