 State
of the Tank (cont.) |
| the leading
edge guys who always seem to have opinions
about everything? Well, I hadn't
heard a peep from them about this and
I thought this was odd. Especially
as it seemed like camp #1 (those having
problems) was growing a whole lot faster
than the other two. |
Anyway, when we
left for the beginning of summer vacation,
things seemed to be going pretty well.
I was beginning to actually feel confident
for a moment. Then Ray called to tell
me that my Heliopora had begun to develop 'sores'  .
Soon, a couple of my Montiporas were
showing signs of bleaching and it felt
like the whole uncanny cycle was beginning
all over again. NOW I was mad. Last
summer, I promised my daughter that
I would not spend the next one slaving
over the tank. Well, now it was the
next one and if I had to spend the
whole thing agonizing over the tank
from afar, it would've been just
as bad if not worse. For the first
time in years, I honestly felt like
just saying screw it; let the damn
thing bleach out and when I get back,
we'll either start all over or
make it a terrarium. Then someone started
a thread on Reef Central entitled, "Crystal
Sea Bio Assay Causes Death!!!" …or
something vague like that. What I read
was jaw dropping: It seemed that many
very experienced reefers who made the
switch were going through EXACTLY what
I was going through…and worse.
Some were dealing with severe 'sps' bleaching.
Some were losing |
|
| colonies
that they had for years! A few
said their entire tanks were affected; 'sps', 'lps',
and softies. They were also switching
back to IO in droves. And yet,
there were many others who had
started their tanks with CS that
had absolutely no problems whatsoever. |
| What
was starting to become clear was
that there was nothing wrong with
Crystal Sea itself. The problem,
it seemed, was mixing Crystal Sea
with Instant Ocean! Conjecture,
most certainly. But the circumstantial
evidence was overwhelming…lots
of bleached corals, dead clams,
and devastated reefers. Then when
Ray called and said the polyps
on my little orange Fungia hadn't
been out for a while, that was
all she wrote. Like the hoards
of other reefers who made the switch
and had problems, I immediately
dragged my unworthy cheatin' carcass
back to Instant Ocean. |
| According
to the reefers who had switched
back earlier, changing as much
water as you can as quickly as
you can, seemed to improve things
in a matter of days so that's
exactly what we did. By the second
25% water change (125g) all of
the new recessions had stopped.
By the fourth, the Fungia's
polyps were coming back out. The
plan was to do about 12-15 of these
quick (every three days), massive
water changes then start to back
off. I am happy to say that as
of this writing, we are nearing
water change number 10 and the
tank finally seems stable. Now
I'm convinced that the |
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