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  #18  
Old 12/25/2007, 09:55 PM
Agu Agu is offline
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Join Date: Oct 1999
Location: Venice, Florida
Posts: 15,230
I have a plan.

Went by my LFS late afternoon and the owner was there feeding and checking the livestock. Picked up a new 10 gallon and spray painted the back black. The current tank has several scratches, a deep sand bed that's got to go, and the back is covered with zoas. It's going to be too much mess emptying the tank ,cleaning it, and putting it back in place when a new one was $12.

The leathers, nepthea, and shrooms will be freshwater dipped and moved to a frag tank that's already set up and cycled. Is it safe to assume any nudis that survive are obligate zoa feeders and will starve in the Q tank ?

Then the zoas will be dipped with a freshwater lugols solution and transferred to a tub with flow and heat. I have to remove every piece of live rock because there isn't a rock without zoas in the tank. The clownfish and cleanup crew also goes into the tub. Should I salt water rinse be given the dipped rock to avoid getting Lugols in the holding tub?

Then the tanks get swapped out, all equipment gets thoroughly cleaned (after 5 years it's due), and the new tank is put in place with new substrate (shallow this time). The next hour is spent picking worms and pods out of the old tank to seed the new tank .

I'll let the new tank run for a day or two with the sand seeded and live rock rubble in the aquaclear just to stabilize the tank (and to make sure everything is working properly).

After a couple of days everything is redipped and rinsed in saltwater and returned to the tank. Special attention of course to any colony that doesn't look 100% .
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Less technology , more biology .

Last edited by Agu; 12/25/2007 at 10:06 PM.