I've been neglecting my tank and have had a few equipment failures over the last year that nuked some very large colonies. While I still have surviving corals, the dead skeletons take up too much space and are impossible to remove and my fish have very little room to swim. I also had a vermited snail problem that got out of hand so I am hoping to not introduce them into the tank again so that means new rock and new plumbing. I think its time for a full on reset hoping to take all the knowledge from when I started this hobby 6 years ago and make this process as streamlined as best as I can.
Here are some pics of my tank at its best.
My plan of attack goes as follows:
- Move existing rock and fish into 150gal rubbermaid tank.
- Drain tank and sump, scrub everything and dry.
- Remove overflow to deep clean, discard plumbing.
- Redo all plumbing, Salvaging expensive gatevalves and such.
- Clean all pumps, wavemakers and equipment
- Redo Aquascape with brand new marco rock ( Not reusing old rock due to vermited snails)
- Fill tank up to top of aquascape with 20ppt saltwater crank the heat up to 85 degrees
- Leave small wavemaker on just to circulate the water a bit to keep heated.
- Dump in a bottle of bacteria over aquascape and dose with 3ppm ammonium chloride
- Monitor with Seneye until Ammonia is gone, Wait a 4 days until nitrates show, redose ammonium chloride to 2ppm and wait 2 more days.
- Fill up rest of the tank with 35ppt water and turn down heaters to 77F and leave the system run for a week
- introduce my fish starting with the small ones like damsels and dwarf angels then least aggressive to most aggressive (Powder blue Tang, Sohal Tang Black Storm Clowns last)
- Start dosing phosphate and Nitrates to try and avoid dinos. I had a huge dino problem for months and tried everything and nothing worked until I accidently overdosed phosphate until it was off the charts ( Talking 0.7ppb) and they went away within a few days. So I'm going to keep dosing to try and keep phosphate at 0.1 or higher until the rock soaks it in.
I won't be adding corals in until my rocks are a deep brown so it will be a fowlr for at least 6 months.
Is there anything I missed ? I would like some imput
Thanks in advance.
Here are some pics of my tank at its best.
My plan of attack goes as follows:
- Move existing rock and fish into 150gal rubbermaid tank.
- Drain tank and sump, scrub everything and dry.
- Remove overflow to deep clean, discard plumbing.
- Redo all plumbing, Salvaging expensive gatevalves and such.
- Clean all pumps, wavemakers and equipment
- Redo Aquascape with brand new marco rock ( Not reusing old rock due to vermited snails)
- Fill tank up to top of aquascape with 20ppt saltwater crank the heat up to 85 degrees
- Leave small wavemaker on just to circulate the water a bit to keep heated.
- Dump in a bottle of bacteria over aquascape and dose with 3ppm ammonium chloride
- Monitor with Seneye until Ammonia is gone, Wait a 4 days until nitrates show, redose ammonium chloride to 2ppm and wait 2 more days.
- Fill up rest of the tank with 35ppt water and turn down heaters to 77F and leave the system run for a week
- introduce my fish starting with the small ones like damsels and dwarf angels then least aggressive to most aggressive (Powder blue Tang, Sohal Tang Black Storm Clowns last)
- Start dosing phosphate and Nitrates to try and avoid dinos. I had a huge dino problem for months and tried everything and nothing worked until I accidently overdosed phosphate until it was off the charts ( Talking 0.7ppb) and they went away within a few days. So I'm going to keep dosing to try and keep phosphate at 0.1 or higher until the rock soaks it in.
I won't be adding corals in until my rocks are a deep brown so it will be a fowlr for at least 6 months.
Is there anything I missed ? I would like some imput
Thanks in advance.
