I didn't think the acid bath was necessary either until I pulled the rock from bleach and it was still covered. Acid is supposed to come first so you can expose the rock that you are trying to sterilize. That is probably why I had coraline growing after all of that. You will probably be okay.Hey @Mikeltee,
Tons of info to digest.
I'm really enjoying this chat with a fellow engineer. You tease me with more tech project ideas. I have two projects on the horizon while I wait for rocks to finish puking. One more single tank water changer to also automate the 3rd tank, and a dedicated single tank frozen food feeder using an mini table top Ice Cube Maker (Super easy design), and one day if time permits a 3D printed compact single Tank Alk tester based on the original protype and code, so anyone can build a copy.
Thanks for the Pod and Plankton project. I used to have a manadarin for years and lost it in a freak accident. He lives on in my Avatar Photo. I did cultivate pods the madarin using Tiger Pods and Live Phyto from Reef Nutrition. I only needed to buy the pods once to get started and had endless food for the Mandarin. I think I will want a Mandarin or two again to add to this new tank. I will certainly enjoy cultivating food again since as you say it's so simple, if you keep tools sterile. Once a brine shrimp got into my copepod farm somehow. I didn't notice. Then I noticed when he got huge and was eatting up my whole harvest like a combine machine.
So you had something worse than my Polyps causing you to bleach. I don't want to even mention the D word to jinx myself. Sorry to hear you had to go through that since I know that you probably suffered trying quite long before going the nuke rute. I assume you totally sterilized your system. I didn't so our restarts are a bit different with my live sump. I also skipped the rock acid bath thinking my rocks don't need it. Maybe I shouldn't have since that would have opened the pores in all the live rock. I'm just as impatient as you to get started. So are my fish to get back their home. Unfortunately we can't rush anything since the pain may be worse.
I'll be posting progress on the rocks here. You are a bit ahead of me, so if you learn something new come back to share with everyone. Maybe you have a tank thread I can follow. Either way works.
All the best.
Wally