ALMOST impossible

wrap your minds around this one. my grandma was given a tank by a neighbor who was moving out of state, and couldnt bring it with.
This 75 gal tank has 65-70lbs of lr, 9 fish all damsel related. soft corals and hard corals galore. snails and hermits.
now heres the kicker.
this tank has NO filters, NO skimmer. The lighting is a drop down shop lamp. the water filled to top off evaperation always tap water, NO salt. the only thing inside this tank was two powerheads one dead the other face down in the sand.
i tested the ph, sp, amonia, nitrites, about it all. this tank is so out of wack you just drop your jaw in disbelief. but its true. this tank survives like any we work out butts off to gain.
HOW?

 

Please someone answer this one. It gots me completely stumped

 

My guess:adaptation. The animals adapted. I had a 100 gallon tank before with 75 gallons water left, 1.3 sg, LR was around 50lbs and sand bed was 2". Nitrate close to 100 ppm, ph was 7.8-8.0 and only one powerhead was working and yet a 2 foot eel was kept alive and well for over 3 months. Top off was well water. I don't know why it survived that long. My guess is that it adapted.
Eel is now in my sump and it wanders from chamber to chamber but never jumps out. Sump is open with no covers.
I am guessing still as to why....

 

The damsels I can see adapting. They are hardy. But what kind of corals are you talking about? Post the test results too .. love to see them.

 

I have a friend who used to have a saltwater tank. With far too many fish in it too. He told me he never had trouble because he cleaned it so well...

By what he meant that once a month he took everything out, cleaned the decorations (under running water; he had no live rock or stuff like that), washed out the gravel (put it in a bucket and rinsed it...), washed the filter and made new water. with tap water of course. In that time the fish were in a bucket.
he was really proud that he took so good care of his fish ...
I tried to explain what he's doing, but he was kinda fixed about his ideas well, he doesn't have any fish anymore so I gave up...

 

she has the mushroom corals that open up like neon flowers. and ones that look like trees/colliflower sprouts. with what i had
ph 7.4
amonia 1.5
gravity .8
im not sure right now nitrites 1.5 ppm

 

Adaptation happens over many generations, acclimation is what individuals do. It is concevable that the organisms were acclimated to these stresses. But very incocevable that they had produced enough generations in the tank to have produced individuals adapted to those stresses.

 

i think we are going to conceive every possible answer, BUT, this is a hard one. her tank isnt perfect she has to wipe the algea from the glass often. the sand bed is pretty dirty. but the growth and the health of this tank is going to cause some debates. and im all ears. keep the ideas coming. the is pretty interesting

 

Post some pics!

 

The thing is, that you just can't put the tank to it's correct parameters either. If all the fish and coral were able to go one way, it would probably stress them to much to bring them back. ;D