Naturalreef
Member
Well folks, this is the second time I have managed to wipe out over $1000 worth of sps and lps (bleeding apples,scoly's.)This time my Maxspect 130 failed while away at work and when I came home 4 days later everything rtn'd with only return flow working which is basically no flow. I was so disgusted, I couldn't walk by the tank for over a month. I had purchased some beautiful LE sps from Dave at Aquapros and Mario at Aquatica and was thrilled to see them encrust and color up quickly. I had everything extremely healthy and was going to make a big sps purchase with sawdonkey to finish filling the tank when the pump failed.
Algae and cyano set in.....I couldn't log in to the reef forums for a while since it was painful looking at such beautiful healthy tanks like mine use to be. After a while I finally was tired of looking at the tank deteriorate more and set in to reset it. Fixed flow issues by getting rid of the Maxspect and went back to vortech with battery backup. Algae issues( high po4 and no3) were smothering my surviving rainbow montipora( which are bulletproof btw) and I couldn't kick it with water changes and used Gfo very sparingly and bleached the rainbow severely(sigh). I purchased a IM reactor and put in 1/8th of dr. Tims Biopellets and I'm finally climbing out of the hole and the tank is recovering. The montipora is regaining color and algae is slowing receding. I won't increase the Biopellets and will stay at the current level as it seems to be a sweet spot with nutrients. This will be my third and last time....I will be purchasing sps very slowly to make sure they settle in and encrust before moving forward. Even though my previous husbandry was pretty anal, I'm not fooling around this time. Those two crashes caused a great deal of stress as I can't stand killing anything and took a lot of joy out of this hobby. The pride I had when the tank was healthy and sps were extremely colorful is the reason I'm giving it another chance so I can experience it again. I'm hoping aquatic experience reignites my passion a little. I have to say, my heart goes out to anyone who has gone through a tank crash. It is devastating!
Nick
Algae and cyano set in.....I couldn't log in to the reef forums for a while since it was painful looking at such beautiful healthy tanks like mine use to be. After a while I finally was tired of looking at the tank deteriorate more and set in to reset it. Fixed flow issues by getting rid of the Maxspect and went back to vortech with battery backup. Algae issues( high po4 and no3) were smothering my surviving rainbow montipora( which are bulletproof btw) and I couldn't kick it with water changes and used Gfo very sparingly and bleached the rainbow severely(sigh). I purchased a IM reactor and put in 1/8th of dr. Tims Biopellets and I'm finally climbing out of the hole and the tank is recovering. The montipora is regaining color and algae is slowing receding. I won't increase the Biopellets and will stay at the current level as it seems to be a sweet spot with nutrients. This will be my third and last time....I will be purchasing sps very slowly to make sure they settle in and encrust before moving forward. Even though my previous husbandry was pretty anal, I'm not fooling around this time. Those two crashes caused a great deal of stress as I can't stand killing anything and took a lot of joy out of this hobby. The pride I had when the tank was healthy and sps were extremely colorful is the reason I'm giving it another chance so I can experience it again. I'm hoping aquatic experience reignites my passion a little. I have to say, my heart goes out to anyone who has gone through a tank crash. It is devastating!
Nick
