Well, After the Pellet Disaster....

The disaster is over and my tank is stable again, with major differences now. That incident seemed to spark a chain reaction of crappy events. My jawfish has been headed downhill for a while as he was pretty large and old so I think the stress of everything pushed him over the edge, he died yesterday morning. I found murdered crab bits all over, saw the Hawkfish killing them in record numbers and I saw the goby that I added from the other day actually trying to come out and swim, however right before my eyes the Hawkfish and Coral Beauty tag teamed him and murdered him. This was the last straw for those two so I took all of the rock out and nabbed them and took them to the LFS to bother someone else. Lastly I woke up this morning with my Powder Brown Tang nowhere in sight. I looked behind the tank and sure enough there he was stiff as a board. I was like "Mother of God..."

It sucks but I've learned some things along the way about how I really would have liked to stock the tank and this gives me a semi clean slate. A lot of those were impulse buys and I have learned not to do that anymore and stick to the plan. The Foxface and Clown are doing just fine which is good cause if I had to do it all over again those two are probably the only ones besides the Jawfish and Goby that died I'd get again. I'm going to bide my time, grow some pretty macro's in there from Reef Cleaners, get a UV sterilizer, upgrade the lights, stock some inverts that I like, then try my hand at some frags and go coral. From here on out I'm just going to keep a few fish in there like a clown goby, smaller wrasse and a couple of chromis. I think I'll have a happier prettier tank. In the end, I'm a lot less stressed than I was and I'll live to fight on. Wish me luck

Any suggestions on coral later on down the road that would be easier for a coral-newb are appreciated. I currently have 4x 54w T5 HO over this 48" long 100g and am looking to get an extra fixture to compliment these but I don't know when I'll be able to afford it. The tank is about 24" deep so I was thinking about adding some towards the top of the rocks (top 10" of the tank) if they needed higher light.

 

Sorry about all of your troubles, your outlook is fantastic, keep it up. You have a great plan, if you can get two more bulbs over the tank then you will be able to keep whatever you like in the tank. Remember to place them by their needs.

 

Good to hear your staying with it and building upon what you have started...enjoy the "fresh" start...

 

i remember reading about the pellet disaster... thinking OMG.

Your nitrates/phosphates and all that remain stableish after all that?

Sorry about the losses. Way to go on keeping your chin up.

 

good to hear it wasnt a complete disaster bud! Id stick to some mushrooms and zoa/palys for now, maybe xenias since they are all lower light corals

 

Thanks for the encouragement folks

Yeah all of the nutrients appear to have stayed about the same. I swapped out the phos-zorb and added extra biochem-zorb to help out with things. My nitrates are always around 20 or 30 so I'm throwing some more aggressive macros in there like grape caulerpa. I have Halimeda and Chaeto in there but those just seem to keep the nitrates from rising not from dropping. Need to get those nitrates down before I get corals so thats what I'm concentrating my fire on right now.

The clown is sitting at the surface acting funny and breathing fast and the foxface is swimming normally. I don't know why, I checked Nitrites and Ammonia and all are 0. I don't know if maybe me disturbing the sand as much as I did realeased some toxins into the water or something that lowers oxygen. Perhaps my test kit is bad, but its only a few months old. If so could the bacteria on my rocks have died when I took them out for about 10 minutes to catch those fish?