I think someone is working against me with this ultralith stuff. I'm not so religious with the shaking of the phosban reactor containing the ultralith rocks and quite frankly I can't remember the last time I shook it, it could be a couple days ago, maybe a week. Anyway I went to shake it last night and discovered the pump running it had died. Who knows when that happened. Stupid maxijet 600s. They're great little pumps but such an idiot design with the impellers. The magnet has two pieces of plastic attached to it, how I don't know but they sure come apart easy. I'm on my third impeller (for 3 different maxijets). I keep stealing them off other pumps that I'm not using but last night I had none to steal and ended up supergluing one back together before I decided to shut down my phosban reactor for a couple of days. If ultralith is as fabulous as they seem to think it is, it will keep my phosphates low for me (although it hasn't been doing anything for the wafer algae/caulerpa/various other pestilence algaes in my tank. If only they could design those impellers without the plastic bits somehow I bet those things would be totally unbreakable. The pump on my schuran calcium reactor is a maxijet 1000 (which I've never heard of or seen a replacement for) and it had a ceramic shaft which broke about 5 minutes after I bought it, which began the parts stealing process from various other maxijets. All my new ones have metal shafts which seem to be interchangeable.
Ok thats enough ranting about that. I hate when equipment fails due to some stupid fifty cent part. I'm in such a small town its not like we can just race out to buy whatever we need (and as per usual I don't discover it until like 9pm anyways) so I've had to have parts shipped. The impeller is about half the price of the pump but they didn't have any, so I'll have another maxijet 600 to add to the pile. At least I'll have lots of spares if the motors die :P
Corals are starting to look better. I don't think I've ever seen the clams so happy, they all have their mantles fully extended, like I don't think they could possibly extend them any further. I'm not sure if this is a sign of needing new bulbs or what, although now that I think of it I just got new ones in January or something so they should be good for another 6 months or so. Anyway, most stuff is starting to color up, a couple of the blue corals are really making more of an effort and regaining their blue. My blue milli and blue acro in the back forty next to the pink birdsnest (middle of the tank)are looking pretty great except for random tissue necrosis in parts. Usually just the tips but I'm seeing bits and pieces in other spots. I try to just prune them off as it usually stops right away and starts healing the broken spot in a few days. I sort of wonder if its some thing viral or wtf is going on. I don't think I'll ever figure that one out. Luckily the colonies its happening to are large enough that its only affecting a small portion and not too detremental.
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