Christy's Reef

Sometimes my tank ticks me off so bad it makes my eye twitch. Today is one of those days. Last night I got a call from my tank caretaker (my boyfriend) to inform me that my "clam was eating my wrasse". Sure enough, my wrasse had been checking out the clam for some reason or another (probably found some snacks hidden within or something) and my clam closed down on its head. Suffice it to say the wrasse did not survive as his head was pretty crushed right behind his gill flaps. I hope for his sake, he died a quick death. RIP little buddy. I had had him for 4 years. So sad.

Extracting the fish was no easy task either and while the clam sustained no major damage. It seems to be ok today. Now I say seems because who the hell knows really, with my luck. I tell you this clam has been a pain in the arse from the start what with the gaping and holes in the bottom and then never sitting upright. Its almost like he's inviting things to snack on his undersides. And now he's wiped out a fish? I can honestly say I'm not nearly as in love with him as I used to be.


So I get home and I'm ready to put a few more frags in the tank. I'm looking at stuff and I'm seeing some tissue recession on several different corals. Not a ton but enough to get that horrible white coral look, you know the one that almost goes off like a blue light special at K-Mart? Look here! Look here. I'm like wtf? What is going on with the tank now? Everything seems fine. And the wrasse wasn't dead in the tank for too long, we figurre 2 hours max.

Then I put my hand in the water. Oh gee, well isn't that just so nice and warm.

Yes, once again the chiller has let me down. The tank is 88.9 degrees. Yay.

Thank god I had the foresight to buy 2 boxes of fuses (5 per pack) because I can see that this is going to be a really fun summer for me and the tank. Last week I decided to try running the chiller without the fan in front of it. See it seems with the temperature that the tank room gets to, I need to take the front panel off of the chiller and run a fan through it, as well, I took the little guard off the return pump as I thought it might be restricting flow. Things went well for a week or two and then I decided to turn off the fan and see if it was just a matter of the flow increase. Apparently it isn't. Hopefully I can get the tank temp down and the tissue recession will stop. I'm also running carbon for anything in the water. I'd sort of like to crank up my ozone again to kill any "cooties" that that hot water might be breeding but I would imagine that would destroy all my efforts with the ultralith.

And don't even get me started on this whole Ultralith debacle. I've decided to give it the full run before I stop using it (gee do you think I've already made up my mind here?) but I'm just not seeing anything happening with my corals. Granted the alkalinity is practically non-existent and the magnesium is at an all time low but shouldn't I be seeing at least some color changes? Just a few, thats all I ask for. I think I was having better luck with the ozone. Oh well, only 5 more weeks and then I'll make my final decision. At this point color me unimpressed.