Tank problems

[reeferaddict]

Thread moved to comedian section.

[albert_dao]

My tank doesn't have any issues... ALBERT FTW!

[christyf5]

Well an update for those of you that are interested (plus I'm really bored today so prepare yourselves for some interesting posts )


So things I've done to help remedy the problem:

moving the powerheads: I couldn't really move them to different locations in the tank due to the position of my rocks and stuff (dead spots in the back forty). After assessing the tank situation and where I could possibly put them and all, I decided that the location I had already selected would actually benefit the tank best for detritus movement to places where I could access it as well as creating as few "dead spots" as possible. I did figure that moving them down in the water column might help though, theres no point in generating water circulation high up in the water column where there is nobody to enjoy is (except for the fish maybe). This seems to be doing a better job for both water movement (wavy polyps) and detritus movement. Funny how at one point I thought one tunze 6060 would be too much for my tank, now I have 2 and am thinking maybe I need one more?

30 gallon water change x2: I did my second 30 gallon water change last Thursday ( a big deal for me, thats alot of water to lug from the loo ya know ). I usually do a 15 gallon weekly water change due to the huge amount of detritus that builds up on the bottom of the tank (which I discovered is mostly nori poop). Anyway, the larger water changes seem to have had a huge effect on my tank as previously I had some SPS corals that hadn't had their polyps out in months and one coral had NEVER had its polyps out (during the day anyway) and now seems happy. Either that or its just toying with me and polyps out for this certain coral means imminent death or something lame like that. Anyway, this doesn't make me want to do 30 gallon water changes every week because quite frankly I don't think my back or wallet would appreciate it. However it does make me think there was/is *something* in the water, although I'm still not sure what or how it got in there.

temperature reduction: heck! I've got a chiller, why not use it to its fullest potential?? While i had the chiller set for 78 degrees, it usually stayed around 80. Then looking at my little coralife digital thermometer I noticed the tank was actually 82.5. I mean, I could be happy with that, but reeferaddict pointed out that I might want to lower the temperature. So I buggered around with it until the temperatures mostly match the digital thermometer (I still don't quite understand why they don't even though they're set to match but whatever) anyway, the temp is about 78.5-79.5 for now vs. 82.5 max before.

Anyway, so as usual, my tank has problems and I fix a whole bunch of things at once so I never know what the problem actually was. To tell you the truth I don't really care, as long as its fixed, which I'm not really sure it is, but the tank looks better and there isn't a whole lot more STN going on. Maybe its super slowed now. Like SSTN.

[muck]

Hopefully you got it beat now Christy. My tank seems to have stabalized now as well. I lost 2 large colonies and a few smaller frags.
Im going with the theory that I somehow had a suicidal coral cult spring up in my tank.

[christyf5]

Maybe they were recruiting members worldwide and managed to get their message out to my tank. I wondered what all those little empty cups of kool-aid in the tank were all about

[Delphinus]

Originally Posted by christyf5

Anyway, so as usual, my tank has problems and I fix a whole bunch of things at once so I never know what the problem actually was. To tell you the truth I don't really care, as long as its fixed, which I'm not really sure it is, but the tank looks better and there isn't a whole lot more STN going on. Maybe its super slowed now. Like SSTN.

To tell you the truth, I think that *unless* the corals are growing like crazy, then they are receding, i.e., STN or SSTN is always there anyhow, you just want to make sure you grow more than you lose. Basically, there's no such thing as "stasis" (well, there is, it's just also known as "death"). But yeah, either things are moving this way (imagine me moving my hand to the left) or they are moving this way (imagine me moving my hand to the right). Basically, you want them growing like crazy. If they're not growing, then look out!!