Getting back on track

[ACBlinky]

I have a confession -- after we moved house, I fell off the maintenance wagon. I have a rotator cuff injury, as well as problems with my wrists, and pain & weakness have made me shy away from doing water changes for too long. I kept promising myself I'd get around to it, and another week would go by... then another month... pretty soon it had been five months since the last water change. Fiddling with the ATO and return pump caused an issue with the salinity -- through sheer dumbness, I caused it to go down to about 1.019. I couldn't figure out why things seemed to be going downhill, until I tested SG and thought about how long it had been since I last changed any water. I started seeing signs of danger -- corals not growing, or not thriving, patches of algae, filter feeder population increasing dramatically... I figured if I didn't get off my butt and do something, the tank would really start to look lousy, or it might even crash! O.o

So when I finished beating myself up, I got down to business. I took some strong painkillers, pulled out the buckets and hoses, and made sure I did everything while my hubby was home in case I needed help.

I started with some heavy-duty algae removal -- bubble and halimeda macroalgae by hand, microalgae on the glass with a razor blade. Then I cleaned out the sump, which was a mess -- I siphoned out detritus, turned the chaeto over and harvested about half its volume, and scraped algae from the glass. By this point, the tank was an opaque mess, so I put the diatom filter on while I continued cleaning, turkey basting every once in a while to get the settled detritus back up into the water column where it could be filtered out. I removed the pumps and soaked them in vinegar, brushed the algae and dirt away, and put them back into the tank. I cleaned out the skimmer -- it was clogged, and after being cleaned it suddenly worked much better, of course!

Then I repeated this procedure on my 30g, and 21g. By the end of the afternoon, I was exhausted and still hadn't changed any water. I had some mixed up, so I pressed on -- I knew if I stopped, I wouldn't have the energy to finish the job the next day.

I did a 20% change (20g, on a 120g system -- I figure the actual water volume is around 100g), raising the SG a little, and filled the topoff container with SW so the SG would continue to go up gradually over the next few days.

I did similar-sized water changes on the other two tanks, and by the time I cleaned up I had been working for about four hours. I learned my lesson -- I won't be leaving things like this again, it was horrible doing everything all at once like this.

Today, I did another 20% water change, and I'm noticing that the corals seem to be improving -- they seemed to be stalled, not really growing at all, and suddenly I'm noticing a little growth spurt. Maybe last week's change gave them back some nutrients that they had used up, or the low SG was harming them even though they weren't really showing it.

I just wanted to post and tell anyone who has fallen off the wagon that I know how easy it is to put things off, but the longer you procrastinate, the harder it is to get started again. I think it will take a few more large water changes to repair the damage I did by waiting so long, and even though I was putting it off because I'm injured, in the end it would have been less painful for me to have done the work a bit at a time, rather than waiting until I had to do it all at once.

[Ritten]

Sounds like you had reason to put it off. Hope your feeling better.

[ACBlinky]

Thanks Ritten, that's nice of you to say Honestly, it's no excuse. If I'm sick and can't walk my dog, I ask my husband to take him out. If I'm tired but the cat needs to be fed, I feed him or ask someone else to take care of him. Fish live in a box, completely dependent on their owner, and it was irresponsible of me to let things slide -- I wanted to post and hopefully encourage anyone in the same situation to take care of things sooner than I did

[BangkokMatt]

"Forgive me father for I...." - Hope you recover soon AC. The tank should get back to normal now, with the care I know you will give it. How is that fish doing which you bought a while back (I tried to help with the id but can't even remember what it was)

[Leosdad]

I wouldn't be too hard on yourself. Especially with the health issues and all, but it does help to do a little bit at a time when things seem piled up around us.

I tend to drag my water changes out (going 3 weeks instead of every week) so I end up doing larger water changes when I miss a few weeks.

My biggest weakness is cleaning the coraline off the glass down at the sand bed. My tank is 36" deep, and I haven't found a scraper yet, other than the Kent (acrylic) that gets it off. It is a long tedius task getting down there and being careful not to pick up sand while scraping, so I tend to procrastinate on that part of tank husbandry. I SEE IT EVERYDAY AND IT BUGS ME.