Aquascape #1.
All my probes have gone bad. Temp reading with a glass thermometer in the tank reads 26 but the digital cheapie is out of whack, the Ph meter probe is out of whack too and reads way low (new probe on order).
OK, my bad. Everything is dead due to my impatience, and lack of experience with such a small tank.
It started mid last week when the fishies killed the shrimps and ate them all. Water was crystal clear though, and fish were doing great. One of the pieces of live rock had a lot of aiptasia on it (I assume as the water quality has been improving they’ve all started to show). I made the call to try and rid the rock of them with Joe’s Juice. There were a few of them, 5-6 of them and by the time I was done squirting the juice with a syringe I think the tank started to crash.
I made a decision to remove the piece of live rock with all the aiptasia on it anyways. I removed the 3 fish and I started aquascaping with leftover base rock I have from my old setup. Stirring up the sandbed doing so (adding to the crash for sure).
I re-introduced the fish to a holding tank within the display tank and instantly realised they were at the surface gasping for air. I used marine buffer to up the Ph and did a 50% water change. 2 fishes died a few hours later and the goby died the day after.
So now I’m back to square one, pretty much. I’m disappointed in my impatience (the fish and shrimp didn’t need to die!) and I’m also quite surprised at how sensitive such a small amount of water is. For example, I put a Koralia 1 I had lying around in the tank and the temperature went up by 2 degrees within an hour.
In some ways I’m glad this has all happened now. I’m tempted to start work on an overflow box and sump for more water volume and gear to hide in the sump (skimmer, carbon/phosban reactors etc), but I’ve decided to try and stick with the concept of a simple nano with weekly 20% water changes for now.