SEPTEMBER UPDATE - PART 1 - PICTURE HEAVY
Ok, so it has been a while since I did an update. Since my holiday at Coral Bay the tank has been running ok, but not as crisply as I would like.
One thing I have learned is that I can see when my Protein Skimmer is not working at its peak. Brown scum will appear at the top of the water indicating it is not breaking down solids.
I can also note that the Activated Carbon definitely has to be changed over regularly now.
So what I want to show you is my 'Overhaul' of the tank, which I am noting needs to be done about every 3-4 months (Last time was 26th May), so maybe 3 months rather than 4.
Let me show you behind the scenes... Yes.... Children overt your eyes...
I am going to show you my tank in need of a good clean, even with my regular 7 day WCs. Took about 1hr to do, I love Nanos!
As you can see, lots of algea, lots of coraline algae in the substrate, tank needs a good scrub.
Closeup of glass
I start to remove all the live rock and coral.
Here is Honey Bun helping me, she loves the tanks, will try to drink the water and will reaching to 'pad' the water too.
Yep, I kinda ignore the Anemones, they deflate probably don't enjoy it.
Here is the tank empty (Fish and Shrimp still in the tank though), I am in the middle of scrubbing the glass and clearing muck
Honey! Get out the way!
Once it's all scrubbed I ran my fingers through the substrate, trying to loosen it up and get a bit of debris out (next WC, I am thinking of doing a little bit of a vaccum).
Also trying to clear some of those weird clear worms ( I had quite a lot). Tank is actually now 'cleaned' I have re-placed all the corals and re-activated the filter.
So I went out for about 2 hours and on my way home I picked up a new clean up crew, a number of my snails had died, as well as a cool dark orange starfish.
You can see how the Plate Coral has emmitted it's defence mechanism against being touched and moved around(that will slowly clear).
This is how the Bubbler looks after 2 months. Need to replace it regularly. I now have 2 spare, and have kept this one as a 'backup-backup'
And here it is the next day, about 24hrs afterwards.
Hope you enjoyed that.
I took some more photos today, it's looking 100% better. I have to do that in another post.
More to come...
MLB
Edited by MrLeifBeaver, 15 September 2014 - 06:04 PM.