After a great summer its time to focus on the tank more. I did manage to keep up with maintenance and bi weekly water changes but did have a few losses over the summer. I lost my Yellow tang, tomato clown and a PJ cardinal. Unfortunately they ended up buried in the rock work and I have not been able to get them out. I am assuming the lobster and pistol shrimp have been eating well. SO of course my nitrates went up and I started getting some hair algae. Working on controlling that with more frequent water changes and phos ban changes. My biggest concern right now is I have lost a few corals. Two very nice chalices being the hardest to take. They started to recede before any of the other issues started to occur. So possibly the fish died due to whatever had affected the chalices. Oddly some of the other LPS and SPS are thriving so its a bit confusing to me what may be going on. I was thinking about taking out all of the rock and rinsing it in salt water, at the same time I would do a serious vacuum of the surface of the sand bed. I'm just concerned that all of this movement may stir up too much detritus and nasties causing the tank to crash. The question is... should I attempt the total tank clean up? Or just continue with frequent media and water changes and vacuum out only what I can reach?
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Time to focus a little harder on the tank
- Thread starter joeb558
- Start date
Cleaning the sand bed is an important part of maintanence and you should do it. Don't do the whole sandbed at once, just do pieces of it say like 10-20% at a time and then do a water change right after. This way you are not stirring up too much stuff and doing the water change will help. Keep some extra water around just in case and you should be good.
Stick to your normal maintanence routine, sound like you have a good one going. As far as the fish losses go, was it disease, aggression?
Stick to your normal maintanence routine, sound like you have a good one going. As far as the fish losses go, was it disease, aggression?
Thank you for the reply. There was no visible sign of disease on the fish and no real aggression. Half of the sand bed is either covered by rock or unaccessible due to the rock preventing me from accessing those bare sand areas. IF I have to move the rock I will need to take a lot of it out and corals as well.
I agree with Mike on all of his points. Do it slow and try to disturb as little of the sand as possible.
Although, if this is a current tank shot, most everything looks pretty healthy to me. You could have 2 of the same type of coral in the tank and one thrive while the other dies. It could simply just be too much/too little light or too much/not enough water flow to keep one of them happy... while the water parameters themselves are adequate for them both.
It's really hard to pinpoint a problem when it's not a total tank decline. But, it's usually (IMO) due to placement rather than a water quality problem.
But, if you lost a few fish then a good (careful) cleaning is probably warranted anyway, so go ahead with that, followed by a big water change.
Good Luck and hope everything works out.
Although, if this is a current tank shot, most everything looks pretty healthy to me. You could have 2 of the same type of coral in the tank and one thrive while the other dies. It could simply just be too much/too little light or too much/not enough water flow to keep one of them happy... while the water parameters themselves are adequate for them both.
It's really hard to pinpoint a problem when it's not a total tank decline. But, it's usually (IMO) due to placement rather than a water quality problem.
But, if you lost a few fish then a good (careful) cleaning is probably warranted anyway, so go ahead with that, followed by a big water change.
Good Luck and hope everything works out.
Thank you both for the reply. My problem is if I move some of the rock I may be forced to move most if not all because of the way I have it stacked. I surely need to simplify my rock work and use less of it. I fear a crash if I upset too much of the sand bed but it could be unavoidable. I will do my best to take it slow and keep the disturbance to a minimum. I will let you all know how it goes once I get up the ambition to do this.
Everything looks really healthy, so I wouldn't want to do a major cleaning. I would just fan the water above the accessible areas of sand and blow off the rocks with a turkey baster or small power head and then do a water change.
For sand bed maintenance I've always used tiger tail cucumbers. They'll eat the detritus off the sand in the inaccessible areas and excrete clean sand.
For sand bed maintenance I've always used tiger tail cucumbers. They'll eat the detritus off the sand in the inaccessible areas and excrete clean sand.
That picture is a few months old. I do have some coral die off now. I lost half of the lobo, some stalks on the frogspawn and some other decline as well. Thats what is prompting me to take action. I did have a few fish die in the last month as well. I am unable to reach them for removal. Thinking the lobster and pistol shrimp made a meal of them. I will look into the tiger tails. Where did you pick them up? I should mention that I am also battling hair algae now. Probably due to the rise is nitrates and phosphates.
I removed some rock. Cleaned the sand bed. About 1/3 and did a water changed. I moved a lot of rocks and corals around so I did a second water change two days later. All seems well and corals are springing back to life. Thanks to all for your help. Now I need to get rid of some nuisance palys. I may just remove the rock most affected.