What a long, sad, tiring weekend.

[OCDP]

Well on Friday I made the decision to switch the crush coral substrate out and put in sand. So, I buy the sand, go home... get a few cups ready. Start to scoop it out, within two or three scoops the tank was instantly clouded with a green/yellowish color. The tank was completely clouded.. couldn't see through it at all. Anyways.. make a reallllyyy long story short, after many hours and many water changes.. I got it done. Took forever to aquascape, and I still am not pleased with the end result.. the tank becomes too cloudy when I start to mess about. There is debris everywhere.

That's not even the worst of it all.... I had bought an RBTA from golds when I got the sand.. and had to introduce it into a fairly messy, cloudy tank near the end of friday night... it's doing fairly well as of now though. I have lost my bicolor blenny . havent seen it since friday evening. searched the sand for him.. looked at the rocks ( i can only see so much ) ... and still nothing.. :sad: I think he's dead somewhere in the tank, or somehow hitched a ride into my cup when I was disposing of the substrate (highly doubtful, i inspected every cup full for hermits, snails ,etc... ) maybe i crushed him with a rock?? but no body to be found . It sucks , he was my favourite.

Then, after all this mess, my clarkii got super stressed... overnight the ammonia shot up from stirring up the gravel. So I immidiately did a 60-70% water change anad brought it back down.... thought all was well, she became more lively but still hid lots.. then it must have not been able to handle the stress, and it died overnight... (saturday night)... so now I am out a bicolor blenny and my clarkii. my watchman goby is still alive.

missing my halloween hermit... but hes in the tank somewhere.

let me tell you, i never even imagined this being such a pain in the butt.. it was so much work (and only a 20g tank!!) ..

so now I am skimming, and running an aquaclear 150 HOB with carbon and a sponge. I bought a seio powerhead at golds too.. but I have it off right now so the debris settles, and I can siphon more out later this afternoon.

im sure glad its all done with now, and only have the small touch ups and cleanups to do.. no more frustration. the new white sand looks so good in the tank already, love it.

ill take some shots maybe this evening.
any suggestions welcome, advice, etc...

sorry for the rambel.. but it was such a weird stressful weekend with the tank.

[Beverly]

Sounds terribly stressful :sad: Sorry for your losses :cry:

Whenever we do anything major in any of our tanks, we set up temporary quarters for fish, inverts and corals, as well as a pail with tankwater for the LR. That way if there are problems with the work we are doing, at least the loss of life is minimal.

[Griffin]

I had lost a bicolor blenny once when re-aquascaping and it turned out i taken the rock he was hiding in and blocked his exit when i put it back in - good thing i knew which rock was his normal home or he would have been dead for sure. Maybe check a few to see if he is blocked in. :neutral:

cheers
Rich

[sumpfinfishe]

Sorry for the loss, sounds like you didn't pre-rinse your sand long enough!
When adding new substrate to a system you should always pre-rinse until the rinse water runs clear which from my experience usually takes about 45min to an hour. If it was live sand you could have also added the sand to the bottom of the tank via a hose, this would reduce a lot of the clouding.

[albert_dao]

Ouch, how is everything now?

[blood_hound]

Sorry for the lost. Well that happen to me before that is why I just live my tanks alone rarely putting my hand in it only if I need to do something major like removing corals for fragging, putting it back and when Im introducing new inhabitant for the tank.

[OCDP]

everything is ok now. the watchman goby is still alive.. there's no way there is ammonia in the tank, i have changed out so much water its madness i tell you. the RBTA i just bought on friday is doing good, it moved near the back of the tank a bit, but still looking good .

i didnt run my skimmer this morning because the RBTA was getting close to the intake , dont want to even chance it. so today im running the HOB with carbon , and that's it. (and the powerhead)

albert, really glad I got that seio powerhead, otherwise I would have been so screwed this weekend.. yikes. Now I just need to restock my tank... this time. TRUE PERCS. and of course albert, you guys had a nice batch of them in when I had my clarkii.. bahh .

(oh yeah, didn't pre-rinse my sand, because it was already in the LFS tank.. soo yeah) and the tank didnt cloud from the sand.. it clouded from removing the CC

[SJSobczyk]

Sorry to hear about the loss. I am doing the same with my 75 gallon right now, switching from CC to argonite sugar sized sand. I only am doing half the tank at a time so it minimalizes spikes. I rinsed my sand in a 5 gallon bucket for 30-45 minutes constantly sturring it with my hand. Then i took a strainer and removed the CC and used ziplock bags to place the new sand in the tank. Worked like wonders! I had complete cloudiness for about 3 hours then it went away. I place some of the old CC in old pantyhose and stuck it on top of the new sand. This way the beneficial bacteria could transfer over. Now i am going to wait probably about 2 weeks and then change the other half. What a painstaking process but worth it. Hopefully all goes well for you and keep us informed!

SJS