Tank Tear-Down: What a Mess!

[Reinhold]

I tore my 55 gallon reef tank down today. I spent hours yesterday cleaning my protein skimmer, power heads, and other hardware. Cleaning all of the coralline algae off the hardware was difficult.

Today, I removed my surviving corals and fish and brought them to my LFS for adoption. I then tore down the LR structures. What a mess! I could not believe the large amount of smelly detritus in the LR. I siphoned dirty, smelly water from the tank, and to tell you how ugly it was, my wife looked at it and said, "You're not going to flush that s**t down my clean toilet are you?"

I scooped out the DSB and brought it and my hair algae-covered LR to the LFS. The owner is going to try to re-cure the LR with no lighting to see if he can clean it up enough to re-use. The DSB looked very white and clean.

I think tearing down was a tougher job than setting up, and certainly not as fun. I kept thinking, "I'm sure glad this isn't a 500 gallon beast."

[FISHme]

Was that your only tank ?

[jadeclam]

did u tear down for good??

[Reinhold]

That was my only tank. I've cleaned and stored all of my equipment, and think I'll restart it sometime in the future, but I don't know when.

These reef tanks, especially the small ones like mine, sit on a razor's edge of stability.