what to do...what to do...?

[Shooter7]

Greetings. Haven't been on here much in awhile. Had gotten my tank into a sweet zone, had a nice collection of SPS frags that were growing and coloring up nicely. My monti cap is now about a foot and a half wide. Softies doing good too. Sometime over the summer, some parameters got out of whack. I was in the middle of a lot of personal issues. Some stuff needed to be done for family. My stepson was gearing up for the move to college. And things with the wife hadn't been good in a long time. Didn't notice the parameters being off for awhile...til it started doing damage. Made a couple of what I thought were small changes in a couple things, and stuff went way out of whack the other direction. I tuned back to where I had been and left it, because I had too many other things to attend to. Now, most of the family issues are done, I got the stepson moved off to college (with zero help from his mother), and as soon as I got back from doing that, the wife was making plans to move along on her own. I filed for divorce and she agreed. Fortunately, I kept my car, my house, my money, and most importantly, I have custody of my six year old son. Had to make more changes in lifestyle. I have to get him off to latchkey in the morning, so i get home much later in the day than I used to. Not as much time to mess with stuff like I used to have.

So now, my tank is a SPS nightmare. I have lost most all of my SPS frags and colonies. With all the dying tissue, I'm sure my nitrates are through the roof when they've been zero forever. Haven't even had time to do a water change. So now I'm in this realm of trying to figure what to do. The main reason I got into this is because I love the look of SPS tanks. Mine was starting to get there, now it's trashed, as far as SPS go. I don't really want to restart in this tank as it's not big enough for me. I'd like some more room. I just don't know whether or not to take a further plunge and expense into a larger tank or put everything aside for now. I suppose I could just let it run as a softie tank with a big a$$ monti in the middle of it. I really don't want to get rid of my fish 'cause they're doing great. But if I try to restart, I'd want it to be in a longer and deeper tank. Money is going to be tighter now, though, as well as time. And replacing all those colonies...ugh. What to do....?

 

[bmrescort]

FAMILY first Fish tank second.
Spend your money wisely on the build up
After that the sky is the limits.

 

[zt444a]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=13468255#post13468255 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by bmrescort
FAMILY first Fish tank second.
Spend your money wisely on the build up
After that the sky is the limits.

I'll second that.... On the tank subject though, have you thought of Vodka dosing as a way to bring down your excess nutrients? Having decent success with it currently. I will post a link when I find it! All you need is a decent skimmer, run some carbon and follow the instructions. It will also greatly improve coral colors too.

 

[Shooter7]

Unfortunately, the majority of my SPS are now white, so I don't see their color improving much no matter what I do.

The problems I had over the summer was with the increased growth of my corals, they start overtaking my Ca reactor. Ca was dropping, so I tried to make some very minor adjustments with that. Didn't get to really test it until several days later, and my alk had jumped from about 9 dKH to around 14+ dKH. The timing was just really bad. If everything had stayed stable, like it had been for many months prior to that, I could have weathered not doing much with the tank for a couple months. But this simultaneously with all the other junk was a real slam. I have bunches of soft corals and LPS that seem to be doing fine. It's just the big bummer of losing my SPS that hurts. Plus I was also very low on salt, out of DI resin, it was the perfect storm of murphy's laws all descending on my tank. My fish are still all eating like pigs, so they're good.

 

[Shooter7]

Pic of the tank taken a few months back. (not very good pic color-wise, looked much better in person) The monti and mille on the right were growing into each other by the time the trouble started. Essentially, everything along the top of the rock is gone except for the monti. Several of the others, like the blue on the lower left are gone too.