MitchM tank build

[MitchM]

Starting to add some inhabitants.
Snowflake clowns and ritteri anemone.



There are others, but I'm still learning camera settings

[monza]

Mitch
That is quite the tank and a long road to where it is now, looking good! Interesting read for sure. Good luck with it. Looking forward to updates.

Dave

PS. Did you get wet during the floods? Looks like high ground and with a steep road I hope not?

[MitchM]

Thanks Dave.

We're at the top of a hill here, so no risk of flooding. However, with the streams and bridges around here, the possible 4 routes out of our location were reduced to 1 with last years flooding.
All back to normal now.

[MitchM]

Draining my 600g saltwater tank today.

I had an incident where a 50% water change was required (at least) and I just wasn't set up for it. It's not feasible for me to be ready for a water change of that size in the future, so I've moved all the surviving inhabitants to a smaller 180g where an emergency water change is possible.

- so a lesson to be learned is that it's all good and fine to have a large tank, but it's vulnerable to a wipeout if you can't intervene in an emergency.

I'm going to be using the 600g as a planted freshwater now. I have a 320g fw planted that is doing very well. I can do large water changes to that overnight, if required. 300g in 24 hours is possible with my R/O unit.

The incident happened a few weeks ago. My anenome, Heteractis magnifica, got drawn into a new MP60. I didn't put the protective foam on the powerhead because I was letting all the newly stirred detritus be filtered out via the filter sock. The anemone was on the other side of the tank so I thought it was secure for the time being.
I lost a few fish and corals by the next morning.
My mistake, obviously. I feel terrible about it.

Amazingly, the blue tang I've had for almost 15 years now survived, with the help of some medication. "Big Blue" as we've named him, is one tough fish.

The anemone has survived, with about 30% less tentacles, but is eating and looks much better.

Hopefully others can learn from my mistake.