I have a 90 gallon mixed reef tank set up for right at a year. Corals are growing great, fish are healthy, display tank looked great, had just won some automatic dosers from BRS to help keep my calcium and alk levels even more stable than my current kalk dosing does. I'd have to clean my glass maybe once every week and a half to two or so, and that was mostly if company was coming and I wanted it to look really nice
I had to go out of town last week for business. My wife looks after the tank when I'm gone. I've taught her a lot about the tank - she helps with water changes, keeping the ATO water topped off, reports if the controller display is showing something weird, etc.
She also feeds the fish when I'm gone. I just have her use some pellets to keep it simple for her. Well, one of the kids ran into her while she was feeding them last week, and rather than pinching out some with her fingers so she knew exactly how much she was putting in, she was just pouring some from the container and more went in that was supposed to. It started with "a little more than I should have". The next day, she calls and tells me under the tank stinks and my bottle under the tank is overflowing....the one my skimmer empties into, and the one I had emptied before I left two days prior. Yeah. Her estimate has now morphed into "there were pellets everywhere and I didn't know what to do." She feels awful and has been apologizing to me pretty much every time she walks by the tank.
Needless to say...I'm not entirely sure how I avoided a complete catastrophe. I don't remember exactly how much food was in the container when I left...but there's a substantial amount gone now. When I walked in Friday, my tank water was really cloudy and the tank had algae covering the sides and starting to work on the rocks. I did an small emergency water change that night (10 g - that was all the RODI water I had made up at the time). While the water was mixing I put in fresh gfo/carbon, cranked my skimmer up to a wetter skim, put on a filter sock and scraped/blasted away as much of the algae as I could so it would find itself into the filter sock (which I took off the next morning).
The cloudiness is gone, but I know the algae battle is just starting.
I'm planning another water change tonight, and will be changing out my gfo/carbon again on Friday. My skimmer is still working overtime, but it's not nearly as bad as it was (I've stepped the wet skim back a bit).
Is there anything else I need to be watching out for? Anything else I can do to help knock this down without too much undue stress?
Needless to say, I'll have the food measured out next time before I go :(
I had to go out of town last week for business. My wife looks after the tank when I'm gone. I've taught her a lot about the tank - she helps with water changes, keeping the ATO water topped off, reports if the controller display is showing something weird, etc.
She also feeds the fish when I'm gone. I just have her use some pellets to keep it simple for her. Well, one of the kids ran into her while she was feeding them last week, and rather than pinching out some with her fingers so she knew exactly how much she was putting in, she was just pouring some from the container and more went in that was supposed to. It started with "a little more than I should have". The next day, she calls and tells me under the tank stinks and my bottle under the tank is overflowing....the one my skimmer empties into, and the one I had emptied before I left two days prior. Yeah. Her estimate has now morphed into "there were pellets everywhere and I didn't know what to do." She feels awful and has been apologizing to me pretty much every time she walks by the tank.
Needless to say...I'm not entirely sure how I avoided a complete catastrophe. I don't remember exactly how much food was in the container when I left...but there's a substantial amount gone now. When I walked in Friday, my tank water was really cloudy and the tank had algae covering the sides and starting to work on the rocks. I did an small emergency water change that night (10 g - that was all the RODI water I had made up at the time). While the water was mixing I put in fresh gfo/carbon, cranked my skimmer up to a wetter skim, put on a filter sock and scraped/blasted away as much of the algae as I could so it would find itself into the filter sock (which I took off the next morning).
The cloudiness is gone, but I know the algae battle is just starting.
I'm planning another water change tonight, and will be changing out my gfo/carbon again on Friday. My skimmer is still working overtime, but it's not nearly as bad as it was (I've stepped the wet skim back a bit).
Is there anything else I need to be watching out for? Anything else I can do to help knock this down without too much undue stress?
Needless to say, I'll have the food measured out next time before I go :(
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