Christy's Reef

Same crap different day. I'm learning to live with the STN. I took a few photos tonight of the offending corals and noticed that one of them has a green skeleton. Granted, its been deteriorating for about 3-4 weeks now and has gradually gone green but its green nonetheless. And we all know what green means: phosphate. Stupid craptastic phosphate remover. I put some of that phosban stuff in the sump. Not only is it useless in the reactor but its useless in its little bag as well. Either that or I've managed to exhaust it in record time (which really wouldn't surprise me). This would mean that I get tissue necrosis when I use it and tissue necrosis when I don't. Why do they make fish food with so much damned phosphate anyways?? Well I'm not about to let my fish starve for the sake of a couple 1" fuzzy sticks. Too bad though, some of those fuzzy sticks were pretty, and expensive.

So I caved and siliconed my tunze 6060 to its magnet. Because most of the STN I've been experiencing is only at one end of the tank, I started to wonder if the problem was due to lack of flow. Its at the end that the 802 was pointing at, and obviously the 802 just can't compare to the power of the mighty tunze :p (really it can't 400gph vs 1600gph, pfft!). Now I'm thinking, maybe I need a more powerful Tunze! First I need more money though, if someone could arrange that for me, that would be great.

Anyhoo, I'm not exactly seeing great reduction in STN. Quite frankly the whole STN thing is kind of funny. I don't ever see it creeping along, just one day I look and a whole bunch of tissue or a whole branch of a coral is gone. Then I keep looking daily and nothing, then whammo! another branch gone. Then nothing for a week. Its the damnedest thing. So now I've started hacking off various branches and relocating them. Not that its working all that splendidly but I suppose time will tell. So far about 3/4 seem to be happy where I've put them. We shall see.

Ok so I did manage to get some decent photos. I took a full tank shot. Its lookin not too shabby if you don't look at the oogy bits. My Pocilipora damicornis is coloring up nicely and I loooove this one, whatever its called Acropora somethingorother :P. This one has really neat green tips, I sort of wonder if it isn't one of those "bubblegum" acros. Its taken a bit of a beating lately as not one but two powerheads have crashed into it, making me a few frags to trade at the LFS :P