He's a candy hogfish and I found him at a "new to me" store down south just before Christmas as I was buying yet another piece of equipment from a fellow reefer. He's a pretty neat fish, very inquisitive and a bit intimidated by all the larger fish, but he has plenty of spots to hide in as none of the others fit ;) He's only about 2.5 inches long or so, maybe 3. But I guess when everyone else is 6" or 7" it can be a bit scary. I had never seen one in the store before, let alone around here so I snapped him up pretty quickly. I wasn't really planning on getting him until I set the new tank up but he's not that big and is fitting in nicely.
With the issues that my solenoid is giving me (not turning on half the time, then turning on the other half of the time) I'm quite surprised that my water parameters have been holding as they are. ca is at about 380, alk at 8.6 (weird as its usually around 7.4) and mg is a bit low at about 1170. I have to fill my reactor this week so I think I'll add a bit more zeomag to see if I can boost the levels up to at least 1250 or so.
So last week I noticed that a rock had slipped out of place and well, not being able to learn from past reefing lessons, I rolled up my sleeves and got to work fixing it. Of course, a landslide ensued and well, the tank didn't quite fit back together as well as I had hoped. And the original rock is still out of place, but no matter. I'm tired of dealing with it.
I also did some pruning of the fugly brown stag on the very right hand side. Well actually I think my powerhead pruned it a couple months ago and one very large branch (pretty much half the colony) broke off at the base. I thought I could just jam it back into place but cleaning the glass was difficult as it ended up just leaning against it. I also had to cut away about half of the very large milli colony on the left side. It was just getting out of hand, shading out several corals and burning the living crap out of the others nearby. As well, the yellow pocilipora/seriatopora in the back forty had to be halved as nasty old caulerpa had taken up residence and pretty much killed off a goodly portion of it. And then I went and broke another colony due to stupidity. All in all, it got me $40 in credit at the LFS which was good enough for me. They're getting a shipment in tomorrow. I know my tank is stuffed but there was talk of purple stylophoras and, well... I just can't resist at least looking :P Besides, I have a gift certificate from christmas so it would be virtually free! ;)
Yet another gratuitous reef shot from the other day. I ended up switching positions of the pavona (piinky in the middle) with the ricordeas on the right. The pavona gets these 4" sweepers on it during feeding time and was stinging the crap out of my ugly brown austera which was right above it. Its not doing well at all. I'm hoping the repositioning of the pavona will help it fare a bit better.
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