Well my latest STN affected colony finished itself off over the last of the holidays. I arrived home to a nice white skeleton. Sadly, it doesn't even faze me anymore, I just move on. No point in dwelling over it. I can't believe how many red bugs there are in the system though, they're not just restricted to a few pieces, everyone has them. Evidently they've been there for awhile and I haven't been very diligent about checking the tank. Granted I've been pretty busy lately and even neglected my weekly water changes which I always do without fail. Time to get back on track!
Even with the STN still waging its war in the tank I'm pretty happy with the growth I have been getting. I actually have to frag one coral as its touching the and killing it (btw, milli vs cap = milli wins). The last of the coralline algae that was doing ok in the tank is gone only to be replaced by some sort of green algae that is difficult to scrape off of the glass. Its only on the back and side panes though so I don't really care much about that. It would be nice to have the purple back though.
The brown wafer algae is really having a field day in the tank. I removed some by hand tonight as well as a huge patch of caulerpa that is growing in the branches of my pink birdsnest. The fish can't reach it in there and it grows into a giant ball before I notice it and yard it out. One thing though, it grows so compact in there it makes it really easy to remove. Well, relatively easy anyways, it doesn't come out one wisp at a time. It comes out in big clumps which is much more satisfying even if it still takes me a good 20 minutes to get it all out of there.
One thing I'm really disappointed in is the growth (or rather non growth) of my blastomussa and acan. I guess having a SPS dominant tank or even providing a nutrient reduced environment required for SPS doesn't make for success with LPS. At least not in my case. I had rescued an Australian acanthastrea from the LFS thinking I could save it. Well not in the big tank anyways, its slowly dwindled down to only a few polyps left (I think less than 8) and my beautiful red blasto just never recovered from the heat wave in july (killed off about half the colony) and its plagued by a bit of cyano which constantly seems to cover the skeleton. I'm going to try to put both pieces in the nano tank where there are more nutrients (albeit less light though) and hope for the best. I don't really know what else I can supplement them with and feeding them has never been successful as I've never really seen any sort of feeding response from them when I target feed them. I suppose I should be feeding them in the middle of the night of some such thing but sadly I'm just not that dedicated.
Something is going on in the nano tank as well, zoos are withered and disappearing, and quite frankly nobody looks happy except for a couple of ricordea. Some are not so thrilled because they are becoming overgrown with algae, which I suspect, is because I've been "overfeeding" the tank to try to target feed the fish in there. I had no idea pygmy hawkfish were so reclusive and half the time I have no idea whether he's eating the stuff I put in or what (plus he doesn't come out for photos, the poophead!). He doesn't recognize flake as food at all so I've been feeding mysis shrimp. Granted I only put about 4 in there but it seems to be enough for the caulerpa and about 10 various other species of algae in there. The valonia is rampant although its a smaller variant of it. I found some halymenia in there as well as some sort of burgundy algae that is really tough and wiry (and annoying to remove). Theres also about 3-4 aiptasia (of which I yarded out the biggest one today, yay!) and flatworms, even though I used flatworm exit on the tank a couple of weekends ago. I guess I'll need repeated treatments and about 10x the suggested dosage it seems. Anyway, I hauled out lots of algae this afternoon and the tank looks much better, stuff looks happier anyways. I put some phosban in the back and I think I'll step up the water changes on it as well as do another FW Exit treatment on it tomorrow while I'm treating the big tank for red bugs.
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