General Observations
It has been about 8 months since the last update (month 40) and big problems have occured.  As I noted last time the tank was continuing to show signs of decline.  I increased my water changes using a new salt on the market called Oceanic.  I also decided to use a large amount of Phosban which is an iron based phosphate remover to combat the algae that was starting to get a stronghold on the tank.  I shut my calcium reactor down to minimize any chance that the CO2 was aggravating the algae growth.  I started dripping Kalk instead as well as used Turbo calcium and buffer to maintain the water parameters within reason.

Soon after, my SPS corals started to show signs of RTN, though unlike normal RTN, this started at the tips and slowly worked its way down.  The Caps all started to bleach at the same time.  I increased my water changes, but the degeneration continued.  After about a month, all the corals were showing signs of significant degeneration and the caps were dead.  One of the two large Derasa clams had also died.   The pic above shows the tank after one of the clams had died, the caps were dead and taken out and the blue A. Tortuosa was removed and fragged to try to save it.

I started doing some research on-line and ran across two disconcerting issues.  The new Oceanic salt I had switch to had reports of bad batches which caused some tanks to crash.  Also, the Iron based phosphate removers I had introduced in large quantity had reports of causing massive RTN in SPS corals when used in large, but recommended quantities.  I pulled the Phosban out of the tank and did large water changes with a different salt, but the declined quickly continued over the next couple of weeks and I lost virtually all of my stony corals and my clams.  The only survivors besides the fish were a bubble coral and some soft corals and the rose BTAs.  I still don't know what the culprit was or perhaps it was a combination of several things, I just don't know.  It's tough to lose corals that you have raised from tiny frags to plate size colonies, a blue A. Tortuosa colony over a foot high, hammer coral that I had for about 10 years and clams that grew from a couple of inches to about 15" long and were spawning.

Deaths/Specimen Problems (too many to list, but here are some pics)

	This pic shows some of the problems.  Notice the Byropsis colonizing part of the millipora coral.  Also the M. Cap below it has died and is being colonized with some cyano.
	Close-up of my large prize purple rimmed cap.  Dieing and being colonized with cyano.
	This pic shows how most of the Acropopra looked.  The tips would die and slowly spread down.  The dead areas were quickly colonized by cyano and algae.
	Pic of large Derasa shell and corals.

What lessons did I learn out of this?  One is that I got lazy and cheap with the tank.  Other interests were taking my hobby money and since the tank was pretty stable, I just didn't keep up with some things as well as I should have.  Frankly I got complacent.  I also didn't keep up with some of the online websites like I used to which would have clued me in to the possible issues with the Oceanic salt and use of Iron based phosphate removers.

• Don't experiment with new salts until they are proven.
• Don't be too cavalier with large
• Keep up with a certain level of maintenance even if the tank is doing fine as noted below.
•  Lighting - I got cheap and didn't replace the MH and actinic lights as frequently as I should have.  The last MH lights probably had been on the tank for over 18 months.
• Water changes - I got lazy and didn't keep up with water changes as well as I should have until problems had cropped up.  Also, I think the amount of water changes I was doing in general needed to be larger.
• Substrate - I left the substrate alone and I think it became a nutrient sink over time leading to my algae problems and lead to the early tank decline.  In the future, I am going to siphon the sand when doing water changes to remove as much detritus as possible, realizing that I will be reducing the filtration capacity somewhat.
• Sump - When I tore the sump down, there was a much larger amount of detritus in the sump that I was expecting which wasn't really visible until I and torn it down. This was an obvious nutrient source in the tank that needs to be maintained better than I had been.