Kimber's Old Tank Thread

[mcarroll]

6 hours ago, Snow_Phoenix said:

I had no idea they could grow to plague-like proportions. I've been trying to slowly repopulate my Mushroom Mountain & restock it with different varieties. 

 

I actually admire reeftanks which are packed with shrooms - even if it's the normal red, green & blue ones. I think it looks very beautiful when it fills up the tank like that - like an underwater forest with colorful cup fungi. 😅

Don't get me wrong, they are beautiful...if I wasn't so partial to stony corals I'd just give the tank to the mushrooms.  But in my case adding them was a rookie mistake...I was afraid to try the corals I really wanted and was told to try a beginner coral.  Mushrooms are one of the best, if not the very best, "beginner corals".  For better and for worse.

 

IME they just don't mix well with stony corals in the long run.  And they're worse to get rid of than aiptasia, mojanos, etc.  Nothing I'm aware of kills them.  (Nothing that would leave my other corals unharmed, of course.)

 

My current best hope is that my rescued juvenile Black Damselfish someday grows, morphs to his namesake adult form and becomes the soft coral eater that the books say he is. 🤷‍♂️

 

For the record, I upgraded my system to the current tank about 2 years ago I think....I left as many mushrooms behind as possible, but one major mushroom rock was transferred to the new system.  I "isolated it" on one end of the new six foot tank.  Over the last few months corals have finally populated the far end of this six foot tank and are now encroaching on the stonies that had been growing there unmolested.   I noticed that my blue Stylocceoniella (new about a year ago, along with 2-3 other frags) is actually fighting back!  At night he has a massive amount of tentacles out and is stinging the crap out of a blue speckled mushroom that has encroached on one edge of his colony.  The mushroom is just a little curled on that edge, no other apparent sign of stress, so not sure there's any real effect on him yet...but I'm watching!

[kimberbee]

It looks like my tank *adjustments* will go ahead the weekend after Thanksgiving. 

 

Usually, I reserve that weekend for Christmas decorating, but it's 3 days in a row that my husband will be home to entertan the child. Unfortunately, because of covid, my mom won't be able to take the little one any time soon, and he sometimes only takes one 1hr nap during the day. This way I'll have up to 3 days to make all my changes and make sure the tanks are running smoothly before the week starts. 

 

🤞🤞

 

 

[kimberbee]

I'm sitting here thinking about my upcoming tank changes and I keep going back and forth on what I want to do. 

 

I was going to move the 25 gallon LPS/softy tank to a 10 gallon tank, because I've had a lot of die off that I don't plan to replace. And then I could move the RFA/gorg tank from the 20 gallon to the 25 gallon because that *is* something I'm willing to invest more money into. 

 

But now I'm not sure if I want to lose those extra 5 gallons of water... and then the RFAs get moved to the office, where they won't be seen as much (the bigher tank won't fit in the livingroom). 

 

One thing is for sure: both tanks need the equipment deep cleaned, some corals fragged, the sand cleaned of debris, and some of the vermetids knocked off the rocks. 

 

 

[debbeach13]

So nothing is set in stone yet. Decisions Decisions. 

[kimberbee]

Decisions have been made, and I'll

be swapping what's in my two tanks on Sunday. 

 

I will have my IM20 as an LPS/softy tank, thinning out what is currently in the lagoon - mostly fragging off some dead skeletons and removing the biggest rock completely from the scape. The goal will be to focus on only a handful of corals, keeping the sandbed mostly open. 

 

The 25g Lagoon will be for my RFAs and gorgonians. I'll expand on what I've got by adding some NPS gorgs and sun corals. I'd like to look into possibly using a doser to feed the NPS corals and add a skimmer to help keep nutrients down. We'll see how it goes. 

 

I'll be shutting down this thread and starting over with two new threads. I think it gets confusing because this thread already contains a few different tanks and swaps. I'll link new threads when I start them.

[kimberbee]

I took last pictures this evening. I will likely get started early tomorrow, before the lights come on, so this was my chance. 

 

IM20 - RFA and gorg tank, with one clownfish. This tank and rocks were initially set up in a different IM20 tank in 2015 for about a year. When I moved in with my BF (now husband) everything was transferred to an IM10. A year and a half ago I moved it all back into an IM20, I just really like the rectangular layout. 

 

IM25 - LPS/softy tank with my b&w clownfish pair. My first tank was set up summer of 2014 - a Biocube that I used for 2 years. When I moved it the first time, I decided to upgrade everything to an IM40. That only lasted a few months, because I found the depth to be too much, and went with the lagoon-style tank instead. When I moved the second time, I suffered huge losses and the tank still hasn't quite recovered. It's been 2 years, and I really need to trim/clean up from those losses.

 

[spectra]

Love the 20...........that was my first tank when getting back into the hobby again........ I prefer it over the 25 as I have had both.............

 

Cant wait to see where you go with these.............

[kimberbee]

Before I spilt this thread into new ones for each tank, I thought I'd list out how I did the transfer today... seems silly to post it twice in the new threads. 

 

I got started bright and early at 8:30am.

 

Step 1. Fill the temp tank:

I used a standard 10 gallon tank, with an AC50 HOB filter. I put a small heater, some filter floss, and a bag of CP nano in the filter. I then siphoned out about 8 gallons of saltwater from the 25 gallon tank to put into the temp tank. I was careful not to stir up the sand, because I only wanted to add "clean" water to the holding tank. 

 

Step 2. Move the contents of the 25 gallon to the temp tank:

I started with small things, like my plate corals and fraged pieces. Anything dead or dying got thrown out. As I started picking up bigger rocks, I made sure to shake them gently to loosen any detritus. I also used a brush on any hair algae. Everything just barely fit into the temp tank. 

 

Step 3. Clean the sandbed of the 25 gallon:

I siphoned out about 5 gallons of water making sure to clean the sandbed very well. I also caught any floating hair algae. I picked out more empty shells and bits of rubble. 

 

Step 4. Move everything from the 20 gallon to the 25 gallon tank:

I started by adding 5 gallons of fresh saltwater to the tank, to replace what I'd taken out while cleaning the sand. I siphoned out about 8 gallons of water from the 20 gallon, again being careful not to stir anything up. This was added to the 25 gallon to replace the 8 gallons that had gone into the temp tank. I then moved livestock/rocks over to the 25 gallon. 

 

Step 5. Clean the sandbed of the 20 gallon:

Just as I'd done for the 25 gallon, I siphoned the sand clean, removing about 5 gallons from the tank. I added 5 gallons of fresh saltwater. 

 

Step 6. Move everything from the temp tank to the 20 gallon:

I moved things back out of the temp tank, livestock and rocks first, then the water. 

 

The whole process took me about 6 hours, and most of that time was moving water. I can only lift about 2 gallons at a time, so it was quite tedious. 

 

It was clear to me from the beginning that it was going to take most of the day. I had hoped to also clean all of the equipment as I went along (pumps, heaters, media baskets, lights) but I knew that would take too much time, and I thought leaving the established bacteria and sponges alone would probably be a better idea. 

 

I had hoped to frag up my Grube's gorgonian, because my 3 main pieces were covered in a lot of hair algae. I ran out of super glue after making 3 frags, so I left the other few pieces stuck in the sand bed for now 

 

The water is still a bit cloudy, but I plan to get a couple of pictures this evening. So far, everything looks like it's doing well. I plan to put in clean filter floss tomorrow and do water changes for both tanks within a week. My goal will be to not put my hands in the tank until at least Wednesday to give everything time to settle. 

[kimberbee]

New threads:

 

IM20 - Squishy Tank

 

 

IM25 - Flowering Lagoon 

 

[debbeach13]

WOW that was a lot of work. I wish you great success with the new /rebooted tanks. Already following the new threads.