So I finally decided that apparently the only way to beat the little bastards is to take the tank down and restart it. There was just no stopping their growth, I could slow it with less lighting but that wasn't so good on the corals. I ended up losing all 3 caps, my green digitata colony, all my astrea snails, my abalone, and about 10 frags. The tank looked pretty empty, just alot of little frags left, no big ones. Here is what the tank looked like before I took it down.
So I went and got myself some sand, thanks to my friend John who loaned me a bag of sugar sand. My old DSB was about 3 years old and some people recommended that I get rid of it and either go bare bottom or replace it. I've always wanted the finer grained sand so yesterday I spent most of the day tearing the tank down and getting the sandbed out.
And its at this point that I really must say: SHOPVACS ROCK!
I never really thought of them as being all that handy, after all they're just a vacuum right? But then using it on getting that last bit of gack water out of a 90G tank that you can't tip. Freakin awesome! Of course emptying out the shopvac isn't quite so awesome ;)
So I got the tank all clean and filled 'er up. I forgot how much fun it is to work with sugar sand. Not that I have before but I've read many testimonals. You know, the ones that say "its been 4 days and the tank is still cloudy"? Well its only been one for me. Not too bad though. Everyone seems happy. I have a few frags that are mostly gone but I just can't throw them out if they have a bit of tissue on them. What if they come back!!?? Anyway I'll wait to post a pic until the water is clear. Its pretty hazy now but hopefully by tomorrow it will be clear.
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