First a little background info...
My 29 gallon tank has been set up for roughly a year and a half now. I'm an engineering student and attend college two hours away from home. Rather than take down my home tank, I opted to simplify it as much as possible and let my mother maintain it. My first year at school went okay but there were many aspects of my setup that I knew I had to change. On top of that, due to some learning curve type mistakes on my mother's part, the tank had a serious cyano problem.
The following is a documentation of how I took my tank down and restarted it using a more thought out and efficient approach. I consider my current 29 gallon tank a truly efficient and effective SPS environment and for those of you about to start a 29, I highly suggest you study the set up I used.
Preparation:
I started the whole ordeal by filling up a 20 gallon long temporary holding tank with fresh saltwater and filling an alternate 20 gallon reservoir with even more new saltwater. I then began to remove the most easily accesable rocks from the 29 gallon tank and placed them into the 20 long.
Taking the tank down:
Once the rocks were in the 20 long I thoroughly rinsed them down to remove any kind of cyano remains.
The corals were left in the 29 gallon tank on the sand bed. I allowed the 20 long to settle for a day and a half or so and then moved the corals from the 29 into the 20 long. I drip acclimated all livestock for several hours. Below are some pictures showing the temporary 20 long housing tank:
Here I was trying to get a reluctant brittle star out of a rock
Re-Building the 29
I knew I wanted a drilled tank this time but there are no commonly available glass 29 gallon tanks with an installed overflow. I had an All-Glass 29 gallon tank drilled and then installed my own overflow:
Next step was to build a sump:
(next post)
My 29 gallon tank has been set up for roughly a year and a half now. I'm an engineering student and attend college two hours away from home. Rather than take down my home tank, I opted to simplify it as much as possible and let my mother maintain it. My first year at school went okay but there were many aspects of my setup that I knew I had to change. On top of that, due to some learning curve type mistakes on my mother's part, the tank had a serious cyano problem.
The following is a documentation of how I took my tank down and restarted it using a more thought out and efficient approach. I consider my current 29 gallon tank a truly efficient and effective SPS environment and for those of you about to start a 29, I highly suggest you study the set up I used.
Preparation:
I started the whole ordeal by filling up a 20 gallon long temporary holding tank with fresh saltwater and filling an alternate 20 gallon reservoir with even more new saltwater. I then began to remove the most easily accesable rocks from the 29 gallon tank and placed them into the 20 long.
Taking the tank down:
Once the rocks were in the 20 long I thoroughly rinsed them down to remove any kind of cyano remains.
The corals were left in the 29 gallon tank on the sand bed. I allowed the 20 long to settle for a day and a half or so and then moved the corals from the 29 into the 20 long. I drip acclimated all livestock for several hours. Below are some pictures showing the temporary 20 long housing tank:
Here I was trying to get a reluctant brittle star out of a rock
Re-Building the 29
I knew I wanted a drilled tank this time but there are no commonly available glass 29 gallon tanks with an installed overflow. I had an All-Glass 29 gallon tank drilled and then installed my own overflow:
Next step was to build a sump:
(next post)
