High Tide Aquatics

200g reboot

treylane

treylane

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Between work and other hobbies, my tank has been in maintenance mode for awhile now. Feeding the fish, refilling chems, and the occasional water changes has actually worked pretty well for this primarily-softies setup - all the fish and corals are healthy and growing.

But the majano population has also been growing... and growing... and once they reach a certain point, occasional spot treatment isn't enough to keep them at bay. I've reached a make-or-break point, where I don't think I can stay on top of the treatment of the current plague enough to really knock them back.

The plan from here is to replace as much of the rock and sand as possible, and spot-treat any majanos that sneak through the transition. I don't have the time or space to run a full temporary setup, so this reboot has to happen in-place. To minimize the risk to the existing fish and corals I'll be doing this 1/3 of the tank at a time, with each phase a few weeks apart.
 
Phase 1 was yesterday! Here's some 'before' snapshots. The tank is a peninsula viewable from 3 sides.

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An in-progress shot:

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It took alllll afternoon to pull out rocks, chisel the corals off, siphon out the sand, wait for the water to clear a bit, add sand, wait for the water to clear a bit, add some base rock, and drop the corals back in.

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That was the view of the tank right before calling it a night last night. All the fish were behaving relatively normally considering the construction being done on their home, and most of the corals looked normal with polyps out as well.

The previous black beach sand is being replaced with bahamas oolite. I liked the black sand a lot, but it's been awhile since I've had white sand, just trying something different. The new rock is plain BRC base rock.

Aquascaping will have to wait another day or two as it was impossible to see what was going on in there most of the day.
 
My sympathies on the Majanos, since I am rebooting my tank as well, just for that reason.

I would consider it unlikely that you get all of them, since I have them in plumbing, skimmer, and so on.
But if you get them below "critical mass" they are manageable, so what you are doing does make sense.
I had them for years before they got out of control.

Hope it all goes well !!!

Keep an eye on that ammonia, since you removed a lot of the bio filter, plus stirred up a ton of detritus.
 
wellll it took longer than I'd planned, but I finished the replace-rock-and-sand project sometime in early Dec. The fish seem a lot bolder now with less rock in the tank, and I'm going to try to keep it a bit more open than it was. I still need to get all the corals glued back to the aquascape, but they're happy enough hanging out on the sand bed at the moment.

I've successfully wiped out the halimeda and stinging black sponges that were in the tank, but there are still some little spots of xenia, and majanos - I've been kalk'ing regularly, but this will be an ongoing maintenance issue.

Some quick snapshots --
 

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Looks good!
Key is to keep those remaining Majanos below "critical mass" so they don't explode in number again.

You might consider an Aptasia eating filefish.
I had one, and it did eat Majanos well. But it could not possibly keep up with the huge number.
With only a few, it would likely do well.
That is my plan if any start to show up again.
 
Alexx said:
so the problem that you had is that everything was to mixed in together ? Or what issues you had?
Click to expand...

Alex, there are some little critters that are not that "well" liked in the hobby as they can overrun a system quickly; among these, majano anemones, aiptasia/glass anemones, vermetid snails and at some point green star polyps GSP, xenia, anthelia.
 
Looks well built!

I don't understand the baffle system in the middle though.
The position of the screen at bottom, and it looks like there is a hole at the bottom of the upward baffle.
Oh well, probably be obvious once water is in it.
 
Yeah, 20g ato reservoir on the right.

As for the baffle system... first part with the wavy pattern is adjustable - in the pic it's at the furthest-down position so it doesn't knock around in transport.
It'll be raised up to some level that works well with the skimmer, so water will flow over that and then down through the hole in the 2nd wall to the return section.
 
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