Pete: Sounds like you are pretty well prepared for this saga. I went through it a while back and successfully hypoed 8: small fish in a fifty gallon. I kept a journal and documented the little adventure well because eventually I intend to use the material for a book. Here are a few things you need to keep in mind. Because you are going to be working bare bottom without any substrate at low salinity keeping up your bio-filter is somewhat of a challenge, but it can be done. The hundred gallon is going to be hard to keep up with all the water changes you will have to do, several smaller tanks would have probably been a better choice, like three twenties etc, but if you've already bought the tank I'd definitely use it. You may want to pick up a couple of the 10 gallon setups or a 20 gallon setup from Wally World or PetsMart anyway. They are pretty cheap, and are much easier to work with.
Also, you should go to Fish Paradise in Ft. Worth see Mr. Ly, and buy about 10 to 20 bucks worth of his caulerpa. This stuff is working alive with pods. Also, while you are in the area go over to Frank?s and pick up several bottles of the TurboStart 900. Don?t get the big bottle, get two or three of the small bottles, they will keep better in the frig. Once you open this stuff it goes bad quickly, but it is really helpful with hypo.
But, right now while you are gathering your supplies you should be soaking several big sponges in your fuge. You need to do this for as long as possible, two weeks if your fish are living with the crypt okay, of course if they are not doing well you will have to work faster. DNA has those big black cylindrical tube filters. I think they are about $15.00 for two, but these are perfect for what you need. Ly has them also, but they are a lot more expensive there, but might be worth saving some gas to get them from him. You can slip these perfectly over the intakes of you power heads and skimmer pump after they are well seeded from your affected tank. I kept one on the intake tube of the power filter and the MJ1200 to the Aqua C skimmer, and one stuffed inside a big power filter box. They worked like a charm seeded and soaked in the TS 900.
As Brian mentioned, the skimmer is not going to help you that much once your down near 009 SG. But it will help during the trip down and of course back up. If you already have it use it, if not, I?d spend the money instead on several of the small sponge type power filters. Over kill on filtration will help you here, the more the better. Keep the filter boxes stuffed with seeded sponge material and use the tube filters on all PHs. After the filter material has been in your sump for a week or so, add it to you HTs and pour the small bottle of TS 900 into the filter box and in three days your HT will be fully cycled. But with all the water changes and dropping the SG you will have to replenish this several times over the six to eight weeks. If you use the 100 gallon you will need more of the TS 900 I?m sure, but this stuff will keep your tirtes and ammonia zero, and the Caulerpa and water changes will help with trate export. Trates will be a battle the whole time, but fortunately fish are pretty resilient to trates at low SG.
While your display is fallow, keep temps and salinity high so the existing crypt will live out its life cycle quicker rather than going dormant. I?d try for at least 82 degrees and 1.027 if you can get by with it. I don?t know what corals you have, but I ran my two reef tanks between 83 and 84 degrees at 1.028 for six weeks with no problems, but I mostly just had softies, some LPSs. This may not be advisable for sps. However if your corals are looking okay I?d chance it. Watch Xenia and GSP, they are pretty good barometers, usually the first to show stress if the water is too salty.
Also, don?t forget to feed your fallow tanks. Your cleaner crew will need food. We lost an arrowhead crab, simply because I forgot to feed one of the fallow tanks.
Keep one of the small tanks full of Ly?s pod laced macro. If you are fortunate enough to trap the Mandarin and blenny, keep them in the macro tank and keep the caulerpa full of gut loaded baby brine shrimp and/or gut loaded ghost shrimp. Those fish will be in heaven in the macros. However, I doubt you will be able to trap these two fish, and they will probably be fine in the display. But if you end up leaving these two fish I?d go the whole eight weeks on the fallow tank just to be sure. If the little mandarin has even one parasite hidden inside a gill cover it could perpetuate the life cycle and all you work will be in vane. Catch them if you can.
I?ve learned a few tricks about trapping fish also. Here are some tips. Right now, as you are preparing for this ordeal: gathering supplies, sponges soaking in the sump, qt tanks cycling etc, your trap or traps should be in the tank, so the fish are getting use to it/them. Place the trap in an area where you usually feed from. Only feed in the trap, no where else. When you are just a few days from being ready, stop feeding the tank completely. Don?t put any food whatsoever in the display for a few days, two or three at least. Let you fish get really hungry, then when you are ready, take a long turkey baster and squirt food only inside the trap. This way you will get them for sure.
For difficult to trap fish there other tricks. You can use other things as bait. If you have a clown hosting anything, you can put his host in the trap. I lured my maroon into the trap with Frogspawn he was hosting in. After you?ve caught all but the LMB and/or Mandarin, you may be able to stuff the trap with the pod loaded caulerpa, and gut loaded brine shrimp.
Good luck with this, and please keep us posted.
