Just returned from a 10 day vacation with success on all fronts. I got a tan, felt rested and somewhat recharged and the tank survived quite nicely. The aquatronica float switch failed on about day 5 but my tanksitter manually topped up the sump every day or so, so everything was groovy (Thanks Kristen!!). I'll have to write out some instructions next time. I'm not sure why the bloody thing fails when there is plenty of water in the topoff tank. Maybe it needs to be cleaned or something.
I'm slowly getting things assembled to start ultralith. I'm kind of apprehensive about starting something that I don't really have much follow through with. I'm not one for dosing which is why I bought the dosing pump for my calcium/magnesium/alkalinity. Spending another $300+ for another dosing pump just so I can be married to ultralith doesn't make much sense to me so I suppose this will be just "dabbling" with it. I don't really want to go too full on as its too hard on the system when I (eventually) quit. I'd like to be somewhere in between wildly successful and somewhat lowered nutrients. I don't need to be ultra low like they advertise, I just need less so I can control the algae and majano population, as well as the vermetid snail population which seems to be creeping up. At least they're easily killed by filling their tubes with kalk, but some of the tube angles really make it difficult, same with killing the majanos, they grow in the oddest places.
Ick still persists in the tank. The orange shoulder tang is now about 1.5x the size of the lavender and I had no idea these fish could grow quite so fast. He is quite the aggressor, not in a super aggressive way (that sounds dumb) but he definitely is trying to be the dominant fish. So he occasionally chases the lavender which spooks the powder blue, both of which are the major carriers for ick. The regal has a light dusting as well, I'm not sure why, I guess he gets a little skittish from time to time, which is odd as he's the largest fish in the tank but also the weirdest so I guess thats it.
A friend of mine gave me another nori feeder so some of the other fish can get in there at feeding time as opposed to the regal, lavender and orange shoulder hogging it all. Now some of the more timid fish such as the bellus and powder blue can feed at one while the pigs go whole hog on the other one. Its nice to see the powder blue eating some "prepared" food as he still seems to be only interested in picking off the rocks. I'm not overly worried as he's still nice and fat but I'd really like to get some garlic into him (via mysis/nori) to stave off the ick.
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