neglect= healthy tank?????

[theone]

I moved a month and a half ago and with all the work I'm doing on my house I have had no time to care for my tank.
I put all the contents of my 50g into a 30g and filled it only 2/3 with water.

My corals have never looked so good. My zoos that were bleached are green again, shrooms have tripled in size as has my leather. A frogspawn I havn't seen in months has all of a sudden been brought back to life. Yes I only have softies.

The only light is a 12W actinic, no water changes since I moved. There is only 40# of LR with 2 PHs for movement and there is no substrate. I used to have 96W of PC 10,000K with the actinic.

I feed the fish 2X a week if that. The tank is in the basement on the floor.

I dont get it. Before I moved, I did regular water changes, had a regular light cycle, had 3.5 sand bed, kept ALK @ 10-11 even added calcium for the heck of it. I spent 1 hour a day careing for the tank and things bleached, never grew and even died.

Now everything is ok with total neglect.

I DONT GET IT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

[ScottM]

...Yes I only have softies......

there is your answer.

softies don't require the high lighting to survive.

they thrive in a nutrient rich environment.

i'd bet if you had any SPS.... they'd all be gone.....

 

[Jim Tansey]

I think what your seeing is the same as you would see in a plant deprived of light, fast growth that later turns out to be stringy and weak made in an attempt to reach light.

Jim

 

[RichConley]

theres also the "keep your hands out of the damn tank" school of thought. Every time you start sticking your hands in there, and playing around, parameters of the tank change. Your tank has probably been more consistent while you were neglecting it.

 

[theone]

Scott when you say "they thrive in a nutrient rich environment" you mwan what exactly?

 

[Conlius]

he means....all your softies are processing all your nitrates. where as SPS corals want nutrient free water...your lucky it was a softies tank. If you had an sps farm you would have watched it die. All the calcium dosing and extra stuff you were doing is needed for sps but not always for softies. but it is good to see that neglect turned out to be a good thing

 

[theone]

So what everyone out here does is mostly for SPS corals? I guess I never realized that was the case. That would explain a lot.

I need to find more info on softie coral care. What kind of lighting is good for them considering 96W of PC was too much. Maybe I'll go back to NO or raise the PCs higher. No need for that 250W MH set up I bought.

Right now less care and more neglect for my tank is a good thing since I'm remodeling my house.

 

[Alex]

Not all softies dislike light. Yellow leathers are light lovers. My toad stools definately liked it when I went from the 220W of PC to the 660W of VHO on my 75. As some one said some times just keeping your hands out of the tank can help growth. The softies are a lot more forgiving though.

 

[Conlius]

yeah, light isn't a bad thing. Dong has a complete softies tank (either a 75 or a 90 gallon) and is running halides over it, and they still love it. sps usually need more light and better water quality. I think sps colors and branchy/plate look is very pretty.

 

[theone]

Thanks all. I will find info and try to keep my hands out of the tank. God knows where my hands have been.

I might add more LR and put some of the corals in shaded areas.