Wow a lot has happened with my contest tank in the last month. As some of you know, I had a kalk overdose in both of my tanks. I spent all of my efforts trying to save my 90 gallon tank, since it obviously has tons more animals in it. My efforts were somewhat successful, and I think I only lost about 20% of my livestock... Considering how bad things could have been, I'm relieved that's all I lost.
During that time, I was doing 50% water changes of the entire system (140 gallons total) every day or every other day, and my 10 gallon contest tank got severely neglected. I was continuing to do frequent, large water changes on it, but I didn't focus on it as much as the big tank. It was honestly just really hard for me to focus on a 10 gallon tank that had no fish, and about $200 worth of corals over my 90 gallon tank that has 8 fish and over $1000 worth of corals in it. In fact, I have been so depressed over the last month from the kalk overdose that I couldn't even look at my tanks -- I refused to clean the glass because I knew there was nothing more I could do to help my animals; that water changes were the only thing that could possibly help the tank recover.
I was also more intent on focusing on the 90, because when the kalk got into the contest tank, all of the rics turned white or brown and expelled their insides into the water. They continued to lose whatever remaining color they had over the next few days, even though I was doing 80 to 90% water changes every day or every other day. After about a week, I had seen no improvement in the contest tank, but I did see improvements in the big tank, so that further discouraged me from putting more effort into the contest tank.
Well last night I did another 100% water change on the contest tank. This time, I cleaned the glass (as I said, I hadn't cleaned the glass for the last month because my corals were in such sad shape, it made me depressed to look at them). The tank was filled with dinos, slime algae, diatoms and hair algae. And I have never had any algae in this tank before. Most of the rics were gone. The few that were left were shriveled or ripped, detached from the rocks, laying on the sandbed. A couple were still attached to their rocks, but they were being overtaken by the various forms of algae.
I blasted off all the algae I could with a powerhead and sucked up anything that I could with a turkey baster, and I collected all the loose rics and placed them in a tupperware. The rics are still brown and colorless.
The tank looks gray. No color. Algae everywhere. And I'm not sure the rics will recover. I am going to try to salvage the rics that I can, and move them in the big tank, since my water parameters in there are finally stable. Hopefully some of them will come back to life.
So this is officially me throwing in the towel. It's been a good run, and the competition has been stiff from the start! It was a great idea, but the contestants are dropping like flies. I would have ridden this horse 'til the end, had I not had a tank crash. Someone else's tank is deserving of the win, and best of luck to everyone remaining in the competition!
