Things don’t always turn out the way we plan and more often than we would like, misfortune seems to befall us. But sometimes adversity can be channeled into something positive.
I’m very proud of my little Mandarin Dragonet’s 10 gallon tank, which I have successfully kept her in for an entire year. Not only is she alive but she is also the picture of health, everything a well cared for Dragonet should be.
With that said, after a number of equipment failures I made the decision to shut down my 10 gallon duo setup and instead consolidate everything into a brand new 25 gallon rimless glass aquarium. Both tanks had heaters that failed on them, of the brand AquaEL(the 5th and 6th heaters of that brand to fail for me in less than 3 years, avoid this brand like the plague!) and shared a 2x39w T5HO fixture that quit on me.
Improvisation at its finest! Did not want risking that caulerpa going sexual!
Being on a very tight economy right now and after crunching the numbers, it turned out that it was actually much more economical for me to buy a new tank and merge the contents of both tanks into one. Especially since a local store had a nice heavy discount on a 4x24w T5HO fixture WITH lights included, which meant not only was it cheaper than my old 2x39w fixture, but I also didn’t have to spring extra for lights either! What made this solution even better was that I had bought an Eheim StreamON+ 2000 last year, which turned out to be way to powerful for a Dragonet but was just perfect for a tank more than twice the size. Of course as I mentioned in the beginning things don’t always go to plan, and as it turns out Ikea furniture does not handle excessive moisture very well. Especially after my 5 gallon tank that was sitting on it seemed to have developed a seeping leak that had soaked into the fiberboard and caused some serious water damage. This of course meant I needed a new aquarium table. But as the french say: C’est la vie.
Once I finally had everything and the new tank was in place I could finally begin moving things over, starting with tank number 2, which contained only sand, rock and algae.
By day 2 everything had cleared and the sponge filters had done an excellent job polishing up the water. Water seemed good and there was no apparent mass die-off or anything amiss, so I decided to go ahead and finish up by transferring over the sand and rock from the remaining tank, and of course my little Mandarin as well. I also took the liberty of transferring over some Zoanthids and monitpora frags that were getting a bit crowded out in my reef tank.
Everything appears to have gone well and though shy Lassie my Mandarin seems to be settling in nicely and still has a healthy appetite for her frozen lobster eggs. Although for some reason she seems to be obsessing over the rocks from the other tank, rather than hanging around her old rocks, which i more or less arranged exactly like they were in her old tank, and has taken up “current surfing” before the lights go out. Who knows what truly goes on in those little brains?
And while looking towards the future and what is to come, let us look one more time at the past and what was.
