My sad tank

[coolhandgoose]

Argh stupid peppermint shrimp is back in the overflow!

[fishytime]

you could also reduce your photo period......or do a complete "lights" out on the tank for up to three days, to get better results..... lots of things to try but I would bet that just being a little more mindful about how much you feed and rinsing the food, coupled with a low tds will likely do the trick for ya

[coolhandgoose]

Just did another 16 gal water change this morning and sucked out all the brown again.

I think I might do like 8 gallon water changes every other day now just to keep siphoning the sand.

I caught that bastard shrimp again and put some 5mm screening around my overflow to hopefully prevent him from going back in the overflow.

Also my tank temp was a little low around 76. I cleaned the heater and moved it to the sump and turned it up a couple of degrees to hopefully get it back to the 78 79 range.

[coolhandgoose]

I fed my frogspawn some acan plus and the feeder tentacles came out so that's a good sign. It's still not inflating like it should though.

[coolhandgoose]

I checked my phosphates today with my new Hanna checker and it showed .08.

The diatoms appear to have subsided from the main display, but the sump is really brown where the scrubber is. The biggest thing now is the cyano in the DT. I'm still waiting for a part for my koralia 1050, so just have 2 and a 3 in there right now. I'm going to add gfo to hopefully reduce the phosphates so the cyano stops.

The scrubber I need to adjust today since it has way too much flow, so I'll be putting a restrictor in the line.

I think the corals are showing signs of recovery but it may take a long time for them to bounce back completely. My frogspawn was starting to bleach out but it's back now. I also removed the carbon.

[coolhandgoose]

Just to give an update.

A couple weeks ago I moved most of my corals over to Eli's place (caco3reef) for safe keeping and bought a new ro filter, the Tds coming out of the old one was 116, after the new ro it was down to about 14, the di resin took care of the rest.

Armed with all brand new water I began the process of draining and moving my tank.

I took out all the sand and could not find my sand sifting starfish, which leads me to the conclusion that it died and probably released a wicked toxin that started the major decline of my tank.

The tank is up and running with no sand and brand new water and already the green palys which were brown before are starting to color back up. I ditched the scrubber and the skimmer is running again.

Lessons learned: maintain the rodi filter, never buy a sand sifting star fish again!

[troni]

ive never used a scrubber but have been interested in trying. is it a vertical one? and did it have any growth on it?