Long Week...

Started when my buddy dropped off his coral, etc off at my house to hold for a few days until he got his tank back up. You see, he took down his 30 gallon tank at his dorm to move back home. I was gonna hold his flowerpot, zoas, finger leather, toadstool, cardinal fish, mushrooms, anemone, snails, hermit crabs and fireshrimp until he set up his tank again at his place. Here's how it looked:




Long story short, within 4-5 days the hermit crabs killed but did not eat a very large turbo snail. So it began to rot, causing ammonia and nitrites to spike. The fouled water in turn caused the anemone to freak out, detach from the rock, and begin to die too. The water got cloudy, corals were closing and slimy, mushrooms shrank to the size of a dime, and nitrites and ammonia readings got bad quick.
I realized the big turbo snail was dead and probably the cause of it all, so I pulled that out immediately. We decided the dying anemone wasn't worth killing the rest of the corals, so we put that in the trash too.
I immediately put the fireshrimp in my tank, because the water parameters would have surely killed it. It's doing ok now.

With multiple (6-8) 3-4 gallon water changes over the next few days, the water eventually cleared up, and the parameters are back to normal in the 10 gallon. The mushrooms and corals are back to near normal, and I put the remaining snails in my tank. All the 4-5 hermit crabs and spotted cardinal are still doing ok too. No pics from the havoc, but here are pics of how the coral is doing now. Due to circumstances, I'm gonna be holding on to these corals much longer (months) than I thought.





Meanwhile, I picked up a purple pseudochromis a few days before Christmas. The damsels gave it their trademark "welcome", but now it's doing fine. It ate frozen (thawed) spirulina the first day, and the second day it was even eating flakes with the rest of 'em. The fireshrimp is still doing OK too.








I may have to put these corals in my DT if they are going to be here for awhile. I plan to dip them to make sure there are no unwanted hitch hikers or algaes getting into my tank.
Enjoy the pics!

 

Nice little dilemma you had going there. I love the purple pseudochromis, great looking fish. Are you sure that the anemone was dying? Luna

great pics BTW.

 

We were quite sure it was. My buddy even came over to check it out. He said he's never seen it do anything like that. It was detached from the rock, mouth wide open (I'm talking 3-4" open), and white stringy cottage cheese looking stuff coming out from the insides. It was looking kind of bleached out to begin with, but at the point where we decided to put it out of it's misery and save the corals, the tentacles weren't even tacky, and chances for recovery were slim to none. So, no regrets there.

 

oh yeah, it was on its way out for sure, sorry to hear. Luna

 

I'm getting ready to add the red zoas to my tank today.

 

What a drag. You handled it well though.