Downgrade

Wow. That was a ton of work.

Original 55 gallon

New 20 gallon Long 1 day later

Process

The downgrade was a success! Most everything went according to plan and  there were no casualties!  I followed the plan I laid out in my last post. Took out the 3 large rocks from the left side of my 55 gallon, and my yellow tang. Took them to AC&C and received $53 dollars in store credit! To be honest I didn't think it would bring this much so I was happy. When I got home I took out some water, most of the live rock, and then the corals.

Then moved everything to their respective holding containers, separated corals, fish, live rock, and bad live rock.

Then emptied the tank as much as possible and got it out of the way! Replaced it with the 20, wow what a difference...

Put in 30lbs of new rinsed aragonite sand! Then some rocks, the corals, and eventually the fish! Didn't quite plan on the water being so cloudy, but it didn't cause any problems.

Ran into my first real snag here, removed the fish from 78 degree bucket and put them into the tank which was only around 70 degrees. I hadn't let the tank heat up and I was more worried about getting the fish out of the bucket! I didn't know how drastic the temp change was until after putting the fish in. The clown and sixline wrasse seemed unaffected, but my yellow watchman goby was definitely temperature shocked. He was motionless on the sand bed for nearly 20 minutes, until he snapped back into it and was back to normal! Thought I was going to lose him for sure, won't make that mistake again!

Put on my penguin 200 HOB filter to help get rid of the cloudiness, and it did the job! Tank's really starting to come together at this point.

Then of course I had a few more temperature problems... the heater I wanted to use was too large for the tank and at its lowest setting was maintaining a temperature around 84 degrees! A bit high for me so I swapped out the heater and got it settled back around 78, which I am much more comfortable with! 

Tonight I removed the HOB filter, and set up the ATO system. Everything is coming together! One problem I've come across is water flow, all of my powerheads are far too strong for this little tank. I'm running one Koralia 1 (400gph) right now, I'm planning to grab a pair of 200gph powerheads next time I am at the fish store. I don't think one powerhead does a good enough job of providing random flow! I also plan on selling the large empty rock on the right side of the tank to the fish store, as well as some other old equipment in order to buy myself those new pumps and a new clean up crew of Inverts that is drastically needed!

The tank as of tonight! One day after the downgrade.

Left side

Right Side