miskairal's Reef

On the morning of Saturday the 21st I went down to feed the fish as I always do to discover the curtain on the front of the stand below the tank was sodden. Took me a while to realise it was water from the tank. On further investigation I discovered what I thought at the time was a worm hole burrowing between the front panel of glass and the bottom pane.

Shit. At the current drip rate I reckoned the tank would be empty within 24 hours. Obviously I couldn't leave it like that and I could see no way to repair it because the opening was on the bottom side against the stand. I spent all day emptying the tank. I divided the fish up putting the 2 clowns in the sump with the shrimp and the other 4 fish in the Q tank with Gollum. The rock and coral were spread out between both those tanks and bins. Luckily I have lots of small power heads that came with the tank which I put in the bins which I left in front of a window so they got a fair amount of light including monring sun.

I got the tank clean and dry and Tony managed to get some silicone pushed down into the hole with a lot spread round. Then the waiting game while it cured. The recommended time was 7 days but I refilled the tank on the 27th with natural sea water. I left it sit overnight and by next morning there were no signs of leaking so I started adding the rock back in along with the clowns and shrimp. I had decided to go dsb this time as previously I'd had a shallow coral sand bed but nitrates were climbing. I think that this time when I setup the rockwork and coral I had it great. It all came together and looked much nicer than it had previously.

With so many fish being thrown in the rather small Q tank so quickly I then developed ammonia issues which caused some problems with the fins of one PJ cardinal and the mouth of the other. Frequent water changes and melafix fixed that. I found it very hard to watch the growing tang being stuck in such a small tank and all the fish became quite timid. Gollum thought it was wonderful as there was rock and coral to play around and a lot more food going in.

From memory I think I moved the fish from the Q tank over to the repaired 6 footer on the 1st December. We had been away for a week's holiday from about the 20th-27th November and a friend had taken care of all our animals for us. The only animal I lost was a gonipora.