If you're ok in a little overhead, especially if you have any original proofs of purchase, I've had a lot of good success with AI warranty support. I would almost guarantee if you sent them in they'd offer to let you swap for new ones for a fee. Then can sell em.
Bit of a rigamarole, but nice way to swap if you, or anyone acquiring, wants to start fresh.
I appreciate the advice, but I just don't have the bandwidth to devote to it.
@Chrism1330 picked up the lights today and I told him the story of the tank.
The basics:
- The tank is a 60"x60"x24" square, viewable on 3 sides, custom-built into the house.
- The sump is remote down in the basement and total system volume is about 650 gallons
- About 18 months ago I had a calcium crash due to an alk dosing issue. I ended up mostly losing corals I had been growing for about 10 years - heartbreaking.
- I kept the tank going, but just did the minimum.
- Because it was now livestock-poor (and getting overskimmed by my Bubbleking), it opened up the door for dinos to grow. That is a bad spiral to get into.
- I decided that I either need sh!t or get off the pot and I decided to give it one more go.
- I got some more fish to beef up the load and decided to get new lighting.
- I built something to hold them, but swapping 25lb+ of lighting mounted over a 25 square foot aquarium isn't easy, so the new contraption sat on our dining room table for, well, a while...
- My wife was not happy.
- I finally got around to a) finding a way to get them up myself, and b) actually doing it
- I got them up and quickly realized I need more
- Hence, more Orpheks on the way.
What broke me on this tank is that the dark coral structure on the left that is breaking the surface of the tank used to be a full-grown blue stylo that was grown from a nub. There is probably 5 square feet of semi-bleached reverse-superman monti that came from a single plug. I was on the fence, but, as I said, I'm giving it a go to try and get the tank to recover.
Also, for the first time in this tank, I loaded up with golden damsels and a few chromis (more to come) and they are schooling nicely, which is pretty cool.
