On to my story:
Back in Nov. I shut my wet/dry off, completely. This includes the skimmer. Cleaned the whole thing and set it aside. Didn't slowly take the bio balls out or anything. This whole time of 18 days I didn't even drip Kalkwasser.
This goes against everything that I have told people not to do. This is also a 90 gal tank, 100 pounds LR and 2 inch sand bed.
I ran my tank with two power heads, MJ 1200's.
I did not suffer any major ammonia spikes, nor nitrites. Water never clouded up. got less clear and what I would call somewhat hazy, but no ammonia clouds.
There was some more algea growth, a quarter size spot of cyno appeared and grew to about 4 inches across, what also looked like green cyno showed up across the front of the tank for a week but began to dissipate. I watched daily as the scum or oil slick grew on top of the water colum. Nitrates started to exceed the 20 ppm mark. I added new actinic lights as well.
The corals response to all this was mixed.
I have a leather coral that once was the size of my fist, but for over a year has been no larger than the top of a nose spray bottle or thumb if you will. For what ever reason it started to extend, could be the lights who knows?
Frogspawn acted the same I believe but would like to think it may have been reaching a bit more, maybe not.
Another sarch. leather was fully extended and was taking on a bit more color to its polyps, it seemed to have a bit more yellow to its stalks.
Mushrooms didn't mind what was happening at all.
Two of my BTA's were on the move though, don't think they liked the building DOC's in the water. Two of the others seemed to become a bit more bulbous at the tips and a bit more colorfull and greener.
Fish were acting as hungry and normal as ever.
Snails however were a bit sluggish and slow (for snails).
After the 18th day I plugged everything back in and am monitoring it day by day to see if any spikes happen.
So far after one day everthing seems happy, oxygen levels are back up and the tank does look cleaner. All snails were counted and on the glass, none on the rocks. Haven't been able to count all the hermits. Emerald crabs are still busy on the rocks. Nothing out of the ordinary.
I never checked the ph
Go figure :thinking:
Thomas
