Leave of Absence Over

[Gill Snork]

So it's been a while but I'm getting back into the hobby after a 3-4 year hiatus of sorts. I have been neglecting my tanks for over 4 years now (wow, it's actually been that long!) doing nothing but feeding the one damsel I had and doing MAYBE 4-5 water changes A YEAR (not a typo) . I haven't added a single living thing to the tank for that time and I'm amazed that the tank didn't crash years ago. I won't bore you with unrealted personal details, but I'll just say that I've been way too busy to do anymore, eventhough I would have liked to. I even shut down my 12gal NC and put it in the basement.

 

This past weekend, I noticed I was running out of mysis for the damsel (the last time at the LFS, I had bought enough to last a year) and thought "Gee, it would be nice to get rid of all this algae, maybe I should restock my cleaner crew", which lead to "I'm going to need to change the water first... a few times" , which led to "I should get my Ro/Di system running again". So, flash forward 2 weeks, I have all the "higher value LR" (the few that had more coraline algae than red bubble algae) back in the newly restarted 12 gal NC, a few turbos and astreas in the newly cleaned up 20H to get a handle on the algae covered rocks, and two new clownfish to top the NC off nicely. And my green star polyps are coming back in full force after being just a purple smear on the LR for 3 years now- never imagined they would bounce back!!

 

Long story short, the wife went from "You should get rid of those tanks - they are an eyesore" to "maybe we should move the NC into the living room - it looks so nice now. And maybe you should get a few new corals". All in the course of two weeks.

 

It's good to be back!!